Australia’s coal exports to China were non-existent from 2020 - Jan 2023 due to an import ban. Most of AU coal now goes to Japan.
China now imports most of its coal from Indonesia and Russia.
https://www.ga.gov.au/digital-publication/aecr2023/coal
https://www.energymonitor.ai/industry/weekly-data-china-coal-imports-hit-a-high-but-not-from-australia/?cf-view
For comparison, Russia has been equipping their modern tanks with depleted uranium since Dec 2018.
https://tass.com/defense/1036958
And the Ukrainians have been destroying those tanks…
https://gagadget.com/en/war/253241-ukrainian-assault-squad-destroyed-russian-upgraded-t-80bvm-tank/
It it incorrect to state that voters don’t have a choice. The barriers are high to make radical change at the Federal level, sure, but that doesn’t mean that it cannot be done. One of the biggest problems is disenfranchisement and disengagement. People feel like they cannot make any change so they believe that the system is broken, but for all of the talk about politics, very few people actually vote in all of the possible elections.
Here’s an example of US voting in action…
The 2022 Dallas County elections covered a population of about 2.8 million residents in a large urban area, yet voter turnout was only 218,000 residents (7.8% of the population).
The county level of government manages a significant part of daily life for residents (e.g. police, utilities, public education, roads) yet the resident population seems disinterested with guiding local government. If you look at the election records, some roles voted into power are not even contested.
https://www.dallascountyvotes.org/election-results-and-maps/election-results/historical-election-results/#Election
If one wanted to run for office, the requirements at county levels are fairly simple. Fill in some forms, be a resident in the country for 6 months (12 months in the state), and you might need to arrange for 25 people to sign a petition for your nomination. That’s it. You don’t need to be a Democrat or a Republican - you just need the nomination.
https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/candidates/guide/2022/qualifications2022.shtml
And if you need more convincing about how easy it could be to make a change in local politics, meet the animal opponents: https://www.insider.com/dog-mayors-of-america-2019-7
The number of reported issues seems to be about the same with WinRAR: https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1914/product_id-3768/Rarlab-Winrar.html
Ok - here’s what it looks like if you were to group the GDP of each country into regions. If we group all of the regular trading partners and allies into “The West”, they comprise 58% of global GDP. BRICS and the 137 other countries would be 41%.
https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/
The article by Wait But Why has always been my favourite reference guide for explaining the future of AI to friends and family: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html
You know you can follow the tweet to learn more about the author, right?
That “random person” is Trisha Greenhalgh - Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford.
Here’s an excerpt from her Oxford Uni profile:
Trish is the author of over 400 peer-reviewed publications and 16 textbooks. She was awarded the OBE for Services to Medicine by Her Majesty the Queen in 2001, made a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences in 2014, and elected an International Fellow of the US Academy of Medicine in 2021. She is also a Fellow of the UK Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of General Practitioners, Faculty of Clinical Informatics and Faculty of Public Health.
https://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/team/trish-greenhalgh
Her Google Scholar profile shows that her work has been cited almost 95,000 times in other research papers.
https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?sortby=pubdate&hl=en&user=8KQwEGcAAAAJ&view_op=list_works
I’m not sure that they ever had any data because the data would probably suggest that management had the lowest productivity out of any employee. Middle management is filled with too many meetings, they’re all promoted to a level of incompetency, and have delusions that they contribute more towards the success of the business than the skilled people below them.
I wear masks on public transport and when flying. Even without reading the latest research on long-term COVID impacts, the amount of people openly sneezing and coughing is enough to convince me to keep doing it.
This is the official government reporting: https://data.stats.gov.cn/english/easyquery.htm?cn=A01
As of Jun 2023, the “The Urban Surveyed Unemployment Rate of the Population Aged from 16 to 24(%)” was 21.3%.
The “Urban Surveyed Unemployment Rate of the Population Aged from 25 to 59(%)” was 4.1%.
The overall unemployment rate was 5.2%.
This site references the same data, but provides better visual charts:
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/youth-unemployment-rate
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/unemployment-rate
The situation isn’t really a lack of jobs, it’s that younger generations don’t want to work the factory jobs (because they all studied for better jobs) and there is pressure to look after parents. Not only is there an imbalance in young vs old people due to the one child policy but China also passed a law that required children to provide mental and financial support to their parents. Some parents are effectively paying their children to look after them, thereby removing them from the workforce count.
https://www.voanews.com/a/china-elder-care-law-a-struggle-for-one-child-families/1704200.html
Great article, thanks! The last few sections really make it seem like a dumpster fire.
So, in simple terms, the value proposition is that the retinal scan will generate a unique ID of a person in the system and ensure that a person cannot be registered more than once. This will then allow the system to be used for tasks like authentication or ensuring fair distribution of tokens. Another potential use case mentioned is something like the administration of Universal Basic Income (UBI), whereby the system would verify that people receive UBI and cannot claim duplicate payments. You could also extend that idea to things like government ID.
The privacy concerns would probably prevent a roll-out in most Western markets, so it will be interesting to see if they can generate enough business in other markets.
I’m more interested in learning about who is paying the 25 WLD, how they have funded that, and how they plan to generate a return on the investment. There is already an upfront investment involved in developing the token, the “orb”, and the uses of the data, so what is the business model that generates revenue for them?
Operation InfeKtion is a good watch. It helps explain most Russian disinformation campaigns: https://youtu.be/tR_6dibpDfo
Greed and envy (the roots of capitalism) are basic human drivers that we all have. It takes a lot of discipline, ethics, and an altruistic moral code or belief system to negate that. Some individuals are capable of that, but there is no societal system that has been able to overcome it.
We would never be able to completely move away from a capitalist system because it’s in our nature to want more, to be rewarded for our efforts, and to be jealous of others. It’s also why alternative systems never work as intended - the greed turns into corruption and ends up ruining the system.
The best outcome is to establish guardrails that limit the extent of the greed that is allowed in the system.
This article described some concerning methods they used to develop and deploy the system…
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoin-cryptocurrency-biometrics-web3/
Why are those specific metrics more important than 5-year plans?
Because a plan is just an intention or wishful thinking. Inflation data is an actual, measurable result.
Inflation data is one of the most common economic measurements and it can be reasonably expected that every country should be able to not only report on the inflation metric itself, but provide details on the measurement and the methodology used so that every country, globally, knows that the metric reported by each country is transparent and credible. Understanding the methodology then allows analysts to investigate the underlying drivers of the inflation result, confirm its accuracy, and compare it between countries by using similar methodologies.
Simply put, if a country can’t provide detailed explanations on how they determine an important metric like inflation, then what does that suggest about other metrics or results that they share?
Regarding transparency, governments such as the US, UK, and Australia publish not only the results of metrics like inflation but also the methodology applied to determine the results.
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/methods-overview.htm
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices#methodology
https://www.abs.gov.au/methodologies/consumer-price-index-australia-methodology/mar-quarter-2023
Can you direct me to the resource where I can find a similar level of detail for the Chinese economy?
There’s a lot of FUD with this news, but it needs some facts to determine the impact.
And this is why’s Apple’s share price has only gone down by 5%, losing only 2 weeks of gains.