waffle

[Mark Di Stefano @MarkDiStef]

🚨 The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age reporting today the son of the Chinese billionaire who hosted Albanese’s fundraiser was accused by the ATO of repeatedly deceiving authorities to funnel huge sums of money into Australia from China.

[jeroen blokland @jsblokland]

This is one of the most intriguing charts in the world right now.

Not necessarily because China’s annual CO2 emissions are on another planet, we all know that already, but because climate ideology remains almost entirely centered in Western Europe.

If you truly believe that frustrating housing development, blocking roads, gluing yourself to buildings, or throwing soup at priceless art is the way to make the world better, why are you not doing it where it has the biggest impact?

If you believe in catastrophic climate projections, including the extreme scenarios that even the United Nations is now moving away from, and if you believe that destroying things and severely disrupting people’s lives is the way to reduce CO2 emissions, then at least focus on where the biggest reductions can actually be achieved.

Instead, after years of societal damage, activists keep demanding more idiotic measures in countries that have already cut emissions and are nowhere near China’s levels.

In Europe, climate ideology has produced massive imbalances: housing shortages, energy insecurity, loss of competitiveness, industrial decline, wealth destruction, and rising polarization.

All without anything close to a meaningful global reduction in CO2 emissions.

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔A researcher invented a fake eye condition called bixonimania, uploaded two obviously fraudulent papers about it to an academic server, and watched major AI systems present it as real medicine within weeks.
The fake papers thanked Starfleet Academy, cited funding from the Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation and the University of Fellowship of the Ring, and stated mid-paper that the entire thing was made up. Google's Gemini told users it was caused by blue light. Perplexity cited its prevalence at one in 90,000 people.

ChatGPT advised users whether their symptoms matched. The fake research was then cited in a peer-reviewed journal that only retracted it after Nature contacted the publisher.

My Take
The researcher made the papers as obviously fake as possible on purpose. The AI systems didn't catch it. Neither did the human researchers who cited it in real journals, which means people are feeding AI-generated references into their work without reading what they're actually citing.

I've covered the FDA using AI for drug review, the NYC hospital CEO ready to replace radiologists, and ChatGPT Health launching this year. All of that is happening in the same environment where a condition funded by a Simpsons character and endorsed by the crew of the Enterprise was being presented as emerging medical consensus. The people making these deployment decisions seem to believe the pipeline from research to AI to patient is more supervised than it actually is. This experiment suggests it isn't supervised much at all.

Hedgie🤗
https://t.co/8Kg8FOrgHW

[chris keefer @Dr_Keefer]

Here’s a fun fact for China’s climate cheerleaders to mull over.

"If China’s coal to chemicals industry was a country it would rank as the world’s third largest consumer of coal."

"This sector is trumped only by the rest of the Chinese coal sector and India’s national consumption, but it is ahead of other major coal users like the US, Japan, Indonesia and Turkey." to paraphrase @JavierBlas

Shaanxi’s coal to chemicals industry, centered on the city of Yulin, continues to expand with government backing: the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has classified coal-derived chemicals as a ‘new productive force’ in the same policy breath as solar panels and electric vehicles.

China’s own government is clearer about its energy system than its Western admirers tend to be.

Official policy statements and domestic media describe coal as the “ballast rock” of China’s energy supply, providing cheap electricity, industrial heat, and chemical feedstocks for the bulk of the industrial economy.

The claim that China is becoming a green electrostate sits alongside an operational coal fleet of 1300 GW with 261 GW of coal capacity either under construction or already permitted. Coal generated 59 percent of Chinese electricity in 2024. Vanishingly little coal capacity has been fully retired, only 2.5 GW in 2024.

While some are ultra-supercritical coal plants which now serve as flexible backup and load-smoothing assets for variable renewables, this fleet is not a legacy sector approaching retirement.

Many are fresh investments in the sectors the electrostate narrative holds up as proof of China’s clean industrial future.

China will not retreat from coal for ideological reasons, as the European bloc has done with both coal and nuclear.

Chinese planners have reasons to retire older, less efficient plants and reduce coal combustion near urban centres, but there is no structural incentive to remove a working power source from a system still growing at roughly 7 percent per year in electricity consumption.

For a deep dive check out my interview with @wang_seaver on @DecoupleMedia. link in replies. For the full essay this excerpt is based on go check out our s\/bst@ck. linke below.

[waffle @happihoppi]

@The_Real_Joakim @Tablesalt13 What are we talking about? Food, cars, IKEA furniture?

[Kevin Metcalfe @KevinMe49077436]

@JennyForster7 Please for the love of god can we start teaching the difference between a subsidy and a tax rebate in kindergarten?

Subsidy - Govt gives you someone elses money.

Tax Rebate - You get to keep some of your money.

Reason, the rebated vehicles are not operated on public roads.

[waffle @happihoppi]

@JaneCaro How is this unplanned after decades of war games etc? How is it illegal? Foolish? What are the relative risks of curtailing or not curtailing nuclear capability of religious fanatics? Does war now reduce the risk of WW3 or increase it? Questions to ponder…..

[waffle @happihoppi]

@nickofnz The gas and oil are free from the ground. The mining and storage of them before they can used for energy just happens at different stages with different complexities from wind and solar.

[waffle @happihoppi]

@ChaneyforCurtin Kate Chaney talks with authority, but doesn’t understand complexity. Plastic is a cheap form of packaging, amid other benefits, & makes up aboat 50% of packaging. Other packaging, like metal & paper, is also reliant on “volatile” fossil fuel to produce. Recycling too.

[waffle @happihoppi]

@ausstockchick It ignores that an EV is generally 10k-15k more than an equivalent ICE to purchase, and depreciation of the battery is also a factor than adds cost at the time of replacement . Chinese brands can be less but then you are buying poorer quality car, so the depreciation is higher.

[Cameron Murray @DrCameronMurray]

A lot of people will appeal to Japan as a place that kept its housing market cheaply priced via its planning system.
But this claim fails the sniff test.
Didn't the same planning system also allow for one of the biggest property booms of the 20th century in the 1980s?
And when you take into account macroeconomic conditions, like inflation and incomes, the picture doesn't look so rosy.
Here's a comparison of the inflation-adjusted price of apartments in Tokyo and Sydney over the past decade.
What do you notice?

Read more here:
https://t.co/rBLStDRnIi

[Aidan Morrison @FootnotesGuy]

Everyone in NSW knows they pay $20 bucks into a Climate Change Fund right through their power bills every year right?

[waffle @happihoppi]

@Missile_O_Clock @Re7ardfinderJr @TheConservati19 @shallowchal The key is a domestic allocation so local energy prices decouple in most part from global market pricing. The first step is you need an energy supply buffer to be able to have a domestic allocation that doesn’t ruin local energy investment. Hard to argue against independance.

[waffle @happihoppi]

@MadsMelbourne Are you arguing Iranian control of Hormuz with impunity is good for world oil supply and prices in the future? Anyhoo Australian policy failures in securing its own energy supply in an uncertain world is not really USA’s responsibility, but it seems the zeitgeist feels entitled.

[waffle @happihoppi]

@AvidCommentator Think it isn’t a terrible strategy. I am guessing the Iranian public would put pressure on the regime to open Hormuz in order to save thier electricity. If you were a power broker do you risk losing the public or do I survive another day?

[waffle @happihoppi]

@Roland_Milit @Inako_Yolwa @Bigqadi Pretty sure it is the Superpit in Kalgoorlie Western Australia. It is close into town. The mining companies are always trying to get the residents to move out from down wind and relocate to another part of town, but they struggle to get agreement.

[waffle @happihoppi]

@AvidCommentator What would WHO be referring to? Food security, medical supplies, what? Don’t think they are very useful since the Covid response and they seem to be corrupted. Thinking that if anything turns to a shit show they are likely a main protagonist!

[Tarric Brooker aka Avid Commentator 🇦🇺 @AvidCommentator]

The collective cost of Albo and co's electricity subsidies would have paid for almost half the cost a 100m barrel oil and fuel storage facility and kept all of our 2009 refineries in operation (rough AI estimate).

That is how badly our policymakers screwed up.

[waffle @happihoppi]

@WifeFinance @strifenjustice It is always a win to buy Versace at the best price possible! 😂