sien
Joined 16 years ago
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4,655
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1,183
Member since
Sep 22
Recent submissions
Comment · 11 days ago
Yes.
Sorry, should have said they have a 35% share of new car sales, up from 4% just a few years ago.
Comment · 12 days ago
The transformation in Australia has been remarkable. Chinese electric vehicles are now everywhere.
https://evdbau.com/market-stats
In Australia Chinese cars had 4% of the market in 2020. They now have 35% and Chinese cars have the greatest share of any country.
https://www.anz.com/institutional/insights/articles/2026/07/...
Just as an aside, Australia is odd in that it has positive trade balance with China because Australia sells so much iron ore and coal there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...
Comment · 17 days ago
People also moved to suburbs in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
Cars enabled people to have free standing houses and work became decentralised, which was also due to cars.
Many people prefer to live in a free standing house.
Comment · 18 days ago
The Economist is so good in this respect.
A smart, very good writer will write something and get to the point quickly. Articles are mostly a page or less.
Writing like that respects people's time.
Many bloggers could do with writing things more briefly.
The author of this piece also makes a very good point that often long pieces go into weird corners of their own argument without thinking about their own assumptions.
Comment · 19 days ago
In Australia the fully electric BYD Atto 1 starts at $AUD 20K. That's 12.5K Euros. It's not a bad car.
In Australia Chinese cars had 4% of the market in 2020. They now have 35% and Chinese cars have the greatest share of any country.
https://www.anz.com/institutional/insights/articles/2026/07/...
Comment · 27 days ago
https://www.bydauto.be/en/
The BYD Dolphin Surf is 20K Euros in Belguim. This is the same care as the Atto 1.
Presumably it's European duties designed to drive up the price of cheap Chinese electric vehicles that is the difference.
Apparently the EU has tariffs of up to 36% on Chinese electric vehicles.
Comment · 1 month ago
SA is at 168 gC02eq/kWh for 2025.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/AU-SA/yearly
France is at 32 gC02eq/kWh for 2025.
So France's emission intensity is 1/5 that of SA.
SA has a population of 1.9 M. France is at 69.1 M. SA is physically larger than metropolitan France ( 983 km^2 vs 549 for France). It is very sunny. It is rich and solar has been subsidised for ages.
It is really ideal for solar.
But the emissions are still much higher than France.
Australia is ideal for solar in general and the government has been giving money to millionaires all over the country to put it on their roofs.
But most of Australia, with the exception of Tasmania that uses hydro, has fairly high emissions.
Australia's emissions have also been effectively flat for the past half decade :
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/measuring-what-matters/mea...
This is despite increasing solar.
Comment · 1 month ago
What about Sweden?
South Sweden, with most of Sweden's population is at 20 gC02eq/kWh and at 36% nuclear
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/SE-SE3/yearly
Also Ontario?
Finland?
Comment · 1 month ago
It's not.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...
Orano and Urenco are European and have massive enrichment capability.
Canada, Australia and Namibia have massive Uranium reserves.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...
Comment · 1 month ago
I don't think you're one of the happy few.
You're more like one of the happy many.
Amazon has sold an estimated 70 million Kindle readers.
Ebook sales are at least 20% of book sales.
I read 60+ books a year. Almost all on my Kindle. My partner and my sister are similar. I know of one person who has bought a Kindle and not used it much.
Australians alone are reading 1.6 billion pages a month on Kindles.
https://www.techguide.com.au/news/gadgets-news/australians-d...
Comment · 1 month ago
Yep.
Muddling through with markets, democracy and welfare.
Global life expectancy was 34 in 1913. Today it's 70.
https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
Global GDP was less than 1Trn until about 1800. In 1950 it was 11.7Trn . Today it's 157 Trn. In a life time it's gone up by more than 10 fold.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-gdp-over-the-long-...
People are living longer, richer lives all over the world.
The world's largest country grew at 7.8% last year.
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/why-indias-strong-gdp-gr...
Things are getting better. Look at the data, work at what you do and ignore the doom sayers.
Comment · 1 month ago
Yep. They alternate decades with the 'Airships are returning for cargo' groups.
Comment · 1 month ago
Andor was really good and only finished in 2025.
Star Wars Jedi Survivor was also highly enjoyable.
The big films have been sad except for Rogue One.
But there is some Star Wars stuff that is out there and is really good.
Comment · 1 month ago
The wikipedia entry is well worth a read for anyone interested in this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shada_(Doctor_Who)
The tie in between Shada and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective agency is worth noting.
Comment · 1 month ago
I'm old enough to remember when it was celebrated that 'big data' was being used to rally voters.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/12/19/114510/how-obama...
This was in 2012.
These tools were used around the place. They have an influence. They don't decide who wins and what big issues are.
https://twitter.com/siento