Petroleum? Oil’s at a five year low. The dollar could stand to be a bit firmer.

I heard Reza Pahlavi is wildly popular in Iran right now and Iranian locals are enthusiastic about seeing the Shah returned to power. Is this true?

What’s the lie about Ukraine?

Yaroslav Hunka scandal leaps to mind. But farther than that, it was the same old “it’s not going to be a quagmire”, “it’s not just about propping up the US arms industry”, “we have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” line we’ve been hearing in every international theater.

Even the bit about Trump being “Putin’s Puppet” falls apart on any amount of historical interrogation. Trump was selling anti-tank missiles to Kiev as far back as 2018, three years before the Donbas invasion. He’d laid a bunch of sanctions on the country the first year he took office.

Then, as soon as Biden took office, he’s the one weak on Ukraine, according to the GOP.

Both parties egged their own supporters on by insisting the other party wasn’t Pro-Ukraine enough. Both parties insisted the other faction was “Communist”. Both insisted the other was a fifth column, trying to disarm the US from within. It was always and forever bullshit.

Why not both?

You’d absolutely need to do both, unless you wanted all sorts of malformed incentives.

Generally speaking, the revenue from a pigouvian tax needs to be spent mitigating the problem that generates the revenue. Otherwise, you end up with something of a Cobra Problem, wherein excess consumption is seen as a revenue driver that the state subtly promotes.

Isn’t this article about UK?

I’m just speaking from personal experience.

If you want to talk shit about the UK, you can always point to HS2. Cancelled out of spite by the outgoing Conservative government. Chronic mismanagement of the rail network has been a lead weight around the British economy for decades.

How is the Loonie still losing to the dollar? The Euro is running laps around USD. Carney, get your shit together.

Even then, a 37% markup on $37k is only CA$50.7k

I mean, alternative means of mass transit would be the most effective policy. But we can’t even get a rail line between Houston and Dallas, despite the airspace maxing out and there existing an enormous profitable and general economic benefit to its construction.

Taxes keep the marginal participant out of the market. But the real goal should be to move people and cargo at maximal efficiency, not just to hobble lower income travelers with a consumption tax.

If the pricing was similar and one airline had a lower carbon print

Price and emissions tend to track one another, as the price of fuel is heavily baked into the cost of the seat. And everyone flies the same aircraft models. It’s not like there’s a “Low Emissions Boeing” or “EV Airbus” you can select.

https://www.cars.com/research/tesla-model_3-2026/

2026 Tesla Model 3

Starts at: $36,990

If I have a choice between two flights A and B, based exclusively on CO₂ emissions, the only thing my selection changes is my body weight/luggage added to the flight. But the emissions calculation (as I understand it) is the total anticipated CO₂ of the flight divided by the number of seats. And the bulk of those emissions come from lifting the plane itself, not the individual passengers.

The plane still flies whether or not I’m on it, though. So my choice of flight does not really impact emitted carbon.

I guess heavy luggage might impact emissions marginally. But do you really believe the flight is staying on the tarmac because you didn’t book a seat?

Mitsotakis is not Cypriot.

He’s the President of the government that claims the Greek-Nationalist occupied end of the island.

Greece pinned its hopes to normalization with “longtime NATO ally” and regional bully to a europeanization of the relationship

How do you Europeanize your relationship when you refuse to see your neighbor as European?

they’re >50k and made in China lol

The Model 3 is $38k and made in Freemont, CA.

This rule exists to exclude BYD, XPeng, and the constellation of other Chinese EV companies, whose enormous productive capacity are swamping the East Asian auto industry with cheap EV compacts and small trucks.

Incidentally, BYD had historically operated an electric bus factory in Newmarket, Ontario. But operations ceased thanks to cut backs in the Toronto Transit Commission. They may try to repurpose the plant to begin manufacturing consumer-ready vehicles, but its still up in the air with respect to US/Canada trade relations and Canada’s own shaking economic situation.

Petro-State gonna Petro

The unoccupied part of Cyprus is a functional democracy.

There’s two ways to read this and one of them is very funny.

But sure, put all your chips on Kyriakos Mitsotakis and tell me about the freedoms enjoyed by Greek Cypriots in 2026.

At the time of accession, it was hoped that the EU would catalyze a solution to the Cyprus problem altogether. Greek-Cypriot nationalists fucked that up.

Inducting Cyprus while denying longtime NATO ally and European trading partner Turkiye was already guaranteed to land flat. Opening the floodgates for money and military aid into Cyprus, via the EU relaxed trade and travel rules, yielded predictable results.

How dirty money and Russian riches flow through Cyprus, a gateway to the EU

Possibly one of the most corrupt and compromised governments on earth

Has anyone ever actually selected a flight based on it’s carbon impact?

There’s nearly a one to one correlation between carbon and distance and cost. So I rarely see it as a selling point that gets past the bottom line. Even then… do I think spending an extra $200 on a ticket is actually going to reduce the plane company’s gross emissions? No. Of course not.

Explain the introduction of Cyprus, on those terms

Turkiye has been waiting in line for EU membership since the 1987

After the ten founding members in 1949, Turkey became one of the first new members (the 13th member) of the Council of Europe in 1950. The country became an associate member of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1963 and was an associate member of the Western European Union from 1992 to its end in 2011. Turkey signed a Customs Union agreement with the EU in 1995 and was officially recognised as a candidate for full membership on 12 December 1999, at the Helsinki summit of the European Council.

But… Turkiye’s a majority Muslim country. So Portugal, Spain, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Croatia all got to jump the queue ahead of it.

A big joke about these mainstream publications is how quickly they’d open their pockets to accept fossil fuel industry native advertisement money. WaPo, NYT, WSJ, The Economist, et al - they’d always have some kind of AEI industry flak or Heartland Institute goober or Saudi stooge pen an Op-Ed about how fossil fuels are inescapable and alternatives don’t work / cost too much / have a secret downside orders of magnitude worse than O&G.

It was the same “We Report, You Decide” bullshit that FOX News played out in big bold letters for their rube base. The fishwrap editions just knew how to play their cards closer to the chest.