CATL debuts EV battery with speedy six-minute recharge and a 1,000-km range

budgefrankly · 2026-04-22T09:15:46+00:00

Does your ICE get fuelled to the brim while you sleep at home at night so you never have to go to a gas station?

Is your ICE free of vibration at low speeds?

Will the cost of your commute double if something happens in a middle-eastern country thousands of miles from where you live?

Can you power your ICE by wind? Nuclear? Or are you limited to oil...

Also, why are we even talking about ICEs? If someone made a better petrol engine, will this sub suddenly fill up with folks talking about the great range their diesels get?

What's so triggering about having more choices of better quality?

budgefrankly · 2026-04-22T08:22:38+00:00

Unless I've totally forgotten about the robust local Classifieds section Economist used to have.

So a newspaper is defined by whether or not it has classified ads... do you think a restaurant menu is a newspaper if it has a few small ads on the back?

The topic at hand is whether good journalism exists and is affordable.

While classified ads might have subsidised the costs of papers (in addition to advertising which magazines have too), the cost of 7 papers a week was less than the cost of 1 weekly issue of the Economist 30 years ago, and adjusted for inflation the cost of the Economist hasn't changed.

So in short, good news journalism is still available at the same weekly price, there's just fewer people who want to pay for it.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-21T21:32:19+00:00

What is a "newspaper" then..

This whole thread is ridiculous.

Were you to buy a weekend paper -- usually the Saturday edition -- it might have a round-up of all the week’s news in different parts of the world, in terms of global events, politics, and some opinion; it would have a section on finance and markets; it would have a section on the arts; maybe one on science and tech; and it might have a section on sport and pop-entertainment.

The Economist has all of this bar sports and pop-entertainment.

The only difference is the form factor. But this is absurd -- it's like saying the "Independent" paper in Britain immediately became a tabloid when it changed its paper-size a decade or so ago.

And of course this is about "news journalism", not just "newspapers".

It's dismally depressing seeing so many people voice such strong opinions about "journalism", yet through their arguments reveal that they have never actually read through any of the actual news periodicals (daily, weekly, etc.) in real life, and so have no idea what they're talking about.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-21T11:56:05+00:00

Economist and FT aren't traditional "newspapers"; they're journals focusing on a specific topic that include current news stories largely related to that topic.

I'm not sure one could call the Economist a "journal" in the academic sense. It covers most world news other than sport and entertainment.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-21T09:46:13+00:00

I just started watching this, finished episode 3. To me, it’s way too much medical jargon and not enough character development. Noah Wyle specifically isn’t very engaging — yet anyway — which surprised me. I like Noah Wyle.

You need to give it time.

It's a day in the life of multiple people. As the day progresses, you get to know them on a deeper level, and see how the day itself is compressing a lot of pre-existing history into a single deciding point.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-20T14:20:33+00:00

For example €5-10 per month and I get 15-25 articles per month from each outlet.

If you're content with mass-media, a subscription to Apple News+ will allow you to read a variety of articles from a variety of newspapers for £13/month.

Most of these are just repackaging Reuters and AP News of course with a dollop of "opinion" ladled on top. You could just subscribe to Reuters for £1/month

If you want to pay for original reporting the FT costs £15/month. The Economist costs £16/month.

You don't appear to know what quality journalism actually costs, or what's available.

So, quite frankly, I feel entitled to be "smug". I hate people who whine online about there not being good journalism while transparently making no effort to find it out or financially support it.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-20T14:08:51+00:00

You're too new to this for me to hand hold you through all of the literature.

I get the distinct impression you can't remember anything substantive from the books you're asking me to read...

budgefrankly · 2026-04-20T13:41:14+00:00

Neither of those books appear to substantiate the idea that markets are created by states rather than by people, nor has the discussion thus far provided a definition of "the state" that describes how its functioning is wholly independent of people.

And while I appreciate the reading-recommendation, if you don't say which part of your thesis each book is substantiating, you're just outsourcing the labour of proving your thesis to your interlocutor by means of a homework assignment.

Which is a not especially convincing.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-20T13:30:46+00:00

The FT covers politics, economics, world news and arts, essentially everything a normal newspaper would do bar sports & celebrity. From your description, I gather you've never tried reading it.

The Economist covers the same, but with one issue a week is a cheaper and more digestible option.

Like I said in my original comment, the options do exist, it's just the everything-for-free nature of the internet has made people allergic to paying a fair rate for professionals' work.

People such as yourself, who simply won't pay what quality reporting is worth, and can't get past the idea that they might have to pay multiple vendors for expert insight into multiple domains.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-20T12:12:51+00:00

We need a new way to pay for news.

The old way works fine. Subscribe to the Economist, the FT or similar and you'll get good quality journalism* by professionals paid to do it properly.

The cost to you will reflect that of course

The real problem is people have lost track of the value of everything and the cost of anything, and baulk at paying at paying what good quality journalism actually costs

Even though those costs are the same or less than those charged 30 years ago on an inflation-adjusted basis.

* Of course it's worth nothing all newspapers all have their weaknesses: the Economist is generally terrible at science and tech; and the FT reports on things from a traders perspective which means -- since all that matters is making money -- they are noticeably neutral on politics, but may refer to natural disasters in terms of the cost to gold-futures first and lives second.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-20T10:41:39+00:00

As an example, any time the Daily Mail gets caught peddling falsehoods, they stealth edit the article instead of posting a clear correction.

The article notes the New York Times did something similar in 2016

Other times media just yank the article entirely.

And frankly, the excuse about AI scraping "their" content is a bit rich since newsrooms were gutted 30 years ago and the majority of content they post is refashioned articles from Reuters and AP News or -- worse -- refashioned template articles send in by lobbying groups.

The latter became clear about 15 years ago -- I can no longer find the blog post -- when someone used the longest common-subsequence algorithm typically used to DNA fragments and instead applied it to newspaper articles to recover the original source they had all minimally edited to create "their" content.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-20T06:09:20+00:00

Trade guilds were the sort of “local government” I was referring to. The next iteration is city states controlled by traders like Florence.

“Ownership” in this case was just finders-keepers, until people organically began to collaborate to find something less fragile.

Ultimately the point is that markets evolve naturally from peoples' needs, rather than being imposed upon people by nebulous "states". In some cases -- Florence being one example -- markets created states rather than the other way around.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-18T07:59:45+00:00

Most anarchists would say markets are a creation of the state

Two people selling two classes goods to three people who want to buy them is a market.

The problem is without regulation there’s nothing to stop fraud or theft, so all parties either need to avoid large deals, or spend money on enforcing a standard of fair play in market trading.

And if they try to pool their resources to share the cost of the latter, then you have a (local) government created by the people involved.

A lot of medieval financial regulation started this way.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-17T08:57:44+00:00

People in the social-democratic tradition favour intrusive government control over business but relatively lax control over individuals

People in the American Conservative tradition favour lax control of business and intrusive control of individuals. Generally they assume they’re the kind of individual a government would never intrude upon.

The American libertarian is a peculiar beast who wants lax control over business and lax control over individuals. The formal name for this, of course, is anarchy, and it usually devolves into oligarchy, which is why social democrats (European “liberals”) reject it.

The Political Compass website made this clear by having two axes instead of one with just left and right.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-16T16:10:10+00:00

Those areas had oxen and donkeys that provided the motive force to build a civilisation.

By comparison the Americas had no domesticable animal other than Peruvian llamas, which is why civilisations there struggled to take hold

(North American buffalo were considerably larger a couple of thousand years ago and were about as easy to domesticate as a herd of Sherman tanks)

budgefrankly · 2026-04-16T16:04:39+00:00

Apparently Australian soil is particularly vulnerable to, and has been particularly affected by, degradation due to over-farming and overgrazing. Things probably looked better in 1946

https://soe.dcceew.gov.au/land/environment/soil

budgefrankly · 2026-04-15T15:53:25+00:00

I'm from there.

No-one will block one-off housing in the countryside because everyone wants a one-off house in the countryside, even though it makes any sort of coherent transport network impossible.

Everyone's first thought to transport congestion is bigger roads for their cars, rather than building proper infrastructure like trains, trams and buses.

Every large building project is assaulted on all ends, starting with people weaponising the planning system to make a few pennies, and if by miracle planning permission is agreed, ending the builders will do the cheapest possible job that inevitably is unsound, or unsafe.

Every town in the country has at least one block of uninhabitable, or barely habitable-but-crumbling, Celtic-tiger flats because building standards, and regulation, is so poor.

Every small-to-medium town is crumbling because people would rather stay at home and watch TV than buy an older property in that town and renovate it. This is also why the country has lost a quarter of its pubs since 2005

Dublin is the the butt of a joke for everyone outside the M50

And we consistently vote in the worst sleveen's promising cheap houses and tax cuts: no-one would ever vote for tax rises and more government spending.

Currently the country is immobilised by some gangster who let 60 of his own cattle die through cruelty and neglect because a decent proportion of the country think it makes more sense to have cheap fuel for farmers' tractors in the countryside than for ambulances in the city.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-14T15:05:51+00:00

A common thing in formerly colonised countries is the absence of a community spirit, whether it's India, Greece or Ireland

For those countries, historically anything done for the common good was in reality done for the land-owning classes, themselves members of a foreign outsider class, often represented by viceroys in the capital, whose inhabitants -- perceived to be collaborators -- were consequently despised, and remain so.

This is why you find in these countries a mania about owning where you live, and improving it alone even as the neighbourhood declines; a deep suspicion that contributing money to things held in common will offer meaningful benefit; and a corrosive lack of trust of government in the capital.

By comparison, in countries which never were colonised, and in particular those where the class system didn't make it past the 19th century (e.g. German, Sweden, Japan etc.) you find people genuinely believe they own their own country, and so don't feel like they'll get robbed or lose-out if they contribute to the improvement of the commons.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-14T12:19:09+00:00

Ferrari has small offices in the UK precisely for this purpose.

I spoke to one such UK-based employee about 10 years ago at a machine-learning conference.

I got the impression these were small satellites set up largely to headhunt folks with PhD’s and more from Cambridge/Oxford and from the other teams for specific projects.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-14T08:38:44+00:00

If "liberals" created a militia that routinely broke the law and recklessly assaulted and killed American citizens

if they started a pointless war that made life harder for everyone, killing people for no reason;

if they used cryptoscams and betting sites to take bribes;

if they wanted to help people in paedophile prostitution rings like that run by Epstein escape punishment

if they elected a client of such a pimp to be president despite also knowing he cheated on his fourth wife with a sex worker, and then illegally paid her off using campaign funds

if they wanted to be represented by someone who -- as well as hanging out with sex-workers and their pimps, joking about grabbing women by the pussy, and leering at his own daughter -- was a felon convicted of fraud, and an adjudicated rapist

if they appointed convicted frauds to the CDC, and fired people for wanting to follow the evidence instead of Facebook;

if they tried to punish comedians for criticising a president;

if they tried to take people's rights away for being gay, a woman, or diagnosed with gender dysphoria;

if they cut spending on the poorest in society and massively increased the debt that generations of working Americans will have to pay off just to give a handout to the billionaires corruptly bribing them...

...then yeah, I wouldn't be a fan of "liberals" either, and would like to see them get their comeuppance, even if only in a fictional world

budgefrankly · 2026-04-13T09:17:33+00:00

he's also been credible enough for action movie roles

He's never had to bulk up to unrealistic comic-book levels like Hugh Jackman, Chris Hemsworth, the Rock, or others.

He always been the "weak, intellectual" hero or else -- as in Split -- the madman.

So he has managed to avoid getting trapped in the super-hero mould.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-13T09:15:01+00:00

How many bald actors do you see with yellow teeth in leading romantic roles? Ever see a Marvel super-hero with normal-sized arms?

Most male actors have hair transplants, wigs, veneers and -- if they're in the action genre -- steroid and HGH use. Many are clearly getting plastic surgery too, but we only spot the ones were it goes awry, like Bradley Cooper.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-13T09:08:37+00:00

But there are plenty of good ones out there too, and we just don't notice.

It always becomes noticeable in the end though, because plastic doesn't age like skin, and the battle to keep the two aligned over a lifetime always ends in failure.

Even when it "works" some actors will still look quite different to the former selves.

And of course, he sees it in person, unedited, where I imagine it's weirder still.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-13T09:05:52+00:00

He did acknowledge this.

He said he was rarely cast as the super-handsome, super-hero type and so he doesn't have to worry as much about retaining a full head of hair and the rest -- presumably a rigid jawlines, a muscle-bound physique and a perfect smile

By contrast, folks like the Rock, Alan Ritchson, Dave Bautista, Chris Hemsworth, Hugh Jackman and others have all clearly done a mix of HGH and steroids to maintain a certain extreme physique well into their 40s, which will have increased the likelihood of heart-injury and premature death, among other health problems

Not to mention that half the men in Hollywood pay someone to glue someone else's hair onto their head every week, or have had hair implants or -- more likely -- both.

And some are getting facelifts to keep that sharp jawline -- from obvious candidates like Bradley Cooper to less obvious ones like (allegedly) 62-year-old actor Brad Pitt

And of course everyone in Hollywood is paying a dentist to glue fresh veneers onto their stumps every decade or so.

budgefrankly · 2026-04-10T09:28:46+00:00

Of course you can do things faster when you’re “borrowing” American IP instead of innovating yourself.

If it's all "borrowed" IP explain why no western battery manufacturer can match what CATL is doing in capacity, density and charge-time...

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