David Fickling

Pictures emerging from today’s heavy bombing of Isfahan. Damages to the mirror works, tiles, floors, and carved wooden doors of Safavid palaces of Aali Qapu and Chehelsotoon. Both of these are within the UNESCO Heritage complex of Naqsh-e Jahan Square. These are 16th-17th century bldgs.

Europe’s impotence extends to energy The political momentum behind decarbonising the continent’s energy system has dissipated

Great column from @martinsandbu.ft.com on the EU's miguided turn away from an ambitious energy transition. Its main effect has been to make us weaker, more vulnerable, and ultimately less competitive. www.ft.com/content/a6be...

Google Translate notoriously translates 万 as “billion” all the time, but how sloppy do you have to be as a China analyst to not know what 万 means or just double-check the original?

Whaaaaat? Did not know that. Wild if true…

Personally I always check in on the price of cloves from Comoros, just to know where Mr Market’s mind is at

The really crazy thing is the extent to which vegetable oil prices are often just tracking petroleum. Palm oil traders spend most of their time analysing Singapore diesel cracks because THAT is the key determinant of prices.

The step-son of the NT attorney-general’s sister!doesn’t even lose his license after hitting two Aboriginal pedestrians with his car, killing one, calling them “dogs” and “oxygen thieves”. Serving time in home detention. Australia in 2026.

Not Harry Belafonte’s version, the Lord Flea original:

TIL Grace Jones’s grandfather played on the original version of “Shake, Shake, Senora”

Hormuz Is the Hidden Risk to the AI Economy A world where we can cook up AI videos in seconds from the apps on our phones might seem remote from the physical realities of warfare in the seaways of the Persian Gulf. In fact, they’re closely inte...

South Korea & Taiwan have made many bad energy choices favoring fossil fuel over renewables. They're paying the price now, with repercussions for global technology. The Iran war should make them correct their mistake - @davidfickling.bsky.social

Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

In my mind I had retconned this song as being some giant broken hearted FU to the HIV pandemic. Sobering to realise it’s just dramatizing the themes of a mad movie about Warhol Superstars rejects cosplaying as Masters of the Universe.

Tesla’s Giga Berlin reportedly running at 40% capacity | Automotive World Plant management and union representatives have both disputed the figures reported by Handelsblatt. By Stewart Burnett

This regime-connected, subsidy-dependent company could probably do with an anti-involution campaign to deal with its predatory overcapacity. Am I doing this right?

www.automotiveworld.com/news/teslas-...

The fun thing is that now it is much much harder for the 98% of people who want vaccinations to get them, the 2% of people who hate them will totally sit down satisfied and not spread mad conspiracy theories any more…

It’s cool how I now have to spend 45 minutes resetting online passwords, solving captchas and setting up two factor authentication to give parental consent for my kids to get standard school vaccinations.

I’m sure this has no negative effect on coverage rates.

Grace Jones is only two years younger than Cher. Let that sink in.

Though I have a soft spot for Belgium’s Kamer van Volksvertegenwoordigers

And actually if you get past the banal familiarity, House of Lords is just insanely metal and Game of Thrones

Hard to beat Austria’s Nationalrat

www.chosun.com/english/mark...

Does this bag look black or gold to you?

I love his sweetly stilted delivery almost as much as the 5W lasers. Have watched a bunch of these with my science nerd son 🤓

The target market used to have everything they could want on just one of the US Virgin Islands

Though by the same rules I reckon Aus/NZ are entitled to claim Blackpink

They just invented the JCPOA

Mind blown by this photo of a 10-year-old Orson Welles from 1926:

Closer to 4x what Iraq’s population was in 2003!

Electric Vehicle Sales Boom as Ethiopia Bans Fossil-Fuel Car Imports The East African country is making use of cheap hydropower and Chinese electric vehicles to ditch the internal combustion engine.

‘Well, look, if I’m going to import the cars anyway, then I’d rather import less oil. We may as well import the one that cleans up local air quality and is cheaper to buy.’

The Great Story of the Extraordinary EV boom in Ethiopia www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Is this some sort of joke? 😡

That every government on earth (aside from professed theocracies) is functionally utilitarian is a wild outcome when you consider what an obscure weirdo Jeremy Bentham was.

“Murder Most Foul” was almost 60 years after Bob Dylan’s debut!

“Hurt” by Johnny Cash was nearly 50 years, and also wins the perennial “cover versions better than the original” question…

The Insurance Crisis Is About to Get Even Worse The Trump administration will soon make it the official policy of the US government that greenhouse gases don’t endanger Americans’ well-being and therefore don’t need federal regulation. Insurance co...

The EPA's decision to quit regulating emissions might be symbolic, but what it symbolizes if scary: a government that puts antiquated ideology and corporate profits over the health and welfare of its people

Gift link to my column for @opinion.bloomberg.com

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...