But, on the other hand, not very many of them are making money. Most of them are in trouble. The electric vehicle boom in China has reshaped the global automotive landscape, but not every player in the field is built to last. While China’s automotive industry has grown into a formidable force, a new report suggests that only a fraction of the country’s EV brands may survive the coming years. With hundreds of startups already gone and consolidation gaining momentum, China’s EV market is headed for a major transformation. In 2018, it was estimated that over 500 companies in China were developing and planning to build “new energy” vehicles. Many of these companies failed to get off the ground and quickly folded. As of 2024, it’s understood that there were 129 companies selling NEVs in China. According to consulting firm AlixPartners, just 15 of these are expected to remain financially viable through 2030. While the consultancy firm didn’t name which companies it expects to thrive, these 15 brands could account for roughly 75 percent of China’s total EV and plug-in hybrid market. Some of them have already reached full-year profitability. According to the head of AlixPartners’ automotive practice in Asia, Stephen Dyer, some local governments may support non-viable companies to protect jobs and economies. As such, consolidation may proceed more slowly across the industry in the coming five years.

Pretty sure I would also make pronunciation mistakes if I were to talk for 4.5 minutes, in any language.

Oh my. Wow. Super wow. I’m impressed. Gains are gains no matter what. And you’re being safe. You gotta be.

@kluurs We got a lot of generic drugs. Not an isue, unless we'te talking highly sophisticated stuff.

@Mik said: Let's say for the sake of argument that it was in fact a lab leak. What's the followup? You can bet that the Trump administration is going to do nothing to punish the Chinese. What can we gain for the American public by rehashing this over and over? An accurate history of what happened. There is value in truth. To quote Hilary, "At this point, what difference does it make?". Those who are in charge have learned, hopefully, whatever lesson there is to be learned. "Difference?" Probably none. However, there are laws about lying to Congress, and the fact that Fauci got a preemptive pardon is something. You can be assured that if you or I lied to a government entity we'd be in zipties faster than you can say General Flynn, George Papadopolous, and Roger Stone.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/05/cassidy-kennedy-maha-maga-vaccines/687152/ Interesting article about whether Sen. Cassidy regrets his vote on Sec. Kennedy. Bill Cassidy did not want to talk about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Last month, as we shuffled through the U.S. Senate subway, a subterranean corridor connecting lawmakers’ offices to the Capitol, the senator from Louisiana was fielding rapid-fire questions from reporters about two of his favorite topics: drug pricing and college sports. But I asked him about his least favorite: Did he regret confirming Kennedy as health secretary? I was eager to know because, in spite of that decision, Cassidy may be looking at the end of his political career. This weekend, after 11 years in the Senate, he is headed into a Republican primary election with polls trending out of his favor. His vote last year to hand the keys of America’s immunization policy to one of America’s most prominent vaccine skeptics now hangs over him as a political move that may not have been enough to save his life in politics. Cassidy—who was one of the few Republicans to initially balk at confirming Kennedy—is pro-vaccine. As a liver specialist in a crowded Baton Rouge charity hospital at the turn of the new millennium, he saw firsthand the effects of hepatitis B, a vaccine-preventable disease; he later set up a school-based program in Baton Rouge that inoculated tens of thousands of children against the virus. At Kennedy’s confirmation hearing, Cassidy justified his vote by claiming that Kennedy could help restore faith in the medical establishment. It was, by all apparent measures, a vote against his values, an attempted olive branch to the new administration. Cassidy has since criticized some of Kennedy’s actions as secretary, namely his decision to stack the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee with vaccine skeptics. Cassidy was also among a group of Republican senators who declined to publicly endorse the surgeon-general nominee Casey Means—a Kennedy ally and wellness guru. (Trump announced a new candidate for the job late last month.) But Cassidy refuses to acknowledge that he made a mistake by confirming Kennedy. In the months since the vote, his staff has repeatedly declined my requests for a sit-down interview. In the Senate subway that day, he sidestepped. “I’m a doctor. You make a decision, you move on,” he told me. “You don’t sit around and say, ‘Oh my gosh, that was a great decision. Oh my gosh, that was a bad decision.’ No, you just move on.” In Louisiana, being anti-Kennedy means being anti-Trump. And the problem for Cassidy is that many of his constituents already see him as both.

https://sciencex.com/news/2026-05-striped-turbines-millions-birds.html One recent study, in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, actually proposes an ingenious solution: paint patterns on turbine blades that change "optic flow" seen by birds, the changing visual contrast experienced as a bird flies through its environment. Changing this optical flow could make turbines more visible, helping birds avoid them more effectively. Researchers note, "The ultimate goal is to enhance the overall conspicuity of turbines under a range of natural conditions, ensuring that birds detect the structure in time to avoid collisions." "By looking at the world through a bird's eyes, we are exploring new ways to prevent deadly turbine collisions. The idea is to blend sensory ecology with natural flight strategies, how birds scan, steer, and avoid obstacles, and use that knowledge to redesign turbine blades." and One way to avoid birds smashing into wind structures is to change the appearance of turbines so that birds see them as an obvious threat and avoid them. Some studies suggest that painting towers and blades black, with reference to a bird's visual perception, can reduce collisions for some species. In lab tests, kestrels and red-tailed hawks could spot turbine blades best when they had two wide black bands across a white surface. Narrower stripes were less effective. A retinal study of kestrels tested computer-simulated turbine blades and found that staggered thin stripes on all three blades, or a mix of one black blade and two white blades, provided the clearest visibility by reducing motion blur. For all that, lab studies mostly looked at how well blades could be seen, hardly a collision-avoidance measure. So far, only two full field trials and one small UV-paint test have been done, all at Norway's Smøla wind farm. Painting one rotor blade black reduced bird deaths more than 70%, primarily of raptors, but based on only a small number of turbines. Another study revealed that painting the lower sections black virtually halved the ptarmigan death rate, sometimes more, sometimes less. Though these results are promising, the designs tested may not have been the best possible solutions.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91540194/the-wheels-are-falling-off-teslas-cybertruck The headline sounds like a pun: “The wheels are falling off Tesla’s Cybertruck.” But it isn’t a joke. Tesla is recalling 173 Cybertrucks because the wheels can literally fall off while the vehicle is in motion. Yes, friends, you could be driving to Costco, take a right, and off goes one wheel from your six-figure polygonal truck. Goodbye! Your car is now a prop from a Buster Keaton movie. The recall covers Cybertrucks fitted with 18-inch steel wheels, built between March 21, 2024, and November 25, 2025. The problem is as straightforward as it is alarming and surreal. Rough roads and hard cornering can crack the stud holes in the brake rotor, causing the wheel stud to separate from the hub.

Wolf tries to eat bison carcess that grizzly bear is already eating Link to video

For car models with comparable specs, I have always found the Hondas to feel more "powerful" than the Toyotas. Doesn't mean the Toyotas are inadequate for actual use, just a different feel when driving.

Not necessarily.

I wonder how much of that is out of respect for Jim Clyburn.

We'll see how things go in the future. Kyle Diamantas, the deputy commissioner for food, would take over leading the agency in an acting capacity. and Within hours of the announcement, anti-abortion groups were attacking Diamantas for work his law firm did representing Planned Parenthood regarding a dispute with one of its clinics that was slated to open in Florida’s Kissimmee Health Center medical complex. “We cannot allow someone who represented Planned Parenthood to oversee rules surrounding the deadly abortion pill mifepristone,” Lila Rose, an anti-abortion activist, posted on X. “Kyle Diamantas was a junior legal associate who was assigned to that case by his superiors. He expressed his objections to representing Planned Parenthood, based on his personal convictions, and ultimately removed himself from the case,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.

This is rather mild by recent standards.

that was quite interesting.

@jon-nyc said: I’m pretty sure that’s a 9000% drop.

How do these guys talk themselves through security? Or arrange the proper paperwork for it at a moment’s notice?

Interesting interview with Jon Krakauer, who wrote "Into Thin Air", and it is now 30 years later. On May 10, it will be 30 years since a squall swept across the upper reaches of Everest, killing eight climbers that night in what was then one of the deadliest mountaineering disasters of all time. (By the end of the season, twelve climbers had died on the mountain in all.) Worse, this was at the dawn of Everest’s guided era, when strong, competent Western mountaineers thought they could pacify the mountain’s myriad death traps and build, as Mountain Madness guide and owner Scott Fischer famously put it, “a yellow brick road right to the summit.” Writer Jon Krakauer was there as a client of Kiwi Rob Hall’s Adventure Consultants on assignment for Outside, and the magazine story he turned in became the book Into Thin Air, which immediately surged to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Far from dissuading would-be clients and guides, the book seems to have supercharged the commercialization of Everest. By the time I was reporting on the mountain regularly in the early twentyteens, mass casualty events had become a regular feature of many seasons. There were the four climbers who couldn’t get themselves down in 2012 despite the good weather, the 2014 serac collapse that killed 16 Sherpa porters, and the avalanche set off by the 2015 Nepal earthquake which took at least 19 lives in Base Camp. The death toll climbed and so did some 13,000 summiters’ apparent ability to memory-hole the disasters and keep coming at the mountain, decade after decade. Now, 30 years on, Krakauer has written a new foreword to Into Thin Air, chronicling those changes as Vintage Books re-releases the book. I spoke with him at length about that dark and stormy night and the after-effects that are still haunting him today. Interview with Jon Krakauer