Well Then

The second major expectation gap highlighted by Zheshang Securities is that the carbon-based supply shock triggered by El Niño could prematurely burst the silicon-based inflation bubble. The transmission mechanism clearly unfolds in two layers. The first layer involves a direct tightening of carbon-based resource supply. Intense rainfall induced by El Niño has temporarily disrupted mining operations and logistics in key South American copper-producing regions such as Chile and Peru, leading to tightened industrial metal supplies and an upward shift in price levels. Currently, LME aluminum has entered a backwardation structure, while the copper market is generally in a devaluation phase following the 2025 squeeze. Meanwhile, extreme summer heat in the southwestern United States—particularly in the ERCOT grid in Texas and California’s power grid—will significantly increase cooling-related electricity demand, testing the marginal capacity of energy infrastructure. The second layer involves the transmission of carbon-based cost increases into the silicon-based industrial chain. Industrial metals such as copper, which serve as foundational materials for grid upgrades, transformer manufacturing, and data center infrastructure, will directly raise the marginal capital expenditure costs for upstream AI development. During summer peaks in electricity demand driven by extreme heat, high-power AI computing clusters may face localized or temporary electricity allocation constraints due to potential conflicts between their energy-intensive operations and residential electricity needs, thereby imposing physical limits on the linear expansion expectations for computing infrastructure. These rising external costs will further amplify financial vulnerabilities within the silicon-based industrial chain. Currently, general-purpose large AI models in the downstream segment are engaged in intense price competition, with commercial monetization lagging significantly and heavy reliance on primary market financing. When macroeconomic inflationary pressures and rising supply chain costs transmit to tech firms—widening credit spreads and driving up financing costs—the cash burn rates of compute-focused startups lacking self-sustaining revenue will accelerate, putting at risk the valuation premium previously expected to persist until 2027.

2 June 2026

(This page is machine-translated.)

We’re trying to decide which of these is a better option:

or

People commonly defend this practise with "But the audience isn't meant to understand!" or "It's inconsequential!", neither of which actually address a) their assumption that the [ideal Anglo] audience wouldn't understand, or, perhaps most crucially in the context of CCs, b) that this is a failure of accessibility. A hearing person who speaks that "foreign" language will know exactly what's being said. A deaf or HoH person – the people CCs are primarily intended for – who speaks or reads that language should therefore have the exact same opportunity to understand. It very much feels to me like an assumption that we deaf and HoH people couldn't possibly understand any language but English, so there's no point in getting those languages transcribed for us. I hope it goes without saying how profoundly audist that sentiment is.

There is also, I think, a profound misunderstanding or ignorance of Deaf culture at play. Which is to say, CCs in English-language media are written with not only the assumption that the audience will be native English speakers, but that all d/Deaf and HoH people speak English as their first language, so all other languages are as supposedly foreign to them as they are for hearing people. But sign languages are their own distinct language. BSL, ASL, ISL, AusLan, NZSL etc ≠ English (and are indeed different from one another), LIS ≠ Italian, JSL ≠ Japanese, and so on. So, if you follow the captioners' logic to its natural extreme, all non-signed dialogue is "foreign" to many d/Deaf and HoH people and should therefore be labelled [speaks foreign language] / [speaks English] / [speaks own language] / etc. – which is, obviously, a terrible idea that perfectly highlights all the biases implicit in closed captioning.

No shirt, no bra, completely bare torso, just like cis men are allowed to

It's about desexualizing breasts and "female presenting nipples" and not being criminalized for our bodies if we want to go topless because it's a million damn degrees out. This was a popular growing movement that was still widely known a decade ago!

To contribute to the critically endangered pygmy raccoon fund, you can donate:

On the website

On Venmo

On 26 June 2026, the Financial Times ran a piece titled “The shrinking arguments for degrowth.” Written by John Burn-Murdoch, the FT’s chief data reporter, the column argues that “the idea that economic growth is a barrier to achieving better outcomes is at best outdated, in many cases a misreading of the data.” He builds his case in five steps: (1) growth reduces environmental impact, (2) eradicates poverty, (3) raises all wages, and (4) improves wellbeing, and therefore (5) degrowth is a terrible idea (hence the title of the piece). I take each claim in turn and show that none survives careful scrutiny. 

[...]

On a finite planet, where seven out of nine planetary boundaries have been breached, you cannot answer a distributional crisis by simply growing the economy further.

Hiroshi Nagai's paintings need sunglasses to look at.

They look like how it feels to walk across a parking lot on a 98° summer day without a speck of shade in sight.

They look like heaven but also like you'd burn your bare feet on the ground.

Even when you can see shade you know it's not enough and the minute you step out you'll be burnt to a crisp like a vampire.

This feels like I could trip on that radio and fall right into that water, feeling the crystal waves as I drop in.

And this, a nice stroll down a resort strip, where my sunscreened skin could literally feel cooked if I leaned too close to the tiling.

And then a nice stretch of summer street, wherein you could see your face in the flushed red of that car provided it didn't blind you from its sunny reflections.