Jrmining

I think there are a lot of fair criticisms to be levelled at Carney; but starting from the assumption that the Americans are acting in good faith to secure "free trade" and the Canadians are mucking it up -- that's just pure delusion or dishonesty.

Here comes the food inflation Costs for food companies jumped 7.9% yoy in March (vs. 4.2% in Feb.) This is basically just from higher fuel costs - we're still waiting for the impact of higher fertilizer, plastics, etc. From the Odd Lots newsletter: bloomberg.com/news/newslette…

Approximate estimates of percentages of U.S. munitions expended in Iran war, per @CNN : 50% THAAD interceptors 50% Patriot interceptors 45% Precision Strike Missiles 30% Tomahawk missiles 20% Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles 20% Standard Missiles (SM-3 and SM-6)

The world’s top condom maker says it plans to raise prices by 20%-30% and possibly further due to the impact of the US-Iran war in the petrochemical industry. Malaysia's Karex Bhd told Reuters is also seeing a surge in condom demand as rising freight costs and shipping delays have left many of its customers with lower stockpiles than usual. Karex produces over 5 billion condoms annually and is a supplier to leading brands like Durex.

CATL has launched its third-gen Shenxing LFP battery, featuring charging speeds: 10%-35% SOC in 1 minute, 10%-80% in 3 minutes and 44 seconds, 10%-98% in 6 minutes and 27 seconds, and 10%-98% in 9 minutes at -30 degrees Celsius.

Nova Scotia wind farm run by friends of @liberal_party required $206 million in public financing since no private lender would touch it, says CEO of Canada Infrastructure Bank @cib_en. Ehren Cory said costly venture was deemed too risky. blacklocks.ca/venture-too-ri… #cdnpoli

Cabinet remains adamant that dairy quotas will never be sacraficed in U.S. trade talks. “We will not be negotiating supply management.” — @DLeBlancNB blacklocks.ca/guarantees-fed… #cdnpoli @CanadaTrade

One of largest #cdnmedia unions seeks federal controls on what people say about journalists on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Government regulation is supported by “95% of media workers,” said Jane Robertson, president of @CMGLaGuilde. blacklocks.ca/media-seek-cur… @CdnHeritage #cdnpoli

this is exactly why I moved back to china and I genuinely think most people reading this from the west have no idea what it actually feels like to build here the thing about shenzhen that changed everything for me is the access, makerspaces everywhere open to anyone, components available in any quantity at any hour, hardware meetups and deeptech demo nights happening every single day where founders show up with actual physical prototypes & get torn apart by engineers who’ve been shipping products for 20y +++ investor sessions where VCs ask about your thermal dissipation strategy before they ask about yourt revenue, the density of ambitious people building physical things in one city is something I’ve never experienced anywhere else on earth and the education pipeline feeding all of this is staggering, chinese kids start building robots & programming microcontrollers in middle school as part of the national curriculum by high school they’re doing projects in machine vision& embedded systems tsinghua, USTC & zhejiang these universities produce researchers who go from publishing a paper to founding a startup with gov backed seed funding in a matter of months… the pipeline from fundamental research to applied engineering to company creation is seamless here in a way that would make any european researcher cry and what most people in the west completely miss is the role of the tech giants as ecosystem builders, juawei alibaba, tencent & baidu are operating as deeptech accelerators at a scale that has 0 equivalent in the west huawei alone runs the ascend AI ecosystem where they give hardware startups access to their custom AI chips their toolchains& their cloud infrastructure for free or near free so founders can build on top of chinese silicon instead of depending on NVIDIA alibaba’s academy funds and incubates in quantum computing chip design and autonomous driving then plugs them directly into alibaba cloud’s customer base & tencent invests in robotics companies and connects them to its manufacturing partners these aren’t passive financial investors writing checks from SF, they’re active ecosystem architects who provide silicon compute distribution channels & manufacturing access in a single integrated package Q1 numbers that just dropped tell the whole story, 5% GDP growth driven almost entirely by hightech manufacturing, integrated circuit production up 49.4% in a single quarter under maximum US sanctions, electronic materials up 32.5%, lithium battery output up 40.8%… the 4 AI chip startups they call the « four dragons» moore threads, metaX, biren & enflame all going public simultaneously valued at billions, huawei rolling out a 3y roadmap to overtake NVIDIA & the deeptech VCs here write checks with a technical depth I’ve rarely seen anywhere these are people who read your papers who understand your architecture at the gate level who challenge your engineering choices on EMI coupling & power stage layout before they even look at your market I genuinely think think the sanctions have been the greatest unintentional R&D program in history, they forced China to build in 5y what would have taken 20 without them, and now the country is sitting on a self sufficient semiconductor ecosystem, a dominant position in clean energy tech, a manufacturing base that operates like a collective intelligence network and an education system that produces millions of engineers who see building physical things as the highest form of ambition meanwhile the west is spending trillions on a war in the middle east and debating whether AI needs another ethics committee I know where I want to be and it’s here​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ft.com/content/f2b53a…

Seven years of subsidies have permanently compromised government-approved media in Canada, current and former editors tell Commons heritage committee. “The public doesn’t see them as independent anymore.” blacklocks.ca/media-too-reli… @MLInstitute @Pagmenzies #cdnmedia #cdnpoli

“People are losing faith that the Liberal government will actually fix any of the structural problems they created in the last 10 years”... “Start building, or better yet just get out of the way of industry. We need to see clear and concise direction from the feds.”

Project managers originally planned to find 30 homeless gay veterans in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax to take photos with free cameras. Records show the $1.2 million @HICC_ca project started late and had difficulty finding gay homeless veterans.

Majority government will move to regulate legal internet content, says @CdnHeritage Minister @MarcMillerVM. Reporter: “How seriously are you considering this idea?” Miller: “Very seriously.” blacklocks.ca/serious-on-int… #cdnpoli

Canada launches national initiative to build large-scale AI supercomputing capacity ow.ly/O32V106xhpu

"Net zero" @EnvironmentCa garage in Yukon cost more than disclosed. Budgeted at $754K in two years, it took $1.8M in seven years.  blacklocks.ca/yukon-garage-e… #cdnpoli @Lianne_Rood

But Cenovus Energy Inc. CEO Jon McKenzie, who chairs CAPP's board of directors, said he sees it as a "fallacy" that a carbon levy would encourage industry to invest in decarbonization. "What it means at the end of the day is more of the global supply will come from countries outside of Canada," he said. "It represents nothing more than an incremental cost that makes us less competitive with the rest of the world."

‼️ ZELENSKYY: For the first time in the war, an enemy position was captured entirely by ground robotic systems and drones - without any infantry. A robot entered the most dangerous zones instead of a soldier and took the positions. «The future is here, on the battlefield, and Ukraine is creating it. These are our ground robotic systems. For the first time in this war's history, an enemy position was taken exclusively by unmanned GRS platforms and drones. The occupiers surrendered, and this operation was completed without infantry involvement and without losses on our side. Ratel, Termite, Ardal, Lynx, Zmiy, Protector, Volya and other GRS completed over 22 000 missions at the front in just 3 months. In other words, over 22 000 times lives were saved. A robot went into the most dangerous zones instead of a soldier» - Zelenskyy’s address to the workers of Ukraine’s defense-industrial complex. April 13th, 2026.

Stay tuned

Germany’s shutdown of its entire fleet of nuclear reactors—among the best in the world—will go down as one of the most catastrophic acts of self-inflicted wealth destruction in history. More remarkably, it was enthusiastically applauded as a shining beacon of climate policy by many self-proclaimed “progressives,” seemingly indifferent to the billions of tons of additional emissions and air pollution it would entail. Germany is in really, really dire straits, for a host of other reasons as well. But they're still feeling cozy and comfortable, mistaking decline for stability. quillette.com/2026/04/12/ger…