Deadwood
On the Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire with the spectacular folly in the distance.
Quote of the Day
“While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.”
- Groucho Marx
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Mozart| Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622: I. Allegro (Live)
One of the first LPs I bought as a student.
Long Read of the Day
Guest, Host, Ghost: A Dinner Party in Kyiv
Memorable meditation by Timothy Snyder on what the war in Ukraine means (or should be understood to mean) for the rest of us.
Excerpt:
The overloaded table was lit by candles. As the flames moved this way and that, I discerned, one at a time, the unframed canvases that climbed the high walls of the small room. My hostess was wearing a dress that resembled one in a portrait; my host was in uniform. The labor of war brings together people who would otherwise never meet. The apartment was full of a love that was both risky and mature. In candlelight the lip-reading that accompanies conversation in another language is harder. We had started in English and switched to Ukrainian, in part so that I could hear from a soldier back from the front.
I will call him Serhyi, since that was his name. He had been on active duty since the first Russian invasion, in 2014. He had been in the Donetsk airport and in Debaltsevo, two of the most desperate battles of that initial stage of the war. Since the full-scale invasion of 2022, he had led special operations, including rescue missions. My host asked him to answer my questions. Serhyi spoke matter-of-factly, in an even tone, about acts of stunning physical courage, about the center of the largest war the world has seen since 1945. He was modest. He was doing the things he had to do, and that night one of those things was to talk to me…
Sergei was killed the following week.
Serhyi was married and had children. He had comrades and friends. This is their loss. He had a country that he served. This is Ukraine’s loss. In another sense, though, his death is a loss for those of us who do not notice. By resisting, Ukrainians have helped to make the world safer. They have held off a larger war in Europe. They have deterred China from adventures in the Pacific. They have made it less likely that other countries will develop nuclear weapons. They have defended what remains of a world order based upon law…
Do read it.
My commonplace booklet
The truth about Tesla
Tesla makes money by making and selling cars, right? A splendid piece of investigative journalism by Sky News tells a more nuanced story. Turns out that,
Revenue from state subsidies accounted for at least 38% of Tesla’s profits of $7.1bn in 2024 as the company banked $2.8bn from trading “regulatory credits”, a state-level subsidy paid to encourage production of electric vehicles.
Accounts for the first quarter of this year show Tesla earned $595m from regulatory credits – almost 50% more than its net earnings of $409m – suggesting that without the subsidy Tesla would be operating in the red.
Where do these ‘regulatory credits’ come from?
In America, regulatory credits are an incentive intended to encourage car manufacturers to meet targets for EV production.
Several states, led by California, use them to enforce a “zero-emission vehicles mandate”, under which manufacturers are required to produce a certain proportion of EVs as part of their overall output.
Because Tesla only makes electric vehicles, it earns credits at no cost and profits from selling them to manufacturers producing petrol and diesel vehicles, which need them to meet any shortfall against state targets.
Tesla’s total revenues in 2024 were $98bn, of which automotive sales made up $72bn.
And of course half of those cars were made in China. Wonder how that plays with Trump’s tariff obsessions.
Feedback
My puzzlement about the young woman in Wednesday’s photograph prompted some readers to rescue me from my ignorance. Diane Coyle, from whom nothing is hidden, was first off the blocks: “My guess,” she wrote, “would be the girl was recreating a scene from a manga or anime!”
And then, hot on her heels, came Marco Pagni.
“No doubt this is Frieren!”, he wrote. “This lovely manga currently on Netflix features a pretty innovative scenario about friendships and the passage of time. Worth watching…”
So of course, I dug it out. And now I wished I had stopped and spoken to the young woman and her friend. Sigh.
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