China has easy access to Russia, but it was also a major buyer of Iranian and Venezuelan oil. Can the Russian pipelines scale up to cover that at short notice?

Estimates for China’s strategic reserve seem to be 1.3 billion barrels, which is about three or four months of imports. That’s not very different to the EU requiring members to have 90 days in reserve

To be clear, I do not think that China is about to collapse over this or anything like that. It’s a functioning country with a generally competent government. I just think that the (implied) assessment of China being functionally isolated from the pressures you describe Japan and the EU facing is wrong

Money is only useful if people trust that they’ll get what they expect for it. A government can make a nationalised bank take a decision like that, but who’s going to use that currency if the government just snaps its fingers and makes 100 trillion yuan of everyone’s money disappear?

because they are massive net importers of petroleum

So is China, it imports more oil than any other country by a fair margin and as far as I can tell a bit more than the EU27 collectively do as well

National government debts are usually owed to a variety of domestic banks, private investors, and similar interests. I don’t know about China for sure, but I’ve never seen anything indicating that it’s different in this regard. Not much of it, as a proportion, is owed to foreign governments or investors. So far as I’m aware, the main unusual things about China’s government debt is that Chinese citizens have a high savings rate (meaning banks holding those savings have more to work with as creditors) and the provincial governments have quite a lot of debt (potentially almost as much as the central government when added up, though I don’t know where to get reliable numbers for this)

I am generally okay with it provided there’s a decent mix of slower enemies, but Elden Ring is about the upper limit of what I can manage. To take ER bosses as an example set, Morgott and Maliketh are too quick for me to do cleanly and I can basically only win by clinging on and getting a bit lucky. They’re not notoriously difficult bosses in general due to their low health, but they’re always major roadblocks for me. ER does have the likes of Godfrey, Radagon, Placidusax and plenty others that operate at much lower tempos but still have a lot of interesting challenges, though, so I am okay with Morgott and Maliketh because that’s the variety of the game and it’s not entirely outwith my reach.

I actually don’t mind how outmatched my character feels by the boss because that’s kinda the point, isn’t it? To quote Gred Glintstone: “You’re not supposed to feel like a god in Elden Ring. You’re not supposed to feel like a cool devil guy with a leather jacket making quips and surfing on demons while you play the electric guitar. You’re just a dude named Butthole, you’re just a guy.” Provided that my toolset is enough, which I personally think it is in ER, then that toolset has to be only just enough to do the job if the feeling of the game is to be preserved. That’s a difficult balance to strike because I’m better at these games than many people and many more people are far better than me, but it is essential.

I would like slower Soulslikes to remain a thing. I like racing games a lot; I do not play the fastest, wildest arcade ones because I enjoy the focus and tension of a more sim-like one (similar to a Soulslike in that regard, I suppose). I often don’t even race the faster cars in the sims because I enjoy squeezing lap times out of shitty cars. I understand why that’s never going to be the most popular option, and stuff like GT3 and F1 cars will remain dominant in sims, but I’m happy that some of them still include a 1995 Fiat Uno for people like me

If this happened in a movie I’d be rolling my eyes at how heavy-handed the metaphor is

If the Roundtable Hold with the mirror was originally in Leyndell, then the Two Fingers and Morgott would be stopping you from getting to it. Marika moved it to… Uhhh… not Leyndell, anyway, but it’s actually even harder to get to by yourself. Melina takes you there. So two generations and a whole extended authority keeping it away from you but then this one kind lady teleports you past all that nonsense

The more we depend on the AI for these things, the worse that our reasoning gets. It’s like a muscle, it withers without use

For what it’s worth, the act only authorises the president to command that to happen rather than requiring them to do so. It has a bunch of prohibitions on doing anything to facilitate the ICC, including on extraditing American citizens to get them on trial, but if he somehow does end up in the Hague then the then-president is 100% within their rights to just abandon him there

Of course I don’t expect him to ever come close to winding up in the Hague in the first place. What a beautiful sight it would be if it did happen

I can believe that he wrote this more than I can believe that some MAGA-loyal handler wrote praise be to Allah

Oh damn, that’s a hell of a dinner. Nice work

Tunic, absolutely! But I posted about that relatively recently here, so I’ll suggest another that I like. I think Hellblade counts? I really haven’t played many things that qualify as soulslite, but it has the tone and it’s a third person action game with dodge-and-stamina combat. I’ve actually not played all of it, as my old laptop could only barely run it and I hadn’t thought about it since building a PC. I will perhaps need to go see the rest of it, because I did enjoy what I played

Poetry is one of those things that I want to be better at, but I have so little reference of actually reading poetry. I mostly want to learn about it so that I can write decent song lyrics, but that then puts me a lot of separate steps away from my goal. Guitar is indeed where I went, though! Got a good filthy tone on my 7 string and figured out the synth part of a Carpenter Brut song

Great news! Ember is a great service where I am, it’s allowing me to get rid of my car completely. More of that is what I want to see

Is that not just the article reflecting the study it’s talking about? It has users either accept or override the chatbot’s answer

They don’t, but they also don’t seem to be great at recognising spicy until it is in their mouth and causing them pain

Also, though, it’s tikka masala. It’s a British curry and it’s certainly not disproving any of the stereotypes about our spice tolerance

( ´ཀ` )

Incredible emoji work, I hate it

It doesn’t, though. It’s drawing a contrast between the two and explaining the context behind remarks made by the military president of Burkina Faso. It’s the BBC, it’s the state-funded news of a country that has universal healthcare

How the fuck is it Friday already. I feel like I’ve done nothing

Getting together woth folks for an Easter lunch regardless of the fact that none of us actually observe Easter. Besides being sous-chef, I’m making some lao gan ma monkey bread to bring along

I want to find some time and energy for something creative this weekend. It’ll have to be Saturday given that Sunday is booked up, so I’d better start thinking of what I want to do to give myself the best chance

Also I am going to post something on the Gàidhlig community this evening, because I have failed to do so in the rest of the week

I’m standing in the aisle and loudly insisting that neither game needs a remaster because we can just put the good bits in Nightreign. I’ll be fine, I definitely levelled my ADP in real life