First, there’s the pull-forward effect. December 2025 was Tesla’s best-ever retail month in China at 93,843 units, as buyers rushed to purchase before the reinstatement of a 5% purchase tax on NEVs starting January 1, 2026. That tax had been fully exempted for over a decade. Some of January’s weakness is borrowed December strength.

Second, China’s vehicle trade-in subsidies expired in most cities in mid-November and remain in a transitional phase, dampening demand broadly.

Third, the broader NEV market was weak. China’s total passenger NEV retail sales fell 20% year-over-year in January to 596,000 units, according to CPCA estimates. Even BYD saw its NEV sales drop 30% year-over-year and 50% month-over-month.

But here’s the thing: even BYD’s weak month produced 210,051 units. Tesla’s 18,485 is a different universe.

Whenever I’m taking that stuff as prescribed, I’m usually not high, I’m simply not in pain.

Slicked back hair is the wrong move when you have a fivehead like that.

Everyone’s boosting food with protein now, when every doctor on earth is screaming “eat some fucking grape nuts dawg.”

RT is straight up trying to stoke the fire with even more disinformation.

Vlad should keynote a marketing conference, because he’s still reaping the rewards from that 2015 Facebook campaign. Homie’s breaking up NATO and western democracies by bidding on shitty social media ads.

Homie banned me the other day for saying Venezuela’s Chavez-Maduro era was full of weird Trump-like authoritarian demagoguery and for referencing Chavez’s weird weekly state media talk show.

My money is on Putin trying to bait Trump into bigger conflict with Canada. Trump is a useful idiot that’s helping Putin destabilize the bonds holding NATO nations together.

Top of the morn’n, motherfucker.

I feel ya, but the Trump administration expects that the global, local, and market response will be gradual. As soon as they start seeing quick responsive volatility that impacts Trump or his cronies, they TACO.

Given what’s happening with Venezuela, Greenland and the Fed Chair, I don’t know we’re not aggressively talking pulling out of US bonds and setting investment policy around that. That doesn’t have to be a gradual thing, it can happen swiftly.

People naturally started backing out of US bonds when Trump’s crazy tariffs started rolling out, and the Trump admin totally wussed out on a lot of that stuff.

Also, if the world is going to stop pegging their currencies to the dollar, they need to stop buying US bonds first. They need to diversify.

The global community has agency, and it should really start to create plans for things like getting currencies off of the US dollar.

I’m only on Lemmy for the fresh dressage content.

The ads are shit, but I’m inclined to let the ads run because the entire app is built by one Ukrainian dude who basically cloned the creative suite himself.

Thanks. I’ll check it out.

What are some other good open alternatives to GIMP?

Having been in the design trade for 20 years, I’ve mastered countless design applications, but GIMP’s UI is something I have always struggled with.

My goto these days has been photopea when I need something fast and free… but it’s not open and it’s ad supported.

Strangely enough, I used to research this. I used to work for a grocery delivery company and we’re travel around to learn how people fed themselves in different parts of the worlds.

For North America and Europe, the big difference was among people in major cities, vs rural or suburban areas. The grocery, transportation infrastructure, and housing stock are often very very different. And that changes how people eat.

City shoppers = smaller, more frequent, shopping trips that cover the day or week.

Outside of the city = more need / opportunities to “stock up” and buy in bulk.

Obsessive fans wait 4 years for this, and the last World Cup showed that those idiots will spend thousands to visit your country, even if it’s doing some terrible things.

It’s fucking crazy how they can just straight up say this to millions of people who watched this broadcast live over television and over livestreams. Any many of the streamers were FROM the folks raiding the capitol.

And sadly, we’re soon going to have a generation that was old enough vote, but too young to have seen this live. And all they’ll know is what their political party of choice is telegraphing.

Excuse me… “five dollar footlongs”