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Deadpool & Wolverine leads a pop culture cascade of F-bombs

IMDB

LOS ANGELES — What the f—? The F-word, once seen as the most shocking expletive in the English language, has become commonplace in pop culture.

Deadpool & Wolverine, the R-rated Marvel film from family friendly Walt Disney, features the word “fuck” more than 100 times. Taylor Swift sings it 18 times in just one song on her hit album The Tortured Poets Department, and many other pop stars utter it freely.

As its public usage has increased, the word has undergone what language experts call a “semantic shift,” or a change in meaning over time, said Roy Peter Clark, a writing teacher and author of several books on writing.

He points to a scene in My Lady Jane, a drama series on Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service. A girl who appears to be roughly 10 years old uses the word as her older sister is about to be beheaded under orders from Queen Mary.

“Fuck Mary,” the girl says.

Putting the F-word in the mouth of a child actor, Mr. Clark said, shows it has become less taboo over time.

“It’s used in so many different ways, some that are clearly very negative, and other ways that are humorous, and other ways that are mischievous and other ways that are emphatic,” said Mr. Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit focused on media. “It has become less negative.”

A British study published in 2021 found that “fuck” was the most-used swear word and was particularly popular with teenagers and young adults. A 2023 study published in the Journal of Pragmatics sought to understand how its usage had evolved.

Comparing conversations among British teenagers in the 1990s and 2010s, researchers Robbie Love and Anna-Brita Stenstrom found less slinging of the F-word as an insult, or as a term for sexual intercourse.

The word was more likely to appear in phrases such as “what the fuck?” and “for fuck’s sake,” they found. Teens tossed the word around in friendly conversations.

Karen North, a psychologist and professor of digital social media at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School, said habituation likely has made the word less jarring.

“Anything that you experience over and over and over again, you’re desensitized to,” Ms. North said. “If you’re in a room that smells very bad, then after a few minutes you don’t smell it.”

With language, “if you keep hearing the F-word, or any particular inflammatory or emotional thing over and over and over again, you’ll start desensitizing because your senses get used to it,” Ms. North said.

Many people still find the F-word highly offensive. Its use is often cited by politicians to ban books such as J.D. Salinger’s 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye in schools and libraries, Mr. Clark noted.

At Disney, executives offered “nothing but support” after seeing the foul language in the new Deadpool movie, said Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios. They understood that the raunchy humor was a key to the success of two earlier Deadpool movies made by Fox.

When Disney bought the Deadpool character as part of a deal with Fox, Marvel filmmakers decided “we were going to stay true to the spirit of what Deadpool is,” Mr. Feige said.

Deadpool & Wolverine was rated R in the US and 15 in the United Kingdom, a signal to parents that it was not intended for young children. In the Philippines, it received a rating of R-16 from the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board. R-16 restricts viewership to those aged 16 and above, with the reviewers citing the film’s mature content as the reason.

Audiences embraced the movie, which racked up the biggest opening weekend of the year with $211 million at US and Canadian box offices. Total global sales reached an estimated $824 million through Sunday.

For the Deadpool character, the F-word “makes sense, and if it wasn’t there, it wouldn’t feel right,” said 22-year-old Marvel fan Gaige Johnson from Michigan.

Another Marvel fan, Diana Alvort from Mexico, laughed when asked if there was too much swearing in the film.

“Fuck that,” she said. “Come on, it’s a fun movie. Let’s not get so serious. You know, there’s moments for everything and so I don’t have a problem with that. Just enjoy it.” — Reuters

Transformative mindset of the new procurement law for good governance

FREEPIK

We’ve heard too many horror stories about procurement in government. Opaque processes, favored bidders, and rigged specifications — resulting in delayed, poor quality, and badly implemented projects — have often accompanied the way our agencies and local government units selected their suppliers or contractors in delivering government services.

As a result, people don’t get the quality of projects and services they deserve. Public funds are wasted and get into the hands of unscrupulous groups or individuals, and our aspirations toward good governance remain just that, aspirations.

A new law, enacted just on July 20 and which will take effect on Aug. 13, seeks to change this.

Republic Act 12009 or the New Government Procurement Act (NGPA), championed by Department of Budget and Management Secretary Amenah Pangandaman as the “biggest anti-graft and corruption law in modern history,” aims to promote transparency, competitiveness, efficiency, proportionality, accountability, public monitoring, procurement professionalization, and sustainability in government procurement.

According to President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., it is “a testament to our unwavering commitment to build a government that truly serves the people by ensuring that every peso spent is accounted for and is used for the benefit of the Filipino people.”

This law was deemed a piece of priority legislation by the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council because it includes key reforms aimed at putting an end to side deals, under-the-table agreements, uncompetitive behavior, corruption, and other criminal activities.

Before RA 12009, there was an existing procurement law enacted in 2003. But Republic Act 9184, or the Government Procurement Reform Act, needed to be reviewed and updated to become responsive to the many changes that have taken place since then and to address numerous gaps that still allowed irregularities in the procurement process.

There are several salient points and key features of the NGPA that make it more attuned to the demand of the present. For example, it includes an emphasis on value for money instead of mere low prices, introducing the “Most Economically Advantageous Responsive Bid” or MEARB as a new award criterion in addition to the existing Lowest Calculated Responsive Bid.  This new award criterion frees agencies from the obligation of selecting the lowest-priced bid, which sometimes ends up with the government getting the cheapest items but with the lowest quality, allowing them to choose the best deals that would result in the most optimized benefit for the item or service being procured.

It strengthens the procurement planning process that needs to use market scoping and strategies for best results, the use of emerging technologies and innovative solutions. All procurement shall be conducted with sufficient planning and preparation to ensure sound procurement decisions. The process will also be streamlined from three months to just 60 days.

Newer factors like environmental, social, and economic factors, life cycle, gender parity, poverty alleviation, and marginalized/vulnerable sectors must also be considered as procurement principles and practices. In the old law, there was no mention whatsoever of sustainability.

The principles of open government and participatory procurement, as well as beneficial ownership information, must be included in procurement decisions to enhance transparency and accountability.

It tries to prevent conflict of interest in the procurement process through the disclosure of relations between the bidder and procuring heads of agencies. There will be improved public monitoring through civil society observer participation and use of video recording for all procurement-related conferences.

Finally, procurement practitioners should be professionalized and developed into a skilled and competent workforce driven only by excellence and integrity.

The enactment of the NGPA is expected to significantly improve the execution of government projects. Its enactment is anticipated to foster trust among stakeholders, including local and international investors, by demonstrating the government’s commitment to ethical governance practices and to build a more transparent, accountable, and sustainable procurement system, ultimately benefiting the Filipino people.

However, the test of the new law — as is the tests of all laws — is its conscientious implementation. We at Stratbase hold the view that attempts at attracting and keeping investments and inducing technology-driven economic growth will not happen unless transparency in government transactions is normalized. The people have seen far too many instances of public officials promising to serve them and putting their interests above all, and yet, behind closed doors, rigging the bidding process so that it favors them and their conspirators.

This may not completely eliminate irregularities in the procurement process as there will always be devious minds who will continue to look for loopholes that they can exploit despite the safeguards established by the law.

This is where the watchful eyes of the other sectors must come to enforce transparency. It is good that the new law already provides additional means by which the public can observe and monitor the bidding process. Irregularities, after all, happen in the dark, under the veil of secrecy.

The law will take effect soon and we look forward to the consultative process that will ensue for the crafting of the Implementing Rules and Regulations. Here, the actual situations for the operationalization of the law will be discussed by those who actually know the technical and operational dynamics of government procurement. We are confident that under the leadership of Budget Secretary Pangandaman, the full implementation of this law will finally help curb corruption and institute good governance practices at all levels of national and local government, and according to its spirit and intent.

 

Victor Andres “Dindo” C. Manhit is the president of the Stratbase ADR Institute.

Security Bank closes offer of 5-year bonds

SECURITY BANK Corp. on Monday closed the offer period for its five-year peso-denominated bonds, more than a week earlier than the original plan, amid strong investor demand, it said on Tuesday.

“Security Bank Corp. has ended its bond offer period early as volume significantly exceeded target,” it said in a disclosure to the stock exchange.

“Prevailing market conditions also allowed the bank to augment its returns to its clients. Previously marketed at a fixed rate of 5.7000% per annum, the coupon has been adjusted to 6.0500% per annum,” the bank added.

Security Bank was looking to raise at least P5 billion from its offer of five-year bonds, with an option to upsize. It has yet to announce the final issue size.

“Proceeds of the offering will be used to support the bank’s lending activities and expand its funding base,” Security Bank said.

The offer period for the papers started on July 8 and was originally set to end on Aug. 13.

The lender will issue, settle, and list the bonds on the Philippine Dealing and Exchange Corp. on Aug. 20.

The bonds were offered in scripless form in denominations of P10,000 each for a minimum investment of P100,000.

The papers may be traded in multiples of P10,000 in the secondary market, the bank said.

The five-year bonds will be issued out of the bank’s recently upsized P200-billion peso bond and commercial papers program.

Philippine Commercial Capital, Inc. and SB Capital Investment Corp. were tapped as the joint bookrunners, joint lead arrangers, and selling agents for the issuance.

Security Bank last tapped the domestic bond market in July 2023, where it raised P18.5 billion from the issuance of 1.5-year fixed-rate corporate bonds.

The papers were priced at 6.425% per annum.

The listed lender’s net income rose by 11.4% year on year to P2.63 billion in the first quarter amid growth in its retail and micro, small, and medium enterprise businesses.

Security Bank’s shares closed unchanged at P64 apiece on Tuesday. — AMCS

How much did each commodity group contribute to July inflation?

HEADLINE INFLATION accelerated to a nine-month high in July, mainly driven by a spike in electricity rates and food costs, data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed. Read the full story.

How much did each commodity group contribute to July inflation?

Google hires top talent from startup Character.AI, signs licensing deal

REUTERS

STARTUP Character.AI has signed an agreement with Alphabet’s Google that grants the search engine giant a nonexclusive license to the chatbot maker’s large language model technology.

The deal, echoing ones struck by Microsoft and Amazon in the past few months, will see Character.AI co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas rejoin Google, where they were formerly employees.

Those other deals are being scrutinized by regulators, reflecting a growing concern in both the US and Europe about how artificial intelligence (AI) deals are put together by tech giants who are funneling billions into bolstering their AI infrastructure and hiring the best researchers from startups.

Character.AI will get more funding as part of the deal with Google, the startup said in a blog, without disclosing the amount. Dominic Perella, Character.AI’s general counsel, will become its interim chief executive officer effective immediately.

“We’re particularly thrilled to welcome back Noam, a preeminent researcher in machine learning, who is joining Google DeepMind’s research team, along with a small number of his colleagues,” a Google spokesperson said in an e-mail.

In March, Microsoft paid $650 million to bring on the cofounders and dozens of staff from AI startup Inflection. In June, Amazon hired several cofounders and employees from Adept, another AI startup.

Character.AI earlier raised $193 million in venture capital from investors including Andreessen Horowitz. It was in talks to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from Google, Reuters reported in November.

Inflection and Adept raised $1.3 billion and $415 million, respectively.

Law firm Sullivan & Cromwell advised Character.AI on the deal. — Reuters

Ancient Egypt’s ‘screaming’ mummy woman may have died in agony

FRONTIERSIN.ORG

IT IS a startling image from ancient Egypt — a mummy discovered during a 1935 archaeological expedition at Deir el-Bahari near Luxor of a woman with her mouth wide open in what looks like an anguished shriek.

Scientists now have an explanation for the “Screaming Woman” mummy after using CT scans to perform a “virtual dissection.” It turns out she may have died in agony and experienced a rare form of muscular stiffening, called a cadaveric spasm, that occurs at the moment of death.

The examination indicated that the woman was about 48 years old when she died, had lived with mild arthritis of the spine and had lost some teeth, said Cairo University radiology professor Sahar Saleem, who led the study published on Friday in the journal Frontiers in Medicine.

Her body was well-preserved, being embalmed roughly 3,500 years ago during ancient Egypt’s glittering New Kingdom period using costly imported ingredients such as juniper oil and frankincense resin, Saleem added.

The ancient Egyptians viewed preservation of the body after death as crucial to secure a worthy existence in the afterlife. It was customary during the mummification process to remove the internal organs, aside from the heart, but this had not occurred with this woman.

“In ancient Egypt, the embalmers took care of the dead body so it would look beautiful for the afterlife. That’s why they were keen to close the mouth of the dead by tying the jaw to the head to prevent the normal postmortem jaw drop,” Saleem said.

But the quality of the embalmment ingredients “ruled out that the mummification process had been careless and that the embalmers had simply neglected to close her mouth. In fact, they mummified her well and gave her expensive funerary apparels — two expensive rings made of gold and silver and a long haired-wig made from fibers from the date palm,” Saleem added.

“This opened the way to other explanations of the widely opened mouth — that the woman died screaming from agony or pain and that the muscles of the face contracted to preserve this appearance at the time of death due to cadaveric spasm,” Saleem said. “The true history or circumstances of the death of this woman are unknown, hence the cause of her screaming facial appearance cannot be established with certainty.”

Cadaveric spasm, a poorly understood condition, occurs after severe physical or emotional suffering, with the contracted muscles becoming rigid immediately following death, Saleem said.

“Unlike postmortem rigor mortis, cadaveric spasm affects only one group of muscles, not the entire body,” Saleem added.

Asked whether the woman may have been embalmed while alive, Saleem added, “I don’t believe that this is possible.”

Saleem was unable to determine how the woman died, saying, “We frequently cannot determine the cause of death in a mummy unless there is CT evidence of fatal trauma.” Saleem cited evidence of a fatal head injury, slit neck, and heart disease in three royal mummies.

The “Screaming Woman” was found at the site of the ancient city of Thebes during excavation of the tomb of a high-ranking official named Senmut, the architect, overseer of royal works, and reputed lover of queen Hatshepsut, who reigned from 1479-1458 BC.

The mummy was inside a wooden coffin in a burial chamber beneath Senmut’s family tomb. Her identity has not been determined but her jewelry — the gold and silver rings with images of scarab beetles, a symbol of resurrection, made of the gemstone jasper — showed her socioeconomic status.

“She was likely a close family member to be buried and share the family’s eternal resting place,” Saleem said.

The study revealed details of her wig. Its spiral braids were treated with the minerals quartz, magnetite, and albite to harden them and provide the black color indicative of youth. Her natural hair had been dyed with henna and juniper oil.

A number of ancient mummies, in Egypt and the Americas, have been found with facial expressions resembling a scream — eerily similar to Norwegian painter Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

“I use this painting in my public lectures about the screaming mummies,” Saleem said. — Reuters

Transfer the sinking capital

PHILIPPINE STAR/ MIGUEL DE GUZMAN

Greenpeace studies in various regions in the ASEAN have indicated that Metro Manila is sinking by no less than 10 centimeters per annum. By simple calculation, this means that by 2050, or in 26 years, the National Capital Region (NCR) will be 2.6 meters below the level it is at now! Rapid urbanization and the extraction of underground water are reported to be the main causes. This is exacerbated by rising sea levels.

Outgoing Indonesian President Joko Widodo has boldly begun to hold office in Nusantara, South Kalimantan (Borneo Island) which he has designated as Indonesia’s new capital precisely because of similar concerns. Jakarta is like New York-DC, and LA in which business, government, and entertainment are all centered in one place. Metro Manila is the same. Traffic in Jakarta is unbelievably worse than in Metro Manila, if that is at all possible. And the quality of air is worse than in Metro Manila.

Today, with the destructive reclamation of Roxas Boulevard, floods are making the capital city unlivable. The destruction is not only to the physical infrastructure. Worse, it has ruined one of the most beautiful things about our National Capital Region — the awesome view of the sunset on Manila Bay. Driving along Roxas Boulevard back then was always a pleasant experience.  Now it is actually depressing! Especially when you see the disastrous reclamation of that fake dolomite beach. Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Maria Antonia “Toni” Yulo-Loyzaga has finally stopped further reclamations on Roxas Boulevard because she reveals that the extra land area slows down the exit of flood waters. So, now we discover this, after the trauma of Typhoon Carina!

Meanwhile — probably because our legislators and Cabinet officials live in the area — budget priorities continue to focus on dealing with the major symptom of overpopulation in the NCR: traffic.

So now billions are being invested in building a subway (and even a long bridge from Cavite to Bataan) — in a place that will be under water in 25 years!

Almost 30 years ago, when he was running for president, Lito “Promdi” Osmeña said that the capital should move to Clark.  If we had taken this seriously, we should have accomplished this by now. If Clark is found to be a good idea, since it already has an international airport, and nearby Subic has first class seaports, infrastructure investments to make it easier to travel to Clark from the current NCR should facilitate and expedite the transfer.

Other areas considered less prone to typhoons and other calamities are Palawan and Davao.

Then there is Dumaguete, a lovely city in Negros Oriental. It has preserved its four-lane seaside boulevard all the way from the provincial capital to Carlos City whence a ferry crosses to Toledo City in Cebu. It is a pleasant four-hour drive along the seawall. It is right in the center of the country. However, this university town might lose its precious gracefulness if it becomes the national capital.

Cebu City can continue to be a business hub, like New York.  But it is already too crowded to take in National Government and entertainment. Metro Cebu City already has 80% of the province’s population. But perhaps with the transfer of the provincial capital to western Cebu (in Balamban), there will be more breathing space in Cebu City which is in the east. The transfer is also expected to improve the economy of western Cebu where there is a lot of poverty.

Government and private land developers continue to invest in the NCR, making it more and more attractive to businesses and people who leave their provincial homes for better-paying jobs there. It is time for Government and these developers to consider the not-so-distant future. Are they putting more and more money to waste?

Negros Island is in the middle of our archipelago. Can we relocate the government center there?  Joko Widodo has chosen Nusantara as the new capital of Indonesia because, he says, it is central to their archipelago. The incoming president (in October) Prabowo Subianto Djojohadikusumo — who was endorsed by Widodo and whose vice-president is the son of Widodo — is likely to proceed with the ongoing transfer of the Indonesian capital.

If President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. takes a look at Greenpeace’s and other studies on the sinking of Manila, he might, like Widodo, make some bold decisions while he is in power for four more years.  To ignore these studies can be truly disastrous for our country and our people.

 

Teresa S. Abesamis is a former professor at the Asian Institute of Management and fellow of the Development Academy of the Philippines.

tsabesamis0114@yahoo.com

PBB posts higher profit in the first six months

PHILIPPINE BUSINESS BANK, Inc.’s (PBB) net earnings climbed by 18.7% in the first semester, it said on Tuesday.

PBB’s net income grew to P1.032 billion in the first half from P869.2 million a year prior, it said in a disclosure to the stock exchange.

This translated to an annualized return on assets of 1.34% and a return on equity of 11.19%.

Its financial statement was unavailable as of press time.

“PBB performed well in the first half of 2024, generating a net income of P1 billion. This highlights the strength of PBB’s business model and underscores its effective recovery and growth strategies following the challenging pandemic years and the ongoing uncertainty in the economic conditions. PBB reached this milestone faster in 2024 than in previous years. In 2023, it took PBB nine months to reach P1.1 billion in net income, and eleven months in 2022,” PBB Chief Operating Officer Cynthia A. Almirez was quoted as saying.

“In the next six months, the bank is committed to sustaining our positive income momentum by continuing to enhance our product offerings and provide innovative solutions tailored to meet the evolving needs of its clients. The bank is looking forward to working together with our clients, shareholders, and employees in building stronger business communities,” Ms. Almirez added.

PBB noted that its profit before tax went up by 18.8% to P1.38 billion from P1.16 billion.

The bank’s interest income rose by 17.2% year on year to P5.18 billion in the first six months.

Core income stood at P1.71 billion, up by 21.4% from P1.38 billion in the same period last year, the lender added.

PBB’s loans and other receivables rose by 14.3% year on year to P118.7 billion at end-June.

On the funding side, deposit liabilities grew by 12.5% to P126.4 billion in the period.

The bank’s total resources expanded by 12.6% to P154.4 billion at end-June.

Total equity was at P18.4 billion in the period.

PBB’s capital adequacy ratio stood at 12.66% at end-June, while its minimum liquidity ratio was at 20.80%.

The bank has a total of 158 branches nationwide.

Its shares ended unchanged at P8.80 apiece on Tuesday. — AMCS

Philippine Merchandise Trade Performance (June 2024)

THE PHILIPPINES’ trade-in-goods deficit ballooned to $4.3 billion in June as imports and exports contracted, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said on Tuesday. Read the full story.

Philippine Merchandise Trade Performance (June 2024)

AI chip startup Groq valued at $2.8B after latest funding round

FREEPIK

SEMICONDUCTOR startup Groq on Monday said it had raised $640 million in a Series D funding round led by Cisco Investments, Samsung Catalyst Fund and BlackRock Private Equity Partners, among others, bringing its valuation to $2.8 billion.

The Silicon Valley firm, founded by a former Alphabet engineer, specializes in producing artificial intelligence (AI) inference chips — a type of semiconductor that optimizes speed and executes commands of pre-trained models.

Besides big companies such as Advanced Micro Devices, many startups including Groq have been trying to nibble away at Nvidia’s dominant position in the booming AI chip industry.

Last year, Groq adapted Meta Platforms’ large language model LLaMA, to be able to run on its own chips rather than those of Nvidia’s. Meta researchers built LLaMA using Nvidia’s chips.

Cloud service providers racing to develop their own AI products are also seeking alternatives to Nvidia’s top-of-the-line processors due to high demand but limited supply.

In 2021, Groq was valued at $1.1 billion after funding from Tiger Global Management and D1 Capital.

“Groq will use the funding to scale the capacity of its tokens-as-a-service (TaaS) offering and add new models and features to the GroqCloud,” the company said.

Groq will deploy more than 108,000 Language Processing Units manufactured by Global Foundries by the end of the first quarter of 2025.

Groq has also announced the appointment of Stuart Pann, a former senior executive at Intel and HP, Inc., as its chief operating officer, while Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun was named its newest technical adviser. — Reuters

Filmmaker David Lynch clarifies he will not retire despite illness

X.COM/DAVID_LYNCH

LOS ANGELES — Twin Peaks creator David Lynch said on Monday he is filled with happiness and will never retire despite an emphysema diagnosis, clarifying comments he made earlier to magazine Sight and Sound that he would most likely have to stop working.

The 78-year-old American filmmaker posted on social media platform X that he appreciated everyone that has voiced concern over his health condition, noting that his past as a smoker caused his emphysema, a lung disease with no known cure.

“Yes, I have emphysema from my many years of smoking. I have to say that I enjoyed smoking very much, and I do love tobacco — the smell of it, lighting cigarettes on fire, smoking them,” he wrote, gaining 1.3 million likes.

“But there is a price to pay for this enjoyment, and the price for me is emphysema. I have now quit smoking for over two years. Recently I had many tests and the good news is that I am in excellent shape except for emphysema,” he added.

He also said in the interview for the Sight and Sound’s September cover story that he was no longer able to leave his home, as he was afraid of contracting COVID-19, which would threaten his health even further.

“I’ve gotten emphysema from smoking for so long, and so I’m homebound whether I like it or not … And now, because of COVID, it would be very bad for me to get sick, even with a cold,” Mr. Lynch told the British magazine.

The Eraserhead and The Elephant Man filmmaker also mentioned he could only walk a short distance before he ran out of oxygen.

A representative for Mr. Lynch did not respond to a request for comment.

For Mr. Lynch, it is unlikely that he will ever direct in-person again, but he mentioned the possibility of directing remotely.

“I would really hate that,” he added, admitting that directing virtually would not be desirable for the Oscar-nominated director. — Reuters

China’s abandoned building sites are killing oil demand

RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS developed by Evergrande in Pingyuan New Area, Yuanyang. — WINDMEMORIES - EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

TO GET AN IDEA of why the oil industry keeps failing to see the demand lift from China that it’s been waiting for all year, consider this: The area of buildings that broke ground in the six months through June was the lowest since 2009.

That remarkable slowdown is a problem for the cement industry, as we’ve written. But it is also reverberating through the oil market in ways that are still not appreciated, because China’s building sector is one of the world’s biggest consumers of diesel fuel, also known as gasoil. Emissions from all the trucks, excavators, and site generators that have operated at headlong rates in recent years will fall as they stand increasingly idle. That’s good news for the climate, but bad news for anyone who was counting on China’s thirst for crude remaining as unslakeable in the future as it was during the 2010s.

China’s millions of diesel engines consume just under 4% of the world’s oil. As a result, they account for a bit more than 1% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, a similar climate footprint to France and Scandinavia put together. On measure after measure, however, this industry looks to be in trouble.

Gasoil demand in June fell 11% from a year earlier, and in Shandong the teapot refineries — a group of privately owned processing plants that focus on turning crude into diesel — are operating at barely half of their capacity. Barring blips in 2020 and 2022, when draconian COVID-19 lockdowns brought the national economy to a juddering halt, that’s the worst performance in nearly a decade.

Diesel’s great advantage over other petroleum products is that it has such a diverse array of uses. The noise, complexity, and dirt of its engines mean that it’s rare to see it in passenger cars or motorbikes.* But it’s much more efficient than gasoline, in both financial and climate terms, at converting chemical energy into work — so it’s preferred by anyone with an eye on the bottom line.

In measure after measure, however, the vehicles and engines that consume it are struggling. With construction activity and the coal production boom of 2021 and 2022 easing, first-half production of excavators last year fell to its lowest level since 2017. (This year it’s up marginally, but still below any other of the past seven years.) The power capacity of engines as a whole, sweeping in all uses of diesel as well as gasoline and marine fuel oil, is similarly running at rates last seen in the middle of the previous decade.

The full picture may be even worse than you’d realize just from counting vehicles and engines. That’s because natural gas and batteries are cutting deep into gasoil’s traditional dominance of heavy-duty drivetrains. As recently as 2021, all but a handful of the semi-trailer vehicles manufactured to haul big truck loads were powered by diesel. So far this year, its share is barely holding above 50%, as electric and gas drivetrains take market share. The total number of diesel semi-cabs produced through June was the lowest first-half total since 2015.

The energy think-tank run by PetroChina Co. reckons that between 10% and 12% of China’s gasoline and diesel demand has already been replaced by natural gas and battery vehicles. S&P Global Commodity Insights recently quoted a PetroChina official arguing that the country’s gasoil consumption peaked last year, and will fall by 5% in 2024.

Even more bullish analysts see a troubled future. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Henik Fung and Chia Chen see diesel consumption growing until 2027 but slumping thereafter as the energy transition wipes out more than half of China’s oil demand by 2050, to the point where the country may become almost self-sufficient in crude.

Even as China’s leadership struggles to make the long-promised shift from a carbon-intensive, investment-heavy growth model toward one that focuses on less polluting consumption activities — such as finding the best place to shop for milk tea and stinky tofu — investors are failing to grasp the implications of what’s happening.

The demand weakness out of Asia that’s confounded oil markets over the past year isn’t a mysterious but temporary hiccup. Instead, it’s the sign of an economic model that has run its course, and will have compounding effects as the construction downturn ripples through all the industries that once fed its epic growth rates.

For all the forecasts of ongoing demand from the oil industry, crude production last year was still about a million barrels a day below its peak level in 2018. Expect more of the same. China accounted for about half of the world’s increase in oil consumption so far this century, and a similarly outsized share of the world’s emissions. With its engine now sputtering, the world needs to take notice.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

*Europe, which for a while disastrously promoted diesel cars as the best way to decarbonize road transport, is the major exception.