I always thought that Europe would be all over the EVs and would quickly build the infrastructure, help replace any other engines, and invest into battery research.

The number of articles talking about BYD destroying the European market are way too high. The truth is that the Volkswagen group is leading BEV sales in Europe and especially Germany. The only non German brand in the top five brands is Skoda and they are owned by the Volkswagen Group. Q4 2025 Tesla was at 2.8% market share and BYD at 2.5% of BEV sales.

Germany is also the second largest producers of BEVs globally passing the US this year. There are also some massive investments into batteries going on. Other European countries are doing similar things.

So this money is going to end up mostly with German car makers anyway.

I personally like a lot of the art, which is very clearly Orientalism. Gaudi for example clearly stands on his own, but also obviously imitated Islamic tile art, especially in his early works. Also a lot of Art Nouveau graphic art imitates very clearly Chinese and especially Japanese prints. I also have a hard time seeing it as racist to do so, but sure I guess I am and stuff like this is shit.

In this context it refers to Westerners patronizing Asians and people from the Middle East. It comes from Orient and also is used to describe Western art, which immitates arts from the North Africa, Middle East and Asia. So it depends on the context if it is actually bad.