Spruik?
Is this new slang? Am I that out of touch?
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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It's about a century old. It is au/nz slang tho.
From what I can tell, it's relatively new Australia-specific slang
It's been around for a long time
Thanks. Live in a different part of the English-speaking world, and hadn't run into it before.
Do you know the pronunciation by chance? Is is Sprook? Sprook-ick? Spreek?
"Sprook"
It means to give a public speech.
Clueless Yankee here! Thanks!
I didn’t realise this wasn’t a commonly used word outside Australia. TIL…
Lol I came to the comments hoping someone would explain what it meant. I’ve never come across it before either.
Here in Australia also, we have gas networks promoting renewable gas. They're literally only adding 5% hydrogen, and it's an inefficient process which uses power anyway
And we have way too many people with their emotional support vehicles pushing their nonsense about batteries being dirty or slave labour or whatever.
Getting so sick of living here with idiots. People who barely passed year 10 are too emboldened, and way too many people listening to them
“These fossil fuel companies aren’t stupid, and they know that they are in an existential fight for their lives”
That’s what bothers me. They don’t have to be in a fight for their lives. If they’d actually spend some of their R&D money on alternative sources of energy, instead of buying and then burying potential competition, they could thrive.
It’s not like being stubborn is free, either. Fossil fuel companies spend an enormous amount on disinformation campaigns, lobbying, lawyers, etc. Even when they’re “successful”, which is hardly guaranteed, those methods can only delay the inevitable. Why are they so dedicated to a method that they know will fail? Developing a sustainable, affordable fuel alternative would be absolutely revolutionary, and create an enormous market advantage. The costs would be significant, but not unmanageable, and the profits could be absolutely immense.
They don’t have to be in a fight for their lives. If they’d actually spend some of their R&D money on alternative sources of energy, instead of buying and then burying potential competition, they could thrive.
Two issues:
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Fossil fuels burn. I.e., they are a consumable and customers regularly need to replenish. If you look around, companies of all kinds optimize toward getting their consumers to depend on them regularly even where there is no need: software subscriptions, car leasing, razors, mobile phones that come with contracts. Selling renewable energy technology like a consumable/as a subscription is a lot harder than doing it with oil. Moving to a business model where income is less plannable must seem insane to them.
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Companies are generally run by people who know nothing about technology, don't care about longer term outlooks and know everything about optimizing taxes.
You forgot number three, while related to your first point I think it might actually matter more to them.
They have a cartel that gains enormous power though being the only ones to sell a substance every nation needs to constantly buy. The cartel names it’s price, nations buy that price. No democratic politician will really take a legislative stand against anything you do, becuse if they do you can just raise prices for them and let the electorate eat them alive for rasing gas prices.
That sort of power is worth quite a lot of money, and that means that you can afford for it to be a lot less profitable while still being absolutely worth it to you. Oil companies were some of the first to really research renewables, and thier answer is the same in Shells investor statements today as it was then. We will invest heavily in any renewable that we can monopolize, see hydrogen, but competitive markets like solar and wind must be delayed at any cost.