It is physically possible to replace petroleum based lubricants with synthetic lubricants created from vegetable feedstocks, it's just not economically feasible in any near term time frame. However what is economically feasible depends on circumstances and alternatives. In a world in which we did this, the circumstances would have to be very different from present.

Imagine a hypothetical world powered by thorium fuel cycle nuclear where electricity was so much cheaper than it is now that it eliminated the use of petroleum for fuel. We'd still be extracting oil for lubricants and plastics, but these materials would be more expensive because the costs of extraction and processing are no longer being paid by fuel users. The high price of lubricants would be OK because we're getting a huge break on energy costs, but that high price would make bioplastics and biolubricants more attractive for research and development.

Such a scenario would happen overnight, it would take decades, but over decades things change so much the familiar becomes unrecognizable.

On the other hand, why is a certification body (likely with a lot of overhead) actually needed?
Consumers these days are far more conscious of energy use, and information spreads much more quickly. Reviews will test the energy consumptions of products, and products which are inefficient will lose sales as a result.
Detailed reviews are a lot more useful than some logo sticker on the packaging.

In many cases, especially for game developers, crunch time *is* all the time; The industry is replete with stories of folks needing to work 60hr weeks or more for months on end.

And those coders would laugh right back at your junior investment bankers if you tell them they aren't working hard.

It means that when there is crunch time for a release of a "product", in this case technical updates to an existing platform, you are expected to work after hours and be ready on a moment's notice to do some hardcore coding for extended periods, which can in fact be considered working hard.

The companies do not follow the golden rule, so why should the employees? The job of the employer is to get as much "production" out of the employee as cheaply as possible. Why should the job of the employee not be the same? To get as much money from the employer while working as little as possible?
Remember folks: The employer does not care about you.

Well, psychiatrists don't always diagnoses people correctly either, and diagnoses don't really capture what's going on. Neuropsychiatric diagnoses are pragmatic, but often vague and always context-dependent. They do not require people sharing a diagnosis to have disorders with a common etiology.

Take Alice and Bob, both of whom have the requisite six symptoms to get a diagnosis of "ADHD, Inattentive presentation". The thing is, it turns Bob's symptoms are caused by sleep apnea. Since the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual does not require the clinician to check for sleep apnea, or even preclude a diagnosis of ADHD for someone known to have untreated sleep apnea, Bob's diagnosis is technically valid. But where Alice is *neurodivergent*, Bob is not.

Now consider Alice's twin sister Charlene. She has exactly the same symptoms as Alice for exactly the same reasons, but she has a creative job that's highly suitable for people with ADHD and a better family situation, so none of those symptoms cause her any distress or impairment. Because there is no impairment, Charlene *can't* be given a diagnosis of ADHD, even though she is neurodivergent in exactly the same way as Alice.

Now there's Erin. She only has *five* of the required six symptoms for "ADHD, Inattentive presentation", so she can't receive an ADHD diagnosis even though she is probably just as neurodivergent as Alice. Finally there's Frank. Frank only has just *one* symptom. You probably wouldn't consider him neurodivergent -- at least not very. But maybe he is; it could be if we could track down the reason for his symptom it would be in a part of his brain that's very weird.

When we call someone or ourselves "neurodivergent", that's inherently speculative because we don't understand the neurological underpinnings of the things we're talking about yet. "Neurodivergent" doesn't really designate any identifiable set of biological distinctions, it's just a genuinely socially useful label we apply to certain people. Where prior generations would try to beat autistic or ADHD behaviors out of people, now we understand those are things a person can't change, but which don't preclude that person from being valuable and productive. I suspect our readiness to apply the neurodivergent label to ourselves and reluctance to let others do the same is just another example of how we're automatically more generous cutting ourselves slack.

This is just an inherent flaw with democracy...
There are LOTS of idiots, and they are much easier to manipulate. Why spend a lot of cost/effort trying to win votes of a few smart people, when for the same cost you can convince a million idiots to vote for you?

But that population isn't underemployed and ready to accept low wages.

This just accelerated a trend that was happening anyway.

One of the genuine accomplishments of the Chinese Communist Party was increasing the literacy rate from something like 15% to around 85%. This means when they opened to trade and foreign investment, they had something unique in the history of economics: a vast, literate, and almost entirely under- or un-employed workforce.

But that's changed. In 1990, $500/year would have been a good wage in China. Now the median income is $4600/year -- still a bargain compared to $42,220 in the US. But a Vietnamese and Indian workers are now significantly cheaper than Chinese ones, and while Mexican workers are far more expensive than Chinese ones, their proximity to the US is an offset, as is a more transparent and fair regulatory environment. Mexico also offers foreign investors better legal protections and IP protection. So China isn't the no-brainer place to make something it was twenty years ago.

China has reached a kind of crossroads where they need some kind of transformation. They are stressed and vulnerable, but I don't think they can be strong armed because of the degree of political control the regime has over the populace.

My son is a chemical engineer who has spent his career doing battery and fuel cell research. He's looking at graduate programs in the UK because of the disruption to academic battery research in the US. But if Canada rolls out the welcome mat he'll probably apply to Waterloo or Calgary.

It solves the problem of you giving them your biometric in return for a consideration that costs them nothing.

Don't forget all the researchers who will move overseas to take advantage of research opportunities that have dried up here. France, Germany and Belgium have all started programs to attract researchers away from US universities, and the EU is moving to establish programs to attract American researchers.

This of course is a huge boon to China's ongoing effort to attract science and technology expertise from the US.

The US Molten Salt Reactor Experiment from the 1960s operated at over 7MW, and was also successfully refueled in operation. So without denigrating China's accomplishments with this reactor, they're just reproducing what we already did sixty years ago. But it's a necessary step if there's going to be future progress in thorium fuel cycle technology.

The MSRE wasn't *abandoned*. The experiment finished successfully, with all of its research goals met. It successfully showed that the technology was physically workable. It was never followed up because, at least at the time, the technology wasn't economically viable. Until fission power generation expands to make the supply of uranium a constraining economic factor, the technology probably won't be economically viable. But it's a good that someone is working on it.

Also, with respect to China surpassing France, this has nothing to do with thorium reactors and everything to do that China is 20x the population of France, so everything is bigger. They consume 25x the number of eggs France does too -- but it's because they're larger, not because they get their eggs from super chickens. France gets 63% of its power from nuclear, China gets about 5%. Another way to look at it is that China, with 20x the population, has 1.3x the nuclear generating capacity. About half of China's nuclear generation capacity come from reactors based on a 1980 French design.

But the size of the domestic market and the political commitment to developing advanced nuclear power technology leave no doubt in my mind that China will be the world leader in nuclear power in the coming decades. The thorium research is part of that political commitment, but I don't think it will be of practical importance anytime soon.

If you want to be pedantic, *prisoners* aren't the product of the prison system; necessary services to prisoners are.

In the "free" Internet economy, a detailed picture of your life circumstances and behavioral patterns is the product. In essence, everything about you that might be relevant. It is for practical purposes your digital self.

Because cows are the product, not the customer.