Their business plan was to develop sodium-ion batteries. This requires a lot of speculative research, which requires time and money. Meanwhile, Chinese CATL launched a new sodium-ion battery line. And BYD is building a $2B sodium-ion factory right now.

In 5 years, the US will face international battery competition from two fronts: solid-state batteries for high-performance cars and electronics, and sodium-ion batteries for grid-scale projects and cheap cars. With thousands of patents protecting all the important technologies.

And the US answer will likely be a new purple-colored F250 with even lower fuel economy and built-in coal-roller.

[Citation Needed]

Literally, isolated hunter-gatherer societies still exist. You can literally go observe them. There are old people.

Going to argue that, meh, they have too much exposure to the modern world? Go look at early black and white photos from early western explorers in Africa, South America, etc. Guess what? Old people.

Societies have always had the old. They've commonly been considered "wise men" / "wise women", sometimes attributed as healers, those with spiritual power, etc. To repeat: once you hit middle age, your annual odds of dying are low. The problem is how many people never reach middle age.

I'll repeat: it is mathematically impossible for half of your population to never reach adulthood, and a quarter to not get based infancy, yet have your mean expected lifespan for an adult not be much higher than your mean life expectancy for the entire population.

Lookie here:

Terrorists using hospitals for military purposes. How usual of you anti-semitic genocidal maniacs. You also LOVE riding in ambulances and then complaining when you get blown up. Or using children as shields.

Mind you, Israel admitted the responsibility, unlike genocidal HAMAS terrorists who are never wrong.

Nope. And not hitting on boys either.

A real test needs to be like the gaokao, where nobody ever got the perfect score, or CSAT from South Korea where maybe a handful of students get the perfect score each year.

And why is this bad? Taking out HAMAS leaders while not harming civilians is good in my book.

Indeed. Israel unilaterally left Gaza, forcibly moving Israeli settlers from there. So HAMAS got free reign to build their little fascist state that lavishly paid the inner HAMAS members, while keeping the general population desperately poor, and spending money on propaganda for gullible fools.

Proof?

Oh, please. A well-educated person should be able to get a perfect score on the SAT, with staying awake while taking it being the biggest problem. No tutors required. SAT simply distinguishes between parents who care about education and the ones who don't.

This just isn't true. Hunter-gatherer societies with limited interaction with the outside world still exist. Yes, without access to external healthcare, they have mean a mean age of 40 (or even lower!) is not uncommon. But that mean age is due to offsetting their high child mortality rates, not due to mass death in their 40s. Only about 60% of people in a typical early hunter-gatherer society reached the age of 15. Mathematically, to get a mean age of 40, when 40% of your population is dying before the age of 15 (and ~25% not even hitting their first birthday), your average adult must live well beyond 40. It is mathematically impossible to be otherwise.

The actual trend is that when you're born, you have a quite short mean expected lifespan. But that significantly increases when you pass your first birthday, and further significantly increases when you reach your teens. By the time you're in your late 20s, your risk of dying in any given year is quite low, and a person in their 30s has a typical mean expected lifespan in the 50s to 60s. A typical hunter-gatherer society will have some individuals in their 70s.

It's just a myth that most people died in middle age in early societies. That was the time in which they had the lowest odds of death. It's the young that were at great risk.

Our bodies attempt to hit a set point of energy usage per day. A consistent increase in your physical activity simply down regulates other internal processes so you end up spending roughly the same amount of energy had you not exercised.

Oh my god, I'm literally arguing with someone who thinks that calorie consumption doesn't increase when you exercise.

No, you're TOTALLY RIGHT! Your body sits around all day just THROWING AWAY ENERGY en masse, and exercise just causes it to stop throwing away energy! What on Earth was I thinking?

(And it should go without saying, but organophosphates also are extremely effective at killing bees)

Particularly due to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) concerns - except that neonicotinoids appear to at worst be be a weak factor (if one at all) in CCD (CCD appears to be multifactor, but the strongest factor appears to be varroa; there's little correlation between neonicotinoid use trends and bans vs. CCD).

If you ban neonicotinoids, farmers tend to switch to organophosphates, and I have WAY more concerns about them. Neonicotinoids at least tend to be far more specific to insects, whereas organophosphates also tend to strongly affect mammals. Organophosphate-Induced Delayed Neuropathy (OPIDN) is very much a real problem.

+1 for the excellent pun ;)

(I'd also add that, beyond water, while plant cell walls (fibre) do also "water down" their protein content, plant cells also tend to be lower in fats than animal cells, and said fats "water down" their protein content (particularly on a per-calorie basis, but also to a lesser extent on a volumetric basis)

No, I literally wrote "Unless we are talking a truly gigantic amount of vegetables". Most vegetables contain very little protein.

Per calorie or per gram? And if per gram, raw or cooked, and if the latter, to what water percentage? Green vegetables are actually quite comparable to or superior to meat on a per-calorie basis. Per gram, if cooked to equivalent water content, meat usually leads, but not by that much. However, raw, meat vastly exceeds raw green vegetables in protein per gram. The main difference is that raw vegetables are primarily water. But the non-water content is actually quite protein rich.

As for "staples", the phrase "bread and water" for a minimal tedious diet isn't so named because bread lacks sufficient protein to keep you alive; it's because it very specifically does. 3000 calories of whole wheat flour (a daily calorie requirement) contains 102 grams of protein. For a 70kg worker, that's 1,45 g/kg daily intake, nearly double the recommended minimum daily intake.

The thing you need to remember is that both animals and plants use protein as their building blocks. Every bit of "machinery" in a cell is made of protein, whether it's an animal cell or a plant cell. This includes, for example, all of the machinery involved in photosynthesis (RiBisCo, the carbon-fixing protein, is the most abundant protein on Earth). The main difference between the two is that plants have cell walls (fibre) and large vacuoles (water reserves).

You are also conflating what is the optimal amount of protein with what people die from.

No, you are confusing that. The minimum recommended daily intake of 0,8 g/kg protein per day isn't "the level you die from if you don't get it", it's the RDA, the level where deficiency symptoms start to become noticeable if sustained for a long period. The amount which would actually kill an otherwise healthy adult if sustained for long periods is in the ballpark of 0,4 g/kg. Of course, people with various health conditions can be more susceptible to protein deficiency than the general population.

All the world's vegans will suffer from protein deficiency if they don't already.

This is demonstrably false. Vegans consume on average less protein than the median population, to be sure, but most vegans are still well above the recommended daily consumption. The population in the US that suffers from protein deficiency is alcoholics.

What vegans tend to commonly suffer deficiencies of without supplementation is iron and B12. Without fortification, B12 cannot be gotten in any meaningful quantity from a vegan diet. B12 is however commonly fortified in foods and only microscopic amounts are needed.

Just as a random example, I asked an AI to generate a typical vegan who is not focused on their nutritional intake meal routine for a day. Here's what it came up with:

---
Breakfast:
A large bowl of oatmeal made with rolled oats, soy milk, a tablespoon of peanut butter, a sliced banana, and a handful of walnuts. This is accompanied by a large glass of orange juice.

Lunch
A substantial burrito filled with black beans, white rice, guacamole, salsa, and vegan sour cream. On the side, a small bag of tortilla chips.

Afternoon Snack
A store-bought vegan protein bar and a large apple.

Dinner
A large serving of spaghetti with a store-bought vegan marinara sauce and three vegan meatballs. A side salad with mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, and a vinaigrette dressing is also included.

Evening Snack
Two pieces of toast with vegan butter and jam, alongside a handful of almonds.
---

Looks pretty normal to me for your typical modern vegan. Now let's break down that protein:

Here is a detailed breakdown of the approximate protein content per meal:
Meal Food Item Estimated Protein (grams)
Breakfast Total 25.8
Large bowl of oatmeal (1.5 cups cooked) 10.5
Soy milk (1 cup) 7.0
Peanut butter (1 tablespoon) 3.6
Sliced banana (1 medium) 1.1
Walnuts (1 ounce) 4.3
Large glass of orange juice (12 oz) 2.0
Lunch Total 24.5
Large burrito tortilla 5.0
Black beans (1 cup) 15.2
White rice (1 cup) 4.3
Guacamole (1/4 cup) 1.0
Salsa (2 tablespoons) 0.5
Vegan sour cream (2 tablespoons) 0.5
Small bag of tortilla chips (1 ounce) 2.0
Afternoon Snack Total 20.5
Store-bought vegan protein bar 20.0
Large apple 0.5
Dinner Total 33.5
Large serving of spaghetti (2 cups cooked) 16.0
Vegan marinara sauce (1 cup) 2.0
Vegan meatballs (3) 15.0
Side salad with mixed greens and tomatoes 0.5
Vinaigrette dressing 0.0
Evening Snack Total 11.0
Two pieces of toast 7.0
Vegan butter and jam 0.0
Handful of almonds (1 ounce) 6.0

Daily total: 115.3

Let's go with 70kg as the body mass. That's 115.3 / 70 = 1.64 g/kg daily protein intake - over double the recommended minimum of 0,8g/kg.