It wouldn't be cost-effective in China either were it not for state support.

There is no doubt that global free trade in commodities, in the absence of any government support, would be the most economically efficient thing to have. But China -- probably correctly -- identifies dependency on foreign supply chains for critical materials as a *security* issue. So they have indirect and direct subsidies, as well as state owned enterprises that operate on thin or even negative profit margins.

Since China does this kind of support on a scale nobody else does, China produces more rare earths than any other country, even though it is not particularly well endowed with deposits. This solves China's security problem with the reliability of the supply, but creates a security problem for other countries.

China thinks like Japan did before WW2, like empire building European countries did in the 1800s. Control over resources is a national security weapon, both for defense and offense.

The behavioral model you have isn't supported by data. When you raise the standard of living and food security of population, the fertility rate goes down. When you have nothing, children are economic assets whose labor can support the family. It's not a great option, but some people live in conditions where there are no good options.

I don't know what what means?

I live in Utah... I wonder what effect this will have on my power prices.

One example is AlphaFold an AI program which predicts folded protein structures "with near experimental accuracy" from amino acid base sequences. This ability is going to have a huge impact on many practical problems like pharmaceutical development, agricultural science, and engineering custom proteins. For example, since the human genome has been long since sequenced, the program means we now, with a fairly high degree of certainty, know what all the protein coding sequences make.

I'd say that's a pretty significant result.

If you work in technology long enough, you see this over and over. Every time something new comes along, it's actual usefulness gets buried in the breathless media response by a mountain of bullshit. But that doesn't mean the uses aren't real.

I had no concern with Joe Biden being Catholic, but I *would* think something was fishy with the *Electoral College* if six of the last nine presidents were Catholic given that fewer than one in five Americans are Catholic.

I'm not saying Catholics (or Jews) shouldn't serve on the Supreme Court, although maybe it would be good idea to have some justices who weren't Catholic or Jewish. Maybe an atheist, or polytheist.

One of the casualties of the Internet has been newspaper science desks. In the post Sputnik era, major city newspapers built teams of reporters with science and technology backgrounds to cover breaking science stories. To make use of that manpower in between big stories, they'd do a weekly science supplement, which was one of my favorite parts to read. These bureaus even had people on staff who could cover breaking news in *mathematics*.

That's all gone now, and you can see the impact of that in the scientifically ignorant summary you are objecting to. Twenty years ago, no major city newspaper would ever print anything that stupid. Today just the New York Times and Washington Post still have a newspaper science desk, and those are much reduced. Smaller newspapers barely cover local government anymore, they tend to just reprint opinion, purchased content, and press releases by politicians and corporations, and dueling reading letters on hot button issues. Actual shoe leather find out the facts journalism is in steep decline. In other words cheap content is more profitable, and science reporting is the least profitable content of all. The most widely consumed remaining sources of science information are non-profit -- the public broadcasting outlets.

I'm not implying anything. I'm saying the Pope's opinion is particularly significant to more than half the Supreme Court. They won't necessarily take those words as marching orders; I doubt that they would even agree that all the other Catholics on the court are good Catholics. But it means those words are automatically more weighty than if, say the Dalai Lama or the Lubavitcher Rebbe said them.

If we're not Catholic ourselves, I mean.

I'll tell you why: 2/3 of the Supreme Court justices are Catholic.

First of all, spoils of war doesn't work the way you think it does under international law, according to multiple treaties to which Russia is a signatory. Spoils of war are limited to military equipment like tanks or ships. You can't invade your neighbor and declare anything you can grab as yours because they're spoils. Private property, civilian infrastructure, cultural objects and human beings are explicitly excluded.

So when Russia seized the power plant, what it got -- again according to treaties it signs and holds other countries to -- is a mess of responsibilities. It is obligated to protect and maintain the plant. It is obligated to protect the civilian population in the areas under its control, both by maintaining the plant in a safe condition, and by providing normal infrastructure services to those civilians; it does *not* however, need to ship power to the rest of Ukraine.

So Russia could, under its treaty obligations, sever the grid in the area around the plant from the rest of Ukraine, and connect it to Russia. The plant would then provide normal services to the civilian population in the occupied area, and also provide power to Russia at least until the final status of the province and power plant are agreed to by the belligerents.

What Russia can't do is use the plant, in essence, as a giant dirty bomb to blackmail Ukraine. That is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. But so was destroying the Kakhovka Dam back in 2023. That's a cautionary tail, because it tells you something important: the Russian military leadership aren't just war criminals, they're idiots. The consensus was the intent of the dam destruction was to hamper Ukrainian movements. But it also hampered Russian movements. What's more it cut off the main water supply to Crimea, which Russia considers Russian territory. This caused massive economic damage to the man industry in Crimea: agriculture. Not counting environmental costs, and the billions of dollars required to build new wells and desalination plants, this act by Russian generals is costing Crimea, a "Russian territory", tens of billions of dollars a year economically.

So the takeaway is this: the fate of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is in the hands of idiot criminals.

You don't think policies like VAT on private school fees and pushing up business taxes instead of personal ones play well with the typical Labour voter?

They're cratering in the polls anyway for a host of other reasons, and I suspect Starmer is already toast anyway for a host of other reasons (though it's significantly harder in practice for Labour to replace a leader they're not happy with than it is for the Tories), but I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that some of these policies are being chosen because of their political alignment.

You might be right about the rest, but the Aptera is far more efficient than a Model 3. The published numbers put it at about 110 Wh/mile, while the Model 3 is at 230 Wh/mile. And, frankly, the Aptera numbers seem a little high for a vehicle with a 0.13 drag coeffiecient and with one less wheel. I think the Aptera design should be able to do better than 100 Wh/mile. Obviously, it's hard to make an accurate comparison between a real-world car and one that is basically vaporware, but something would have to be seriously screwed up for a design as light and aerodynamic as the Aptera to be barely better than a Model 3.

I'd buy one if they ever get around to making them. I've been wanting to buy one for 15 years.

> And, in that case, why add a new law versus just adding to the CCPA?
It is an amendment to the CCPA. Websites covered by the CCPA are required by law to honor the opt-out, and browsers are required to implement it.