My pie in the sky hope for UBI is that it would be large enough so that you don't need to work to live, maybe with some frugality.

At that point I'd be fine with scrapping minimum wage altogether. Companies would have to offer a job/salary that attracts people who aren't desperate.

It would be much easier to quit a job. And I think it would broadly increase the value of labor. Automation would increase, but that wouldn't be a problem, because its no longer a problem to be unemployed.

Lets just do a single time zone

They do. But one thing that bugs me about the nutrition labels in the US is that they show "amount per serving", rather than per 100ml or per 100g, which they have in the EU (at least in Sweden). it makes it a step harder to compare nutrition labels in the US.

I also feel judged when they tell me a bag of chips contains many servings.

What do you do for a living? How does NPD impact your work? Is it beneficial or detrimental? I imagine there are careers that would be particularly suited for someone with NPD.

TIL fake books are sold. It has never crossed my mind to check a book like that.

I recommend the podcast Jack by MuellerSheWrote for those who want to follow the case

Good thing it's stern. I don't think they'll stop otherwise.

Don't know much mythology. Do Thunderbird and Firefox count?

Edit. Just realized those aren't version codenames.

The electrons can not be stored stationary floating in the vacuum of the bottle. They will immediately attach to the internal surface. The entire bottle is now negatively charged and will accumulate positive charge on the external surface until it is electrically neutral. Now you have a funny looking capacitor with extra steps.

The closest thing in existence are the magnetic bottles used for different fusion reactor designs and particle accelerators. In these, the charged particles are kept moving in a closed loop contained by electromagnets that contiously adjust to keep the system pseudo-stable. These certainly cant store energy.

I feel the same way when I read these articles. They make it seem like everything is an earth shattering breakthrough when in reality, they're making a small (albeit worthwhile) contribution towards solving a problem that already has 20 other solutions with other trade-offs.

But I like it when I read about any new battery tech being scaled up do industrial scale, like the article here. That's the hard part.

I'm doing a PhD in batteries. Not this issue specifically, but I hear a lot about different battery fields so I think I can speak on it.

The drawback is that the anode expands and contracts a lot during a cycle. This puts a lot of strain on the binder holding the film together, and on the contact between the film and the aluminum foil. This makes the battery degrade and fail after fewer cycles.

Below is an article in nature from 2020 where a group is trying to solve this issue by coating the Si platelet particles with carbon (adding complexity and mass). You can read about this issue on greater detail in the abstract and introduction. There are many articles tackling the same issue (many cited in this article), I just picked this one because it had info in the intro/abstract. Stable high-capacity and high-rate silicon-based lithium battery anodes upon two-dimensional covalent encapsulation

In addition, the expansion/contraction cycles causes the electrolyte to dry up. During the first few cycles of any battery, the electrolyte reacts with the electrodes to form passivating layers on the electrodes. When the particle contracts/expands excessively, the particle breaks apart and the passivating layer is ripped up. The passivating layer is then reformed, now on a larger area, which consumes more electrolyte. Eventually the cell fails from the lack of electrolyte.

Below is an article in nature from 2024 where a group tries to solve this issue by designing an electrolyte that creates a passivating layer that keeps its shape when the particle contracts, creating a shell. You can read more about the issue In the abstract, intro, and figures. High voltage electrolytes for lithium-ion batteries with micro-sized silicon anodes

These are solvable issues, but a lot of the solutions are either too complicated to scale up, or add too much mass/volume to make it worth it, or slow down the discharge rate. And any change anywhere, needs to be taken into account on the rest of the parts of the battery.

I don't know what Sienza Energy did. It's an MIT spin-off, so they probably know their stuff. All issues don't need to be solved for a battery to be functional, it just needs to be good enough. Any new battery factory "just" needs to find and scale-up the state-of-the-art components in the right combination. There will be a ton of drawbacks, but it will be better than the last battery factory.

This business of partisan redistricting and the judiciary telling states how many majority-minority district states need to have is unsustainable. We need a total overhaul. I think a single statewide multimember district with ranked choice voting would be ideal, and solve all of these issues in one swoop. A handful of multimember districts per state, like the Fair Representation Act proposes, would be acceptable too.