The hoarder houses I've been part of cleaning also require ripping up and discarding the carpeting. Some walls could merely be repainted, some required that special paint for trapping decades of cigarette smoke, and some required replacing the sheetrock that had been damaged by unspayed pets "marking" the walls.
Part of the trouble with refining "rare earths" [1] is that the undesired residue (commonly called "slag") is radioactive and toxic. Smokestack emissions are also toxic enough that countries with pollution controls don't want them inside their borders. In the US, that means that every rare earth refinery becomes a SuperFund site [2].
China doesn't want to keep refining the metals - they want to move up the value chain by making things out of these metals. Instead of selling the refined neodymium & dysprosium for $50, they want to sell the electric motors that sell for $1,000.
Notes:
1 - They aren't rare at all, they're the bottom 2 strips/rows of the periodic table (of how it is most commonly displayed). Chemically, they're rather similar so the separation process is more complicated and annoying than, say, refining iron ore. Many people like to specifically exclude the actinides (the bottom row which includes uranium & plutonium) from the category "rare earth" because scary! radioactive! nuke! stuff! tends to divert discussion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_element
2 - A major problem with SuperFund sites is that every person/corporation who owned that land at any time is responsible for cleaning up the toxic waste. Just like asbestos waste.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfund
Exactly! The problem with the way countries move up is to move the dirty industries to the up-and-coming countries. We need to properly pay for clean industry, but that conversation really never gets very far.
The units used for detecting and locating clandestine transmitters started WW2 as large truck mounted facilities to hand carried units (with antennas) that fit inside suitcase-sized containers.
Modern ham groups engage in transmitter hunting as part of organized events. Bunny hunting and fox hunting are alternate names for such activities.
I used to be prescribed Victoza (for diabetes). When liraglutide (the generic) went off-patent, every pharmacy reported that both Victoza and liraglutide were "no longer available".
Last year, in my state, the legislature outlawed being homeless by defining it as the crime of "unlawful camping" [0]. It allows for sleeping in your car if and only if the registration and insurance are current AND you move the car every 12 hours. You can also use violence to defend your property against "unlawful campers" and/or squatters and/or people whose lease/rental period has expired.
I wonder if that unlawful camping legislature can be fought back as it can’t be considered camping if you have no other residence.
And camping is by definition outside urban areas… I understand not wanting junkies around but criminalising some poor folks who fell on hard life is just senseless.
My absolute favorite "magician" was a card manipulator who demonstrated how several of the standard card tricks worked. Even showing the trick from the side and also from behind (his back to the audience so you see how he's doing it) the technical skill was amazing. It motivated me to learn prestidigitation. It turns out that my fingers are too short to do card tricks with standard playing cards (also too short for the fretboard of a classical guitar - I have to stick to acoustics & electrics).
> The most misused SSN of all time was (078-05-1120). In 1938, wallet manufacturer the E. H. Ferree company in Lockport, New York decided to promote its product by showing how a Social Security card would fit into its wallets. A sample card, used for display purposes, was inserted in each wallet. Company Vice President and Treasurer Douglas Patterson thought it would be a clever idea to use the actual SSN of his secretary, Mrs. Hilda Schrader Whitcher.
> The wallet was sold by Woolworth stores and other department stores all over the country. Even though the card was only half the size of a real card, was printed all in red, and had the word "specimen" written across the face, many purchasers of the wallet adopted the SSN as their own. In the peak year of 1943, 5,755 people were using Hilda's number. SSA acted to eliminate the problem by voiding the number and publicizing that it was incorrect to use it. (Mrs. Whitcher was given a new number.) However, the number continued to be used for many years. In all, over 40,000 people reported this as their SSN. As late as 1977, 12 people were found to still be using the SSN "issued by Woolworth."
As late as the 1970s, the first 3 digits of your SSN told what office issued your number to you. And the next 2 digits told workers at that office what filing cabinet held your application.
