Swarfblog

Rare Earths Aren’t Rare, with Julie Klinger-Ep. 254

“Rare earths aren’t actually rare, nor are they earths,” Julie Klinger told me. Julie is an associate professor at UW Madison and literally wrote the book on rare earth elements—Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes. I interviewed her last week, the day after Trump signed a rare

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Pools of Money

We hear the term “private equity” tossed around every day in business. The Bloomberg ticker tells us about the giants that often go by initials

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Equal Opportunity?

I have been thinking a lot about whether America has become hopelessly stratified by wealth, race, education and all sorts of barriers that make it

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Let Me Work

I’m on vacation in the Bay Area and I’m working. Today it’s a blog, business calls, thinking about options for TMW and Graff-Pinkert. I’m in

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Respect the Streak

Baseball fans love statistics because they tend to make the daily events seem more rational and orderly. We humans crave order and predictability, even when

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