• 11 Posts
  • 137 Comments
Joined 3 months ago
cake
Cake day: April 20th, 2026

help-circle






  • Zimbabwe can tax the profits from mining AND the profits from processing. Additionally, doing it locally means that Zimbabwean workers get the work, and that the knowhow for doing it becomes local knowledge. Furthermore, this is merely a stepping stone, as Zimbabwe plans to develop a domestic industry for manufacturing batteries with this processed lithium. If you’ve ever seen Rules for Rulers by CGP Grey, you’ll be familiar with the concept that the more a national economy depends on raw resources, the more prone it is to exploitation and oppression, whereas the more a national economy depends on advanced manufacturing, the harder it is for a dictator to exploit, since it means national prosperity depends on a highly-educated workforce, which is antithetical to how brutal dictatorships work.

    This isn’t a Chinese initiative. Zimbabwe has banned the export of raw lithium, meaning that Chinese companies were forced to move processing here. There’s no doubt that China wants to exploit Africa as much as it can, but Zimbabwe at least has figured out how to prevent itself from getting completely taken advantage of, and is leveraging its position to turn itself into a more advanced economy.




  • DS9 is probably the best-written Star Trek show, but what worries me is how many of its fans think that Sisko’s war crimes are “badass” and that his worldview should be emulated. Many DS9 fans seem to think that the show’s shades of grey renders the Roddenberry vision on display in TOS and TNG invalid - dismissing it with “it’s easy to be a saint in paradise”.

    There are a lot of things to criticize with Discovery, but what it absolutely nailed was the Lorca twist. Lorca arguing about how rules are made to be broken, sometimes you gotta commit a war crime or two, and “context is for kings”, was a perfect summation of the mindset of these kinds of Trek fans. So when it was revealed that he was actually from the universe where humanity had given in to this mentality and thus failed to create the Federation, that was the perfect “sci-fi twist” that Star Trek excels in.

    I enjoy DS9, but not uncritically.



  • Zimbabwe was already mining the lithium, so the environmental damage was already happening. What’s new here is that it’s now processing it locally. This means Zimbabwe gets a bigger percentage of the money that’s made from this lithium. A nation’s resources should be profitable primarily to itself.

    Additionally, exporting for processing is more environmentally damaging than doing it locally because when you export, then in addition to whatever damage is done by processing, you also get all the environmental damage that comes from all that transportation. Eliminating the transportation at least removes one unnecessary element of environmental damage in an industrial chain that would exist one way or the other.













  • The key is simply ensuring that Ukraine survives whatever Putin’s planning next. This sell-off might be to fund a troop surge. There’s zero chance that Putin loses the war without at least attempting a general mobilization first. Regardless of how badly it would have the potential to backfire, it’s definitely a desperation tactic that Putin will at least attempt before admitting defeat. Ukraine’s strategy is working at the moment, but in much the same way that Ukraine attacking Russia’s economic resources is putting Russia under pressure, Russia stretching Ukraine’s manpower could put Ukraine under pressure.

    In the recent drama between Fedorov and Syrskyi, one of the things Syrskyi mentioned at his dismissal was how complicated troop procurement has been. The West can loan Ukraine money, but it can’t help with Ukraine’s manpower. So whether or not Ukraine’s drone strategy can still neutralize Russia’s manpower advantage if Russia issues a general mobilization order is a question I’ve been worrying about.