👋 ASB Partners Nuggets 5.2.25

This is a short weekly email that covers a few things I’ve found interesting during the week.

May 02, 2025

Interesting Links/Reads

Many links are sourced from Marginal Revolution (bold and italics are my own to highlight what I found particularly interesting)

1.Spain fact of the day by Tyler Cowen April 28, 2025 at 3:14 am in Current Affairs Spain’s grid ran entirely on renewable energy for the first time on April 16, with wind, solar, and hydro meeting all peninsular electricity demand during a weekday. Five days later, solar set a new record, generating 20,120 MW of instantaneous power – covering 78.6% of demand and 61.5% of the grid mix.

Dyspro-What? Why an Obscure Element Has the EV Industry in a Panic The rare-earth mineral dysprosium, used for magnets in electric-vehicle motors, is among exports China slowed in response to Trump’s trade

Caught in the middle of the U.S.-China trade war is a Chiclet-size magnet that is vital to every new electric vehicle on the road.
The magnet is made with dysprosium. Atomic number 66. A rare-earth mineral with a silver metallic luster. More than 90% of refined dysprosium comes from China, and it is used in magnets that power everything from medical equipment to EV motors.
In its retaliation against U.S. tariffs, China slowed exports of several rare-earth minerals and magnets this month, setting off a panic among U.S. automakers.
“You cannot build the motor without the magnet,” said a senior automotive executive. “If we want electric-vehicle production to continue to happen in the United States, this has to be solved.”
The minerals are abundant in nature but difficult to refine into their pure form. They are the essential building blocks of much of modern technology, forming parts of everything from satellites and jet fighters to CT scanners and iPhone speakers. Automakers said they are currently combing through their catalogs to find affected parts. They are finding them in dashboard screens, brakes, gear shifters, windshield wipers and even some headlights.
America’s disadvantage is twofold: There is currently only one large-scale dysprosium mine in the U.S., and processing facilities are only now coming online. The mine, in California, wouldn’t be able to meet the needs of American manufacturers. Many more such operations would be required to wean the car sector from China’s supply.

Move Over, Quinoa. There’s a New ‘It’ Crop in Town. As the trade war strands sorghum in Kansas, the state’s farmers hope to push the tiny grain with an uncool name onto dinner plates

Sorghum has twice the protein of quinoa and four times that of rice or corn, said Sarah Sexton-Bowser, managing director of the Center for Sorghum Improvement at Kansas State.

In defense of an online life by Tyler Cowen April 29, 2025 at 12:31 am in Web/Tech

That is a recent piece of mine at The Free Press (it has been great fun writing there by the way). Here is one excerpt:

Why do I spend so much of my time with email, group chats, and also writing for larger audiences such as Free Press readers? I ask myself that earnestly, and I have arrived at a pretty good answer. I believe that by spending time online I will meet and befriend a collection of individuals around the world, who are pretty much exactly the people I want to be in touch with. And then I will be in touch with them regularly.
I call them “the perfect people for me.”
I recognize that many of these communications are online, and thus they are “thinner” than many more local, face-to-face relationships. Yet I do end up meeting most of these people, and with great pleasure. That, in turn, enhances the quality of the online communications. And frankly, if forced to choose, I would rather have thinner relationships with “the perfect people for me” than regular bear hugs and beer guzzlings with “people who are in the 87th percentile for me.”
The internet, in other words, has invented a new means of human connection, characterized by “the perfect people for me.” For me, it’s people who are into analytical thinking and tech and AI and music and economics, and much more. For others? It can be Survivor obsessives or vegans or knitters or Survivor obsessives who are vegan and love to knit. The point is that there is a niche for all 8 billion of us. And now we know where to find each other.
And it turns out we value that very, very highly. So highly that we are willing to obsess over our little devices known as smartphones.

Recommended, especially to those who read things on-line.

5.‘Back From the Brink’ Review: When Gotham Was Reborn In the 1970s and ’80s, New York’s streets and subways were plagued with persistent crime. Then the city came back to life.