(Unfortunate for many like me who considered them relatively safe for years and did a lot of chemistry with them.)
Farmers use many chemicals for a variety of tasks and it wouldn't surprise me if there were multiple chemicals involved, perhaps even synergistically. Maybe a farmer exposed to paraquat is fine, but one who is exposed to both paraquat and a copper-based antifungal or fumes from a welding repair become more damaged. Hard to say.
Surely someone has proposed the existence of a civilization forming from <=iron and making the heavier elements themselves? Seems far fetched but you have quite a bit of time to play with there.
Obviously this doesn't answer your question, but there are scifi stories about alien civilizations that arise on planets without heavy metals. Usually the plot revolves around their not getting past the stone age.
So here's a fun experiment for you. Look at a periodic table and start with Cobalt (the first element after Iron) and look at what its uses are. Wikipedia is fine. And then ask if there are alternatives for that metal. In some cases we won't know but in other cases, the situation would be dire.
The first few include Nickel, Copper and Zinc. Think of all those alloys and direct uses, particularly copper as an electrical conductor. Or all the rare earths for magnets and semiconductors. Or gold or lead even.
Then there's Iodine, which is actually essential for human life. Zinc, selenium and others are used too, possibly others.
The scarier question is what happens when the universe runs out of hydrogen in vast quantities? It will only be around for stars to burn for so long. Most are in the billions of years. A handful are in the trillions. But eventually they will run out too.
I'm 50 and got my NES in Xmas '86. It's funny how the difficulty has changed. I remember having no problem with carrier landings as a kid, beat Metroid(with the bikini ending) without reading Nintendo Power or calling the help line, figured out turtle trapping on my own...
Going back and trying to do all this via emulation is now a lot harder. I don't know if it's the timing or the fact that I'm just old and crappy now, but if I didn't have the save states of an emulator I would have given up on gaming ages ago due to frustration.
Then again I don't have the hyperfocus and 12 hour marathon gaming sessions like I did for much of my youth.
Man you just unlocked a memory. I'm about the same age...I had forgot about when we lucked our way into "turtle trapping" (didn't know until I read your post it was even called that). When the lives counter goes crazy (we called it "infinity men") we genuinely had no idea what was going on at first and thought we broke the game.
It happened when a buddy and I were completely bored messing around with the game and I remember calling my friends and explaining it but no one "got it" until we showed them.
Also likely you don't have as much time. I'd be more keen to discover things on my own a few decades ago. Now I'm limited by work/family life to an hour of play here and there. That means if something looks annoying or long without a good reason, I'm going to look it up and not feel bad at all.
It's also anyone's guess what direction it will matter. Will apple miss the boat on AI because it's the real deal? Or is it a bubble that will pop and apple will be left standing because they didn't bet the farm on AI
This seems true at many companies. While I'm not all that impressed by many current leaders, I'm sort of terrified of my generation (younger gen x) taking over because some of them seem to not be prepared or not have been prepared for the roles.
Optimizing costs while producing a safe, reliable, durable vehicle isn't exactly simple and requires an entire supply chain to be in place, not just a single company. Look at how many auto mfgs there are in the world that turn out terrible cars. EVs dramatically lower the parts count which helps but you still a lot of expertise to make a safe, reliable car.
Tesla also has a big Elon problem in that the blue cities where self-driving Taxis will be most profitable may opt for Waymo or boycott Tesla over politics.
> Tesla will solve self-driving and everyone will be left unable to compete. Also, AI is advancing rapidly and will solve all kinds of problems for society.
But apparently it will not solve self-driving for anyone else but Tesla.
I gave up trying to argue with Tesla fans years ago. They are immune to logic which invalidates their priors.
and shorting something priced in a currency is effectively going long on the currency as well. If the USD takes a dive due to, idk, increasing populism from both major parties, stocks will do quite well in nominal terms. Your shorts will burn and you'll end up far worse than just staying in cash.
For most people, the best way to short is to just hold cash equivalents like short-term treasuries.
eg: If you think NVDA is overvalued relative to the overall tech sector, you could short NVDA, go long QQQ.
And if you have a more opinionated trade in the same currency, eg: you think AAPL will be fine if the AI trade pops, you can do short NVDA, long AAPL.
Finally, an even more advanced version would be to go long on something else in the same sector, but which is less overvalued in your opinion. eg: Short ORCL, long NVDA.
Positions are not necessary to be single transaction. They can be multi-step trade.
For global currency risk (meaning on USD), You will have to hedge your shorts with a non currency long position which historically hold value during defaults/ runs etc. Assets like gold (ETFs/Gold bars) or real estate (REITs or physical land holdings) or rights to commodity revenue like oil, copper etc [1].
If the currency risk is not for USD, then mix of other currencies particularly USD would work well as as hedge.
Currency risk is independent of shorting, i.e. it is risk in Long positions as well, current may inflate faster than your position increases in value etc.
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[1] Commodity come with additional shorter term market volatility and risks - due their own supply/demand volatility and depend performance of economy.
However after assets like Gold, they will have highest correlation of returns against inflation as long the economy doesn't completely crash, because the demand for them is foundational
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