That's is true for now, but if we let people self select who breeds we'll end up with a population of those with a propensity to breed; either socially or biologically. We're going to have to stop that someday, somehow. I'm confident that it's far enough in the future that I won't have to deal with it.

I saw it, but I wish I hadn't. It's a terrible movie.

There is microeconomics, which is pretty sciency. Macroeconomics is more sociology.

Have you seen the size of those reports? Have you tried stay awake while reading them? It would be more appropriate to say: "It really is that hard."

Banning the trading of certain goods which aren't inherently harmful by themselves seems like a dangerous precedent to set.

The precedent was set by the outlawing of gold bullion ownership. I'm glad that's over, but governments have not promised to never try such a thing again. The control of the money supply is important to them.

What clouds?

Maybe robots could build desalination plants?
It's pretty damn sure that humans never will ...

We're well on our way to getting one built in Carlsbad, near San Diego. I hope there are more to follow.

... in 2000yrs ...

In 2000 years the drums might get sucked down 100 meters or so. It would be better to drop them into the mud in the middle of the abyssal plain. Personally, I think we should keep them more available; they might be useful someday.

The difference between the 60kWh and 85kWh Tesla Model S cash price is $10,000 or $400/kWh so I'm not sure about the article's conclusion that the battery costs $300/kWh.

In addition to the other points mentioned elsewhere, the 85 kWh Tesla includes access to their charging stations, which is valued at $2,000.

747s cruise at several hundred knots, around 250 IIRC.

Off by a factor of two. The cruising speed is almost 500 knots.

I'm very suspicious of the idea of used battery packs being used for grid storage.

However, lithium is cheap and is well understood. I think Tesla could devote some of their production into non-cobalt based cells, and possibly non-nickel too, and use them for stationary storage.

The End? Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!

Unfortunately, we're near the end of the rainy season now. There's not much hope of an El Niño fixing the drought this year.

Isn't that plagiarism?

According to Wikipedia, Berserker was first by a year. I am more reminded of Laumer's Bolo series, anyhow.

If I had to pick an anime series I would have picked Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

That was a long series. I liked the first two-thirds of it or so, but in the end almost everyone dies to no real purpose. Kind of a downer.