“Thay”

Mountain Pass in California is mainly mining bastnäsite. There’s also a coal mine in Wyoming that plans to mine for rare earths, so its slightly more varied but still not a lot of projects

My kids have been listening to Christmas songs and I’m already tired on 12 Days of Christmas even though my youngest does yell “a part idge in uh purr tree” very cutely

I wish I could read the article to see what it actually says but I’m not paying

Yeah I can’t think of anyway you can get to 2 years unless you are already really far along and throw a bunch of money to go really fast and assume permits are automatically approved.

Does he think AI can do it? Because a computer can’t ground truth or drill core or assay. They just plan to dig somewhere in hopes of finding rare earths? That’s not how it works.

That song has been stuck in my head for DAYS

I don’t mind it having so few competitors, but I wish it would have had more variety, though I think they were trying to highlight the importance of copper- like a year of copper kind of thing with how it’s needed for some may things. Hopefully next time there’s more ores!

Fun fact: both copper and rhenium (which we get from molybdenite) were added to the 2025 USGS Critical Minerals list

The absolute last thing I want is every employee in a store asking how my day is

I also started working as an exploration geologist in 2007 and I still have to spell molybdenite out in my head as if it were a name: Moly B Denite

I also think copper vs molybdenite would be kind of poetic and 2 copper minerals would be boring