this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
104 points (98.1% liked)

World News

50330 readers
2638 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Trump cited export controls that China imposed on rare earths from that country. Trump also threatened to cancel his upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping because of the dispute.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Scranulum@feddit.nu 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Remember when they were called "rare earth metals" before he called them "rare earths" in a demented stupor that one time. And now it's just accepted terminology. I hate my country

[–] ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 4 points 5 days ago

The term "rare-earth" is a misnomer, because they are not actually scarce, but because they are only found in compounds, not as pure metals, and are difficult to isolate and purify. They are relatively plentiful in the entire Earth's crust, but in practice they are spread thinly as trace impurities, so to obtain rare earths at usable purity requires processing enormous amounts of raw ore at great expense.

Basically the whole thing has always been a misnomer. They arent rare, nor are they found as metal naturally. But I suppose rare earth elements or metals sounds better than “abundant but hard to find rock thingies”