> The current helium shortage is the fourth to occur since 2006 and is being caused by shutdowns at several major helium producers. The shortage has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, as Russia is one of the world’s top suppliers of helium.
I have a friend who teaches chemistry at a well known university that can no long run some labs because the equipment to run them needs, you guessed it, helium. This has been a long running problem that the Iran war has exacerbated, but is by no means the cause.
Sufficiently long that in the TV Series “The Big Bang Theory”, one subplot involves the characters buying helium from a black market dealer to perform their experiments
If it was worth (i.e., profitable) the effort to create to new supply wouldn't someone have done it by now? If no one is willing to pay for the effort, why should anyone do it at a loss?
(Isn't this, in theory, what The Market™ is all about? If people really wanted something they'd be willing to pay more for it, and it would be an incentive for more supply.)
Well, if there's a shortage as GP's 2022† article states, and the demand is 'actually' there, wouldn't the proverbial "Econ 101" response be a rise in prices? Has there been such a rise?
† I've seen articles from 2019 discussing the (alleged?) shortage.
I get spam texts almost daily. I too wish this would stop and I've tried most of the things the OP has as well. I see this as analogous to being inundated with spam email and we solved the problem for email with regulation[0] and we need to do the same for SMS. The bad news is that it is also likely to get much worse before it gets better[1].
Email is tolerable because gmail and others implemented software spam filters. Gmail did so because they were in competition with other email providers and it was a way to get users. The incumbent phone carriers have no incentive to compete here.
Other platforms did better solving the spam problem, so most people simply don't use SMS/MMS anymore. The kids and young adults all moved to Telegram, Discord, Whatsapp, iMessage, etc.
I've used CAN-SPAM many times to enforce spam marketing from businesses plenty of times.
Further, it has required unsubscribe links to be included which allow you to opt out of any further communication. That is invaluable because you can't do that now with SMS.
I'm not discounting spam filters. They have certainly made life easier, but for things that _aren't_ caught by spam, I have at least some recourse by unsubscribing.
At the center of their story is a quiet revolution in the American economy: the rise of a particular kind of private business. A few decades ago, these businesses collectively made far less money than Corporate America. But by 2011, they were generating more income than all traditional U.S. corporations combined — and accounting for most of the rise in the share of income flowing to the top "one percent."
Over the previous few decades, this sort of private business had — quite privately — taken over the American business world. In 1980, pass-through businesses generated about one-fifth of all U.S. business income. By 2011, they generated more than half. Move over, Corporate America. Hello, Pass-Through America!
> “Pass-through” businesses like partnerships and S-corporations now generate over half of US business income and account for much of the post-1980 rise in the top-1% income share.
I think you're wrong. I've been running with good form, proper nutrition, and rest, for over 40 years, averaging 20-30 miles a week, and have absolutely zero knee issues.
I think you're running a risk here of turning more people off from running, and doing more harm than good, by warning people of a risk that while possible, is unlikely to affect them.
Generally these types of degenerative conditions have other underlying conditions driving them, and are not simply the result of running. We are born to move.
- if budget isn't balanced all members of congress become ineligible for election
Ask Colorado how TABOR[0] is going. The answer is a 1.5 BILLION[1] deficit because TABOR restricts how money is collected and spent by the state.
A balanced budget isn't actually all it is cracked up to be. The deficit spending at the federal level we have now is bonkers, but a balanced budget every year is just unrealistic. Learn from Colorado and do not put yourself into an unrealistic corner. A budget will grow and shrink with the economy -- a balanced budget over X years seems much more realistic. It would mean we could have never, at a federal level, done the kind of spending necessary to cope with COVID, for example.
What I'd like to see is Congress be entirely unable to draw a paycheck while the government is shutdown. Shutdowns are a last resort, but are now so common we have normalized them. This is immensely unfair to federal workers and everything downstream that depends on a functioning government, like SNAP benefits. If the government shuts down over budget issues, make the people who made that decision pay HEAVILY for the action.
Yeah, I distinctionly remember a postdoc I knew who was irrationally excited to move to a role where they were going to get paid $35k, in 2010s money, and they were damn excited about it. And they were moving to a high cost of living area (from a high cost of living area). I was utterly flabbergasted because they were very smart, very technical and should have been earning 5-10x that. I feel like they didn't know what they were worth and academia had utterly failed to teach them that.
I don't know how they paid any of their accumulated (I assume) student debt, let alone had an even decent standard of living.
The article articulated this enough, I thought but I guess not.
They're interfering with officially gathered data, used to forecast the weather. And they're not just gambling. They're also gaming the system to make money on it. This goes far beyond 'just gambling'.
>They're interfering with officially gathered data, used to forecast the weather.
If that's illegal they should be prosecuted for that. Luxury goods create incentive for theft, but nobody suggests luxury goods stores should be banned to reduce the amount of theft.
Could you regulate the sale of luxury goods meaningfully without having negative impacts on necessary markets? Can you say the same about prediction markets?
Give terraforming mars a try. Massive replayability with a lot of expansions to add to replayability and the theme is really really good. It isn't a worker placement game but you do get a lot of RNG from card drafting each round. The drafting is really great for strategic play as you can see what your opponents picked and build a plan around it
It is also a fantastic 2 player game. My wife and I have played hundreds of matches and it was our go to game during the pandemic.
PSA: don't bother with the steam edition. It has been plagued with bugs and is honestly more infuriating to play as the bugs can be game breaking. And the bugs have been around for years.
Some panel manufacturing has been moved to the US and is actually thriving. Qcells keeps growing, year over year and as of 2023 had expanded their US facilities to manufacture more than 5.1 GW[0] of annual production. I'm aware this is a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated 339 GW[1] of annual production in China, but we're also talking about a single manufacturer operating in an actively hostile administration and yet is still managing to grow.
Given this is the top comment on the article at the moment, I thought it was worth at least pushing back on this sentiment at least a little bit.
Maybe this will help to revitalize the US solar manufacturing. In Europe there is almost no solar manufacturing, just importing solar manufactured in China.
> The current helium shortage is the fourth to occur since 2006 and is being caused by shutdowns at several major helium producers. The shortage has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, as Russia is one of the world’s top suppliers of helium.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/6/24/helium-shortage...
I have a friend who teaches chemistry at a well known university that can no long run some labs because the equipment to run them needs, you guessed it, helium. This has been a long running problem that the Iran war has exacerbated, but is by no means the cause.
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