I feel that as soon as the existential threat easened with the splintering of the Soviet Union, the US started doing some self-harming libertarian flavored shit to itself.
In the 1980s, I assume getting rid of the "strategic reserve" of anything would have met more pushback, because of primal fear overriding greed.
"Current law (cira 2013) requires BLM to sell off the crude helium remaining in the Federal Helium Reserve in order to repay the U.S. Treasury the $1.3 billion debt incurred creating it. This debt will be repaid this fiscal year and that, as a consequence, the helium program will terminate at the end of the current fiscal year (October 1, 2013), absent Congressional action.
Currently, the Federal Helium Reserve supplies roughly 40% of domestic and 30% of global helium demand. Loss of access to the Federal Helium Reserve would result in significant disruptions to a large number of critical U.S. industries." https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/494b2f9e-c8f5-4...
Ideological idiocy, the dismantling of anything public turning into private hands is ideologically pure for libertarian-inclined folks, no matter how strategically stupid it might be.
Technically yes, but practically no. Air is 78% nitrogen. Nitrogen is 3.3% lighter than air. Helium is 86.2% lighter than air. Hydrogen is 93% lighter than air.
Nitrogen? That's basically just air, what good would a balloon be using nitrogen? Might as well just blow it up with your lungs. It's certainly not going to float in any case.
Would you like to offer a rebuttal more well reasoned and thought out than "nuh-uh"?
You have the entire collected knowledge of mankind at your fingertips. You could do 30 seconds of research and find an answer better than "I don't think that sounds right".
You sure about that? Everything I've ever heard says that balloon gas is generally grade 4, which is 99.99% pure. Not good enough for MRI, but quite a lot better than 80%.
Economically I expect it wouldn't be that pure, since it doesn't have to be that pure to provide lift, and party balloons are not trying to maximize lift.
Out of curiosity I did a minor amount of research to get an idea.
Turns out that you are right, some balloon gas is 80%. Specifically, the "Balloon Time" tanks you can buy at places like Target say "not less than 80%" helium.
On the other hand, I went to AirGas and a few other suppliers and they seemed to have 95%-97.0% helium gas as their definition for balloon grade.
Grade 6 (6.0 helium = 99.9999% purity)
The closest to 100% pure helium, 6.0 helium is used in the manufacturing of semiconductor chips –
Grade 5.5 (5.5 helium = (99.9995% purity)
Like 6.0 helium, 5.5 ultra pure helium gas is typically considered “research grade,” also used in chromatography and semiconductor processing
Grade 5 (5.0 helium = 99.999% purity)
This high purity grade helium is also widely used for gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, and specific laboratory research when higher purity gases are not necessary, as well as for weather balloons and blimps.
Grade 4.8 (4.8 helium = 99.998% purity)
The highest of the “industrial grade” heliums, 4.8 grade helium is often used by the military. The rest is classified...
Grade 4.7 (4.7 helium = 99.997% purity)
A “Grade-A” industrial helium, 99.997% helium is mostly used in cryogenic applications and for pressurizing and purging
Grade 4.6 (4.6 helium = 99.996% purity)
Grade 4.6 industrial helium is used for weather balloons, blimps, in leak detection
Grade 4.5 (4.5 helium = 99.995% purity)
Often the grade most commonly referred to when people say “industrial grade,” 99.995% helium is most commonly used in the balloon industry
Grade 4 (4.0 helium and lower = 99.99% purity)
Any helium that is 99.99% and down into the high 80 percents is within the range of purities referred to collectively as “balloon grade helium.”
I believe that that's the stuff you buy in the shop, the non-refillable containers. If you buy a proper refillable balloon gas cylinder it's the higher grade stuff. Source: bought the shop stuff, got disappointed, bought the cylinder, happy.
Depending on who you go to, some places will not sell you tanks of Helium. We did a balloon launch expecting to use Hydrogen because Helium was going to be problematic. The sales rep at the supply place took a look at the group of us knuckleheads with absolutely no Hydrogen experience and ended up selling us the Helium while also exchanging all of our connectors. Hydrogen tanks use specific connectors different from all other tanks to make using a hydrogen take by mistake very difficult. I was nervous about using hydrogen and had no issue with the higher price for the helium knowing I wasn't going to catch on fire.
Helium for party balloons is low grade and not pure enough for chip fab use, so stacking up birthday tanks won't keep TSMC running. Industrial grade helium has a restricted and oddly international supply chain thanks to regulation and a few weirdly-placed depots. The US 'helium stockpile' isn't really a menu you can just order from when a factory across the planet runs dry, especially if offtakes and logistics are tied up by decade-old government contracts. If you want to see supply chain fragility, try pricing MRI-grade helium after a shutdown and watch everyone in medical procurement panic quitely.
All natural gas deposits contain helium at various concentrations, it's only commercially worth harvesting above a certain percentage but speculate the problem is the US can't just fill the Qatar loss in supply immediately since we have plentiful natural gas.
Good old JIT stock management for essential materials, right?
One’d think that they’d keep more than a couple of weeks’s supply of critical materials —to bad many copied Cook’s and others’s JIT inventory management for everything.
BLM was required (to sell it) by Congress in the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013, as the alternative was to not offer any H to the market due to the authorization to sell expiring. Sponsored by a Republican and passed basically unanimously with the proceeds used to pay of the debt (back when we cared about that)
The idea of selling things like our strategic helium supply for $460M to "pay off the debt" would be like me selling bricks from the foundation of my house for a penny to "pay off my mortgage".
What if it's not actually your house, but some unspecified "somebody else's", and you only stand to profit from it? Starts to make sense why some unscrupulous people would go that way, shitty as it is.
For better or worse, Donald Trump has absolutely earned his place in the history books. There will be so many lessons from this era, though I think it is very much open to debate what form those lessons will take and which ones will be the most consequential.
To be honest, much of the lessons of this were something that we could've already looked back during all the wars humanity has fought all throughout history to learn from.
We are in here, because we didn't learn from our history. You feel this way because this is recent and its hitting everything all at once but I do feel like these were all very avoidable lessons. Being honest, I don't feel like we learnt anything new aside from seeing how the world is still trying to clutch itself back to stability even after all the instability Donald Trump is causing within the world (for better or for worse) and seeing how the world reacts to all of this live.
But I am not quite sure if future will learn from these lessons given that its feeling to me like history doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes and we somehow don't really learn from the history to be honest.
Could you define the acronym "e/acc"? DDG seems to think it means: "What Does E/Acc Stand For, And What Does It Mean? E/acc stands for the phrase effective accelerationism, and it basically indicates one's personal ideological belief that artificial intelligence will one day become an all-powerful being that can fix the vast majority of humanity's problems."
I don't think I have ever heard a MAGA talk about AI.
> I don't think I have ever heard a MAGA talk about AI.
Lots of ex-Bitcoin-bros turned AI hypemen went all-in on maga for Trump II. Even the silicon valley C-Suites and VC-class went mask-off around February 2025. Some have tried to walk it back since then, after realizing the kind of administration they had hitched their wagons to - thankfully, the internet ever forgets.
I will dare to admit aloud that I think maybe the founders were making a rational choice when they decided that only certain citizens would have the right to vote. As awful as that sounds, there are halfway decent arguments in favor. Maybe not just restricting to white wealthy landowners, but sometimes I do wonder if we would benefit from a filter that adequately screens for people 1) with real skin in the game and 2) a plausible claim to being well informed.
That is just a thought experiment, though, I do not believe it would play out beneficially if we tried to implement it in real life.
I like this idea in theory. In practice, the problem is that someone gets to decide who is allowed to vote and on what grounds. If that institution is corrupted, it leads to worse outcome than allowing everyone to vote. And the bad actors would have all the incentives in the world to corrupt that institution.
> Maybe not just restricting to white wealthy landowners,
Some of those people are not white and/or not straight. They - very incorrectly - think that wealth will shield them from the sharp teeth of White Christian Nationalism. They should consult with the Log Cabin Republicans and women who voted for both Trump and enshrining abortion into their state's constitution on the same ballot.
We live in the dumbest possible timeline. As someone who came of age in the late 80s and was lucky enough to fully experience the 90s and 2000s ... what we have done in the last 20 years makes me sad. I never saw this coming. I admit that I maintained my delusion even though I was in OKC in 1995. Should have been a wake-up call.
However Qatar stopped production before the straits were officially closed and their stated reason is "due to military attacks", also Russian or Chinese ships can pass
There is no such thing as "officially closed". The moment people start shooting there, driving a ship across becomes dangerous. This was an absolutely predictable consequence of the attacks on Iran, you didn't need to wait until several tankers were burning to know these attacks were likely to happen and the strait would become essentially too risky to pass.
Back then there were only two ships attacked in the straits, and one was an Iranian shadow fleet ship. I am not sure that is "closing the straits" in any shape or form
So if there's an active shooter on the one alley to your workplace you should still be at work in time, right? :)
Or let's make the analogy clearer: if your Uber driver cancels the ride because there's an active shooter on the only road between him and you, it's their fault not the shooter's?
no, but if two ships were hit, while one clearly by mistake, it is very early to say the straits are going to be closed as opposed to incorrect targeting
your analogies have went past me though, generally although a common misconception, countries are not people and wars are not comparable to crime
You don't even have to scare everyone. You just have to scare the insurers. Without insurance ships won't sail. The exposure is huge, so a small blip in risk makes all the modeling go kerplooie. Traffic stopped when the insurers said drop the anchors.
To restore traffic, we need that risk to return to previous levels, which requires diplomacy and trust. I don't expect resolution any time soon.
Are Russian or Chinese ships actually passing? Junior just released a decree saying not one liter of oil will pass. It didn't have an asterisk allowing Russian or Chinese ships.
I also find it funny that we just decided to allow Russia to pad its coffers by temporarily lifting sanctions on sale of Russian oil. Sorry Ukraine!
Shutting down production doesn't pressure the US at all since the oil and gas can't go anywhere anyway. They're shutting it down because they have to, there's nowhere to put the oil.
Even if this nonsense was true it is absolutely normal tactic used by the US when bombing is out of question. Use economic pressure by way of tariffs and sanctions until vassals are put in their place. So what's your problem
And I say that with his permission, since he’s on camera asking to be called out if he did exactly what they did with the Supreme Court not four years later.
Somewhat tangential question - for the "Just Stop Oil" folks - is it the extraction of oil that is the problem, or the burning of it? If the former, then we have an opportunity to investigate more renewable sources.
Okay, but while technically correct, it does nothing to change the situation. They are punching holes in the ground to extract the sweet sweet nectar. They have to store what has been extracted. When that storage is full, what does one do? Stop the input into the storage.
I remember hearing somewhere on this site that medical imaging got pretty good at building systems that recycle helium.
Does chip manufacturing not do this or are the losses at their scale are still large enough that you need a substantial constant supply?
Some of the fabs do recycle as effectively as they can, but MRIs use it in a single process, in liquid form, in a relatively constrained container. Fabs use it for a variety of processes, ranging from wafer cooling to purging environments, to making ultra ultra clean chambers. The scale of what they use is higher, too, so even if an individual process is more efficiently recapturing helium, they might go through a few tons a day, with an MRI only using a few liters and losing 5% or less.
The big problem is purity. Fabs use grade 5 and 6 purity helium where contaminants are 1-10 parts per billion. The infrastructure to get it that pure becomes very specialized and any time the helium goes through a process it picks up so much contamination that recycling it would require the entire purifying and quality control infrastructure for pressure or temperature swing adsorption.
Some fabs are starting to reuse helium in downstream processes but there’s only so much they can do without expanding their core competency into yet another complex chemical manufacturing process.
MRI machines don’t need high purity helium and the contamination doesn’t “gunk up” all the tools so it’s not an issue to recycle it there.
I've developed a new fear of my 2025 desktop PC being damaged by a power surge or something, because it would cost at least $2K more to replace than I paid for it, assuming I can even find parts now. Compared to the rest of my adult life when I used to secretly pray for something to fail so I would have a reason to upgrade.
I had an eye opening discussion with an IT admin who stated with a straight face that their “patching strategy was not to patch”.
They have a patch strategy! They considered requirements when deciding the strategy! They have a documented strategy, it’s just very brief. (“Don’t.”)
The Trump admin may have similarly thought about this issue for a few seconds, shrugged their shoulders and decided that this might force manufacturers to go on-shore.
You and I know it won’t, certainly not in the immediate future, which means massive disruption to industry, but that’s not the same as “no plan”.
ReptileMan | 7 hours ago
"Let the lord of chaos rule" ...
trollbridge | 6 hours ago
vasco | 6 hours ago
owebmaster | 6 hours ago
bix6 | 6 hours ago
cagenut | 6 hours ago
infogulch | 5 hours ago
actionfromafar | 5 hours ago
In the 1980s, I assume getting rid of the "strategic reserve" of anything would have met more pushback, because of primal fear overriding greed.
noah_buddy | 23 minutes ago
Kidding aside, the US has had libertarian pipe dreams for the better part of its history. The aberration was the New Deal period up until the mid 60s.
scythe | 16 minutes ago
– Georgi Arbatov, Soviet political scientist, 1988
phr4ts | 5 hours ago
baldeagle | 5 hours ago
Sounds like Obama kept the gas taps flowing, instead of locking it up because authorization to sell it had expired. Here is the whole record: https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527/...
4ggr0 | 4 hours ago
> biden
uhm...
edgyquant | 43 minutes ago
ImPostingOnHN | 35 minutes ago
There are billions of people in the world, and you are one, and you have your one set of opinions out of billions.
Nobody endowed you or your opinions with any sort of infallibility or superiority over others.
piva00 | 5 hours ago
forgetfreeman | 5 hours ago
dnautics | 5 hours ago
stvltvs | 3 hours ago
forgetfreeman | 3 hours ago
dnautics | 2 hours ago
kristjansson | an hour ago
fluidcruft | 6 hours ago
bilsbie | 6 hours ago
cpncrunch | 6 hours ago
nerdsniper | 5 hours ago
ralferoo | an hour ago
More than just from inflation? (sorry, not sorry!)
rootusrootus | an hour ago
emsign | 5 hours ago
qwertox | an hour ago
estimator7292 | an hour ago
You have the entire collected knowledge of mankind at your fingertips. You could do 30 seconds of research and find an answer better than "I don't think that sounds right".
loloquwowndueo | 58 minutes ago
So could you, right?
rootusrootus | an hour ago
pfdietz | 37 minutes ago
rootusrootus | 28 minutes ago
Turns out that you are right, some balloon gas is 80%. Specifically, the "Balloon Time" tanks you can buy at places like Target say "not less than 80%" helium.
On the other hand, I went to AirGas and a few other suppliers and they seemed to have 95%-97.0% helium gas as their definition for balloon grade.
pfdietz | 24 minutes ago
icwtyjj | an hour ago
bee_rider | 46 minutes ago
inaros | 34 minutes ago
Grade 6 (6.0 helium = 99.9999% purity) The closest to 100% pure helium, 6.0 helium is used in the manufacturing of semiconductor chips – Grade 5.5 (5.5 helium = (99.9995% purity) Like 6.0 helium, 5.5 ultra pure helium gas is typically considered “research grade,” also used in chromatography and semiconductor processing
Grade 5 (5.0 helium = 99.999% purity) This high purity grade helium is also widely used for gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, and specific laboratory research when higher purity gases are not necessary, as well as for weather balloons and blimps.
Grade 4.8 (4.8 helium = 99.998% purity) The highest of the “industrial grade” heliums, 4.8 grade helium is often used by the military. The rest is classified...
Grade 4.7 (4.7 helium = 99.997% purity) A “Grade-A” industrial helium, 99.997% helium is mostly used in cryogenic applications and for pressurizing and purging
Grade 4.6 (4.6 helium = 99.996% purity) Grade 4.6 industrial helium is used for weather balloons, blimps, in leak detection
Grade 4.5 (4.5 helium = 99.995% purity) Often the grade most commonly referred to when people say “industrial grade,” 99.995% helium is most commonly used in the balloon industry
Grade 4 (4.0 helium and lower = 99.99% purity) Any helium that is 99.99% and down into the high 80 percents is within the range of purities referred to collectively as “balloon grade helium.”
bryan0 | 54 minutes ago
stevenwoo | 35 minutes ago
kerridge0 | 20 minutes ago
dylan604 | an hour ago
hrmtst93837 | an hour ago
dnautics | an hour ago
stevenwoo | 37 minutes ago
mc32 | 29 minutes ago
One’d think that they’d keep more than a couple of weeks’s supply of critical materials —to bad many copied Cook’s and others’s JIT inventory management for everything.
lpcvoid | 6 hours ago
desireco42 | 5 hours ago
linkregister | 5 hours ago
karmakurtisaani | 3 hours ago
actionfromafar | 5 hours ago
infogulch | 5 hours ago
Messer Completes Acquisition of Federal Helium System from BLM | June 27, 2024 | https://www.messer-us.com/press-releases/messer-completes-ac...
baldeagle | 5 hours ago
dnautics | 5 hours ago
robmccoll | an hour ago
embedding-shape | an hour ago
Noumenon72 | an hour ago
TehCorwiz | an hour ago
But yeah, that would make more sense.
coreyh14444 | 6 hours ago
lpcvoid | 6 hours ago
rootusrootus | 57 minutes ago
Imustaskforhelp | 44 minutes ago
We are in here, because we didn't learn from our history. You feel this way because this is recent and its hitting everything all at once but I do feel like these were all very avoidable lessons. Being honest, I don't feel like we learnt anything new aside from seeing how the world is still trying to clutch itself back to stability even after all the instability Donald Trump is causing within the world (for better or for worse) and seeing how the world reacts to all of this live.
But I am not quite sure if future will learn from these lessons given that its feeling to me like history doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes and we somehow don't really learn from the history to be honest.
fhdkweig | 6 hours ago
I don't think I have ever heard a MAGA talk about AI.
spiderfarmer | 6 hours ago
overfeed | 32 minutes ago
Lots of ex-Bitcoin-bros turned AI hypemen went all-in on maga for Trump II. Even the silicon valley C-Suites and VC-class went mask-off around February 2025. Some have tried to walk it back since then, after realizing the kind of administration they had hitched their wagons to - thankfully, the internet ever forgets.
karmakurtisaani | 3 hours ago
rootusrootus | 53 minutes ago
That is just a thought experiment, though, I do not believe it would play out beneficially if we tried to implement it in real life.
karmakurtisaani | 43 minutes ago
overfeed | 22 minutes ago
Some of those people are not white and/or not straight. They - very incorrectly - think that wealth will shield them from the sharp teeth of White Christian Nationalism. They should consult with the Log Cabin Republicans and women who voted for both Trump and enshrining abortion into their state's constitution on the same ballot.
cyberax | 14 minutes ago
rootusrootus | an hour ago
breppp | 6 hours ago
In that respect they may be bombed by Iran but they have the same interests
fabian2k | 6 hours ago
And as far as I understand, helium is a byproduct of the extraction, so they can't choose to keep only the helium.
breppp | 6 hours ago
fabian2k | 6 hours ago
breppp | 6 hours ago
nottorp | 5 hours ago
Or let's make the analogy clearer: if your Uber driver cancels the ride because there's an active shooter on the only road between him and you, it's their fault not the shooter's?
breppp | 4 hours ago
your analogies have went past me though, generally although a common misconception, countries are not people and wars are not comparable to crime
BigTTYGothGF | an hour ago
ceejayoz | 5 hours ago
MengerSponge | 20 minutes ago
To restore traffic, we need that risk to return to previous levels, which requires diplomacy and trust. I don't expect resolution any time soon.
Macha | 5 hours ago
tekla | an hour ago
--- Hegseth: “The only thing prohibiting transit in [Hormuz] right now is Iran shooting at shipping.”
“It is open for transit should Iran not do that” ---
Oh really? I thought it was because Mercury was in retrograde.
I guess if even Mr. Hegseth is admitting that transit is effectively prohibited in the Strait, he must actually be lying and part of the deep state.
int0x29 | an hour ago
hinkley | an hour ago
overfeed | 13 minutes ago
overfeed | 14 minutes ago
dylan604 | an hour ago
I also find it funny that we just decided to allow Russia to pad its coffers by temporarily lifting sanctions on sale of Russian oil. Sorry Ukraine!
noelsusman | 6 hours ago
FpUser | 40 minutes ago
spiderfarmer | 6 hours ago
This whole administration is such a fiasco.
hinkley | an hour ago
And I say that with his permission, since he’s on camera asking to be called out if he did exactly what they did with the Supreme Court not four years later.
pelotron | an hour ago
wizzwizz4 | 16 minutes ago
emsign | 6 hours ago
heyitsmedotjayb | 5 hours ago
4ggr0 | 5 hours ago
BigTTYGothGF | an hour ago
arunc | 5 hours ago
HerbManic | an hour ago
nDRDY | 4 hours ago
tencentshill | 4 hours ago
dylan604 | an hour ago
ac29 | an hour ago
dylan604 | an hour ago
abeppu | 4 hours ago
observationist | an hour ago
throwup238 | 22 minutes ago
Some fabs are starting to reuse helium in downstream processes but there’s only so much they can do without expanding their core competency into yet another complex chemical manufacturing process.
MRI machines don’t need high purity helium and the contamination doesn’t “gunk up” all the tools so it’s not an issue to recycle it there.
etchalon | an hour ago
randerson | 51 minutes ago
SlightlyLeftPad | 37 minutes ago
Joel_Mckay | 26 minutes ago
Joel_Mckay | 28 minutes ago
These line-conditioners actually perform well given the cost, but never buy used surge-arresters given the finite spike hit-count. Best of luck =3
CrzyLngPwd | 29 minutes ago
jiggawatts | 17 minutes ago
They have a patch strategy! They considered requirements when deciding the strategy! They have a documented strategy, it’s just very brief. (“Don’t.”)
The Trump admin may have similarly thought about this issue for a few seconds, shrugged their shoulders and decided that this might force manufacturers to go on-shore.
You and I know it won’t, certainly not in the immediate future, which means massive disruption to industry, but that’s not the same as “no plan”.