Helium is not something we can make more of - there are only a few places with large underground deposits. The HIndenburg blew up in part because Germany had no helium and had to use hydrogen instead. It's got all kinds of important uses in science, medicine etc. Putting into balloons for kids parties or whatever is goddamned stupid.

Just wait until you get your wisdom teeth out and you'll change your mind quickly about popping percocet. I remember calling my brother after I got my wisdom tooth out and saying I dont think I even need percocet, I took a nap, woke up and immediately changed my mind. Just follow the strictly follow the directions and flush the extras when you dont need them. I didnt feel any effects except pain reduction by doing that.

"The survey’s top performing cities are Houston, Dallas and Atlanta, in that order — all in the South"
The Red Red South.
Put Leftists in charge and they turn a place into a shithole.

Timothy darling;
impeachment≠removed from office
The House can impeach whenever they want,
the Senate would then try the case and convict (and remove from office) or not.
You learned that in fifth grade civics.

Funny, you'd think there would be mass exodus with all that dissatisfaction. Could it have something to do with our massive influx of transplants?

@3 The mayors of Houston, Dallas and Atlanta are all Democrats.

derp

@2 Please don't "flush the extras". We don't need that in our water system, thanks. My local cop shop has a drop box for unwanted meds but before that I used to put them in with the used cat litter.

Seattle is definitely not the progressive haven I thought it was before I moved here. But that speaks more to my own ignorance than anything else. It's still a nice place to live, better than most in this country. And i've tried a lot of places.

The combination of sucky mass transit and high cost housing is deadly for urban oriented youth. The number one benefit of living here was the outdoors.not really what the city could offer (great parks though). I am not sure that has changed.

@1

So, a shortage is not the same thing as resource scarcity.

The scarcity of helium has been overstated for decades, often by respectable, well-meaning people like low-temperature physicists who didn't quite grasp the economics of helium extraction.

There's a somewhat notorious history here; go read up on the US National Helium Reserve:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_storage_and_conservation

Helium is extracted from natural gas. And companies don't bother to separate helium from natural gas unless its concentration is relatively quite high, or if they're liquefying the natural gas for transport (this is why tiny Qatar currently produces a quarter of the world's helium-- it has a fairly new program of liquefied natural gas export). As a consequence, far, far more helium is vented into the atmosphere every year as a constituent of unprocessed* natural gas than all of the party balloons and pleasure blimps in the history of the world put together.

We have a shortage mainly because we simply throw away the vast majority of helium that comes out of the earth, and demand for the stuff has outpaced the construction of expensive new extraction facilities. We can fix this through regulation (require helium extraction from sources with concentrations above a given level), or by waiting around for magical markets to fix things (shortages raise prices, prompting investment in new production and shutting down businesses that use it purely for entertainment purposes, which in turn reduces consumption, etc etc Adam Smith's hand blah blah) or by consolidating the fracking revolution (be it via government or privately) to a system where most natural gas gets liquified for storage and/or transport as part of the production process, a la Qatar.

"unprocessed" here just means "hasn't had the helium removed from it"; the gas does of course go through plenty of processing.

Happiness and satisfaction are closely related to expectations. This region draws starry-eyed idealists in droves. Idealists are constantly disappointed as reality doesn't even begin to resemble the dreams in their head. Not surprised at all to read the results of this survey.

First, I love A Tribe Called Red, so thank you for that, second here is a link to contact AMC if anyone would like to encourage them to also drop Georgia as a film location.
https://www.amcnetworks.com/contact-us/

@13

"The Outdoors" is something people living in Seattle experience by first getting into an automobile and driving for an hour or three... so of course they're going to be unhappy about the traffic (that they are part of).

@11

I don't know when you moved here, but since the 80s at least, and probably longer, there's been a much stronger libertarian streak in Seattle than you'll find in most other cities. To call the place "progressive" was never quite right, there's something more nuanced going on in our little passive-aggressive paradise.

@1 Technically one makes more helium by nuclear fusion. Hydrogen becomes Helium when fused with another hydrogen atom.

This process happens in stars and in hydrogen bombs. So again, technically, we can make more. :-)

I could totally see the fat fuck secretly hoping to get kicked out of office, even if he's not really admitted it to himself. I bet there was a big ol' sigh of relief wrapped up in that, "My presidency is over, I'm fucked" admission. There's absolutely no way he's enjoying himself and this would make a martyr of him.

@20

Let's pause for a moment to appreciate the advanced humor in this!

tempur_tempur's joke assumes you are aware that:

One: Controlled thermonuclear fusion has been an intractable engineering problem for over 70 years now,

Two: The mass of helium produced per unit energy in a fusion reactor is, um, not very large. Just the opposite, in fact, and

Three: The helium so produced would be in the form of what we collquially call "nuclear waste." Granted, this byproduct would be neither as long-lived nor as toxic as what we get from fission reactors or weapons production (assuming ideal engineering solutions are found), but our miniscule helium product would still need to either be very expensively decontaminated, or stored for 100 years to allow the active nuclear contaminants to decay down to safe levels.

@21: Trump is mad, frustrated, and angry probably most of the time but his narcissism is in the driver's seat - as he has been saying recently he's eligible for the Nobel Peace Prize -- as he basks in manifestations of grandeur in his creeping authoritarianism.

Unfortunately, he remains quite content in his perverted dispositions.

@18 Well, people aren't going to stop recreating in the outdoors as your several comments on this issue appears to wish (shouldn't you go after flying?). There are several significant sustainability issues with outdoor recreation today (transport of course) but none are really not solvable

Anyway, none of this addressed my point that living in Seattle is known to be great in large part because of its access to the great outdoors, not because the city provides all the advantages that great urban environments provide for city youth.

@25

Really? Whataboutism? Come on man, you're better than that.

Why do you think it's unreasonable to ask people to reduce their impact on wilderness areas by simply leaving them alone, or at least reducing the time they spend stomping around on them?

@28

You know, the whole idea of having laws to begin with is that there's this baseline of undesirable behavior that nobody is free to indulge in, here in our free country. You know, rape, homocide, armed robbery, human trafficking, fraud, all that stuff?

And that baseline changes over time. Human trafficking was legal in our free country 170 years ago, and until quite recently it was legal to rape your spouse in some states.

I don't agree at all with David on abortion. I do consider myself a freedom-lovin' free American even though I do very much want to impose my own opinions about firearm operation, marijuana consumption, prison labor, the electoral college, etc. etc. on other people.

@27 what?

Who said I was for people stomping in wilderness areas? I certainly didn't and there is no need to since most people don't go to wilderness areas that certainly deserve extra protection from vehicular access.

@30

Sure, NOW it's all relative true Scotsmen, eh?

You've got me all wrong on weed and prison labor, but then "good faith" seems to be sliding off the table pretty fast here.

The point is that David, as horrible as his views are, is no more a "freedom hater" than an abolitionist was in 1845. They're both morally consistent; the difference is simply that the abolitionist was right, and David is wrong.

@31

Oh, I see, when you say "the outdoors" you're talking about ski resorts, tree farms, mountain-bike parks, powerline trails, and other heavily managed spaces, not national forests or other unmanaged or minimally-managed lands.

My mistake, sorry about that.

Christ but the bad-faith arguments sure are coming thick and fast today, aren't they?

@33 I am talking about the outdoors that people actually use not the one they use in your head,