Best Of

‪@chadbourn.bsky.social‬

There’s going to be a shortage of helium critical for hospital MRI machines and for manufacturing advanced chips like those from NVIDIA Corp after damage to a major gas facility in Qatar, Bloomberg reports.

Fees will also rise. Suppliers are prioritising healthcare.

I'm told the chip/disk shortage, partly due to a buy up by cloud providers, partly due to the helium shortage has put up disk array costs by around 50% in the last month, with 80% expected to be incoming shortly.

And for those that don't know, the helium shortage relates to the reduction in the production of natural gas. Helium occurs as the result of radiative decay n the earth and gets trapped in the natural gas formations as it makes its way up. So nearly all Helium used is captured from natural gas.

This will affect a range of industries. Not just party balloons.

Oxford Instruments was doing some good work with high temperature (liquid nitrogen temperature) superconductors. I wonder where they have got to, by now?

NMR world is very aware of the helium challenges too.

The growth of both Reform and the Greens show that people have simply lost all faith in the mainstream parties. They are simply not delivering and haven't for a long time. People are exasperated and lashing out. That reluctance to make "tough" decisions that @Taz mentioned at the end of the previous thread has caused something approaching a disaster, a State that works for those employed by it and for very few others.

Both Labour and the Tories (the Lib Dems are a lost cause) need to wake up and start to deal with reality or reality will finish with them.

I think there is still a way forward for something I can only really term “radical centrism” and indeed I think it’s the only thing that can really get us out of our current predicament.

I don’t think a majority of the electorate really want the divisive rhetoric of Reform or the Greens but they do want things to be done differently to how they have been - and both parties promise that. They’ve been let down so much by the two main parties that they are looking for an alternative.

What we really need is someone who is unafraid of making big, bold, reforming decisions but who does not subscribe to the divisive viewpoints. I think the public will broadly accept reform of institutions like the NHS, planning and regulatory system, welfare state, asylum and immigration system, relationship with Europe, defence spending etc etc so long as they feel that the person behind it has a bold vision and a plan to make things better - on the centre right or centre left. Of course, such figures are sadly lacking from our politics at the moment. But it’s the emergence of figures like these that are what western economies really need in the next decade.

We need to invest and trade our way out of the mess. So much of the high cost low value nature of so many sectors is because of partisan bickering moving the goalposts. This happens because we have completely lost our way as to who we are and where we want to go.

More trade does not mean selling off everything. We need to get back to actually having British industrial giants capable of building the stuff we need. Start with steel, then car, train and shipbuilding, electronics, consumer goods etc. Harnessing both whats left of the north sea fossils and the growing wind & solar capacity. With turbines built here.

It means that we need to actual educate, train and equip my kids generation to go out and compete with the world. All we equip them with today is debt that is almost impossible to repay. And don't get me started on the NHS bonfire where we can't propose to axe the endless layers of administrators because aren't our nurses marvellous? Not that we train nurses anymore.

The challenge is "where do we get the money". To which my answer remains CAPITALISM. Borrow. Invest. ROI. Today we borrow and throw it on the bonfire. Throw a little less into the flames and buy a fire hose. An increase in cost briefly to greatly decrease it longer term.

It just needs vision, to accept that we're in a mess and a change is needed. I cited 3 great reforms - Liberal, Labour, Tory. We need a 4th, and it won't be from those daft fukers in Reform or the Islamo-Commies in Green... Trade is the solution to the gulf mess, to the American mess, to the refugee mess.

Trade. Free fucking trade. Make stuff. Sell stuff. The Rest Will Flow.

Yep. Trade is good, [cliche] which is why Brexit is and remains a ball and chain around our ankle [hackneyed metaphor] . We are the nation that sanctiond ourselves [hackneyed metaphor], then complain about the lack of trade.

It's always funny reading remoaner arguments.
There's never any figures, there's not even a simple explanation of how x has resulted in y. Just a heap of meaningless metaphors and cliches loosely held together by wounded spite. They cannot make a proper argument because there isn't one.

Brexit created barriers to trade. There, that's your simple explanation of how x has resulted in y.

I need to send food samples UK to NL. Parcel Farce would send it to the moon by accident. DHL won't do food to EU because paperwork. USP will - but its faff - for £££

I'm looking at an opportunity to re-use electronic waste material from the UK and EU. Similar nightmare. Political zealots on either side of the Brexit debate do my head in.

A Green Party ad suggests why they are doing well in the polls.

Zero* policy, but very well done emotional appeal.
https://x.com/AaronBastani/status/2037197492631036043

*Not net zero; just zero.

Well, not zero. The video specifically opposes the racism and division that so much of our politics is about. It speaks for our common humanity.

@NickPalmer has observed in the past that people choose their vote much more via vibe than by totting up a balance sheet of policies and cooly comparing to other parties.

They ask themselves "is this a party that matches my values? Is this a party that gets my issues and will speak for me?"

That is how Polanski is doing so well. The message is a very positive one, of hope, and one unafraid to speak for pluralism and modern Britain. This is a unique approach in current politics.

Really?

At the Spring Conference the Greens are voting on a motion opposing the government's proposals to fight racism and anti-semitism in the NHS. Who's that positive and hopeful for? Racists and anti-semites presumably. It's certainly representative of a very unpleasant aspect of modern Britain - the way anti-semitism has become embedded in once respectable organisations and professions.

Polanski has also refused to condemn members of the public going from door to door canvassing for a boycott of Israel and its goods, and noting down those who disagree. He did not understand why this might seem frightening and sinister to Jewish people. And no this is not like normal political canvassing.

Nor has he condemned his deputy, Mothin Ali, who attacked a Jewish university chaplain, forcing him to go into hiding and whose wife received rape threats. Ali recently attended a demonstration protesting against attacks on the Iranian regime which has slaughtered tens of thousands of its citizens, is executing children as young as 14, rapes women prisoners as a matter of course and did this so violently to two nurses who helped those wounded by the regime that they lost part of their intestines and, in one case, their uterus.

Perhaps this is what some have called the Green Party’s “fresh new ideas”. To this jaded eye, they rather resemble some older, very sour ideas, whose impact on ordinary people is well-described in Sally Carson’s novel “Crooked Cross”, written in the 1930’s after her time in Germany. She wrote that as a warning, not a manual to be followed.

As you should know. You recommended it.

It isn't anti-semitic to oppose the Israeli government or boycott Israeli goods.

If someone specifically boycotts Israeli goods but not goods from any other country it would suggest they are anti-semitic.

I'm still unclear as to whether it's antisemitic to conflate all Jews with the state of Israel, or antisemitic to draw attention to Jews who are citizens of other countries strongly identifying with the state of Israel. All very confusing.

It's definitely anti-semitic to attack Jews who oppose the policies of the Israeli govt because they are Jews people opposed to the policies of the Israeli govt.
Which renders most supporters of the current Israeli govt anti-semitic.

The rest needs a bit more clarification.
We could start with some non-edge cases...
1) Settlers who attack and murder Palestinians and Bedouins because they want their land (with the excuse that their God granted it to them). Is there unanimity that it's OK to criticise them without being classed anti-semitic?

The simple rule of thumb is that criticising individuals or closely defined groups of people for their actual actions isn't racist.

So

- Netanyahu is demonstrably a warmonger and criminal. Not racist
- Jew drink the blood of small children. Racist.
- All Iranians are terrorists. Racist
- Units of the IRGC murdered protestors. Not racist