It's abundant on the moon. It can be mined. There's another space race going on. We don't hear about it because the west isn't winning. And we're in the middle of another cold war where propaganda must control the narrative.

I have goodish news. We aren't going to run out of helium any time soon.

Based on current rates of helium consumption the US alone has something like 250+ years of stored helium. We pumped a porous mountain full of all the helium we could back in the 60s and it's been kept stable since.

We still have no alternative to helium in a few of its most important use cases, but there is price where the helium we haven't bothered collecting will become cost effective to go get. Those untapped reserves are estimated 3-10 times what we have ever used.

I'm also fairly certain that we will have figured out a way to produce helium in the next hundred years. We know how it came to exist naturally it's really just the matter of someone being crazy enough to try and replicate those underground conditions and spend the money on the project.

I have faith that helium is a solvable problem for the human race.

Not just obesity, but also the loneliness epidemic, since mental health is boosted as much by the weak relationships of the people that one sees regularly, day-to-day, whose name one might not even know, as it is by close, intimate relationships. (And even the latter are suffering the loss of social contact.)

You’re trying to find a problem for your solution.

The obesity epidemic actually due to the increased availability of ultra processed foods.

As a lifelong bike commuter who's fifty pounds overweight and prediabetic, this isn't the cure-all you seem to think.

It'd be great, but it won't be enough.

One of the reasons I don't think I'll ever want to live outside of NYC. I walk every day. Sometimes take a bike. It's much nicer than the car world of the suburbs I grew up in

That might certainly be one factor, but my intuition is that the primary driver is still todays diet. Things like soda drinks that let you consume teaspoons of pure sugar in an instant without appropriate feedback simply didn't exist in the past.

Or walking. I've been to a few US cities, and the common denominator for all of them is that walking anywhere isn't really an option. Sure, you can't always walk A to B in most cities, but at least European cities have public transit to cut down on the distance, necessitating only two short walks to and from a transit station.

Observation: Saudi Arabia is heading down a Houstonian path. There was one pedestrian bridge near me, and outside of that one, getting anywhere involved strategic jaywalking to cross freeways. At least they seem to have a decent bus network, though.

The thing about that though, is that to reduce the population in the least invasive, most peaceful way, is progress. And I mean progress in the geographical locations that are currently being kept from progressing. Human rights and progressive ideas, better healthcare, worker's rights; these are all crucial to achieving lower birthrates. It's an intersectional problem, always has been, always will be.

I worry that with declining birth rates capitalism will fall. OK maybe that is a good thing.

I totally agree, it’s alarming to see the projections of population growth. It seems unsustainable and I fear the consequences will be catastrophic. I think about this every time I see a news piece about declining birth rates or countries incentivising procreation.

Speaking of real, the USA is not a law of nature. It's only been around for a short time, historically, and it took a bloody civil war to keep it going this long. The warning that we have to vote for the correct color every time, or the country falls apart, is wrong. Voting for the correct color and the country still falls apart is possible if that color can't make the fundamental changes needed.

Don't worry (/s), I think you're down to one now.

Which is stupid, since unisex bathrooms already exist. It shouldn't be hard to install those in every single new building everywhere.

Especially the devoid of empathy billionaires who are just growing parasites, sucking the blood out of the planet and all of us.

I thought female birth ratio was higher than males

By itself this is not that big of an issue. A much bigger issue is the gender imbalance that you find in certain localities due to local governments, universities and companies not taking this gender imbalance into account. But I'm glad that you brought up this issue.