No Man Knows How Bad He Is
Reviewing my notes for the year and culling some of the most amazing facts that I learned this year:
Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company of Saudi Arabia, contributes more than 70% of the annual state operating budget. Can you imagine if a single corporation funded 70% of the US Government? The Saudis originally had no interest in oil, offering to trade it barrel for barrel for water instead.
43% of Chinese residential homes were built after 2010. That’s housing for roughly 1 billion people!
The world’s largest farm is a dairy farm home to 100,000 dairy cows and covering 22m+ acres! The farm has to be that large to handle the dispersion of waste from the cows.
The US Defense Department earns ~$100m/year operating slot machines used by personnel on their bases. Whether this is a stupidity or boredom tax is open to debate.
The GINI Index, which measures global inequality, reports that in 2023 the amount of inequality in the world is equal to that of 1897, down from its peak in 1997. We hear that things are more unequal than they ever have been, but the data suggests otherwise.
The UK has two Duchies that are inherited by the reigning monarch (Lancaster) and the heir apparent (Cornwall). Inside the borders of those duchies, if you die without a will or without common law heirs, your property transfers (escheats) to the King, or the Prince of Wales.
King Charles III is the beneficial owner of 1/6 of the world’s land mass (largely through his role as the monarch in Canada.
The US population has grown 50% since 1980. Even so, birth rates per family are on the decline, a serious and long-re
Measured by ROI, E.T. is the most profitable film of all time. When plotted against all other films, it scale jumps and has to be given its own chart.
Compared to 1970, it now takes 70% less labor to produce $1m in revenue for an S&P component company.
The IRS measures the expected return on investment in audit situations. For most returns, it recovers 2x its costs. For the Ultra-wealthy, that number is 6x.
Most tech companies test new products and features in New Zealand because it is a diverse, English-speaking country. It has the added bonus of being a bit remote, even in the global economy, so that details of the products are insulated from the risk of leaking the news.
The US has 6,000ish hospitals with 900,000 beds that see 34 million patients per year. 10% of the population is hospitalized at any given moment.
The US discards more than 120 billion pounds of food each year. That equates to roughly 40% of total food supply in the country, more than any other economy on earth. Most of it goes to landfills when composting programs would be far more beneficial.
Our galaxy is currently consuming the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy (the closest galaxy to ours). How have I never heard this? Are we not studying this?
99% of the mass of the human body consists of six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. If sold commercially, they are worth about $576. All the other elements taken together are worth only about $9 more.
Cider is a favorite drink of kids and adults, with most adults performing the hard version. However, Cidermakers only make cider from apples. So if you have had pear “cider”, then you were actually drinking “perry.”
The average child asks 300 questions per day before going to school. That number drops precipitously as structural education discourages free range questioning. As adults, we ask an average of 44 questions per day. If you are a Taylor, these numbers increase by a factor of 22x.
Joe Biden’s White House hosted an Electric Vehicle summit, didn’t invite Tesla, and lauded the CEO of GM for changing the world through EV sales. That year, GM net shipped 24 electric vehicles because of a worldwide recall on their models. Tesla shipped 520,000 that year.
The average commute time in the US is 27 minutes. Mine is 6 if I go into the office, 1 if I walk to my home office.
English speakers describe time as being in front or behind them, or as a horizontal line moving left to right. Mandarin speakers envision time as a vertical line where down represents the future.
Singapore has the highest bandwidth speeds on earth, 213mb/s. A user of the internet today would need 181 million years to download all the data from the internet.