Tomas Pueyo
@tomaspueyo
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MEGATHREAD
All my geography posts in one place
(I'll add more as I make them)
1. Maps distort the world
Maps twist our perception of the world
Here are 20 to rethink it:
1. Countries closer to the equator (~poorer) seem smaller than they are
(map by
@neilrkaye
)
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India just passed China as the most populous country in the world. Why?
Because of the biggest accident in history
Look at where people live in India. What's that band up north?
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The Mediterranean Sea was dry 5M years ago
Then, a series of MEGAFLOODS filled it in a matter of months
How did the Med dry up?
Why did it fill so brutally?
How would it have felt to be there?
This is what we know:
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Maps twist our perception of the world
Here are 20 to rethink it:
1. Countries closer to the equator (~poorer) seem smaller than they are
(map by
@neilrkaye
)
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50% of humans live in this circle
But why?
It's not a coincidence
It's because of a single, massive accident
Why?
Let's zoom in:
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Why do Brazilians speak Portuguese and not Spanish?
Because of the rotation of the Earth and the distance between Puerto Rico and Cape Verde:
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This video of the Rock of Gibraltar gives an intuition for why some areas of the world have deserts next to rainforests
What's happening here?
How can you use that to predict where there will be deserts or rainforests?🧵
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Why is Africa the way it is?
What are its main regions?
Its most defining features?
What's key about each country?
Most of it is rooted in 2 factors.
Here's how to understand Africa and each one of its countries:
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Why is Madrid the capital of Spain?
Madrid is quite unique:
• No river
• Very recent
• Tiny when it became a capital
So why?
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The tiny island of Java has more population than all of Russia
More than all of Japan
Why?
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The Texas Triangle , between Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, contains 75% of Texans.
Why?
What's special about that triangle?
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Why is Africa the way it is? Part 2
Today, a story about religions, bugs, mountains, deserts, trade, wars, slaves & more
Here's a challenge. Look at this map and make a guess: what do the red/green/yellow colors represent?
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Who has a fair claim on the region of Israel and Palestine?
It's time to go deep to understand:
• History
• Geography
• Religion
• Legal claims
• Morality
• And more:
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France is weird:
Why is it the biggest sea country worldwide?
Why was it the most powerful?
Why not anymore, even in Europe?
Why the only EU country that belongs to both north & south?
Why did it form so early, >1000 years ago?
It all starts here:
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Since the Bucha massacre was made public, Germany has paid ~$1.5B in gas to Russia
Yet 🇩🇪 will still close its nuclear power plants in 2022. Why? I dug up the details. Not pretty.
The only conclusion is that 🇩🇪 would rather kill nuclear than fight Putin & defend Ukraine
1/
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We discussed India's 1.4B people earlier this week, but China also has 1.4B ppl
Why?
Is it a coincidence these 2 population giants are neighbors?
Why do most of its 1.4B ppl live east of the red line?
It's also due to an accident:
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You think housing prices will keep going up because you've seen it all your life. But this is a historic anomaly that is likely to reverse soon: Prices might start shrinking in many places.
This thread is the case against investing in housing:
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What are the most surprising facts about the Amazon river, watershed, and rainforest?
Here are the 9 craziest ones I found:
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What if there was a way to:
• Mitigate climate change
• Create more life
• Grow the economy
• And make money along the way?
Let's call it *Seaflooding*
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Why are tropical waters so transparent?
Because they're dead.
This is connected to why some scientists fear global warming could make Europe *colder*
And freeze 80% of all humans above the 60th parallel:
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Me puse a mirar hoy México un poco por encima, y es evidente de que tiene muy muy mala pinta.
Empecemos por casos diarios. Iban subiendo rápidamente, pero de repente empiezan a bajar hace una semana. ¡Qué bien! ¿No? [1/10]
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This is a good depiction of clouds (and their humidity) being stopped by mountains:
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Here it is, comparing the most disadvantaged with the most advantaged. Africa is *wider than Russia*!
Source:
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Why is LA California's biggest city?
Why is the state's capital Sacramento, only the 7th biggest city?
Why is SF so important despite being on hills?
Why did San Jose pass it in population?
What's the role of the Central Valley?
How to understand California:
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Why does Egypt keep the border with Gaza closed?
Why are there more Palestinian refugees in Jordan than in Palestine?
Why doesn't Lebanon grant citizenship to Palestinian refugees?
Do Arab countries really support Palestine?
It's not as it seems:
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So we develop a poor intuition for comparative country sizes.
The biggest loser is Africa, which is humongous:
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Egyptian pyramids are not where they're supposed to be. Why?
Why is Cairo, the biggest African city, where it is today?
Alexandria?
Why do over 100M Egyptians live so densely clustered?
These questions all have the same answer. Look:
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Because it's one of the most fertile places on Earth.
It's one of the main producers of wheat, peas, potatoes, rice, lentils, eggplant...
And why is it so fertile?
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Here you can see how India (to the left) is much greener than Tibet (right).
You can tell where the mountains stop the water from the wind
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You can't understand the West Bank if you don't understand Israeli settlements. They are one of the biggest sources of frustration for Palestinians
What are they?
Why are they there?
Why so contentious?
What should we do about them?
Here are the details:
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Germany just became the 3rd largest economy
But why is it so rich?
Work ethic?
Here's a huge factor: Geography 🧵
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This is the ghost of Poland's past
Poles call this type of map "widać zabory": "You can see the partitions"
What partitions?
Why is Poland like that today?
What does it tell us about the country?
About Russia? Germany?
Let's explore:
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BREAKING: The US is adding one Wuhan a day.
Wuhan: ~50k cases in TOTAL
US: ~50k per day
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It's the Ganges river basin. It hosts ~half the country's population. It's one of the densest places on Earth. Why?
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Can Brazil become a superpower?
It will be an uphill battle despite the heroic efforts of the Brazilians
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And what causes the mountains? The Indo-Australian Tectonic Plate hitting the Eurasian Plate
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But why is the Ganges valley so flat when it's just next to the Himalayas, the tallest mountain range in the world?
It's *because* of the Himalayas: They're so heavy that gravity crushes down the region around it! The same thing happens in the Indus valley nearby
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• It's hot (tropical)
• It rains a lot
• It has a many rivers bringing water and irrigation
• The rivers also bring fertilizing silts
Why so much water?
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I hope you enjoyed this thread. If you did, follow for more. I write one of these every week or so.
You can also subscribe to my newsletter. It's free:
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The mountains.
Wind comes from the ocean full of water
It hits the Himalayas
Climbs up
Gets colder
The water condensates and rains down
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“With the number of known
#coronavirus
cases today in South Korea, Italy, Iran, France, Spain and the US, Wuhan was already in lockdown.”
Read why every day we wait to make decisions is costlier that’s the previous:
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Why is New York so big?
Why the biggest metropolis in the US?
Why are other East Coast cities smaller, like Philadelphia, Boston, or even Québec and Montréal?
Because of holes in the mountains and competition with the UK:
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We can see it in action in this experiment
At first there's water trickles in
It carries some sediments
Which widens the hole
More water flows in
Carrying more sediments
Opening a wider hole...
Soon, you have a megaflood
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Now we know why:
• It's flat
• Humid winds discharge their water there
But hold on, why are there humid winds to begin with?
They're not supposed to be there! Every other part of the world at the same latitude is a desert!
Why is the Sahara a desert but India a garden?
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Brazil is also very shorthanded
It's so big, the northernmost point of the country is closer to all other American countries (including Canada!) than to the southernmost point in Brazil
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Most ppl are missing the key point regarding OpenAI
This is not standard startup drama
This is literally a fight for the survival of humanity, linked to the original purpose of OpenAI: saving us from the end of the world:
🧵
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It doesn't look like Israel & Palestine can reach a peace agreement now, but they totally can. They nearly did in the past.
Here are the 4 factors that matter:
1. Borders
2. Security
3. East Jerusalem
4. Right of Return
Don't let anybody tell you it's impossible. Details:
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German used to be spoken very widely across Europe, but within years of WWII, it collapsed
What happened to the ppl who spoke it?
How did German get to be spoken so widely to begin with?
How does this help understand WWII?
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Should Israel and Palestine consider a 3-state solution?
It makes sense politically, economically, and geographically:
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I ran out of tweets.
If you liked this, I'll continue & write more threads distilling the rest of Africa's main features.
Let me know by retweeting the 1st tweet
And follow me and subscribe to my free newsletter to not miss anything
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In summary, in India:
Fertile soil ➡️ Population
Why?
• Hot (tropical)
• Lots of rain
➡️Rivers➡️irrigation & fertilizer
But ALL these conditions exist thanks to an ancient accident: The Indo-Australian Plate hitting the Eurasian one!
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18 surprising facts I learned about climate change:
1. Temperatures are at an all-time high...
... since humans left Africa
Temperatures peaked higher ~120k years ago (humans already lived on Earth)
And the world was generally warmer ~3M ago and before
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Here's another example: Papua New Guinea is as long as the distance from London to Moscow
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This machine makes fuel from thin air
It's carbon neutral
And it does this at record-low costs
Energy and the environment will look completely different in 10 years
Here's why: 🧵
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If you go all in, you can see the world according to fishes. Pretty well connected!
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The equator is the warmest part of the world, hit directly by the Sun
Hot air, full of humidity, goes up, hits colder air, water condensates, and rains down.
But air keeps going, and falls down farther north, completely dry. Hence the Sahara.
So why not India?
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New Article!
Summary: Strong
#coronavirus
measures today should only take a few weeks, there wouldn’t be a peak of infections afterwards, and it can all be done for a reasonable cost to society, saving millions of lives along the way.
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The monsoon
In Indian summers, winds come from the sea, full of water.
What force pushing the monsoon is so huge that it predominates over the normal circulation of wind on Earth?
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I go into much more detail in this articles on India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh:
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Medical workers of the world: You are about to experience one of the hardest times of your professional lives. We are proud, grateful & thankful for the sacrifices that you will make for all of us. May you have the health, energy & courage to endure this unscathed.
#Coronavirus
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The new virus strain is ~60% more infectious. We haven’t processed what that means.🧵
1. Western countries that didn’t stop the previous variant won’t be able to stop this one. It’s already in UK, US, FR, NL... that we know. Probably many more places.
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The sheer size of the Eurasian Plate being north of the only southern ocean on Earth
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1. In summer, the Eurasian plate heats up north of the Indo-Australian plate (Indian ocean)➡️monsoon
2. These plates hit and create the Himalayas➡️stop the waters and rain it down to the Ganges valley
3. The weight of the Himalayas flattens the Ganges basin➡️best for crops
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In summer, the air above the Indian ocean gets hot and fills with water.
But lands warms up faster than water
Eurasia gets much hotter
Air goes up above it
It creates a vacuum
And the hot, humid water from the Indian ocean invades India
And rains down at the Himalayas
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Conversely, Alaska is one of the best logistics bases for air cargo because it's close to all the northern hemisphere markets:
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The West Med filled
It pushed east
It reached Sicily
It found an opening
This happened *in two weeks*
Then water started pouring over
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3. It’s so big that it continues flowing for up to 100 miles into the Atlantic before mixing with saltwater, allowing sailors to drink freshwater out of the ocean before sighting the South American continent!
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The 2 false narratives of Israel & Palestine:
🇮🇱: Everything we do is for self-defense
🇵🇸: We are oppressed ppl who just want freedom
Things are more complicated than any side wants to admit
Let's start with Israel:
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Why were Hamas's attacks against Israel so vicious?
Didn't it know what would come next?
What was it trying to achieve?
They did it because Gaza is in a trap: geographic, political, economical, psychological, religious... Let's understand it
The Gaza Trap:
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So one thing is how you project a sphere into a map. Another one is where you center it.
What if we centered it around Argentina?
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And the biggest thing of all is by far the Pacific Ocean
A third of the world
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What would be the impact of keeping nuclear?
Closing the 3 remaining reactors would increase Russian gas by ~30%
Reopening all the closed reactors would eliminate ALL Russian gas imports
To understand this, we need to understand German gas: where it comes from & how it's used
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This brings water across all of India, not just the Himalayas, making all of it fertile—even if the Ganges river basin is the most fertile.
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This graph puts things into perspective.
Its true beauty: It's a myth-buster.
"Only authoritarian states can stop it" ➡️ SK TW NZ AU JP
"Only islands can stop it" ➡️ CN VT TH
"Only rich countries can stop it" ➡️ TH VT
"Anglo-Saxon countries are too free" ➡️ NZ AU
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This is the end of the pandemic:
• Vaccines reduce deaths by 90%
• Omicron kills 90% less
• Treatments save 90% of ppl
These 3 reduce COVID fatality rates by 99.9%
And after Omicron, most ppl will have some sort of immunity.
It's time to change our behavior
Details:
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What's the biggest Mississippi city?
Chicago!
Why? Because of an ice age water stream
If you understand this, you can understand why Chicago is so huge today
And more importantly, why some cities thrive while others don't:
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Why is Africa the way it is?
Why are its countries where they are?
The relationships between them
The people? The deserts?
Here are X to easily understand Africa better (politics, geography, history, demographics, climate & more)
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The African and European tectonic plates have been colliding for millions of years, forming the mountains of southern Europe
About 6M ago, water still poured into the Med from the Atlantic, but not through Gibraltar. Through what is now the Guadalquivir Valley
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What if we could:
• Sequester CO2
• Create more life
• Reclaim huge pastures and turn them back into forests
• Increase healthy food production
• Grow the economy
• And make money along the way?
How? By filling ocean deserts with life:
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9. Dust blowing from the Sahara desert brings over half of the Amazon Rainforest's fertilizer.
It's so much that it replaces the phosphorus washed away yearly in Amazon soil from rains and floods.
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Si ese ratio fuera válido para el resto de México, el país en vez de 27,000 muertes ya tendría unas 125,000 muertes, como en los EEUU. [10/10]
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Then, 600k years later... BOOM!
Water furiously tore through the Strait of Gibraltar, and water poured in
Like 30,000 Niagara falls
More than 100x all the water rivers discharge in the ocean worldwide
Water raised 10m per day
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Imagine how it felt to the animals living there
Hominids were roaming Africa back then
Your species has been there 400k years
Suddenly, water appears
You run away
But water keeps rising
The lucky ones lived on today's islands
The rest drowned
Massive extinction event
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Why is Mexico so mountainous, and yet so populous?!
Why is it poorer than the US?
How was that influenced by Spanish colonization?
Why is Mexico the way it is today?
A thread 🧵
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Why is Berlin the capital of Germany? It's much less straightforward than you might expect!
The story involves kings, emperors, imperial roads, rivers, seas, plains, trade, and a crucial 200 m hill
Here it is: thread
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Compare with Madrid's main river
Do you know its name? No, because it's puny
It's weak. An affront on capital rivers. A feeble stream
Low bridges. Full of sandbars. Why? No point in clearing them. The only thing that navigates the Manzanares is its inferiority complex
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It's 1494
Just 6 years earlier, in 1488, Portugal discovered a path to the Indian Ocean passing below Africa. If they could establish a trade route to the Indies, they could break the Muslim monopoly on the Silk Road and get crazy rich. But the Spanish want in too...
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How do we know? A couple of reasons.
Look at the relief of the ground under the Med ("bathymetry")
Can you see these riverbeds carved into today's seabed?
That only happens when water flows on ground above the sea
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6. Its jungle is so dense, hot, and humid, that 50% of its rainfall comes not from Atlantic water, but from the trees' own transpiration
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I also wrote about a similar event that happened between FR & UK just 5k years ago!
I might write about other megafloods, like the one in Washington State
If you liked this, follow me. I write one of these threads every week or so
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8. With so much heat, humidity, rain, vegetation, and isolation, it has the world's highest concentration of biodiversity
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