Tomas Pueyo
@tomaspueyo
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Silicon Valley
Joined March 2009
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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Here are the most FASCINATING facts I could find about Mexico:. 1. Mexico is so huge it’s hard to comprehend. You can fit 30 European countries in Mexico and still have room to spare
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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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Should you be able to experiment on your own cancer?. This expert virologist did. It was the 3rd time her cancer appeared. It didn't bode well. So she injected viruses in her tumor and it shrunk. But most journals didn't want to publish her results. Why? Because they're dumb 🧵.
A scientist who successfully treated her own breast cancer by injecting the tumour with lab-grown viruses has sparked discussion about the ethics of self-experimentation
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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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Chile is so long, it's curved. How long is it?.Why not longer?.Why no other country is as long?.How does that make Chileans incomprehensible?. A thread about Chile and its humongous length.🧵
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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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2. As big as it's now, it used to be MUCH bigger.In the 1846-48 war with the US, the US took 55% of Mexico’s land!
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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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8. Mexico has the longest canyon in North America: Copper Canyon. It is deeper and 4x longer than the Grand Canyon of Arizona!
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3. Mexico has by far the most Spanish speakers in the world
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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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10. Despite all this humidity, there are no rivers in all of the Yucatan! So natives took water from its cenotes, big holes in the ground full of freshwater
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11. And if you look at the cenotes on a map, you’ll notice they follow an arc. Does that look familiar? Yes, it has the same shape and age as the Chicxulub crater, from the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago!
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7. Mexico is super mountainous! The share of its surface covered by mountains is the same as that of Switzerland and Afghanistan!
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9. The two main Mexican peninsulas are exact opposites of each other. • Baja California is in the northwest, on the Pacific, and it’s thin, dry, desertic, and mountainous.• The Yucatan is in the southeast, on the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s bulky, humid, jungly, and flat
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8% of Mexico hosts over 50% of its population.Why?.Understanding it also explains the Aztecs & their pyramids.🧵
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The answer to this is FASCINATING, it goes beyond what most people think, and its ramifications help explain ALL of the US's climate and population. Here's what people already know: rain.Water basically stops halfway through the US.But why?
Is there an obvious explanation for why the frequency of dense urban cities stop halfway through the US?
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Every American is poorer because of longshoremen's position. The worst is not the $1½-5 Billion per day the strike would cost the US economy. The worst is not their outsized salaries
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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 Mexico City (CDMX) the way it is?.Why does it get flooded? .So many droughts? .Such aggressive earthquakes?.Why is it sinking?.The key is in Tenochtitlan and how it managed its water. A thread on how Tenochtitlan explains present-day CDMX, with maps and animations
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5. It does not have a single big coastal city! .The biggest one is Acapulco (27th biggest)*
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12. The world’s two longest underwater cave systems are in Mexico: Sac Actun and Ox Bel Ha, both in the Yucatan Peninsula
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14. The biggest pyramid in the world is in Mexico!.The Cholula Pyramid is the biggest in terms of volume
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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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So we develop a poor intuition for comparative country sizes. The biggest loser is Africa, which is humongous:
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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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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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6. You can see from space today how much the Spanish cared about silver centuries ago. Notice this line here? It connects CDMX with Zacatecas—where the biggest silver mines were. The Spanish built forts (which would evolve into cities) on the path, to defend the silver convoys
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4. It's been invaded SIX times through Veracruz.Three of these times, the conquerors reached Mexico City ("CDMX") and subjugated the capital!
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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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16. The largest Day of the Dead Parade in the world takes place in Ciudad de Mexico, attended by over one million people, but it started less than 10 years ago, inspired by the James Bond movie Spectre
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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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18. Mexicans are some of the hardest working people in the world—and the hardest working in the OECD.
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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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17. CDMX is sinking between 25 cm and half a meter per year! (10 to 20 inches).Some historic buildings have sunk below street level!
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If wetlands prevent floods and straight rivers are bad, why do we keep doing it?. Here's why, and how we can do better, along with the most AMAZING visualizations of rivers:
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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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13. Mexico’s southern border has so many mountains and jungles, making it impassable, that it only has 6 border crossings for over 1,000 km of border. That’s 3x fewer border crossings than in the desertic Mexico-US border and 10x fewer than France-Germany
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15. Tenochtitlan was one of the 5 biggest cities in the world back then. Today, CDMX has 25M ppl. It’s the biggest metro area in North America. The heartland, with 70 million ppl, is 35% bigger than the US Northwest metro area that extends from Boston to Washington DC.
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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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Conflict between 🇲🇽Mexico and 🇪🇸Spain, because 🇪🇸 hasn't apologized for its invasion of 🇲🇽 500 years ago. Here's what happened, and why this is ignorant and hypocritical:. 1. When the 🇪🇸 arrived to Central America, the Aztecs were in the middle of a brutal conquest (green below)
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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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Lebanon could be rich, but it's chaotic. Why?.Geography, which is reflected on its flag.You can understand it with just these maps:.🧵
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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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If you go all in, you can see the world according to fishes. Pretty well connected!
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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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Starship is going to change humanity well beyond going to Mars: It will transform the Earth too because the cost of sending stuff to space is about to drop by 10x. A tip of this future comes from the Silk Road [1/6]
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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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And of course.19. Over 50% of the Mexican population lives in 8% of the land.
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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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Many are asking about Tijuana as a coastal city. Yes, it's in the coast, but not because it's a *coastal* city. Compare San Diego and its HUGE HARBOR with Tijuana and its puny coast: no harbor, and only a small beach. Tijuana is centered around the interior. It's on the coast
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The sheer size of the Eurasian Plate being north of the only southern ocean on Earth
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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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