The money quote from your linked article:
Another one for the OP - Chicago is further north than New York City (I’ve previously posted that in the “Your geographical misconceptions” thread)
Building the Great Pyramid of Giza involved placing 2.3 million stone blocks (weighing an average of 5500 lbs) over a period of 27 years. Working 24/7 (which almost certainly wasn’t the case), that’s one block - quarried, shaped, transported, placed and mortared - every 6 minutes.
There are more water molecules in a teaspoon of water than there are teaspoons of water in the Atlantic ocean.
The US has less than 5% of the world population, but two thirds of its lawyers.
The flight of the SR71 Blackbird prototype is closer in time to the Wright Brother’s first flight than to present day.
Also, Orville Wright lived to see a plane fly with a cargo hold longer than the first powered flight.
I find it more surprising that Rome is north of New York City
London is further north than Calgary.
The Nirvana vs. Beatles, Happy Days from today, SR71’s to Wright Brothers and Apollo flights all point to the same phenomena of massive changes happening c. 50 years ago.
There are 52! (52x51x50x49… all the way to 1) unique ways in which a deck of playing cards can be ordered. That is a number greater than the number of atoms that make up all the matter in the solar system.
My family once went on a hunting trip, on a ranch owned by a relative. We passed by a peculiar arrangement of rocks. It was the foundation of a house that my great grandparents had built when they were homesteading. My brother and I noted that the entire house had been smaller than our bedroom.
Actually, a bit more than that.
Heart disease kills over 650,000 Americans each year. My kid’s school doesn’t cancel their Krispy Kreme donut fundraiser sale.
I also don’t believe the “500k deaths were preventable” because “experts” had also predicted that if Clinton was in the White House “we’d only have a few thousand dead at most” in 2020. Nobody can accurately predict this. It really seems like somebody just looked at Western countries statistics that had the best COVID policies (Australia, New Zealand) and just assumed the US could have done the exact same thing full stop.
I had a German friend who absolutely freaked out when he realized my daily commute one way was 75 miles one way …
Most Europeans just don’t understand american car culture isn’t always about how fast/pretty/macho ones car is, we own cars because we simply do not have dependable mass transportation. If I were to try to get to my final job in Hartford, I would have to figure out how to get 5 miles into town, then pick up the bus from there to Hartford center, then from Hartford Center out to East Hartford … or roughly 3 hours per 50 mile commute - a car is about 60 minutes of commute.
This is not how it works. These sorts of numbers come from modeling what would have happened with better adherence to the health guidelines, e.g. better mask and vaccine adherence. The masking study I remember modeled 95% mask compliance, for example. Back when only 100,000 were dead, it said 50,000 of the deaths could have been prevented if that many people would have worn masks.
It wouldn’t matter who was president. If the same number of people didn’t mask, then there would be the same number of preventable deaths from masking. The 500,000 number is more long term and includes deaths that would have been prevented by vaccines, too.
Excellent interactive about the size of the solar system (particularly the spaces between the planets).
If the Moon were Only One Pixel
(you have to scroll right - and try the Speed of Light option bottom right).
We do understand that. We just don’t understand why you don’t have decent mass transportation.
Because of the car culture.
The last “circus fat man” weighed about 600 lbs.
The “circus sideshow” is alive and well - on television.
(I’d hoped to find a reliable statement of how many 600 lb people there are now – but all I can find is “obesity rates”.)
I remember learning, as a kid in the 1960s, that one of the local team’s football players weighed over 300 lbs. I was astounded. He must have been one of the heaviest guys on earth! Now you can’t swing a dead aardvark without hitting a 300 pound lineman.
mmm