Your survival instincts will kick in in ways that you never even imagined

I was road cycling, and I’m fairly experienced on the roads, but not any serious incidents. there was a car coming up to a stop sign. He slowed down, but then just continued moving forwards. I realized, at the last second that he was 100% running the stop sign and I was *going* to get hit. There was no way around it, I’m getting hit

To this day, I don’t actually know what I did in that last millisecond second to avoid being seriously injured. The car hit me, but I managed to do something to alleviate impact

I think about incidents like that and I am amazed that I am a dope in my everyday life yet there is a part of my brain that activates in situations like that.

Statistically, flying is safer than driving.

Penguins have lifelong mates and share childcare responsibilities.

Below are global facts that paint a very different picture of our world than the doom scrolling.

In 1930 90% of the worlds population were living in abject poverty (less than $2 a day adjusted for inflation). Today only 10% of the worlds population live in abject poverty. The economic activity of the wealthy and middle class in developed nations are globally fixing the problem.

In 1950, the average life expectancy at birth was only 48.5 years. In 2019, it was 72.8 years. That’s an increase of 50 percent.

Out of every 1,000 live births in 1950, 20.6 children died before their fifth birthday. That number was only 2.7 in 2019. That’s a reduction of 87 percent.

Between 1950 and 2018, the average income per person rose from $3,296 to $15,138. That’s an inflation adjusted increase of 359 percent.

Between 1961 and 2013, the average food supply per person per day rose from 2,191 calorie to 2,885 calories. That’s an increase of 31.7 percent.

In 1950, the length of schooling that a person could typically expect to receive was 2.59 years. In 2017, it was 8 years. That’s a 209 percent increase.

The world’s democratic score rose from an average of 5.31 out of 10 in 1950 to an average of 7.21 out of 10 in 2017. That’s a 35.8 percent increase.

Regarding Microplastics: this is not the first time this has happened. 


The reason we have coal deep below the ground today is because for millions of years nothing existed to decompose trees. They just built up and up and up in ever deeper layers. Eventually something evolved to fill that niche, and today we have termites and fungus and wood eating bacteria, dozens of ways trees can be broken down by the natural world. 


The same will happen with plastics. It will go away, in time. .

When you think about the times in your life you've been embarrassed, you're probably the only person in the world that remembers it and thinks about it.

Something like 130,000 people escape from extreme poverty every single day.

Centralia, PA — the site of the long-burning underground fire — has been reclaimed by nature. I was there several years ago as a last-minute decision on the way to somewhere else, and was interested to see the Silent-Hill-style landscape and the big stretches of graffiti. It’s not there anymore. It’s big beautiful plants and trees. 

If you know what you’re looking for, you can figure out where parts of individual houses are based on the pipes that remain, but that’s largely it. It was so comforting to be there, in a weird way. .