Show Notes - Week of January 3, 2022

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Greetings once again. I hope you are well and that you haven’t given up due to COVID. So many people are just shrugging it off, adopting an attitude of “oh well”. I hope this is nothing. I hope omicron is mild. I hope we don’t destroy our healthcare system. But I fear for the worst. 

In the twenty-two months since I first wrote about COVID, a lot has happened. We rallied around hope and supported our healthcare workers. We changed everything about our lives and daily routines. And we got tired. Author Chuck Wendig summed it up beautifully in his most recent newsletter.

Hahaha. Haha. Hahahhahgaaaaaaah yeah  —Chuck Wendig, “The Great Surrender: How We Gave Up And Let COVID Win​”

Okay, to be fair he said a lot more than that. Read the article for yourself to see his take on how we have given up and are letting COVID win. Note: it is not for the faint of heart and you should probably not print it at the office.

Let’s move on to other less depressing topics. How about the global economy? Nothing sad or depressing there, right? 

My friend Chris sent me this link, a visualization of the global economy. Many interesting facts stick out.

• The US and China account for 22.7% of the global population but 42% of the global GDP.
• There are only 18 countries in the world with economies larger than $1.0 trillion.
• Adjusted for population, Canada’s economy is about 5% larger than Germany’s and about 15% larger than UK’s.
• Iran’s economy is much larger than I thought it was, coming in at $1.08 trillion. But given that it has slightly more people than Germany with an economy less than half of Canada, you can understand how impacted people must be there.
• Surprisingly, Saudi Arabia’s economy is only $0.84 trillion, which means that they must do next to nothing besides produce oil.

Visualizing the $94 Trillion World Economy in One Chart - visualcapitalist.com

If you want to ignore the economy and the pandemic and have ten minutes, try out “If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel.” This is a wonderfully done model of the solar system scaled so that the moon is the size of one pixel on your monitor. Fun fact: the distance between Neptune and Pluto is much greater than the distance between Earth and Jupiter. Crazy.

https://www.joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

That’s it for this week, folks. No new books, no new drinks, no progress on the virtual tour, and no new words. I decided late Friday that I need another week off, so I should get through two books this week and I will likely have two or three new beers to report in addition to a new coffee. (It has “crema” in its name. Can’t wait to try it!)