Two shocking events from last week unmasked eco-terrorists disguised as environmentalists:

1. The Philippines banned golden rice, condemning thousands of children to blindness and death
2. German Greens lied to closed nuclear plants

This is what happened and how to reverse it: 1. Golden Rice Ban
Golden Rice has added vitamin A over 100,000 children every year and turns blind over 100,000 more

Golden Rice has additional vitamin A, and eliminates that problem

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: Our perception of real estate prices is extremely biased.
Most ppl alive today have only experienced them since WW2, but that's a completely anomalous period!

Prices before did not grow as much. Here are real prices for 14 countries
What happened?

Supply and demand

Why do Jamaicans speak English, when most of its neighboring countries don’t?
Why was the pirate capital there?
Why is it underwater now?
Why did pirates drink rum?
Why are most Jamaicans black?

This map of shipping lanes today gives you a hint: Jamaica is in the middle of all these shipping lanes, but isn't a major shipping hub today

This is not new: Back in Spanish colonial times, Jamaica was not in the main trade routes either

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: 🧵 The problem with fossil fuels today is not that we burn them, it's where they come from: They had been locked in the ground for millions of years and now they're back in the atmosphere. The pbm is the "fossil", not the "fuels"

If we make fuels out of thin air, we can burn them

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?🧵 Look at the map below: In some places, deserts and lush forests are side by side. Why?

The mountain chains between them

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: 1st map: population density
2nd map: satellite
The "flower" is the inhabited part of Egypt, which is basically the Nile

Global warming is accelerating
There's only one thing we can do today to delay it before we burn, enough to solve the pbm: SO2 injection

Some ppl are squeamish about it but they shouldn't be. SO2 is so obviously the right solution that we should do it now. Here's why:

There is no way we can stop carbon emissions on time

The Earth is reaching 1.5ºC of warming, but carbon emissions are higher than ever, carried by emerging economies that won't stay poor just for the environment

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: You might have seen this map already: It overlaps Poland's election results with the old German empire borders

So is that region different because of German influence and investment? That's only a tiny part of the story. This can be quite misleading!

Germany just became the 3rd largest economy
But why is it so rich?
Work ethic?
Here's a huge factor: Geography 🧵 If there was something special about 🇩🇪, we should be able to tell it in the regional GDP numbers: It should stand out. But no: regions of neighboring Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, England, and Northern Italy are as rich or richer

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 First, Berlin is not central. Most capitals try to be, but Berlin is in the northeastern corner of the country

East/West Germany's phantom borders
More below Slower now, to give you time to capture the details:

Governments should be freaking out about the fertility crisis. Eg:
🇫🇷France initially lost WW1 & WW2 because of fertility
🇺🇸The US' power comes more from population than economy
🇰🇷South Korea might disappear this century
🇮🇱Israel actively fights this
Thread 🧵: 1. FRANCE
It used to be the most populous & powerful country in Europe

Just as Germany became more populous than 🇫🇷 (1870), it won its 1st war against it

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? For most languages, you have first a conquest, and then little by little the locals start adopting the official language of the conquerors. Happened with Greek, Roman, Arabic, English, now Mandarin...

But not German. The language predates Germany!
Why?

Why is Madrid the capital of Spain?

Madrid is quite unique:
• No river
• Very recent
• Tiny when it became a capital
So why? These are the rivers of other big European cities & capitals: huge and calm. Why?

Because rivers allowed:
• Drinking
• Irrigation ➡️ food ➡️ population
• Trade: Transport is much cheaper than on roads, so much more trade and wealth

Nuclear is the best energy there is today:
• Best safety
• Best for the environment
• Most reliable
• Most sustainable
• Politically ideal
• Can be best economically

This thread will explain why, with details: 1. SAFETY
Nuclear kills the least per TWh of electricity generated

Why?
• Burning stuff creates pollution that kills (coal, oil, gas, biomass)
• Plenty of accidents in most other sources of energy (coal, hydro...)
• Nuclear accidents barely kill. Uh?

We could easily stop climate change right now if we wanted to

For example, we could pause global warming with 100x less money than countries pledged in the recent UN's COP28

If we don't do it, it's just because we don't really want to

Here's how to do it in 3 steps 🧵: 1. STOP ADDING CO2
CO2 comes from burning fossil fuels, and it's mostly used for
• electricity
• heat
• transportation.

We must stop all 3

I'm realizing even intelligent people are missing why AI risk is different: Never before have we faced a likely event that eliminates humanity and more.

1. Risks can vary in terms of scope and severity: Scope: from small (eg affects one person) to global (affects all humans) to trans-generational (affects all humans forever)

Severity: from imperceptible (loss of one hair) to terminal (death)

There are global catastrophic risks like aging or biodiversity loss, BUT

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:
🧵 Why doesn't @sama make 💰 from OpenAI?
Why is the company ruled by a non-profit that doesn't make 💰?
Because the goal of OpenAI is not to develop the most capable AI (that would make 💰). It's to be the first to figure out how to SAFELY create an immensely powerful AI
Why?

The biggest difference I see between Israel and Palestine's strategies:
🇮🇱deals with physical realities—realpolitik
🇵🇸deals with narratives

Let's start with Israel 🇮🇱REALPOLITIK
1. Kill Hamas
After the 10/7 massacre, when 🇮🇱 decided to eliminate Hamas, it was not a narrative. It wants to *physically* kill all Hamas militants

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: 🇮🇱: "Everything we do is for self-defense"
A lot of what Israel does is for self-defense or can at least be argued this way:
• Gaza bombing? We need to eliminate terrorist Hamas
• West Bank (WB) military control? To protect our eastern flank & eliminate local terrorists
etc

The conflict between Israelis & Palestinians has been raging for a century, but 4 long-term trends might make future agreements easier:
1. Solar energy
2. Desalination
3. Oil
4. Fertility 1. Solar Energy
Solar energy cost drop ~12%/year➡️It halves every 5 years
The Israeli desert (Negev) receives a lot of sunlight➡️the value of desert land is increasing as a source of energy