Category: What’s In A Number

Data. Numbers. Math. Log scale(?). Uhhhh numbers. You see them everyday, maybe event count a few sometimes. Find out some interesting numbers in these posts.

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Better Is Possible Some Thoughts About What's In A Number

How To Frugally Manage Your Monthly Subscriptions In 5 Easy Steps

How many streaming services are you paying for? How much a month do they add up to?

And that likely doesn’t even include what you are paying for high-speed internet! And commercials now too! Boo! They have fully Cable-ized streaming services.

It sucks and you likely are paying for some you aren’t even using, or if you are, maybe just few times a year when a new season of a good show comes out every 1 to 2 years.

Here’s my trick to minimize the money you are giving to these ghouls.

Quick note before we get into the step by step guide: Some of these platforms/services have yearly options, and these can have discounts compared to paying by month. If you know it’s a platform you use frequently, it may be better option to go the yearly route.

Step 1: Unsubscribe from every service with a monthly fee.

Spotify. Washington Post. Netflix. HBO Max. Uber Gold. Tinder. ESPN+. Disney+. Every Patreon. Everything.

You want to start with a clean slate. Go through all of your cards/accounts/etc. and make a list of the monthly payments that are coming through for these different services. Then spend the 20 to 60 to 120 minutes going through, logging in, and unsubscribing/cancelling future payments.

Step 2: Take Notes On All The Services

From the list you made above make notes of their monthly cost (or discounts for yearly), and realistically how much you enjoy/need them. Is it a “must have”? Did you forget you even had been paying for it? Do others use your login info? etc.

Step 3: Think of how you can substitute some of these services.

Can you share logins with others? Have you been looking for motivation to start reading again? Maybe do a daily walk? Start-up that COVID hobby again that fell off?

Do you have a local library you can easily use? You can borrow not only books, but DVDs/Blu-Rays! Some will even have free streaming services you can get access to, such as Hoopla or Kanopy.

Step 4: As you need, start resubscribing to the services when you need them

Absolutely can’t make it without your nightly, 17th time through rewatch of F.R.I.E.N.D.S? Go for it girl.

Commute and need your pocasts ad-free, or just want to support them because they make 45 minutes each morning bearable? Right on. Slap that Join button on Patreon.

You’ll notice you will not immediately resubscribe to everything. But you’ll slowly build at least some of your previous subscriptions.

Step 5: As soon as you resubscribe to a service, UNSUBSCRIBE

This is a crucial step. Your subscription will last for the month, and then next month you repeat Step 4. There could be some services you subscribe to immediately, some you wait a month or two, or some you never subscribe to again!

Using this method I’ve successfully cut back my monthly subscriptions by ~75%, and I’m doing just fine (arguable, mike). Give it a try. Save some money. Touch some grass. Read some books.

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Dystopia Is Already Here What's In A Number

How Much Does The US Spend On Storm Damage?

It is maybe no surprise, but 2024 is off to a damaging (and deadly) year for storms. Freezes and heat domes in Texas. Tornadoes in Chicago. And flooding pretty much everywhere.

Well how much does this damage from the storms cost the US?

“An analysis from the reinsurance company Munich Re found that severe thunderstorms in the U.S. caused $45 billion in losses from January to June [2024], $34 billion of which were insured. That makes 2024 the fourth-costliest thunderstorm year on record, based on the first six months.”

Scientific American, Thunderstorms Have Caused $45 Billion in Damages in the U.S. in Just Six Months, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thunderstorms-have-caused-usd45-billion-in-damages-in-the-u-s-in-just-six

Also maybe not a surprise but 2023 was also a Historic Year for storm damage cost.

Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters, 2023, United States, NOAA

“There were 28 weather and climate disasters in 2023, surpassing the previous record of 22 in 2020, tallying a price tag of at least $92.9 billion. This total annual cost may rise by several billion when we’ve fully accounted for the costs of the December 16-18 East Coast storm and flooding event that impacted states from Florida to Maine.”

“The costliest 2023 events were the Southern / Midwestern Drought and Heat Wave ($14.5 billion) and the Southern and Eastern Severe Weather in early March ($6.0 billion).”

NOAA, 2023: A historic year of U.S. billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2023-historic-year-us-billion-dollar-weather-and-climate-disasters

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What's In A Number

Questions And Answers About Plastic Waste

I take some efforts to limit my plastic used: no bottled water, bring my own bags for groceries, get limited takeout/to-go boxes and when I do try to limit to places that don’t use plastic containers, etc. But plastic in the world we live in is inevitable, even if you don’t use directly. Every moment you are breating you are indirectly using plastic. Hell, even after you’re dead!

If I stop to think of even my limited daily use of plastic, and I multiply that by just the USA population of 330,000,000 or so, it is an absurd amount of plastic, which I frankly can’t even comprehended.

So I had some questions about plastic use by humans, and I found some answers. Check them out below.

How much plastic waste do Humans create each year?

The world produces around 350 million tonnes of plastic waste each year.

https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-plastic-waste-ends-up-in-the-ocean

How much of the worlds produced plastic ends up in the Ocean?

One-quarter of that – 19 million tonnes – is leaked to the environment. 13 million tonnes to terrestrial environments, and 6 million tonnes to rivers or coastlines.

1.7 million tonnes of this is then transported to the ocean: 1.4 million tonnes from rivers, and 0.3 million tonnes from coastlines. The rest of the plastic waste that was leaked into aquatic environments accumulated in rivers and lakes.

That means that around 0.5% of world’s plastic waste ends up in the oceans.

https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-plastic-waste-ends-up-in-the-ocean

What is the carbon footprint of the plastics industry?

Indeed, plastics are made from fossil fuels and cause greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of their life cycle. The plastic industry’s global carbon footprint in 2020 was 1.3 billion metric tons — twice as big as Canada’s — and it’s expected to grow as fossil fuel companies seek to offset declining demand for oil and gas used in the power and transportation sectors.

https://grist.org/solutions/the-global-plastics-treaty-can-fight-climate-change-if-it-reduces-plastic-production

That’s pretty fun huh?

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Dystopia Is Already Here What's In A Number

4 Questions And Answers On A.I.’s Electrical And Water Use

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03271.pdf, via Making AI Less “Thirsty”: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models

This is an update of this older post: https://www.bblloobb.com/2023/how-much-water-do-ai-prompts-use/

The first question you might be asking is “why does AI use water at all?” You might also wonder at the end of this, “we are using all of this energy and resources for really shitty “art” and straight up wrong answers to questions we ask? Seems silly and bad, huh?”

Check out the four questions and answers below!

How much water and electricity will A.I. use in the coming years?

Researchers at UC Riverside estimated last year, for example, that global AI demand could cause data centers to suck up 1.1 trillion to 1.7 trillion gallons of freshwater by 2027. A separate study from a university in the Netherlands, this one peer-reviewed, found that AI servers’ electricity demand could grow, over the same period, to be on the order of 100 terawatt hours per year, about as much as the entire annual consumption of Argentina or Sweden.

AI Is Taking Water From the Desert, by Karen Hao, The Atlantic

—

To put that in perspective? Per the Atlantic, that’s approximately the amount that a total of 670 Goodyear families would consume in a year combined. And though that’s a lot of water anywhere, it’s especially material in a place like southern Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, where a drying Colorado River and property development loopholes have led to an increasingly dire water crisis.

Microsoft Is Draining an Arizona Town’s Water Supply for its AI, by Maggie Harrison Dupré, Futurisim

—

Academics suggest that AI demand would drive up water withdrawal — where water is removed from ground or surface sources — to between 4.2bn and 6.6bn cubic meters by 2027, or about half the amount consumed by the UK each year.

AI boom sparks concern over Big Tech’s water consumption, Financial Times

How much water do individual ChatGPT prompts use?

[…]has suggested that requesting between 10 and 50 responses from the company’s popular ChatGPT chatbot running on its older model GPT-3 would equate to “drinking” a 500ml bottle of water, depending on when and where it is deployed.

GPT-4 had more parameters and required more power, so it would likely use more water, said Ren. Detailed information about the model’s energy use has not been made available.

AI boom sparks concern over Big Tech’s water consumption, Financial Times

How much of the world’s overall energy use will be AI tools in the coming years?

“You’re talking about AI electricity consumption potentially being half a percent of global electricity consumption by 2027,” de Vries tells The Verge. “I think that’s a pretty significant number.”
But de Vries says putting these figures in context is important. He notes that between 2010 and 2018, data center energy usage has been fairly stable, accounting for around 1 to 2 percent of global consumption. (And when we say “data centers” here we mean everything that makes up “the internet”: from the internal servers of corporations to all the apps you can’t use offline on your smartphone.)

How much electricity does AI consume?, By James Vincent, The Verge

How has energy use by Google, Microsoft, and Meta increased since their AI tools became available?

In 2022, the latest period for when figures are available, Microsoft increased its water consumption 34 per cent, Google 22 per cent and Meta 3 per cent as a result of their growing use of data centres.

https://www.ft.com/content/6544119e-a511-4cfa-9243-13b8cf855c13

AI boom sparks concern over Big Tech’s water consumption, Financial Times

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What's In A Number

How Much Water Do AI Prompts Use?

The first question you might be asking is “why does AI use water at all?” You might also wonder at the end of this, “we are using all of this energy and resources for really shitty “art” and straight up wrong answers to questions we ask? Seems silly and bad, huh?”

Why does AI use water?

“First, these centers draw electricity from power plants that use large cooling towers that convert water into steam emitted into the atmosphere. 

Second, the hundreds of thousands of servers at the data centers must be kept cool as electricity moving through semiconductors continuously generates heat. This requires cooling systems that, like power plants, are typically connected to cooling towers that consume water by converting it into steam.”

https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2023/04/28/ai-programs-consume-large-volumes-scarce-water

–AI programs consume large volumes of scarce water, by David Danelski, UCR

How much water does a ChatGPT prompt use?

“In a paper due to be published later this year, Ren’s team estimates ChatGPT gulps up 500 milliliters of water (close to what’s in a 16-ounce water bottle) every time you ask it a series of between 5 to 50 prompts or questions. The range varies depending on where its servers are located and the season. The estimate includes indirect water usage that the companies don’t measure — such as to cool power plants that supply the data centers with electricity.”

“In July 2022, the month before OpenAI says it completed its training of GPT-4, Microsoft pumped in about 11.5 million gallons of water to its cluster of Iowa data centers, according to the West Des Moines Water Works. That amounted to about 6% of all the water used in the district, which also supplies drinking water to the city’s residents.”

https://apnews.com/article/chatgpt-gpt4-iowa-ai-water-consumption-microsoft-f551fde98083d17a7e8d904f8be822c4

–Artificial intelligence technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa — with a lot of water, by Matt O’Brien and Hannah Fingerhut, AP News

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What's In A Number

Turns out larger vehicles kill more people and at a higher rate. Who could have known.

Have you seen vehicles out on the roads these days? Pretty big, huh?

“In 2009, pickup trucks, SUVs and vans accounted for 47% of all U.S. new vehicle sales, according to Motorintelligence.com. Last year[2022], light trucks were more than three-quarters of new vehicle sales.“

Worse fuel economy, and also more dangerous for everyone! Especially pedestrians. Cool. Keep it up, the Big 3.

“The research released Thursday by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety points to the increasing popularity of larger vehicles as a possible factor in rising pedestrian deaths on U.S. roads, which are up 59% since 2009, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said.”

The North Carolina statistics showed that pickups were 42% more likely than cars to hit pedestrians while making left turns. SUVs were 23% more likely to hit people than cars. There was no significant difference in the odds of a right turn crash for the different types of vehicles, the study showed.

Outside of intersections, pickups were 80% more likely than cars to hit a pedestrian along the road. SUVs were 61% more likely, and minivans were 45% more likely to hit people than cars, IIHS said.

This is in part to the hood heights growing and thus visability in front of trucks. Which are so unsafe, they come with cameras setup so the driver can see the car in front of them at an intersection!

“The magazine and website found that pickup truck hood heights have risen 11% since 2000. The hood of a 2017 Ford F-250 heavy-duty pickup was 55 inches off the ground, as tall as the roofs of some cars, Stockburger said.”

SUVs, pickup trucks more likely to hit pedestrians than cars, study finds, by Tom Krisher https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/03/17/suvs-pickups-pedestrian-fatalities-rise/7075333001/

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What's In A Number

Numbers about Kroger and their data company 84.51

[Grocery store checkout line]
Me: [chanting] data, data-
Other shoppers: data, DATA
Cashier: [pounding her till] DATA, DATA, DATA!
Reference

Read the excellent full article here, and get a glimpse of what data is being gather about you and how that data is being used against you. Data you probably don’t even fully know you are giving up.

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/02/16/forget-milk-and-eggs-supermarkets-are-having-a-fire-sale-on-data-about-you

How much is the Kroger and Albertsons planned merger?

“In October 2022, Kroger and another top supermarket chain, Albertsons, announced plans for a $24.6 billion merger that would combine the top two supermarket chains in the U.S., creating stiff competition for Walmart, the overall top seller of groceries.”

How many people shop at Kroger? And how many stores do they have in America?

“Kroger counts 60 million households in the U.S. as regular shoppers at 2,750 stores under the nearly two dozen retail brands that it owns and operates (including Ralphs and Food 4 Less).”

How many clients does the Kroger data company 84.51 have?

“84.51 is considered a leader in the industry, selling insights to makers of the products sold in stores like Kroger’s. The company’s clients include more than 1,400 companies, including General Mills, Unilever, CocaCola, and Kraft Heinz. The data 84.51 provides to them is used to understand not just what the sales figures are for a given product but also the context of the purchase—context that can only be understood with data about the shopper.”

How many points of data is 84.51 collecting about Kroger’s customers?

““We have collected over 2,000 variables on customers,” claims an 84.51 marketing brochure titled “Taking the Guesswork Out of Audience Targeting.” The historical reach of the data is another selling point, noting that the data includes 18 years of Kroger Plus card data. A page marketing 84.51’s “Collaborative Cloud” says the company has “unaggregated” data about individual product sales “from 2 billion annual transactions across 60 million households with a persistent household identifier.” It adds that this data is “privacy compliant.””

How much total data does 84.51 have on Kroger’s customers?

“On a webpage promoting “behavioral analytics,” 84.51 claims “35+ petabytes of first-party customer data, our science—no crystal ball needed.” A petabyte is equal to one million gigabytes. For comparison, Kroger’s trove of customer data is 66 percent larger than the U.S. Library of Congress’s digital collection, which clocked in at 21 petabytes for 2022.”

Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You, The Markup, https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/02/16/forget-milk-and-eggs-supermarkets-are-having-a-fire-sale-on-data-about-you

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What's In A Number

How much water does it take to put out fire in a Tesla Vehicle?

Turns out electric vehicles can catch on fire. Apparently at rates lower than ICE vehicles, but much harder to actually put out. So who is to say which is better? Not Me.

But how much water does it take to put out an EV fire? Let’s take a look directly from an EV manufacturer, and some first hand accounts from Tesla fires.

From Tesla’s Emergency Response for their S model:

“It can take between approximately 3,000-8,000 gallons (11,356-30,283 liters) of water, applied directly to the battery, to fully extinguish and cool down a battery fire; always establish or request additional water supply early. If water is not immediately available, use CO2, dry chemicals, or another typical fire-extinguishing agent to fight the fire until water is available.”

https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2021_Model_S_Emergency_Response_Guide_en.pdf

Tesla, https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2021_Model_S_Emergency_Response_Guide_en.pdf

From Tesla Fires:

“Crews worked for over an hour and utilized approximately 6,000 gallons of water from 3 fire engines and a water tender for full extinguishment as recommended in the Tesla emergency procedures manual.”

Sacramento Metro Fire District, https://www.facebook.com/MetroFireOfSacramento/posts/pfbid02NKEuAHr8Td6vDWNXZfX7yHGE7bNZLVuLcu795tvqdqGg2YgSYsyqjsJBVGdMjkVsl

“Additional tankers were called from three other fire departments and a total of 12,000 gallons (45,425 liters) of water were required to put out the fire. That’s considerably more than a normal car fire, which can take as little as 500 gallons (1,893 liters) to put out, according to the fire department.”

Carscoops, https://www.carscoops.com/2022/11/fire-fighters-use-12000-gallons-of-water-to-extinguish-burning-tesla-model-s/

“An electric car crashed on a highway in Wakefield Thursday, bursting into flames that took more than two hours and 20,000 gallons of water to extinguish, police said.”

Boston Globe, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/01/20/metro/tesla-fire-takes-over-two-hours-20000-gallons-water-extinguish-after-wakefield-crash-police-say/

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What's In A Number

What was Chevron’s ($CVX) Profit in 2022?

Joe Biden? Inflation? The WOKE MOB?! Wait, why is gas so expensive again?

Well it’s certainly in part due to the unprecedented profit at oil and gas companies like Chevron.

“Chevron announced Friday that it brought in a record-shattering $35.5 billion in profits in 2022, a sum that campaigners said highlights just how much the company benefited from global energy market chaos spurred by Russia’s war on Ukraine.”

“Chevron, which reported $6.4 billion in profits for the fourth quarter of 2022, also raised its quarterly dividend by around 6%.

‘That Chevron feels free to spend $75 billion of its windfall profits on stock buybacks signals its belief that it is immune from accountability,‘ Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement Friday. ‘It has price gouged consumers in plain sight and it’s going to get away with it.'”

-The Definition of War Profiteering’: Chevron Posts Record $35.5 Billion in Profit for 2022, By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, https://www.commondreams.org/news/chevron-war-profiteering

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What's In A Number

What Percent of New Vehicles Sold Are Equipped with a Driver Assist System?

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have become extremely commonplace in the last decade. What is considered an ADAS? And how many new vehicles made include at least one?

An estimated 90 percent of new vehicles sold today come equipped with some form of advanced driver assistance system, like automatic emergency braking, lane-centering, or Tesla’s erroneously named Full Self Driving.

-Report: State and Federal Officials Are Asleep at the Wheel on AV Safety, By Kea Wilson, Streetsblog, https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/12/06/report-state-and-federal-officials-are-asleep-at-the-wheel-on-av-safety/

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What's In A Number

How much do vehicles weigh and how does the move to EVs play a part?

Cars have gotten larger and heavier over the last four decades (See Page 25 of this PDF from EPA, or image below). And the slow but inevitable shift to electric cars, will only make it worse. It turns out the amount of batteries needed to give large vehicles a long range is very heavy!

So how much do cars currently weigh, and how do their electric counter parts weigh? Find answers from this article on Curbed.

“The average vehicle weight is now a record-breaking 4,289 pounds, according to EPA data. Larger vehicles are being blamed for skyrocketing traffic deaths, and part of the reason EV batteries are so big is because automakers are building them as if they have gas tanks to go 300 miles per charge.”

“GM’s American-made electric Hummer is nearly three tons [6,600 pounds] thanks to its gigantic battery, which is itself the weight of one Honda Civic. Even the country’s most popular vehicle, the F-150, also has an electric version that’s one-third heavier than its gas-powered counterpart.”

–By Alissa Walker, An EV in Every Driveway Is an Environmental Disaster, Curbed, https://www.curbed.com/2023/01/electric-vehicles-biden-batteries-lithium-mining.html

Source image:

Page 25 of this 2020 EPA report: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/documents/420r21003.pdf
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What's In A Number

A few questions answered about the speed of vehicles

Cars can quite fast! Sometimes up to and above 200mph. On streets you live, walk, bike, drive on yourself. The older I get the more insane it this is not physically limited by government and car companies. And not only that, but one of the “selling points” companies are using for selling Electric Vehicles is how fast they are!! Oh they are also keep getting bigger each year. fun!

What is the highest speed limit in America?

“Now that said, these ISA systems still have a hard limit on how fast the vehicle can go, period,” he added. “So that might be set at, say, 90 miles an hour; under no circumstances can you exceed that level. And that, to me, makes a whole lot of sense. We live in a country where the highest speed limit anywhere is 85 miles an hour, and that’s just for one particular stretch of highway in Texas; everywhere else is lower than that. So I continue to be baffled about why so many cars can physically go up to 155 miles per hour.”

How many American’s die per year in speed-related car crashes?

Let’s just be really clear: we have a status quo right now where over 10,000 Americans are dying per year because of speed-related crashes,” he said. “So it’s not like we’re starting from a point where we aren’t already facing horrible losses of life and destruction … Every idea that’s put forth about how we can address this problem, whether it’s a speed limiter, or whether it’s a road diet, you’ve got somebody dreaming up some scenario where they say, ‘Well, what if it makes it unsafe in X,Y, or Z scenario that might come up once in every 30 years?’ Frankly, we [just can’t afford to] paralyze ourselves with that kind of debate.”

-via Streets Blog USA

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/09/06/six-arguments-against-speed-limiting-technology-and-how-to-quash-them/

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What's In A Number

How much does the CEO of Dollar General make? And how much do the workers of Dollar General make?

Let’s a take a look at how much the CEO makes:

Dollar General has enjoyed steady profits despite the pandemic, and CEO Todd Vasos was paid $1.7 million in 2021, a 37 percent pay bump that amounts to 986 times more than the median wage of one of the company’s 163,000 workers in the more than 18,000 stores across the United States.

And now let’s take a look at the hourly rate for it’s employees.

A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute finds that 92 percent of Dollar General employees make less than $15 an hour. Twenty-two percent make less than $10 an hour[…].

Could you live off less than $10 an hour with limited to no benefits? And likely not getting 40 hours a week? I know I couldn’t!

–Jacobin, by Alex N. Press, https://jacobinmag.com/2022/05/dollar-general-workers-shareholder-rally-pay-safety

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What's In A Number

How much does the new GMC Hummer EV weigh?

I’d be honored to be absolutely obliterated crossing the street by a 9,000 pound Hummer accelerating incredibly fast to 60mph in a residential area. 🙂

“Numerous EVs, including the 9,000-pound GMC Hummer EV, already crack the three-ton mark.”

-Curbed, by David Zipper https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-26/a-new-way-to-curb-the-rise-of-oversized-pickups-and-suvs

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What's In A Number

How Much Trash Is Picked Up a Day In New York City?

Humans create an immense amount of trash. And it all needs to go somewhere. In NYC (The Big Apple, baby!), it first goes onto the sidewalk, and then gets picked up by NYC Department of Sanitation. But how much trash are they picking up each day around New York, New York?

Sanitation picks up 12,000 tons of trash and recycling every day across the city, hauling it off to dumps outside of the city on large barges filled with containers of garbage.

The City, by Katie Honan, https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/1/30/22909701/garbage-heap-lost-and-found-sanitation-nyc

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What's In A Number

How Many Pounds of Meat Do Americans Eat Each Year?

Where’s the beef? Meats back on the menu, boys. And all that. We love quips about meat and we love eating meat.

Meat, at the scale America consumes it is not sustainable for the health of Americans nor the earth we inhabit. So how much meat do Americans eat each year? The answer may not surprise you.

Meat consumption remains stubbornly high in the US – the average American gobbled down 264lb of meat in 2020 – and is rising quickly in countries such as China.

Many people are receptive to the idea of switching to vegetarian options in order to help the environment, however, the research found, with messaging on restaurant menus a potentially significant way of shifting behaviour.

The Guardian, by Oliver Milman, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/26/plant-based-food-restaurants-climate-menu-messages

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What's In A Number

Three Questions Answered About Cars in America

The Atlantic recently published this great piece about cars and their inherent pitfalls. It also happened to answer a lot of questions you may have about cars and their costs. $$$, human, and otherwise.

How much of gasoline is wasted in running a car?

How many people in America die a year from car pollution?

More than 80 cents of every dollar spent on gasoline is squandered by the inherent inefficiencies of the modern internal combustion engine. No part of daily life wastes more energy and, by extension, more money than the modern automobile. While burning through all that fuel, cars and trucks spew toxins and particulate waste into the atmosphere that induce cancer, lung disease, and asthma. These emissions measurably decrease longevity—not by a matter of days, but years. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculates that 53,000 Americans die prematurely every year from vehicle pollution, losing 10 years of life on average compared to their lifespans in the absence of tailpipe emissions.

What percent of time are cars not being used?

As an investment, the car is a massive waste of opportunity—“the world’s most underutilized asset,” the investment firm Morgan Stanley calls it. That’s because the average car sits idle 92 percent of the time. Accounting for all costs, from fuel to insurance to depreciation, the average car owner in the U.S. pays $12,544 a year for a car that puts in a mere 14-hour workweek. Drive an SUV? Tack on another $1,908.14

How deadly are cars for Americans?

The death toll on America’s streets and highways during that same period since 9/11 was more than 400,000 men, women, and children. The traffic death toll in 2015 exceeded 3,000 a month. When it comes to the number of people who die in car wrecks, America experiences the equivalent of four airliner crashes every week.

Car crashes are the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 1 and 39. They rank in the top five killers for Americans 65 and under (behind cancer, heart disease, accidental poisoning, and suicide). And the direct economic costs alone—the medical bills and emergency-response costs reflected in taxes and insurance payments—represent a tax of $784 on every man, woman, and child living in the U.S.

The Atlantic, by Edward Humes, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/absurd-primacy-of-the-car-in-american-life/476346/

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What's In A Number

How Big is the Thwaites Glacier and How Much of it Melts Each Year?

Things aren’t looking too good for low lying areas on the ocean’s coasts.

For decades, scientists have carefully tracked changes in the Thwaites Glacier, which already loses around 50 billion tonnes of ice each year and causes 4% of global sea-level rise.

Thwaites flows off the Antarctic continent into the Southern Ocean. At 120 kilometres across, it is the world’s widest glacier. Across about two-thirds of that expanse, ice flows relatively quickly into the ocean. The remaining one-third is the eastern ice shelf, where ice had been flowing more slowly1. In part, that’s because the ice grinds to a halt when it reaches an underwater mountain about 40 kilometres offshore. The submerged mountain holds back the ice flow like a cork in a bottle.

–Nature, by Alexandra Witze, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03758-y

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What's In A Number

How much do Apple retail employees make per hour in the United States?

While you read the below quote and then the article it’s linked to on The Verge, remember these facts:

  • Apple’s current worth, as of writing this, is $2.825 TRILLION
  • Apple profited $94.7 BILLION in 2021
  • Entry level engineering jobs at Apple pay over $150,000/year

Part of the issue is pay. Apple’s retail employees make on average between $19 and $25 an hour in the United States, according to Glassdoor. That’s good for the retail industry, but can be grating for employees who want to build a career at the tech giant. Some say that after staying at the company for six years, they’re making less than $21 an hour. 

–The Verge, by Zoe Schiffer, https://www.theverge.com/c/22807871/apple-frontline-employees-retail-customer-service-pandemic

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How much cash does the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have on hand?

It sure would be nice if we lived in a society where the health of children was an inherent given, rather than dependent on the philanthropy of the rich and the masses. It would also be nice if these “non-profits” that filled in for our societies failings didn’t make themselves rich in the process.

Last year, St. Jude raised a record $2 billion. U.S. News & World Report ranked it the country’s 10th-best children’s cancer hospital, and St. Jude raised roughly as much as the nine hospitals ahead of it put together. It currently has $5.2 billion in reserves, a sum large enough to run the institution at current levels for the next four and a half years without a single additional donation.

–ProPublica, by David Armstrong and Ryan Gabrielson, https://www.propublica.org/article/st-jude-hoards-billions-while-many-of-its-families-drain-their-savings

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How many miles do e-bike riders ride per day?

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it until it’s the actual future: e-bikes are the future.

The people who bought e-bikes increased their bicycle use from 2.1 kilometers (1.3 miles) to 9.2 kilometers (5.7 miles) on average per day; a 340% increase. The e-bike’s share of all their transportation increased dramatically too; from 17% to 49%, where they e-biked instead of walking, taking public transit, and driving.

–Treehugger, By Lloyd Alter, https://www.treehugger.com/e-bikers-ride-much-farther-and-more-frequently-than-regula-bikers-5076231

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What is the average cost of a diamond engagement ring?

Wow, marriage is expensive, huh? But does it have to be!?

And it was also exactly what De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd. wanted. I was a century-old marketing campaign, actualized. […] three-quarters of American brides wear a diamond engagement ring, which now costs an average of $4,000.

–The Atlantic, By Uri Friedman, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/how-an-ad-campaign-invented-the-diamond-engagement-ring/385376/

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How much money is donated to Environmental Charities each year?

That’s a lot of money, but you’ll be surprised to know it’s not very well distributed to organizations and a lot goes to the richest of the charities.

To complete the analysis, Carbon Switch looked at returns from a regular report put together by Giving International, an organization that takes a yearly look at overall charity data, as well as more than 65,000 tax returns from environmental nonprofit groups housed on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer tool.

According to the Giving International report, $8 billion went to environmental charities in 2020. Just five groups took in a quarter of that total. The Nature Conservancy alone raked in more than $1.1 billion in donations last year, significantly outpacing the runner-up, World Wildlife Fund.

–Gizmodo, By Molly Taft , https://gizmodo.com/people-are-giving-money-to-the-wrong-climate-charities-1848135834

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How many people on Earth die each year because of Air Pollution?

10 million. TEN FUCKING MILLION. That is an uncomprehensible amount of people. That’s essentially a New York City dying ever year. I implore you to read the entire article from David Wallace-Wells. It’s shocking.

Not​ all deaths are created equal. In February 2020, the world began to panic about the novel coronavirus, which killed 2714 people that month. This made the news. In the same month, around 800,000 people died from the effects of air pollution. That didn’t. Novelty counts for a lot.

But air pollution kills more than ten times as many as the flu every single year, and we hear even less about it. In 2017, a Lancet study put the figure at almost seven million a year, about two-thirds from outside air pollution and one-third from indoor, household pollution. More recent estimates run higher, with as many as 8.7 million deaths every year attributable just to the outdoor particulate matter produced from burning fossil fuels. Add on indoor pollution, and you get an annual toll of more than ten million. That’s more than four times the official worldwide death toll from Covid last year. It’s about twenty times as many as the current annual deaths from war, murder and terrorism combined.

–London Review of Books, by David Wallace-Wells, https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n23/david-wallace-wells/ten-million-a-year

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How much total plastic trash is in the world?

Fun reminder: this increases an incredible amount each year!

There are now around 6.3 billion tons of plastic trash in the world, making its presence known from the oceans to national parks to the peak of Mount Everest. Plastics take so long to break down that they essentially exist outside of our human perception of time itself.

-Gizmodo, By Molly Taft, https://gizmodo.com/scientists-made-a-plastic-mug-out-of-salmon-sperm-1848149272

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Can you make a living streaming on Twitch.tv?

The short answer is: probably not. In October 2021 there was the leak from Twitch (owned by Amazon), which showed payouts to the streamers. From the leaks we found out only a *very* small percent of the streamers are making large sums of money, or even a livable wage.

[…] 25 percent of the top 10,000 highest paid Twitch streamers don’t make minimum wage — and based on the fact that payout data covers a range of time spanning some point in 2019 to the last handful of months in 2021, 25 percent might actually underestimate the actual figure. For example, if you take what the 8,000th streamer on the list has made since 2019 — $29,396 — and divide it by two, you get $14,698, which is below the annual minimum wage of $15,080. Even that might be a charitable estimate: The numbers likely cover a bit more than two years’ worth of time.

–The Washington Post, by Nathan Grayson https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/10/08/twitch-hack-leak-minimum-wage-pay-hasan/

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How much turkey do Americans throw away each Thanksgiving?

Mmmmmmm Thanksgiving Dinner *Homer drooling gif here*

To overeat, we must over-make. While we do this purposely for the tasty leftovers, in classic American fashion, there is a lot of waste. But how much??

Thanksgiving is one of the biggest days of the year for wasting food. Americans toss around 200 million pounds of turkey meat in the wake of the holiday each year, along with 48 million pounds of sweet potatoes and 45 million pounds of green beans. Thanksgiving is a contradiction, with festive home cooks driven to both overproduce and creatively reuse.

–Grist, by Kate Yoder , https://grist.org/guides/2021-holiday-makeover/in-defense-of-leftovers/

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How much plastic do humans dump into the ocean each year?

Maybe we should all be using a little less plastic? And if we are putting this much new plastic into the ocean each year, imagine how much more is in land fills.

The world dumps a jaw-dropping 17.6 billion pounds (8 billion kilograms) of new plastic into the oceans each year.

–Gizmodo, from Molly Taft, https://gizmodo.com/why-trying-to-clean-up-all-the-ocean-plastic-is-pointle-1848111529

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How many miles per gallon equivalent (MPGe) do e-Bikes get?

e-Bikes are the future. For those in the back, E-BIKES ARE THE FUTURE. Healthier, less deadly, and far more efficient than even electric cars. So how much more efficient than electric cars?

A trip made by an e-bike uses a fraction of the energy required to make that same trip by car. Most e-bikes get around 2,000 miles per gallon of gasoline-equivalent–a rate that greatly surpasses even electric vehicles, which typically fall within the range of 90 to 130 miles per gallon of gasoline-equivalent. In terms of health benefits, despite the reduction in effort required for e-bikes, e-bicycle riders have similar gains in cardiovascular health as compared to those riding traditional bicycles –gains that lower the risk of developing chronic diseases such as heart disease and cancer.

Streets Blog – https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/11/15/op-ed-why-government-should-invest-in-e-bikes/

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How much of Earth have Humans changed?

Humans are inherently a destructive being. It’s impossible to not see everywhere around you. Even in some of the most beautiful places on earth, there is trash, vandalism, human made forest fires, and so on. And not to mention the harder to see: changes due to human-lead climate change. But how much have we altered so far?

Humans have altered about 70 percent of Earth’s land surface and ocean. Wetlands have lost 85 percent of their natural area; kelp forests have lost 40 percent; seagrass meadows are disappearing at 1 percent per year; the ocean’s large predatory fish are two-thirds gone; coral reefs have lost half their living mass. Agriculture has halved the weight of living vegetation on land, driving a diversity loss of 20 percent; 40 percent of extant plants are currently endangered. Farmed animals and humans now constitute 96 percent of all land vertebrates; only around 5 percent are wild, free-living animals. The world’s wild populations of birds, mammals, fishes, reptiles, and amphibians have declined by an average of nearly 70 percent in just the last 50 years, a breathtaking plummet. More than 700 vertebrate species have gone extinct over the last 500 years, an extinction rate 15 times the natural rate. Around a million species are now threatened with total extinction.

Yale Environment 360 – https://e360.yale.edu/features/avoiding-a-ghastly-future-hard-truths-on-the-state-of-the-planet

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Are mortgage loan companies racist?

Algorithms written by humans, using historical data will be racist. It’s inevitable. We see example after example. The housing market/mortgage companies are no different.

“Nationally, loan applicants of color were 40%–80% more likely to be denied than their White counterparts”

– https://themarkup.org/denied/2021/08/25/the-secret-bias-hidden-in-mortgage-approval-algorithms

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What is the national average wage for a Restaurant Host?

As you see you see story after story about the “labor shortage” (not real), ask yourself, how little you would work for?

”The bureau reported in 2020 that the average annual wage for hosts was $24,800.”

– https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/dining/restaurant-host-covid-pandemic.html

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How many homeless people are employed?

As Tyler Walicek writes in Truthout.org:

“In staggering contrast to prevailing stereotypes, between 40 and 60 percent of homeless people are employed.”

– https://truthout.org/articles/homes-not-sanctioned-encampments-are-the-solution-to-homelessness/

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How many Ad Tech companies are there?

The web runs on ad technology. And it’s full of fraud and deception and lies. Why is it so hard to navigate, understand, and regulate? Well the sheer size of it could play a part.

From  Charlie Warzel‘s interview with Shoshana Wodinsky; 

“The Martech 5000 is wild. It’s more or less 8000 companies all generating, like, billions of dollars in revenue. When you look at that thing, you’re looking at the guts of the internet. Like, that’s how the internet gets funded. That’s how people like me — I mean almost all media — get our salaries paid.”

– https://warzel.substack.com/p/the-internets-original-sin

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