Have you ever heard northern Europeans telling southern Europeans they're lazy?

It's false.
So why are northerners richer?

Small thread 🧵
1. Northerners work substantially LESS than southerners
2. Northerners make substantially MORE money
Here's GDP per capita PPS, indexed at 100=EU average
Which mean Northern Europeans are substantially more productive.

Why? If you ask a Northerner, he might tell you it's because they're better educated, have better institutions, the protestant work ethic, it's colder so ppl work harder...

Suspicious.
Alternative: geography.
This is Europe's topography map.

Look at it and try to figure out the biggest patterns.
Do you see any?

The biggest one: the north is made up of the gigantic Northern European Plain, while the south is mostly mountains.

Why?
Because the African tectonic plate hits the Eurasian plate.
Looking at the details, you can see the formation of Southern Europe due to these tectonic plates.
A bit like the Indian plate forms the Himalayas hitting the Eurasian Plate
But mountains don't create wealth. Plains do. Wherever there's a plain that is well irrigated, there's ppl. Where there's ppl there's wealth.

Why?
Flat :
➡️ you can irrigate. Water doesn't run away.
➡️ build up of sediments from rivers, so +fertile
➡️ Rivers are slower, easier to control. +irrigation
➡️ easy to trade (walk, roads, navigable rivers)
➡️building is much cheaper
Now look back at the map of Europe, this time with navigable rivers. What do you notice?
1. So many mountains in the south, you can't develop agriculture as well, grow a big pop, create much wealth. And everything is + expensive
2. The mountains stop the water from the clouds, which falls quickly into the mediterranean in the south (mountains), but very slowly in the Northern European Plain, creating lots of navigable rivers, amazing for irrigation and trade.
Remember all of this when you hear northern Europeans calling the southern neighbors "lazy".

Many details in my series of articles on geohistory. Eg:
unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/geography-is…
unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/world-chessb…
unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/a-space-craf…
To clarify: I’m not saying geography is the only cause. I’m arguing it’s a big one

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More from @tomaspueyo

14 Sep
If you catch COVID, the risk of developing COVID Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are 3,000x higher than those of suffering a bad vaccine side-effect. That illness can leave you out of work and energy for the rest of your life.
The most long-lasting part of Long COVID is likely Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which so far has no cure and can last decades.

Your likelihood of catching it from COVID is ~2-3%, and it's worse for young ppl than old ppl

Vaccines appear to help. They probably reduce the odds of developing COVID CFS by 75-90%.
Read 6 tweets
13 Sep
Long COVID is confusing until we realize its most alarming outcome is *Chronic Fatigue Syndrome* (CFS).

What does CFS look like?
Is it like Long COVID? 🧵

This is a person with CFS. At 24, she had spent nearly a decade without putting her feet on the ground.
This is @jenbrea suffering from post-exertional malaise, from her documentary Unrest, which you can watch on Netflix (the 3 clips come from the documentary)
This is Whitney, who hasn't talked for years. His father:
“Whitney’s state is comparable to an AIDS patient about a week before his death. And that has been the case for the last six years.”
Read 12 tweets
6 Sep
I'm going to try a new experiment in 2022.

The idea is to create a cohort-based course with live lectures. I am still debating whether it should be about
1. How to solve any problem
2. Advanced product and growth mgmt

Would you be interested in any? LMK!
6pbx56333ge.typeform.com/to/yhfkHyl3
Over my career managing billion-dollar tech products with hundreds of millions of users, studying storytelling, and writing COVID and Uncharted Territories articles, I've come to think the biggest pbm of mankind is that we don't know how to make decisions.

I want to solve that.
The 3-week course would include frameworks, lectures, and more importantly, workshops so you can bring pbms to the table and we can work to solve them together, learning decision-making along the way.
Read 5 tweets
4 Sep
A majority of the world will speak English by the end of the century. This will create a new global identity. It will be the triumph of the Anywheres.

Why? Because the same mechanic happened in the past.

Here's what happened and what will happen next 🧵
Up to the 1500s, languages were not differentiated like today. In places like Europe, there were vernacular gradients, from Wallonia to Lisbon, from London to Vienna.
That's because most ppl didn't communicate with those far away from their village.
Read 16 tweets
3 Sep
Slides or write-ups? Which one is best?

According to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, write-ups. But I never understood it until very recently.

Bezos defends why writing is better. Ironically, his write-up has all the flaws that he complains about in powerpoints:
“The narrative structure of a good memo forces better thought and better understanding of what's more important than what, and how things are related”

Ok so his hypothesis: idea importance and interconnectedness are crucial, but write-ups achieve them better.

Why?
“Ppt-style presentations somehow give permission to gloss over ideas, flatten out any sense of relative importance, and ignore the interconnectedness of ideas.”

Ok 3 causes. W/ ppt, ppl:
-gloss over ideas
-don’t make idea importance obvious
-ignore their connection

But why?
Read 11 tweets
2 Sep
Has anybody ever told you "Stop being a Jack of All Trades, Master of None"?

They're wrong

It's "Jack of Some Trades, Master of One"

This is why, and how it's the only way to become the best in the world at something. 🧵
unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/how-to-becom…
Becoming the best in the world at some skill is nearly impossible. There's always somebody stronger than you, cleverer than you, with better genetics, who worked harder...

The more you work on standing out in a domain, the more you face these phenomenal competitors.
That's why becoming the best in the world at something takes too much work.

It's nearly impossible to be the best, but it's quite easy to be in the top 10% or so.
Read 15 tweets

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