Never bet against the US:
Ppl think its biggest strength is its institutions, the dollar, entrepreneurship... But one of its biggest assets is its geography 🧵 1. Size
The US is the 4th largest country. It spans an entire continent, reaches two oceans, and is big enough to be a geographic heavyweight in the world

Climate caused the US Civil War, because:
1. Slavery was the main cause of the war
2. Different crops were the main cause of slavery
3. Climate caused different crops in the North vs South

This is terribly important to understand the US today and how to heal it
🧵 1. Slavery was the main cause of the war: the Abolitionist North & the Slavery South were competing to expand westward to increase their political influence

But the North grew & expanded faster, to a point where it could force abolition on the South, which then seceded

Moscow is one of the weirdest capitals:
• Biggest European city
• Extremely cold
• Little farmland
• To Russia's extreme west
• Not on a coast or main river

How did it create the biggest country on Earth?

It involves horse archers, human harvesting & tiny animals 🧵 The first shocking fact is that Russia is so far north it's at the edge of arable land. How can you create a capital with so little food? Why not in the middle of the most fertile area on Earth?

This map tells you how a seemingly innocent difference, like wheat vs rice eating, can have dramatic political, economic, and cultural ramifications:
🧵 The areas that harvest wheat vs rice are different. Why?
Because of climate

Did you know the West's trade deficits to China are not recent, but started 2000 years ago? This is the story of how silk, porcelain, tea, opium, and silver have determined the history of the world 🧵 The Romans already complained about deficits to China! Mainly because of silk

Why did 🇮🇱Israel strike 🇮🇷Iran now, and not months or years ago or in the future?

A unique combination of a dozen factors converged to make the moment unique for 🇮🇱Israel: 🧵
1. No Hamas to its southwest
2. No Hezbollah to its north
3. No Assad threat to the northeast
4... 4. No more Syrian army to attack 🇮🇱Israel's planes: As the new forces of HTS took over Syria, Israel bombed all the existing Syrian military. No more fighter jets or surface-to-air missiles to threaten 🇮🇱Israel

Was 🇮🇷trying to get a nuclear bomb?

1. From Feb 2025 to Jun 2025, it increased its amount of enriched uranium by 50%
2. It now had 400kg of highly enriched uranium, enough for 9-10 bombs
3. This is 60% enriched uranium. Fuel only requires 5% enrichment.
4... 🧵 4. It's easy to go from 60% to 90% (weapons grade), it only takes weeks
5. The only country on Earth with such enriched uranium and without a bomb is 🇮🇷Iran
6. The IAEA (nuclear watchdog) found 3 secret nuclear sites

Now that the 🇺🇸US has bombed 3 of 🇮🇷Iran's nuclear sites, where will the war go from here?
It depends on 🇮🇱Israel: 🧵 🇮🇷Iran never wanted the war, and its forces are being decimated. Its ability to send missiles to 🇮🇱Israel is being degraded every day. If it could sign a ceasefire while saving face, it would

Can there be an invasion of Iran? Hardly. Two maps explain why, and also why Iran is the way it is today, whether its regime will fall, what other superpowers will do, and in general why Iran is the way it is today

1. Iran is a mountain & desert fortress Here's a topograhic map
West: Zagros
North: Caspian Sea + Caucasus, Albroz, & Kopet-Dag mountains + Karakum Desert
East: Mountains + Dasht-e Kavir / Lut Deserts
South: Sea

The only truly exposed area is the southwestern corner of Khuzestan, which is a swamp

Was 🇮🇷Iran trying to develop nuclear weapons?

Listening to the debate, it looks like 🇮🇱Israel & the 🇺🇸US intelligence community disagreed, but that's not really the case!

Both thought Iran was weeks to months away from being able to develop the bomb

So what's the disagreement? Here are more facts:
• Tehran had just announced a 3rd enrichment site in an undisclosed place
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had recently produced a report censoring Iran for the 1st time in 20y
• It accused Iran of 3 undisclosed nuclear sites

Nuclear is the best source of energy across nearly all the factors that matter. It's the safest, cleanest, densest, most sustainable, geopolitically stable, predictable, dispatchable, and can be cheap.

1. SAFEST
It kills 1000x less than coal Living close to a nuclear power plant for one year gives you less radiation than eating a banana (graph is logarithmic)

Over 80% of Canada's population lives in these 3 areas.
Why these 3?
Why so disconnected?
What are the consequences of that?
Here's why: 🧵 ST LAWRENCE VALLEY & GREAT LAKES
About 55% of Canadians live here, on the riverbanks of the St Lawrence River and the Great Lakes. Why?

And as soon as you go a bit farther north of the St Lawrence, population disappears. Why?

Trump claims Canada should become the 51st US state
How much truth is there to this claim?
These maps tell us: You probably know that 50% of Canadians live below this line

80% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the border with the US!

10 surprising things I've learned about Korea as I research it:

1. You might have seen the map of day & night lights in North vs South Korea, but have you compared it with population density? 2. Seoul is just monstrous. Its metro area covers 12% of South Korea🇰🇷's surface but 50% of its population

I think the craziness of North Korea is most apparent in its architecture. 7 examples:

1. The Science & Technology complex has the shape of an atom from above
2. North Koreans like making their buildings' form represent their function. This is the entrance of the Zoo in the capital, Pyongyang:

The stupidest German policy of the last decade: closing its nuclear power plants

These are Germany's sources of electricity vs what they could have been if they had kept nuclear open:

• This has destroyed Germany's industry
• The new gov can reverse this
🧵 Germany's economy is in tatters. It's one of the slowest-growing rich economies. It has been in recession in 2023 and 2024!

This Sunday are Germany's elections
These are the best maps to understand the country:
Why is it so rich?
What makes it special?
What lies in its future?

1. We can still tell the East/West divide, 35 years after the reunification. These are Germany's phantom borders 2. Before WW2, East Germany had more:
• Working class ppl
• Vote left
• Women working
• Births out of wedlock
• Protestantism

UNPRECEDENTED
The singularity is near. We're 1-6 years away from AGI according to:
1. Prediction markets
2. Insider insights
3. Benchmarks
4. Lack of barriers to growth
5. Current progress

This breakneck speed of AI progress is illustrated by OpenAI's o3 and DeepSeek🧵 1. Prediction Markets:
Average bet on AGI: November 2030
Mode: June 2027

This remote corner of the US has something unique that might soon make it one of the most important cities in the world—the city of the future. It is officially Boca Chica today, but it might soon become Starbase 🧵 This point at the south of Texas is the southernmost point in the continental US

We should transform Guantanamo Bay into a 21st Century Hong Kong 🧵 Hong Kong was a deep water port surrounded by a Communist country—China

By building up the port, urbanizing the surrounding area, making business easy, and taxing little, Hong Kong showed China what capitalism could do by becoming a global port and financial center

The answer to this is FASCINATING, it goes beyond what most people think, and its ramifications help explain ALL of the US's climate and population

Here's what people already know: rain
Water basically stops halfway through the US
But why?

https://twitter.com/rememberlenny/status/1875031224659644856

The next thing people will say is: mountains. The US West has tons of them! See map

Mountains stop rain, and the US West is mountainous, so that's why rain doesn't make it farther, right?
Wrong!