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Amanda Shendruk

@not-ship.com

https://www.not-ship.com/ Explaining the world through data and design • Newsletter: Not-Ship • Formerly Washington Post, Quartz, the Guardian 🇨🇦 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

277 Posts1160 Follower1143 Folgt
Yusuf@yusufimaadkhan.com · 2mo ago

“Our world is increasingly moving towards extreme values: Damages from climate change, deaths due to genocide, wealth that knows no bounds. And we can't tackle them if we can't wrap our heads around the numbers.”

July 15, 2026 Understanding large values: It's our ethical duty Amanda Shendruk
Amanda Shendruk@not-ship.com · 2mo ago

What's your favourite technique for trying to understand big numbers? I like turning them into time! In my newsletter this week I look at ways to wrap our heads around large values. What did I miss? www.not-ship.com/large-numbers/

This is a table showing how large numbers convert to time. 1 million seconds is 11.6 days, about as long as a vacation. 1 billion seconds is 31.7 years. About the length of a career. 1 trillion seconds is 31,700 years, which is longer than human civilization.
Amanda Shendruk@not-ship.com · 3mo ago

For decades, Americans haven't been feeling too optimistic about their country. Now, on its big anniversary, I gave the US a 250-year performance review. How do you think it's doing? Meets expectations? Room for improvement? Full performance review here: lnkd.in/ePYdgmjy

This line chart shows the percent of US adults who say they are satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the US today. It starts in 1990 and goes until 2026. Around 2000, the portion of those dissatisfied became greater than the portion of those who are satisfied. It has been that way ever since.
Abbey@abbeyarletto.bsky.social · 3mo ago

When reality surpasses fiction! Top: fictional forecast for August 2050, broadcast by French TV in 2014 to warn about the consequences of global warming. Bottom: Real French forecast for yesterday, June 22, 2026.

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Amanda Shendruk@not-ship.com · 3mo ago

Things are really heating up in Europe. So, in today's Not-Ship the focus was heatwaves. I was floored by this: Heatwaves are clearly on the rise globally, but the "dirty thirties" were such an extreme outlier that you can't even see that rise on this chart of the US. www.not-ship.com/heatwaves/

This is a chart showing the Annual heat wave index for the US. The spike in the 1930s is so extreme that it dwarfs all other data by at least three times. During the 1930s, the US experience extreme heatwaves as part of the Dust Bowl.