Recent Posts

Most Used Categories

Month: January 2023

Charted: U.S. Egg Prices More Than Double in 2022

by Pallavi Rao
This post is by Pallavi Rao from Visual Capitalist

This chart shows the increase in the national average price of a dozen Grade A eggs in the U.S. in 2022

Charted: U.S. Egg Prices Double in 2022

Eggs are a staple food for many countries around the world, and the U.S. is no exception. Americans eat between 250‒280 eggs a year on average.

Eggs are also easy to cook, protein-dense and supply many daily vitamins needed for healthy living, making them a popular meal or ingredient. So when egg prices rise, people notice.

MetalytIQ charted the rapid rise of egg prices in the U.S. during 2022, using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS).

Eggs-asperating Prices

Over the course of 12 months, the national average price for a dozen large Grade A eggs more than doubled, to $4.25 in December from $1.93 in January.

Egg Prices Per Month (2022)Price per dozen
January$1.30
February$2.10
March$2.50
April$2.52
May$2.86
June$2.71
July$2.94
August$3.12
September$2.90
October$3.42
November$3.59
December$4.25

The biggest culprit has been an avian flu outbreak that resulted in 43 million chickens culled to prevent the spread of the disease.

This led to a severe shortfall in egg supply. Egg inventories in December had fallen by one-third compared to January. Combined with increasing demand during the holiday season, prices skyrocketed and empty shelves became apparent in some states.

This is not the first time avian flu has disrupted the industry.. In 2015, a similar outbreak pushed egg prices up 40% in nine months, reaching a high of $2.97 per dozen eggs in September (Read more...)

Visualizing Orangutans: The Most Endangered Great Ape

by Freny Fernandes
This post is by Freny Fernandes from Visual Capitalist

Click to view this graphic in a higher-resolution.

The most endangered great ape: Orangutan

Orangutan: The Most Endangered Great Ape

Just 50 years ago, millions of our orange-haired relatives—the orangutans—populated Earth.

But over the past five decades, these numbers have declined by 50%, and orangutans are estimated to completely disappear in the next 50 years. Currently, the world’s most endangered great ape is on a path to extinction.

This illustrated graphic by Shehryar Saharan uses a wide range of information to highlight the threats that led to the downfall of the world’s orangutans, and what can be done to prevent their extinction. Sources include National Geographic, the New England Primate Conservancy, WWF, the IUCN Red List, Current Biology, Our World in Data, Nature, AAAS, and Britannica.

Where Are the Orangutans?

These long-haired, orange, and gentle primates are closely related to humans. They are extremely intelligent, and also crucial to the ecosystem as they help spread the seeds of trees in the forests they inhabit.

Found exclusively in the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia, these tree-dwellers are Asia’s only great apes. Their three species are all found on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.

SpeciesScientific nameLocationDistinct Physical Features
Sumatran OrangutanPongo abeliiSumatra (Indonesia)Wide cheek pads, longer hair.
Bornean OrangutanPongo pygmaeusIsland of Borneo (Indonesia and Malaysia)Small beard, broad face, dark fur.
Tapanuli OrangutanPongo tapanuliensisSumatra (Indonesia)Flat face, Frizzy hair.

Bornean Orangutans

The dark reddish-haired Bornean Orangutans are more likely than the others to come (Read more...)

Everything You Can’t Have

by Collab Fund
This post is by Collab Fund from Collab Fund

Nothing is as desired as much as the thing you want but can’t have.

In fact for most people there’s a hierarchy of wants that goes something like this:

  • If you don’t want something and don’t have it, you don’t think about it.

  • If you want something and have it, you might feel OK.

  • If you want something and don’t have it, you might feel motivated.

  • If you want something and can’t have it, you drive yourself mad.

A few years after leaving office, Richard Nixon mentioned that the richest people in the world are some of the unhappiest, because they can afford to never struggle.

“Drinking too much. Talking too much. Thinking too little. Retired. No purpose,” he said.

To ordinary people, it sounds amazing. To those who can afford to do anything, it often falls flat.

Nixon elaborated:

You feel that, gee, isn’t it just great to have enough money to afford to live in a very nice house, to be able to play golf, to have nice parties, to wear good clothes, to travel if you want to?

And the answer is: If you don’t have those things, then they can mean a great deal to you.

When you do have them, they mean nothing to you.

This is a little exaggerated. But the idea of valuing only what you’ve struggled for is real.

In 1905, author William Dawson wrote in his book *The Quest for The Simple Life* about how the hardest thing to understand about (Read more...)

Visualizing the Scale of Global Fossil Fuel Production

by Govind Bhutada
This post is by Govind Bhutada from Visual Capitalist

Subscribe to the Elements free mailing list for more like this

Scale of global fossil fuel production

The Scale of Global Fossil Fuel Production

This was originally posted on Elements. Sign up to the free mailing list to get beautiful visualizations on natural resource megatrends in your email every week.

Fossil fuels have been our predominant source of energy for over a century, and the world still extracts and consumes a colossal amount of coal, oil, and gas every year.

This infographic visualizes the volume of global fossil fuel production in 2021 using data from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy.

The Facts on Fossil Fuels

In 2021, the world produced around 8 billion tonnes of coal, 4 billion tonnes of oil, and over 4 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.

Most of the coal is used to generate electricity for our homes and offices and has a key role in steel production. Similarly, natural gas is a large source of electricity and heat for industries and buildings. Oil is primarily used by the transportation sector, in addition to petrochemical manufacturing, heating, and other end uses.

Here’s a full breakdown of coal, oil, and gas production by country in 2021.

Coal Production

If all the coal produced in 2021 were arranged in a cube, it would measure 2,141 meters (2.1km) on each side—more than 2.5 times the height of the world’s tallest building.

China produced 50% or more than four billion tonnes of the world’s coal in 2021. It’s also the largest consumer of coal, (Read more...)

Asheem Chandna | Leveraging the Downturn

by Greylock Partners
This post is by Greylock Partners from Greymatter

Audio version of Greylock general partner Asheem Chandna's essay for Forbes "Four Tasks for CEOs in 2023: Leveraging the Downturn." As Chandna puts forth, while economic recessions can mark the end for many otherwise promising companies, they also present opportunities. Businesses that were previously in hyper-growth mode now have time to re-asses and implement tactics they couldn't in busier times. Chandna lays out several strategies to take in this scenario. This essay was read by Greylock's head of editorial Heather Mack. You can read the essay here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/asheemchandna/2023/01/18/four-tasks-for-ceos-in-2023-leveraging-the-downturn/?sh=7494f60f56cc

The Cleanse

by Fred Wilson

I’ve never done a cleanse. But many of my friends and family members have done them. There are various flavors of cleanses but the basic idea is you cut back your consumption of food and drink and replace it with mostly liquid nutrition for anywhere from a day to a month. I believe the most common lengths are in and around one week.

As I understand it, the theory behind the cleanse is it helps your body eliminate all sorts of toxins that build up over time from a poor diet and other unhealthy practices and allows you to reset. I’m told that people feel great when they complete the cleanse.

I like to think of what we’ve been going through in the tech sector/startup land/venture capital over the last year as a cleanse. Things had gotten so nutty, frothy, and out of control that we needed a reset. It was not just valuations that got out of whack, although they certainly did. Cost structures got out of whack. Compensation structures got out of whack. Company cultures got out of whack. Venture capital firms got out of whack.

Things just moved too fast, we lost track of what made sense, and focused on doing more than thinking. Everyone was reacting to everyone and everything. All of this hyperactive behavior was driven by fear of missing out and the idea that the path to success was more, more, more.

So now we have stopped eating all of that bad food and (Read more...)

Big Emps, Low Temps!

by Om Malik
This post is by Om Malik from On my Om

In 2021, I had a chance to visit the frozen continent of Antarctica. It was a chance to experience “totality,” a kind of solar eclipse where the Moon fully obscures the disk of the Sun. Originally the plan was to see this eclipse over a large Emperor Penguin colony, but the weather changed my plans. Instead, I experienced totality on the vast nothingness of the Union Glacier.

But before that, I got to spend a lot of time with the Emperor penguins and get up close and personal with these beautiful creatures. I captured some of these moments on my iPhone, which was my primary tool for making short videos on this trip, which took me to different locations in Antarctica. My videographer friend Felix helped cobble them together and created a short 2+ minute film for your enjoyment.

Let me know what you think!

January 31, 2023, San Francisco

Pull, Don’t Push: How Catalysts Overcome Barriers and Drive Product Adoption

by First Round Review

Marketing expert Jonah Berger has spent years probing into the science behind changing people’s minds, and why becoming an effective change agent is about lowering barriers, not pushing harder. He distilled five of the most common barriers into a simple framework and walks us through how founders can more effectively build and sell products.