Welcome to Z-Pack:.you were due for a mental cleanse 🧠

If this is your first Z-Pack, welcome - I'm Zach.

I’m chronically online, finding out how the world works.

⬇️ Let’s get it.

🌎 Should we be scared of earthquakes?

The discourse/headlines: everyone should be scared of earthquakes because they’re super dangerous! 😱

The reality: earthquakes can be devastating, but we’re so much better now at building cities that don’t collapse, like in Taiwan.

We also know the terrible consequences of what happens when we don’t build our cities’ infrastructure properly.

Remember the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria last year? The one that killed more than 60,000 people?

What if I told you that was only 0.4 magnitude greater than the one in Taiwan? 🤯

Side note: if you love to read about the biggest tech companies and their strategies, def check out Ben Thompson’s Stratechery.

📉 Declining suicide rate in Europe

Good for Europe! But how’s this going in the U.S.A?

The discourse/headlines: the suicide rate in America is out of control.

The reality: it’s way better than pre-1940s, but we need to figure out how to lower the rate.

• The age-adjusted suicide rate is WAY lower than it was pre-1940s.

  • Like we’ve discussed earlier, older generations had it rough - no widely available plumbing, electricity, clean water, food options, vaccines and antibiotics, etc.

• “Age-adjusted suicide rates did peak in 2018 and then decline for two years (good!) but unfortunately that short trend reversed in 2021, and then 2022 was worse than 2018.” - from economist Jeremy Horpedahl

As shared by economist Noah Smith in his excellent post on what’s stressing Americans out from August 2023, “Americans used to have a lower suicide rate than high-income countries in general, but ever since the early 2010s we’ve passed them up.”

Why is this? Well, we don’t really know!

Is it because…

• Americans have more access to firearms than Europeans?

• Worse social isolation?

• Rise of cellphones and access to 24/7 negatively-biased news?
  It doesn’t seem like this one, because Europeans also use social media and cellphones.

This is something we have to keep figuring out.

🗳️ Are young American men drinking the Trump Koolaid?

🩼 Are you a victim?

👇 Great insight from Adam Grant, organizational psychology professor at Wharton and NYT bestselling author.

Thanks for taking the Pack,

Zach

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Disclaimer: This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.