Oil and The Night Watch
Hi there 👋 Building Blocks is a weekly roundup of content to prickle your mind. There has been a big jump in subscribers since the previous edition. Welcome!
Today’s stories in a nutshell:
🛢 Energy and geopolitics
♻️ Where does our trash go?
👩💻 Excel magic
🖼 Appreciating a Dutch master
🧩 Try a new game
🛢 Geopolitics: Global energy supplies
Economies need energy like the human body needs water. Because of this, energy drives geopolitics, influencing the budgets and policies of most countries. Oil, coal and gas are by far the biggest sources of the global energy supply, with oil as the largest.
Because the world relies heavily on fossil fuels for its energy supply, we’re subservient to the handful of countries where these natural resources are in abundant supply. Here are the world’s biggest producers of oil, gas and coal (excluding reserves).
Oil:
Gas:
Coal:
The balance between global supply and demand for oil is tight, so a dent in the oil supply sends prices skyrocketing, as demonstrated following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
Vladimir Putin built his power on the back of energy commodity exports. Russia is the biggest oil, gas, and coal supplier to Europe, providing over 40% of its gas and coal supply and 27% of crude oil imports. Not ideal for European countries that must decide how best to intervene in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. According to The Economist, Europe may run short of diesel, and Germany is preparing to ration natural gas next winter if Russia cuts off supplies. I wonder how strong Western resolve against Russia will remain once the impact of this really hits the pockets of average Americans and Europeans.
As the world transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energy, we can expect changes to the geopolitical power balance. One country has set itself up to benefit from this shifting landscape more than any other: China.
More on that in future.
♻️ Environment: Where does our trash go?
Do you regard yourself as someone who litters? Would you, for example, sprinkle your used plastic into the ocean like confetti?
Of course not. That would be ludicrous.
It amazes me how much trash our little family generates each week. It feels like I’m constantly trudging down the stairs to chuck rubbish into Amsterdam’s municipal rubbish collection facilities. Luckily I can rely on the city’s waste management services to take care of our trash responsibly. Or can I?
In this Bloomberg Quicktake, an investigative journalist put tracking devices on plastic items to find out where they went after putting them into the recycling bins in a Tesco store (a huge UK retailer) in London. His trash travelled a surprisingly complicated journey from London across the ocean to the Netherlands, through Germany to Poland and ended up in Turkey.
The next time you throw out the trash, it may be the first leg of an adventure across many countries. Who knows where it might end up.
The moral of the story: Waste less.
👩💻 A useful skill: Excel tricks
Apart from Microsoft Outlook, I’ve used Excel exponentially more than any other software during my career. I wish there were a scoreboard of how many hours I’ve spent on Excel. Although I must be nearing Malcolm Gladwell’s mythical 10 000 hours, it seems that I’ve only scratched the surface of Excel’s capabilities.
If you work on Excel as much as I do, this 👉 Twitter thread 👈 contains many tips and tricks that you may find useful. Here’s an example:
🖼 Appreciating art: The Night Watch (1642) by Rembrandt van Rijn
Dutch artist Rembrandt’s famous Dutch Golden Age painting, The Night Watch, depicts members of the civic guard who defended the city and public order. It’s an example of the Baroque, a style characterized by rich, deep colours and chiaroscuro, the use of contrasts between light and dark. Baroque paintings, including the Night Watch, were also known for capturing action in motion.
The painting is massive (h379.5cm × w453.5cm × w337kg) and hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. You can marvel at the finer details of the painting by clicking on this ultra-high-resolution version. If you want to learn more about this masterpiece, check out this video 👇
🧩 Weekend games
Test your vocabulary: Wordle or take the Mirriam-Webster quiz (NEW)
Test your geography: Globle
Test your knowledge of maps: WorLdle
Guess the country based on its exports: Tradle
Regarding "The Night Watch," it appears that the shadow-cradled emblem of Amsterdam on the lieutenant's coat may be Rembrandt's 17th century Baroque version of an "Easter egg." Thank you for this holiday edition of Building Blocks.