It’s a great example of using large numbers without context to scare people.

Say “6.4 billion gallons” in isolation and people will be horrified. Put it in context relative to something like alfalfa farming and it doesn’t even appear on the same scale.

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recallingmemory 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Absolutely, not to mention the difficulty people have in grasping the difference between a billion and a trillion.

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BurningFrog 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Always use the same unit in comparisons.

Instead of "1.6 trillion vs 6.4 billion" write "1600 billion vs 6.4 billion"!

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hennell 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've remembered the fact that a million seconds is ~11 days and a billion seconds is ~32 years since I was a kid. Still feels pretty ridiculous as an adult, no-one who didn't know it has even guessed close (and some who try to work it out were way off).

I just had to google what a trillion is in years, and the answer made me realise I don't instinctively understand the relationship between a billion and a trillion either!

	▲	dreamcompiler 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Each "-illion" is 1000x bigger than the previous one. If you have some cubes 1 cm on a side (about the size of a sugar cube), you can make a bigger cube out of them with 10 little cubes along each edge. Now you have 1 big cube made from 1000 smaller cubes. Your bigger cube is now 10cm x 10cm x 10 cm. Easy enough to pick up in one hand. Now do it again. Make a bigger cube with 10 of those cubes along each edge. Now you have a cube 1 meter on each side. Too big to pick up by hand but it would still fit in the back of a pickup truck. This 1-meter cube contains 1 million sugar cubes. Do it again: With 1000 of the previous cubes, make a cube 10 meters on a side. This cube is the size of a 3-story house, and it contains 1 billion sugar cubes. Now do it once more: With the house-sized cubes, make a 10x10x10. Now the cube is about the size of a football stadium. It contains 1 trillion sugar cubes. Take 4 of these stadiums, call each sugar cube $1, and you have the market cap of Nvidia. [Note: This is US usage. In older UK English, some of the "-illion" words mean different things than they do here.]

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rogerrogerr 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What’s the difference between a million and a billion? A billion.

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dmd 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

"You have a million dollars? Damn man you a regular Elon Musk or something"

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pfdietz 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I understand it takes a gallon of water to grow one almond in California.

	▲	recallingmemory 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		That's right, and it takes ~600 gallons of water to make one hamburger. 1: https://watercalculator.org/footprint/what-is-the-water-foot... 2: https://www.almonds.com/why-almonds/growing-good/water-wise