Scarcinality

Tools & explorations

Curiosities

Things that don't fit the dispatch format but are worth building and seeing. Interactive tools, maps, and other instruments for looking at the world through the framework's lens, and occasionally far outside it.

Health

Where scarcity shows up in bodies rather than balance sheets.

A scatter plot of health spending per person against infant mortality, with peer nations clustered low and the United States isolated in the top right corner.

Spending vs outcomes · 27 nations · OECD data

What Health Care Buys

The United States spends $13,473 per person and has the worst infant mortality and shortest life expectancy of any rich country. Japan spends $5,365 and leads the world on both. Twenty-seven systems compared, each with a synopsis and rated wait times for physicals, minor surgery, and major surgery.

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A heatmap of the United States with states colored from blue (low) to red (high) by disease case count.

Interactive map · CDC data

Disease Hotspot Map

Select any nationally notifiable disease and year from the CDC's NNDSS data set. The map recolors by state case count, light for fewer, oxblood for more, with a ranked sidebar and state-by-state tooltip. Scarcity shows up in health systems too; this is where it lands geographically.

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Commodities

The things that get grown, dug up, and priced.

A line chart of ground beef retail price per pound from 2008 to 2026, annotated with drought, COVID packing shutdowns, and tariff events.

Annotated chart · BLS APU0000703112 · 2008–2026

Ground Beef Price, 2008–2026

Eighteen years of retail ground beef prices annotated by scarcity type: the real drought-driven herd shortage of 2011–2015, the COVID meatpacking bottleneck of 2020, and the compound tariff-and-screwworm stack driving prices above $6.80 in 2026. A companion to the dispatch on which shortage is actually behind the beef price.

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A choropleth map of the United States with states shaded from light to dark green by crop production volume, with the corn belt clearly visible.

Interactive map · USDA NASS data

Crop Production Map

Select any commodity, corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, hay, and more, and a year from 2000 to 2023. The map shades each state by total output, with a ranked sidebar and per-state tooltip showing volume and share of national production. Data from USDA NASS Quick Stats; requires a free API key.

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A choropleth map of the United States with states shaded from light to dark blue by active mine count, Nevada and Alaska clearly dominant for gold.

Interactive map · MSHA data

Mine Count Map

Select a commodity, gold, copper, coal, limestone, sand & gravel, and more, to see how active mines are distributed across US states. Data from the MSHA mine registry; counts reflect active and licensed operations. Gold clusters in Nevada and Alaska. Coal fills Appalachia. Sand and gravel is everywhere.

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Corporate profits as a share of GDP rising against business bankruptcy filings falling, 1960 to 2025, with corporate tax changes marked and the statutory rate stepping down from 52 to 21 percent.

Profits, failures & tax law · BEA · ABI · 1960–2025

Profits Up, Failures Down

Corporate profits reached 13.25 percent of GDP in 2025, the highest in the postwar record, while the top corporate tax rate fell from 52 percent to 21. Every major tax change is marked, and none of them lines up with the turn. The honest finding here is a negative one.

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Energy

What it costs, how long it takes, and where it comes from.

Bar comparison showing a data center drawing 300 megawatts against a neighborhood of 350 homes drawing 0.41 megawatts on the same 100 acres.

Interactive comparison · land, power, water

A Data Center and a Neighborhood

Build the same hundred acres twice. One way houses 875 people and draws 0.41 megawatts. The other houses nobody and draws 300, which is the residential electricity of a city of 570,000. Adjust site size, IT load, cooling efficiency and housing density and watch the ratios move. The water gap turns out to be the small one, and the argument is mostly about water.

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Stacked bars showing electricity generation mix by source for the world, China, USA, France, Norway, South Africa, and Brazil.

Generation mix · 37 countries · 2025

How the World Makes Electricity

France runs on nuclear, Norway on water, South Africa on coal, Iran almost entirely on gas. Every country’s generation mix broken into coal, gas, oil, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, and biomass, sortable by any source. In 2025 renewables passed coal worldwide for the first time in a century.

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A dot plot by country showing lifting cost, full-cycle breakeven, and fiscal breakeven per barrel of oil, with Saudi Arabia spanning from three dollars to eighty-six.

Cost comparison · 19 countries · three measures

What a Barrel Actually Costs

Saudi Arabia lifts a barrel of oil for about three dollars and needs roughly eighty-six to balance its budget. That spread is not geology, it is politics. Extraction cost by country, split into what it costs to pump, what it costs to develop, and what it costs to govern on.

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Three stacked timeline bars comparing land, shallow water, and deepwater oil development from survey to first oil, with a success rate strip below.

Cycle-time chart · land · shallow · deepwater

From Seismic Survey to Gas Pump

Every phase between a geologist's first survey and a gallon in your tank, for land, shallow water, and deepwater drilling. A land well takes about sixteen months. A deepwater project takes nearly nine years. And seven in ten high-impact exploration wells find nothing worth producing at all.

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A dual-axis line chart showing US rig count (navy dashed) and Brent crude price (oxblood) from 2015 to 2025.

Dual-axis chart · EIA · Baker Hughes · 2015–2025

Rig Count & Brent Crude

Ten years of American drilling rigs and the price of oil, on one chart. Watch the gap between them. Price moves, and drilling answers months later, which is the whole story of shale economics and OPEC strategy at every turn from the 2015 price war to the Ukraine shock.

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A choropleth map of the United States shaded from light tan to dark brown by crude oil production, Texas sharply dominant.

Interactive map · EIA data

Oil Production Map

Select any year from 1981 to 2025 to see how US crude oil production is distributed across states. Data from the EIA. Texas produces nearly half the national total. New Mexico and North Dakota have surged since the shale boom. Alaska's share has fallen every decade since its 1988 peak.

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Politics

Who decides, who pays, and where that has moved over time.

A scatter plot of education spending against PISA reading scores across 32 developed countries, with a nearly flat trend line, Ireland high on the left and Iceland low on the right.

Spending vs attainment · 32 countries · World Bank · PISA

What Education Spending Buys

Ireland devotes 2.9 percent of GDP to education, the least of any rich country here, and finishes near the top on both degrees and reading. Iceland devotes 7.3 percent and finishes below average. Across all 32 countries the correlation between spending and outcomes is almost exactly zero.

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A chart of international student enrollment in the United States from 1960 to 2026, rising from 48,000 to 1.18 million, with policy markers and a shaded band for students working on Optional Practical Training.

Enrollment and stay rates · IIE · NSF · 1960–2026

Who Came, and Who Stayed

International enrollment went from 48,486 in 1960 to 1.18 million in 2025, and roughly three quarters of international STEM doctorates were still living in the country years after graduating. Nearly every inflection in the line sits beside a change in the law rather than the economy.

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Bar comparison showing 128 billion dollars in remittances across four corridors against 7 billion dollars of US foreign aid disbursed in fiscal 2026.

Interactive comparison · aid, migration, fiscal effect

Aid, Migration, and the Money That Goes Home

Foreign aid, migration from the countries receiving it, and what that migration costs or contributes at home, on one page instead of three. US aid disbursed this fiscal year ran under $7 billion after USAID was shut down. Migrants sent about $128 billion through four corridors alone. The fiscal answer flips from negative to positive on a single accounting convention, so that one is a switch you can throw yourself.

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A chart of green cards issued per year from 1960 to 2025 with the 1986 legalisation spike marked, above a per-capita federal ledger comparing what immigrants and native-born citizens receive and pay.

Admissions and fiscal ledger · DHS · National Academies

What an Immigrant Costs

Green cards issued each year since 1960, against federal taxes paid and benefits received per person. Native-born citizens consume more federal resources per head than first-generation immigrants under every scenario the National Academies tested. And the whole argument turns on one accounting assumption worth $3,613 a head.

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A chart of unemployment, inflation, and debt-to-GDP lines from 1940 to 2026, drawn over alternating blue and red bands marking which party held the presidency.

Interactive chart · BLS · BEA · Treasury · 1940–2026

The Economy Under Each Party

Unemployment, real GDP growth, inflation, and the national debt, drawn over a band chart of which party held the White House. Toggle each series, hover any year, and judge the record for yourself. The one clean pattern is the debt ratchet, and it belongs to both parties.

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A US map color-coded by political lean and fiscal status, dark blue for blue donor states, dark red for red consumer states, purple shades for swing states.

Interactive map · USASpending · BEA · MIT Election Lab

Federal Donor & Consumer States

Which states pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal spending, and does it follow party lines? Select any fiscal year from 2008 to 2023 to see grants, direct payments, and contracts by state, colored by political lean.

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A semicircular gauge divided into eight political bands from communism to fascism, with a needle pointing between conservatism and authoritarian.

Interpretive gauge · 28 countries · 1940–2026

The Political Spectrum Gauge

Where does each country sit on the spectrum from communism to fascism, and how did it get there? A gauge of the current reading and a timeline of every swing since 1940, for the United States and 27 other countries. Interpretive placements, offered to be disputed.

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Curiosities are built when something is worth seeing and the framework gives it a useful frame, or when the data is simply too good not to map. More will appear here as they're finished.