Lars Yencken
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lars.yencken.org
Lars Yencken
@lars.yencken.org
Head of Engineering at FAR.AI
Reposted by Lars Yencken
In a new analysis (note, back-of-the-envelope) @charlesjkenny.bsky.social and @justsand.bsky.social estimate that US foreign aid saves around 3.3 million lives per year.

You can read more about their methodology and results here:
www.cgdev.org/blog/how-man...
March 16, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Reposted by Lars Yencken
More land animals than ever before are slaughtered for meat.

Recent estimates indicate that globally, most animals are raised on factory farms. In the US, where better data and research are available, 99% of livestock is factory-farmed.
February 18, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Considering how good advanced voice mode is with ChatGPT, it's crazy to think how close the smart speaker craze was to getting it right — just off by a few years.
February 7, 2025 at 12:11 PM
Reposted by Lars Yencken
Our founder @maxroser.bsky.social has received an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven & UCLouvain!

For his work to make data & research on large global challenges easier for everyone to access & understand, and the positive global impact that Our World in Data has had.

Congratulations, Max!
February 5, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Lars Yencken
“Every year, over 700,000 horseshoe crabs are caught and bled. The global vaccine industry uses an estimated 600 million chicken eggs a year to produce influenza vaccines. And we boil between 420 billion and 1 trillion silkworms every year to produce silk.”

Could we replace them with synthetic bio?
Animals as chemical factories - Works in Progress
Horses bled for antivenom, crabs drained for endotoxin tests, and silkworms boiled for silk. Science can now replace these practices with synthetic alternatives — but we need to find ways to scale the...
worksinprogress.co
December 6, 2024 at 8:42 AM
Reposted by Lars Yencken
The vast majority of people in the world — over 96% — live in the country where they were born. Only a small minority are international migrants.

Insight for @ourworldindata.org
ourworldindata.org/data-insight...
December 6, 2024 at 9:21 AM
Reposted by Lars Yencken
Few people even know about this; when people are asked in surveys how child mortality has changed the majority says it has stagnated or increased.

If you consider that many don't know about humanity's biggest achievement, then it's not surprising that many are so pessimistic about our future.
November 27, 2024 at 6:18 PM