Every figure here comes from a real source. A few come with honest footnotes. We owe you both.
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Children were born · Humans left
The UN counts roughly 132 million arrivals and 63 million departures a year. The arithmetic of it is, we admit, unsettling.
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Hands were held, somewhere
Unsourced · Included on purpose
Nobody counts this. We estimated it the way anyone would — by wanting it to be true. If it comforts you: the number is almost certainly too low.
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Songs were heard, somewhere
About seven trillion streams a year, which is 222,000 a second, which is a lot of people being moved at once, quietly, in different rooms.
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Meals were prepared and shared
Not every meal is shared. We're using "shared" loosely, and a little wishfully.
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Pages were turned, cover toward close
This one required some arithmetic. We counted active readers, average pace, time zones. The result feels right. The result may not be right.
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Dollars were spent on war
$2.887 trillion in 2025 — another record, up 6.1% in real terms. The eleventh consecutive year of growth. Europe rose 14%; Asia and Oceania rose 8.1%, the largest annual rise since 2009. The number went up. We expected that. We did not stop expecting it.
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Tons of carbon joined the air
38.1 gigatons in 2025. Also a record. Records, on this side of the ledger, tend to be the wrong kind.
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Questions were asked of AI, not people
By February 2026 it was closer to 3 billion. By the time you read this, higher still. The number is chasing itself. We are using the last one that was actually counted.
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A species vanished
Roughly one species per hour. The exact rate is debated, and we understand the impulse to debate it. The direction is not in dispute.
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A sister piece
What Color Was The Sky asks a similar question about yesterday's light, reconstructed from atmospheric data. Vol. II of what is now, apparently, a series.