Five systems.
One timeline.
Each row is a system. Each column is a month. Colour intensity is proportional to the indexed value — Jan 2021 = 100. Before February 2022, the grid is mostly dark. The systems are under stress. They hold.
2021–2024
in parallel
The line is not
a design choice.
It is the date on which every system in this grid changed. Not sequentially — simultaneously. The cells to the right of that line are a structurally different state from the cells to the left. The grid did not recover its pre-2022 shape.
Aug 2022
May 2022
Not sequentially.
In all of them.
Refugees: +50% in 12 months. Food: fertiliser +127% vs Jan 2021. Energy: gas ×9.6 by August. Military spending: a record in 2022, then again in 2023, then again in 2024. Each row tells a different story about the same event.
2021→2023
2021→2024
Some prices fell.
Wages did not recover.
Commodity prices have partially corrected. But real wages in 28 of 39 OECD countries remain below 2021 levels in 2023. Military spending has not corrected at all — it set a new record every year from 2022 to 2024.
2024 · all-time record