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I often find myself marvelling at the fractal of businesses and public spaces (shops, museums, cafes, galleries, hotels, etc) that exists around me as I'm walking down the street - some are obvious and easily discoverable, others I will probably never learn of.

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I find myself marveling at how much stock the store at my local petrol station carries.

There are shelves full of different varieties of chocolate bars, and each of those wouldn't be there if people weren't buying them. Yet if you look at how many people are in the store at any given time, and how many of those people are buying chocolate bars and extrapolate then it _feels_ as if it shouldn't be worth anyone's while to carry so much stock.

There’s an entire supply chain behind that too. Cut off trucking into town and even the big grocery stores will run out of everything within days at most.

the stock of over-the-counter medications is wild.

there's are a few places synthesizing complex chemicals with insanely high degree of precision to go into asipirin and cold medicine and such. and then they get thrown into a broad distribution network that ensures almost everybody is within 5 miles of access to them

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