information revolution is a disappointment. Jobs get slashed, but there is no increase in the creation of actual wealth or value.

There has been an increase in wealth, but most of it has gone to the top 1%. Trickle-down is not simply not working anymore. Sorry, Republicans, but you have it all wrong. You are applying 1960 economics to the wrong era. Tax the wealthy to fix our rotting infrastructure; then we'll have jobs, consumers, and working roads and pipes.

I was thinking Spanish Inquisition, Crusades, vicious fights between Catholics and Protestants, Galileo, etc. True, that's more of a mid-point than a "start".

Christianity "matured". Islam seems to still be in the middle stage.

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That explains the No Smoking sign the probe found.

Then, on the day after Thanksgiving in 2013, methane readings shot up in Gale Crater and stayed high while Curiosity made three more measurements over the next 60 days.

Right after Thanksgiving? I suspect they did it Gilligan's Island-style and the probe really landed on Earth, in middle America.

Christianity started out violent but eventually mellowed out for the most part. Islam is just several ticks behind the times.

Just post them all on "Hot or not"

I don't think a parent wants The Internet rating their 11-year-old daughter's anterior end (especially if the score is extremely high or low.)

Scotty: "Files? How quaint".

"It's the best script ever because I get to shoot first this time!" -HF

Astronomer A: "Do you see anything in the telescope eyepiece?"

Astronomer B: "Nope. Nothing."

Astronomer A: "Yaaay! That means WE discovered Dark Matter!"

Astronomer B: "So, do we get a Nobel?"

Astronomer A: "It already came. Didn't you see it?"

Astronomer B: "Nope."

Astronomer A: "That's because it arrived in a Dark Box."

"What no one was anticipating is that the bots are extremely effective [at] looking like a high value consumer."

Maybe because "high value consumers" are usually bot-like drooling idiots.

If you work outdoors, like most of our ancestor did, you generally don't get acne. (One theory is that the sun's radiation kills the related bacteria, or at least co-produces chemicals that do.) Thus, acne is not a good example because it's mostly caused by modern living.

Generally those who are more attractive, especially females, get more resources than the ugly, so acne genes probably would have been filtered away under normal circumstances.

We have zero experience with what might happen

We do have experience for what the creators of malware do, and "expand, gather info, and destroy" is often the mission they build into their creations. Thus, it's reasonable to speculate that the first and early dangerous AI will want to "expand, gather info, and destroy".