The rapid expansion of the population seems to have been largely due to economic factors specifically the need to have a lot of kids on a farm for labor combined with the requirement for a lot of kids to take care of the parents in their old age.

Also the lack of birth control but that's believe it or not a lesser effect. Japan's birth rate dropped below sustainability even before they had the birth control pill available. Also Japan didn't legalize birth control until 1995 go figure...

Basically polls show women want 2.6 kids however it looks like maintaining the population requires 2.7 kids. So without economic and social pressure to force women into having more kids than they want the human population actually starts to decline.

Now there are a bunch of religious wackadoodles and psychopaths that want to turn women back into property and bring back stuff like marital rape in order to boost birth rates. Not sure that'll work though without the need for a shitload of farm workers and we just don't need that many Farm workers.

It is possible that the billionaire class will dismantle capitalism and our modern technological society bringing back a twisted form of feudalism but if they do that the lower cast will almost certainly lose access to reliable food and medicine that allowed the population explosion in the last hundred years or so. And that's without talking about things like world wars brought on by mass unemployment and stuff like that...

Assuming our species doesn't wipe itself out we are probably going to plateau and start to decline in population.

On the other hand ask any expert in foreign policy and they will tell you that at any given time the world is a couple of mistakes away from a large war and this time we have nuclear weapons. I could very easily see us putting crazies in charge of the arsenal too

Just a note - MacOS is Unix https://www.theregister.com/20.... Linux is Unixy as we say. Note that Unix is "POSIX compliant" now, and has been for a long time, (1993) so the pedants among us might want to weigh in on that.

Point is, I bash around in Terminal half the day. The default is now zsh, but bash sounds better to speak.

Yeah, when I have to go into Windows command line, I have to remember to shift my mental state.

Main point is, I have Apple create the ecosystem while I do paid things. Why should I have to do that? My burn rate overwhelms the cost of the phone or computer very quickly. It's like having a starter motor on a car instead of a hand crank. Obligatory car reference.

Exactly. There is a meme that all Apple users are clueless, with more money than brains. Sure, some are. It would be silly to think that Android and Windows users are the intelligentsia of computer, phone, and tablet users. Some are smart and savvy, some are not

You are trying to make the inferior performance of Android product integration a flex. Yes - I get Apple to provide a functioning integrated system. I have things to do that I am paid for, and those things work so much better with an integrated system that I do not have to futz with while unpaid, simply to make them integrate after a fashion. Just getting a computing device to function is so early 1990's.

And my familiarity with UNIX and its close brother Linux - well, I don't know about sleeping better, but I can get more hours of sleep.

Modern models will take into account statistical biases in lotteries. For example, here's ChatGPT:

Pick good lottery numbers for the Virginia powerball lottery

Good question. First, a reality check: Powerball is pure chance — there’s no “good” numbers that are more likely to win. Every set of 5 white balls (1–69) + 1 Powerball (1–26) has exactly the same probability.
wwwuat.valottery.com
+1

That said, I can give you a few tips + a sample “random but balanced” pick, if you’d like to pick your own numbers rather than use Quick Pick.

Some tips when choosing your Powerball numbers

Spread your numbers
Try to pick a mix across the range (low, mid, high). According to lottery-strategy advice, not clustering all your numbers in one group is better.
samlotto.com

Avoid patterns
Many people pick birthdays, anniversaries, or sequential numbers. That’s fine—but if you win, you might have to share with more people because these are popular picks.
lotteryvalley.com

Use “due” or “hot” numbers carefully
Some sites (like lottery-analysis tools) track which numbers are “hot” (drawn recently) or “overdue” (haven’t appeared in a while). But remember: past draws don’t change future odds.
m.lottostrategies.com

Mix even and odd
According to some statistical analyses, it’s less likely to draw all odd or all even numbers.
samlotto.com

Play responsibly
Odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are extremely long: 1 in ~292 million.
lotterycritic.com

Sample “balanced” Powerball pick

Here’s a random-but-balanced combination you could use just for fun (or as a basis to tweak):

White balls: 8, 23, 41, 57, 65

Powerball: 12

If you like, I can generate 5 different “smart random” picks for the next Virginia Powerball draw (balanced by probability and number distribution). Do you want me to do that?

It's a damned shame '99942 Apothis' will miss us in a few years

It's not too late to fix that.

The thing is, it very much *won't* be random numbers. It's about as far from a random number generator as you can get.

In a really bad model, one would expect it to likely be "numbers it's seen the most in the context of a lottery". But in a good model, esp. a thinking model, one would expect it to think over which sorts of numbers are statistically over-chosen (birthdates, etc) and avoid them in giving its answers.

The funny thing is, think of how this woman will interact with ChatGPT from now on. ChatGPT could say "Abraham Lincoln was married to John Wilkes Booth", and she'd be thinking, "Okay, that sounds really, really wrong, but on the other hand, it picked the right lottery numbers, so..."

In either a great way or a horrifying dystopian way.

Either we get rid of billionaires and ruling classes and we rule together without demanding leaders control us or we let the billionaires take over and become trillionaires and then completely dismantle capitalism. Once that happens the economy collapses, all of us basically regress into feudal poverty and about 1% of the population will still have modern technological civilization and the other 99% will have basically nothing.

That's the plan anyway. People keep asking if none of us have any money who's going to buy the billionaires' products?

You think they haven't asked that same thing? You don't think Elon Musk and Bill Gates have noticed that they are completely dependent on you and your filthy little consumers and worker bees in order to have their wealth and prestige and power?

Of course they've noticed it and of course they don't like it. They are taking steps to eliminate the dependency.

That said I don't think they're clever enough to pull it off completely and I think eventually they will start world wars and go nuclear but time will tell.

Maybe when the raccoons take over as the next dominant species they'll be better off than we were. Or it could be beavers. They're pretty close to having opposable thumbs with a few mutations.

Ford made the news because they were complaining about not being able to find 5,000 Machinists but it turns out the reason they can't get those workers is they built the factory in the middle of nowhere and nobody wants to live out in the middle of nowhere for a job where they can be laid off at any time without any other jobs around. It's basically a company town at that point and you're fucked if you live there because it's only a matter of time.

Meanwhile even if the factories come back the jobs don't because the vast majority of the other work is automated. 5,000 machinists sounds great but that's for auto work. Most of the stuff we make these days as a species can be made by robots and machines. So you can do all the tariffs you want and you might get the factories back here but you aren't getting the jobs.

The only reason you see so many people in factories overseas is there paid slave labor wages and if they try to unionize their fascist government just kills them and harvests their organs.

They're all good reasons to use tariffs to force industries to come back even if we don't get the jobs. Not having semiconductors built here as a national security concern.

But we need to stop talking about bringing back jobs with tariffs because that's just not going to happen.

For some, it looks like other places they might put it. Be more inclusive.

You are right about that. As well, they only released them in certain markets where they figured out the demographics. In the world at large, they'd not be so successful. We live in a world where a few people think the iSock is a good idea. Probably the same demographic that believe the new Jaguar commercial people are cool. I suppose if they think the iSock is cool and want to spend the money they can. I suspect they might also have problems with financial savvy, but that's another story.

Do you think? Do you think that Android ownera are all Mensa members or Illuminati?

The iPhone pocket was for sale in very limited locations, picked for demographics. Deciding Apple users are a separate species is kind of prejudiced.

Let's see, there are many of us, like myself, who are on Apple products for a number of reasons

MacOS is UNIX. I'm UNIX. So I'm going to have a UNIX computer. I spend hella much time in Terminal.

The phones and tablets and computers all integrate to an extent that is is impressive. No, Windows and Android don't, not as well.

Family member integration is excellent ApplePlay is much better than AndroidPlay.

Aside from the orange abomination phone, and the stupid iSock, the products are well designed, and tasteful.

So there are many reasons to own Apple products. Yes, some people are in it for some kind of status. Just like some people are into Android as a reaction to those Apple users who they claim are universally stupid status seekers.

So the trouble is that they aren't really quite becoming Banks. Like the article says they aren't becoming consumer Banks like we are used to seeing they're becoming trust Banks which aren't regulated like you would expect.

However you can bet your ass that they are going to advertise that they are banks and heavily imply that your deposits are FDIC insured.

If a Democrat is in the White House at the time they implode some of them might go to jail but you're still not going to get your money back.

And eventually a republican will get control of the White House and pardon them so they'll do a few years in jail and walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Hmm..

I think $150K is nothing unfortunately. It's enough that a stupid person would probably waste it on a car.

The best option would be to invest it in something with a 7% dividend (Warren Buffet model) or S&P index fund and then basically get $900/mo forever.

But everything I said was a fact. If that makes you uncomfortable what the hell does that say about you?

So apparently Jeffrey Epstein wrote that Donald Trump sucked Bill Clinton's dick and Vladimir Putin has the pictures.

Stop, read that again, Google it, and just Jesus fucking Christ what the hell is wrong with our world?

Anyway, I doubt Trump sucked Clinton's dick. Although given some of the freaky shit guys at ivy League schools do in those gentlemen's clubs who the hell knows? The point of something like that would be to have pictures so that both sides could use them for mutually assured destruction...

I think it's much more likely though that Epstein was exaggerating for effect but that Putin really does have some extremely damning compromat on Donald Trump.