this is the real problem most people just don't realize the scale of the fertility collapse. population pyramid inversion in almost all countries and old people massively outnumbering kids is THE cataclysm you won't see the tsunami coming or the meteor in the sky or people dying in a pandemic, but that doesn't mean it’s less existential In the US, if the current fertility trajectory continues, for every 100 people today you'll be left with 25 people in a century. that's like having a pandemic that kills 75% of people worse than your “cataclysmic” bubonic plague. but it happens slower and for self centered people it’s impossible to grasp. the tragedy of modern man is that he has been removed from history and for him nothing exists but today and maybe tomorrow, that’s a real catastrophe. “it doesn’t affect me personally so it’s not a problem” what’s even worse is that the economy might even keep doing great because of AI and robots. the market will boom while humans bring themselves to extinction. you can have rising GDP per capita and a dying civilization at the same time things always get better until they don't

Grok Voice Think Fast 2.0 is now #1 on the Artificial Analysis Speech-to-Speech Index. This index measures whether voice agents can reason over the speech it hears, resolve real customer issues, and correctly complete tasks using agent tools.

Singapore just went all in on birth rates Fertility fell to a record-low 0.87 in 2025. Birth rates have fallen seriously low That’s not just a dip. That’s a whole country nowhere near replacing itself. It's a massive problem for the country So Singapore is going directly after the biggest things making parenthood harder: money, time, childcare and housing Money: - Every Singaporean child will receive around S$70,000 in direct financial support from birth to age 17 - S$10,000 Baby Gift during the first year - S$2,000 every year from age 1 to 16. - Plus MediSave, CDA support, Edusave and another S$10,000 education top-up at 17 - And every child gets the same baseline support regardless of whether they’re the first or fourth child Time: Childcare leave is increasing to: • 8 days for one child • 10 days for two • 12 days for three or more And it now covers children all the way through age 12. The government will cover the cost of statutory child-related leave up to the reimbursement limit, taking that burden off employers Housing: - First-time families will get an extra BTO ballot chance for every child they have or are expecting. - More kids = more chances of securing a home. The BTO income ceiling is also rising from S$14,000 to S$16,000 Childcare: - Government-supported full-day childcare is being pushed toward S$150/month and infant care toward S$300/month by 2030 Cash alone was never going to fix collapsing birth rates. Singapore is attacking the actual friction around having children: the cost, the time, childcare and getting a home If you want people to have more children, make having children easier Singapore is actually trying that

George Floyd had 4 times the fatal dose of fentanyl in his system when he died. We were told that was immaterial because he had developed a "tolerance." @TJHarker explains why that's false on the latest episode of Counterweight.

Elon Musk reveals why he launched his Tesla Roadster into space. "I fully expected this flight to fail." Musk was talking about Falcon Heavy's first flight. Since he thought the rocket might fail, he didn't want to put something boring on top of it. Instead, SpaceX launched his personal Tesla Roadster with Starman sitting in the driver's seat. The car is now traveling in an orbit that takes it between Earth and Mars. And according to Musk, it could remain up there for around 10 million years. Imagine taking your everyday car and accidentally turning it into a piece of space history.

Grok @bot now passes the DOOM test. It ported the entire DOOM to ESP32-S running at a high frame rate without trouble.

The Bolsheviks declared war on the Russian Orthodox Church as soon as they seized power. They stripped it of legal status and property, then executed thousands of priests, monks, and believers in the Red Terror. Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev was dragged from the Monastery of the Caves, tortured, and shot in January 1918. Patriarch Tikhon publicly excommunicated the Bolshevik leadership and spent his remaining years under arrest until his death in 1925. In 1922, while the country starved, the Soviets seized church gold and jewels under the pretext of famine relief. When believers in Shuya tried to stop them, troops opened fire on the crowd. Lenin then issued a secret memo ordering the most merciless suppression of the clergy possible, arguing conditions would never again be so favorable for crushing the Church’s influence for decades. By year’s end thousands of clergy had been shot and a 1000 year old institution was driven underground by the regime that claimed to liberate the peasants who built it.