Yeah, that too. :) However, in practical terms, I'd assume that given enough time, willpower, and a LOT of $$$ we would both solve the environmental challenges and develop a "spacebus" to enable more efficient colonization, so the gene pool would become sufficiently diverse before it becomes a major problem. If not, we already know how that might work out from all of the historic in-breeding of the European royal families, in particular the Hapsburgs, although YMMV on what physical attributes, or personality traits for that matter, will be more likely to be "enhanced" in the Mars colony scenario.

I can't really support doing things for coolness factor while we have so many problems here on earth. I think it would be cool to go to Jamaica, but not at the expense of defaulting on my mortgage. Because that's how responsible adults think.

That's silly, Elon is altruistic and he will definitely let other people have that opportunity before him. He will praise them as heros while he stays here.

He wants to pay for healthcare with tariffs. Americans are so screwed if he cuts back to that.

I keep saying it:

We have not fed one human for one entire day using food produced independently of Earth.

Not one day. Sure, we've played and grown cress on the ISS and all sorts of other nonsense but we've never made FOOD in FOOD quantities to FEED even a single human for a single day.

If you go to Mars, you have to send a regular, consistent, constant stream of food up to them. As well as all the other materials and any experiments you want to do... like soils and hydroponics.

But even with all the kit, we've never fed a human for a day.

And not only does that mean sending resources wherever the planets are in orbit (and Mars suddenly becomes MULTIPLES of its closest distance away from Earth or even the entire other side of the Sun), but you have to coordinate them all to launch, survive MONTHS in space, land near the humans on Mars, in order, and if you MISS even one... people could starve to death.

It could well be that things launched even every month aren't sufficient for any sizeable small "Arctic research station" size population.

We can't even arrange a fucking sandwich on Mars, and you want to talk about colonising it and having scientists roaming around on it?

Good luck with that. Birth rate might be declining in many countries, but we're still spawning around 100m new humans every year. That's an awful lot of human freight just to break even, and while prioritising shipping those of breeding age to transfer the newborns off-world (with all the physical development complications that likely entails) might help a bit, the reality is there are only two ways we get to point where more humans live offworld:

1. We take a long, long, long, time doing it.
2. A massive die off of those left on Earth.

Either way, the Earth-bound serfs are screwed.

Seems to depend on location. In my home city in Europe, it was 3-4 times a day, even shortly after the war.

Numbers mean nothing once enough inflation is involved. But back in those same days, a mailman could support a family on his salary. Not a luxury life for sure, but enough to rent a place and put food on the table. Women working was still a somewhat new thing.

Yes, this stuff is moving digital as well. At different speeds in different countries.

People are just confused because they grew up under capitalism, and it wasn't designed to transform to methods better for the planet. Capitalism only transforms to be more profitable.

Heck, Americans have spent that much this year paying for Trump's tariffs!

Wow, somebody needs a lesson on proper money management if they can't get by with a six figure income. As stated by some other posters, that is well above the average of $66,622, and also above the median income of $83,730 (in other words, you make more than 1/2 the people in the nation!), even if it is just at $100,000. In fact, only 18% of people in the USA make $100,000 or more per year!

So you are in the top 20% of earners in the USA, and globally, you are somewhere in the top 0.1% of earners (to put some perspective on it)....

So now that you realize you are not only part of the 1%'ers (you are well beyond it from a global point of view, as you only needed ~$34,000 a year to join that club), you need to seriously rethink and put some perspective on a six figure income. You also need to put some thought into the difference between high wealth and high income. If you are simply p!ssing it all away and living paycheck to paycheck trying to "keep up with the Jones's lifestyle", you are absolutely doing it wrong. Trying to follow the latest fad, or fashion, or car craze, or instagram vacation lifestyle just isn't possible without a high wealth, not a high income. When your wealth is such a way that the money you have saved, and invested in stocks, bonds, real-estate, rental properties, and/or businesses simply grows on its own to the point that you don't need to do anything, and it well outpaces what your traditional 6 figure income, well, then you can do things like buy that latest fashion outfit, or go on a six week vacation around the world.... And you get there by working your @ss off when you are young and saving everything you can, eating things like ramen noodles for $0.50 a meal, and drink tap water or home made tea, and only going out to eat a couple times a month, as well as drive a modest car till it is well into it's teenage years of age and finally ditching it when a repair bills to keep it going for the year begin to exceed ~1/8th the price of a new one, and save/invest every remaining dollar you have. You manage to do that in your 20's and 30's and you will be set in your 40's and older, especially if you were earning 6 figures, or even the median US income. The 30 years of interest and growth on properly invested savings should have allowed it to compound ~16x. So if you earned $100,000 and simple saved the approx $16,000 that would have dropped you down to the median income in the USA, in the first year, in 30 years even without saving a single penny more, it would be around $256k, and at around 45 years it would be over $1million. Now image you had been saving $16k each and every year of those 45 years, and never touched it for another 45 years, if you started that at 20 and went until you were 65 year old, you would have effectively 1 million dollars each year showing up in your bank account each year from age 65 until you were 110.

They would like to sell you a cloud storage subscription, but they do give you the option to use local physical storage (or iCloud) instead.

It's important to note that over the last 15 years, cumulative U.S. inflation has been on the order of about 45â"55% depending on which exact months you choose and which price index you use. College prices have risen faster than inflation but everything is more expensive too.

The library is most likely benefiting from volunteer labor to run the program and take care of the machines. The university has to pay someone for that. Completely changes the way the services are offered since there are real costs of labor.

Seems like the general thinking is, "Fuck this place; we'll go to Mars when stuff gets bad." Like we can just be-bop on over and populate Mars whenever. We're not very smart.

Social media has become a toxic dump. If you wouldn't allow children to play in waste effluent from a 1960s nuclear power plant, then you shouldn't allow them to play in the social media that's out there. Because, frankly, of the two, plutonium is safer.

I do, however, contend that this is a perfectly fixable problem. There is no reason why social media couldn't be safe. USENET was never this bad. Hell, Slashdot at its worst was never as bad as Facebook at its best. And Kuro5hin was miles better than X. Had a better name, too. The reason it's bad is that politicians get a lot of kickbacks from the companies and the advertisers, plus a lot of free exposure to millions. Politicians would do ANYTHING for publicity.

I would therefore contend that Australia is fixing the wrong problem. Brain-damaging material on Facebook doesn't magically become less brain-damaging because kids have to work harder to get brain damage. Nor are adults mystically immune. If you took the planet's IQ today and compared it to what it was in the early 1990s, I'm convinced the global average would have dropped 30 points. Australia is, however, at least acknowledging that a problem exists. They just haven't identified the right one. I'll give them participation points. The rest of the globe, not so much.