Hi. I'm a software engineer, which is a job that — in theory — pays enough money that I shouldn't need to beg strangers on the internet for coffee money. And yet, here we are, with a tip jar two clicks away and a lottery simulator as the bait.
I know the odds. I built an entire app whose explicit purpose is reminding people of the odds. It didn't help. Somewhere around the billion-dollar mark, my brain quietly stops doing arithmetic and starts doing vibes. Ask me to calculate a tip and I'll fumble it. Ask me to imagine what I'd do with a jackpot that has ten zeros in it and I have a fully rendered fantasy ready in under a second. This is not a coincidence. This is what nine figures of imaginary money does to a nervous system.
And the fantasy, if I'm being honest with you the way this app has been honest about Powerball odds, is not "financial security." It is not "a modest, diversified portfolio." It is: I would like to acquire a few brand-new enemies, purely so that I may have the resources to crush them, slowly and with excellent legal representation. Failing that, I would like to attend the funeral of someone I have never met, lean toward a stranger at the appropriate solemn moment, and murmur, "they know what they did." I do not know who "they" are. I do not know what "it" was. I simply want the freedom to imply something ominous, at scale, with catering.
This is not a financial plan. It is barely a personality trait. But it is the honest version of what a billion dollars actually promises most people — not a yacht, not a mansion, just an unhinged little revenge arc with a body count of zero and a plausible-deniability budget of infinity.
So instead, I built this: a tool that hashes your grocery list into six numbers, tells you the real prices and the real odds and the real historical draws, and lets you feel the entire ritual of almost winning without the part where you hand anyone $2. Financially, it is strictly better than the actual lottery. Emotionally, it is not quite as satisfying as the funeral thing. I'm aware of this trade-off. I have made my peace with it.
If you liked it, here's a coffee link — no odds, no hash function, no villain arc required. Just gratitude and caffeine. Everyone else: go outside, you've read enough of a stranger's fake billionaire revenge fantasy for one day.