Samuel Thomson

Prediction markets are playing a dangerous game The fast rise of Kalshi, Polymarket, and other prediction markets is running headlong into gambling regulations, and now the industry is using the news media as its shield.

Why platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket want so badly to be seen as sources of news, instead of anything-goes casinos.

my strongest case against prediction markets is that every useful and pro social use of prediction markets is already covered by equities somehow. if the event you're gambling on doesn't translate into equity or commodity price, it is actually unimportant

It’s like that by design, Chris.

...And that little boy grew up to manage a $730b portfolio of YOUR pension money.

10/10 website, no notes

Sexually molesting the South Lawn.

Are they renting out the basement?

Old timey propaganda depended on an understanding that the representative image represented a reality.

The thing with pure simulacrum is that it has to hold value independently.

It works as escapism, but no one is signing up to be shot at for simulacrum when they can generate feet pics at home.

The original Coronation Street set, overgrown and run down

The original Coronation Street set, overgrown and run down

The original Coronation Street set, overgrown and run down

The Post-Apocalyptic Coronation Street that we deserve

Middle East crisis live: Israel bombs Tehran and Beirut as Trump says no deal with Iran ‘except unconditional surrender’ Israel launched huge attacks on Iran and Lebanon overnight

The U.S. war against Iran is depraved. Thousands of innocent people are being murdered, missery wrought on millions, and billions ultimately affected, all to distract from Donald Trump's dealings with Jeffrey Epstein.

www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

The House of Lords Digital & Communications Committee just published their report on AI, copyright & the creative industries, and their conclusions could not be clearer.

🧵 1/5

"The story of the Zong is often narrated as a triumph over slavery. A triumph that took 52 years and resulted in compensation for slave owners only... 245 years after the events of the Zong, humanity is still discarding lives deemed not human enough to the open seas, to fire, to hunger, to war."

www.reddit.com/r/videos/com...

This is one of those things that is less sexy to talk about but is unequivocally a war crime

And this is true in some cases for both art and programming. It feels like the actual activity of learning is not understood by some students. Some don't show up to class or work through online materials, and then complain that it's too challenging and not sufficient.

I'm facing challenges where students seem unwilling to do the work necessary to acquire skills, but they're also frustrated that they aren't gaining skills. Forever the case perhaps, but also exacerbated by Ai. Things the agents can produce are seen as not worth learning to do.

This is insane. Margin calls on the property portfolios all these Dubai people had will trigger a global property crisis. Plus inflation from a trade crisis as Hormuz closes, plus secondary shocks. Environmentalism aside, western economies can't afford this war.

Not sure, that's certainly not what literature used to mean. It used to be about stabilising meaning in a community, the members of which were defined by a corpus of agreed meanings. Surely there's a trade-off between that and fluid encodings of meaning.

All other countries should view this iteration of the U.S. as an existential threat. The U.K. should not be hosting U.S. military bases. The global police force is now boldly punching down.

US submarine sank Iran’s warship off Sri Lanka coast, says Hegseth Sri Lanka says it recovered several bodies and rescued 32 wounded sailors after the frigate sank.

Hegseth, Trump, Netenyahu, and their collaborators are conducting a race war against Iran. The wider context is that Tehran is severely water-stressed and might collapse, killing millions. This is psychopathic murder on an industrial scale.

www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/...

What if you removed from a whole population the motivation for creating things?

It occurs to me that if the government did force UK writers to hand over their work to the big AI companies, that would now among other things mean contributing to the development of US advanced weapon systems.

Where did they go?

Ah, seeing this kind of thing in PC magazines scared my horrendoursly as a child. Still coming to terms with it and having difficult thoughts about it.

The calls for trans people to be quieter as we're wiped out are only going to increase, and you owe it to your sisters and brothers to get louder and louder.

Gosh. Just *shocked* to discover that "Freedom in the Arts" isn't actually an artistic freedom org.
It's a GC org with a sideline in Islamophobia and racism.
Because of course it is.

Who up hating the Great Satan and its wretched imperialist running dogs

AngryVeteran
@angryveteran.bsky.social