I believe they are incentivized to discourage insider bets and essentially "rigged" wins. I do not think they will ever be able to control the problem of insiders leveraging guaranteed knowledge to take money for the poor suckers who don't know the game they are playing. Maybe that's too pessimistic, but at this point I don't see how anything but a pessimistic view is warranted.
Putting bounties on insider knowledge is the ideological justification for these kinds of betting markets, so I doubt they’re going to stop this kind of thing
Rigged wins aren't a real problem. Everyone knows that sports betting apps are rigged, and it doesn't affect them at all. In fact, the latest explosion of customers has been accompanied by even more blatant rigging in the form of unwinnable multi-leg parlays. Hasn't slowed them down.
Aren't a problem for whom, exactly? I'm not commenting here with concern about the prediction market businesses, founders, or shareholders. I'm concerned for the suckers who are and will continue to be taken advantage of. Forgive me for not abandoning all empathy for those suckers just because they don't realize they're being mugged. These prediction markets are zero-sum, with the connected and resourced taking yet more from those with less.
That's like me complaining about Wall St. tampering with bond ratings on sub-prime mortgages, and you telling me "Don't worry, the banks will be fine." I don't care about the banks, they have enough people looking out for them, and their golden parachutes will catch them on the way down anyway.
Aren't a problem for the companies; I was responding to you saying they're incentivized to stop it.
Believe me, I am not on their side. Gambling companies are a financial weapon aimed at the working class and a just society would shut them down. I don't blame you for assuming, though, given where we are.
That's true for now. A part of me hopes that one day prediction markets will have the same set of technical constraints, norms and laws that make the stock market mostly work. Let's wait and see.
Kudzu's threat has been long overstated. It thrives especially near forest edgelands which are always visible on highways, so concern of prevalence was partially based on individual sampling error. In reality, its presence in southern forests is higher than desired but still not disastrous (~0.1% of southern forestland), which is a fraction of worse invasives: Japanese honeysuckle (4.4%) and Asian privet (1.4%).
> ~0.1% of southern forestland), which is a fraction of worse invasives: Japanese honeysuckle (4.4%) and Asian privet (1.4%).
Sample size of 1 here (I know), but I've spent a meaningful portion of my life outdoors in the south and I have _never_ seen swaths of the landscape covered with Japanese Honeysuckle or Asian Privet like I have Kudzu. It absolutely dominates _everything_ in areas where it's present here (not surprising when it can grow up to a 1 foot (0.3 m) a day.)
Not trying to say you're incorrect, just trying to get a better handle on this. The thought that there are more destructive invasive plants in the US south than Kudzu is kind of blowing my mind.
You won't see swaths of honeysuckle or privet because it grows in the understory throughout the entire forest, choking out natives. Part of their destructive power is that they bloom earlier than most natives in spring, essentially stealing the available sunlight in those golden weeks before the overstory leafs out and reduces sunlight in the understory.
I guarantee you that if you've spent a meaningful portion of your life outdoors in the south you have seen Japanese Honeysuckle at the least, it is everywhere. But it's not a dramatic/easily identifiable shower like kudzu.
The data I'm citing is from my textbook for my Ohio Citizen Volunteer Naturalist program I did in the Fall semester, it cites the US Forest report but doesn't give a link. I think it's from this report [PDF warning]: https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/gtr/gtr_srs178/gtr_srs178_3...
This isn't 'fraud' in any meaningful moral sense, it is a rational reaction to immoral, unjust school funding models that perpetuate systemic inequalities based on the zip-code you can afford. I'm sure schools have a duty to police this in their mind, sure, but I side with parents trying to evade the boundaries they've been put because they weren't born rich enough.
What am I supposed to be reading here? The article? The short snippet of commentary about it? The back-and-forth comments on the commentary?
Your link seems to have nothing to say about inequitible school quality based on unfair, racist, classist propety tax funding models. How about this one which followed cohorts for 40 years and found substantial differences in life outcomes correlated* to school funding levels (PDF ALERT!): https://gsppi.berkeley.edu/~ruckerj/QJE_resubmit_final_versi.... Crucially this looks at life outcomes, not just test scores.
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*Just in case someone wants to remind me or anyone else that correlation does not equal causation, I will say "I know" and "in longitudinal studies, time operates as an exogenous variable that adds substantial evidence of causality in well-designed research.
I am suggesting that the major causative factor for life outcomes is genetics. Not "racist" property tax funding models. You can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can't take the trailer park out of the girl.
I don't disagree. It's a legal fraud, but it's not a moral fraud. I do not view "the law" a neutral arbiter of morality, and given what is happening in the US right now I hope you don't either.
Who cares? Companies are using your need to have the latest and greatest against you. It's overt manipulation. I'd rather watch an old CRT or nothing at all than allow some company to forcefully show me ads.
> Companies are using your need to have the latest and greatest against you
This is a false dichotomy.
My love of cinema drives me to have certain features in my TV: 4k, OLED, HDR. My hatred of ads drives to me buy certain products to use my with TV: Apple TV.
It is a shame reddit lets people hide their post and comment history now so there can be no identifying signals about astro-turfing or bots. I'm sure this is ostensibly about preventing harassment, and in actuality about disguising bot behavior driving engagement. Or maybe I'm just extra cynical this morning.
It is extremely difficult for me to believe that someone watching Babylon 5 as it aired on a typical sized CRT television thought the effects looked "cheap". Hokey? Okay, maybe, that's subjective enough to be non-debatable. But "cheap" in the context of a television show? The shots were so much more dense and dynamic than what Star Trek was doing at the time, which is the obvious comparison.
It's the season one acting that I find the biggest barrier to entry. It settles in by the end mostly, and the acting markedly improves from Season 2 onward though it always retains some of that campy scifi feel.
The costuming and sets and CGI are impressive, but the lighting is unnecessarily murky and the dark industrial tunnels aesthetic makes me think of Red Dwarf, which I can’t imagine was a very lavish production.
The earlier Red Dwarf episodes were filmed in the BBC cafeteria and other similar locations. The difference is that Red Dwarf was supposed to look grimy. They were on a mining ship with few luxuries. Red Dwarf was more in the territory of Dark Star, and played into that. (Early Red Dwarf tended to use physical models and costumes for a lot of effects. CGI has never been especially great on RD.)
I did watch Babylon 5 when it first came out in the UK. Deep Space 9 definitely had better looking effects, but I preferred B5 to DS9 on the basis of other factors.
I think B5 has a variety of environments, and some of them are quite nice, and I like the moody bustling alien cantina type spaces. But they also have too many dark industrial passages, which doesn’t always fit the scenes and come off rather cheap.
> My wife and I's friends have basically vanished from our lives, they have zero initiative or interest in coming over to see the kids or help in any way
I completely believe that’s been your experience, but want to highlight that his is a difficult asymmetry in these friendships. I in no way mean to imply that the below is the experience your friends had with you, just that the challenges are not one-way.
In my own circle, my wife and I have often felt like it was our friends with kids who vanished. We knew they were busy, we kept extending invites or asking for time. Things often didn't work especially as new parents are figuring their lives out, things are changing all the time, etc. We'd meet up here and there, but it was - necessarily - always on their terms. And so of course, our outreach tapered down incrementally but consistently.
But I do wonder: do they feel we detached from them, or do they have any inkling that we feel they detached from us? We've discussed it with one couple who we were always closer to, but it doesn't feel an appropriate topic to resurface uninvited at any given moment.
It's simply hard to plan. Before kids I'd typically meet up with friend around 8 or so maybe 9. Now bedtime rules my evenings. When my kids are asleep I'm exhausted. Most of my friends evenings are just starting at that time! (lol) and I completely understand. The other thing is I can't go out and get drunk or party because being hung over with a 3 year old pissing the bed after they crawl in to sleep/cuddle with you - nothing better/worse.
It's simply hard to relate. I have some very good friends who we've stayed in touch. I'm forever grateful for them. But when you're out and about and you meet a random person and try to strike up a friendship say at a conference. The second I mention I'm a dad I feel I'm relegated to the back of the bus.
Speaking from the other side, but having been on your side for most of my 20s and 30s and felt exactly how you do, they probably do feel you detached from them.
Their lives fundamentally changed to the extent that as you say, any gathering necessarily must be on terms that allow them to parent.
And the level of last-minute cancellations and apologies increase.
And on top of that, they’re just not prioritising reaching out to you. Mainly because parenting occupies 25 hours of most days and they’re exhausted, but they’re also probably assuming that any activity in reach for them, like simply getting coffee at a playground while they try to make sure their kid doesn’t eat too much sand, is not your idea of a fun time.
So your outreach tapered down in response, but that is ultimately your choice.
The alternative requires you to quite selflessly keep up the outreach and be OK with a lower hit rate, and lean into the fact that you have far, far greater flexibility to meet on their terms than they do to meet on yours.
Not doing that is not an unreasonable choice, but they probably miss you and want you to be part of their kids lives.
Anyway, thanks for sharing this point of view. It’s a hard situation.
I think it's a fair response, and I can appreciate the truth in one's own life that leads you to write it. But this situation is a complex dynamic, no two situations are precisely the same either factually or subjectively. The same couple with a new child may stay close to one, drift away from another for totally different reasons that may not have one thing to do with intention or effort.
At any rate, I'm never too proud to reach out to old friends even if the time between attempts increases. Relationships may change again!
The presumption of good faith has been justifiably obliterated when it comes to Topics Such As These with our right-wing extremist political and media leadership.
Especially with extremists, you should have a solid foundation of argumentation, because they will not ignore even little fails and weaponize everything against you if necessary.
It's not about the extremists, it's about everyone else. Extremists usually have to convince people to give them power, to follow their BS. And by experience, even extremists sometimes can change their mind.
It's unnecessary: extremists usually aren't seeking to change their mind, and they'd sooner fabricate evidence of a fail than acknowledge The Perfect Argument That Totally Changed My Mind
I think this is likely to be true for every artistic creation that requires lots of capital and widespread human coordination. Ultimately for a TV show to be great many, many things have to go right, and much of what could go wrong happens after the money is spent and the air date is already assured. I'm grateful we've had so many great things, certainly far more than I'll have time to watch in my life. But I'm not a heavy TV viewer.
TV has a fairly bad record of keeping shows that are already shown to be good alive though because good does not equate profitable for the network or individual decision makers (which are again no the same thing).
That's just one of the things that has to go right: marketing, finding the audience, being in the right places and place in time for your target viewers, etc.
I think the problem nowadays is that there are so many channels and so much space to fill. TV runs 24/7 now on hundreds of channels. In many cases, it isn't worth the while of a small channel to make an expensive programme as they would lose money.
Sometimes, the "wrong" programme is the hit. I know the History Channel started off with serious documentaries (some of them excellent quality) which not enough people watched. They then tried Nazis and Ancient Egypt, but it seems to be "Ancient Aliens" which is their biggest hit. Its version of history is questionable, to say the least.
How many people even watch TV "channels" these days? Seems most people have moved to a la carte streaming services. I don't really like either myself and prefer local copies of films but seem to be in a very small minority there.
I've been having a lot of trouble with Amazon Prime. I specifically have it so that I can download films and watch them offline when I don't have internet, and yet the player keeps glitching. I do prefer physical media because at least I'm owning it instead of just hiring it.
Yeah, I don't really consider it a local copy when I can't play it in a player of my choice on any device I want. I'd be fine with digital files (although having a movie shelf is nice) but that isn't really an option so physical media (ripped to a hard disk for convenience) it is.
Is this statement a version of "actually, there isn't a problem"? Because if you're dismissing what's happening, all I can do is implore you to look into this issue with a curious and open mind.
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