Is he still on TV? Twenty years ago I worked a part-time job doing data entry at a small local brokerage. One of the assistant brokers used to complain because they had a client who would call in almost daily wanting to buy a stock he had a hot tip on, which was invariably whatever Cramer had featured on his show the night before.

Not just the odds on the screen, there are entire networks with sports books in the name. When Disney bought Fox they were required to sell off Fox Sports and the Fox Sports Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) because they already owned ESPN. Sinclair Broadcasting bought them for way too much money (and formed a joint broadcast venture with Allen Media Group) and sold the naming rights to sports books, first Bally Sports and now Fan Duel Sports. ESPN also has their own gambling service that they heavily promote, often with their own on-air talent.

Meanwhile players and coaches are getting arrested for their gambling activities. College athletes—teenagers—are getting threats on their social media when they underperform or overperform because some random gambler lost a prop bet on the player.

I was not happy when the sports gambling was legalized in my state a year or two ago. A colleague reminded me that historically prohibition has not ended a problem, but it also doesn’t feel like the rampant promotions are something that should be allowed. At its core it’s a business largely built on taking people’s money and giving nothing in return except a slight hope that they might get more back. A slight silver-lining: I read an article a while back about how the explosion of legal sports betting in the U.S. brought a lot of startups and foreign companies in thinking they’d make a bunch of money on American gamblers losing, but the gamblers haven’t really been losing enough and the companies are hurting. Most American casinos have offered sports betting for decades but they don’t put a lot of resources into them and largely haven’t pushed as hard on the online gambling because it turns out that’s a hard business to be profitable in; there’s no inherent advantage for the house. There are professional gamblers who can actually make a living on sports betting. Often they end up getting banned by the casinos or bookies.

It seems like a really immoral business when they build it on people losing money and ban anyone who doesn’t lose money.

Sounds like we don’t know if this particular story is true, but that does seem to be a general bit of human nature that we see over and over again

I usually only hear of her in relation to how she was a teacher but divorced her husband and married one of her former students who was decades younger than her, a classmate of her own kids. Looks like he was 30 at the time they married, so maybe not a grooming situation, but still weird. That’s not the kind of person whose opinions I give much value.

I was wondering if the idea was that someone so tough that they ride a bear was inside fighting, and at least I was right. But yeah, not his best gag.

It’s weird because I feel like I see a lot of solid points from him on EVs and yet I don’t feel like I see a lot of leadership from Ford in the EV space, and missteps in their rollouts. I’ve driven the Lightning and Mach E, great cars in many ways, but still expensive (although I remember the work truck variant of the Lightning was actually slightly less expensive than a comparable ICE vehicle). They spent a lot of money on electric and then haven’t pushed farther.

It’s one area where I wonder if they would do better as a private company, not beholden to investors who want results this quarter.

For people who don’t want to watch a video, here’s the Wikipedia explanation:

The results of a perverse incentive scheme are also sometimes called cobra effects, where people are incentivized to make a problem worse. This name was coined by economist Horst Siebert in 2001 based on a historically dubious anecdote taken from the British Raj. According to the story, the British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped, and the cobra breeders set their snakes free, leading to an overall increase in the wild cobra population.

At least it’s a bobcat and not a house cat!

I saw a post recently explaining that January and February were originally the final months of the year and then at some point they got moved to the front of the year.

Gonna tell my wife I’m helping prevent her from getting Alzheimer’s

Content warning: contains an image of dead whales being prepared for butchering

The vertical bleed is moire. Beyond that it’s hard to say if the colors are just a poor quality photo or if the TV is out of adjustment, or the TV really is in bad shape. The dark colors are really crushed, and maybe it’s even coming from however they’re converting the signal.

Nowadays it’s Facebook Marketplace

I realized a few years ago that most Americans will earn at least $1 million during their working lives. Even if they’re “only” making $30k/year that will get them to $1 million in a little over 33 years. They’ll probably never have much in their bank account, but they’ll have earned that much at some point by the time they retire.

They might be real? Looking closely I think I see a cutout for the bodily waste functions. I’m pretty sure the suit we got for our dog post-spay procedure (as an alternative to the “cone of shame”) has sleeves for both the front and back legs.

The neighborhood I was in 8 or 9 years ago got fiber and the contractor cut the gas line at least twice on my street, to say nothing of the rest of the streets where they also cut the gas line. It was like they never bothered calling 811 before digging.

I don’t know if this is something available where you live, but Replacements, Ltd. may be able to help you. That’s basically why they exist.

“The major record labels have been pressing Spotify, Apple Music and other music-streaming platforms to increase their fees, arguing prices have lagged inflation and subscriptions remain cheap compared to video services such as Netflix,” the report states.

As it explains, a current Spotify subscription in the United States costs $11.99, just two dollars higher than when the service initially launched 14 years ago.

Netflix, which rolled out its premium plan in 2013, has increased the price of that package, along with the basic package at least every other year from 2016 through 2022 (including one year with a switch to high-definition), as Flixed detailed.

In 2015, the city of Riccione, approximately 130 kilometres (80 miles) southeast of Bologna, allocated an €11,000 budget to pay a wage to umarells to oversee worksites in the city – counting the number of trucks in and out to ensure materials were delivered/removed according to the receipts, and guarding against theft when the site was otherwise unattended. The town of San Lazzaro di Savena, 6 km (3½ mi) to the South-East of Bologna, awarded the “Umarell of the year” prize to a local resident, Franco Bonini.

…how? Are they electronically controlled and connected to some central hub? Even most touchless sensors I’ve seen have a button to override and force a flush in case it doesn’t work