The real kicker is that this is from people who bet against Iran striking Israel.
Wouldn’t even bet my life Israel’s iron dome is invincible, especially considering Iran already successfully broke through it last year.
Or you know, Gaza a bunch of times with pipe rockets.
The thing about these missile defence systems is that, regardless of how advanced a system is, it can always be overcome by sheer volume of fire.
A common tactic is to saturate the sky with cheaper dummy missiles/drones that don’t even have warheads, just to deplete missile defence stockpiles and protect the real missiles/drones from being intercepted.
This is happening a lot in Ukraine too.
TLDR; You’re right to believe Iron Dome isn’t invincible because there’s no such thing as an invincible missile defence system.
That’s thee dumbest bet i could imagine.
The “gamble on news” site causing psychos to threaten journalists wasn’t something I expected, but I blame a lack of imagination on my part regarding human depravity.
We should make sure every person on the Internet has their identity confirmed at the device level and then we can punish these people for writing the wrong Iran story.
- Department of War
The only way to fight this is to make a new bet on polymarket to profit off the odds that this journalist is killed by the gamblers in polymarket.
I was thinking it was just to not use polymarket but dang… I guess I was wrong.
nah, “vote with your wallet” can never work! You can only contribute to the problem more until it can’t go any further!
(i am not serious about any of this. a sane society would reject the existence of these “businesses” swiftly. if only…)
Vote with your wallet works if everyone agrees with you…
And the amount of people that love gambling makes it clear that most people do not agree with me.
US: promotes no gambling to children by suing Valve and their lootboxes mechanics
Also US: has an app where anyone can gamble on real life events.
🤷♂️
Polymarket is (or was, anyway) not operating within the US. These are non US people threatening the journalist.
It was not for a short period of time, but since 2025 it does.
My point that it was originated in US and is US based company that operates in US and globally - the same US of A which recently began fighting gambling in games, specifically Valve games.
Also, just recalled that US has a literal gambling city. Hi-fucking-larious.
no gambling to children
“protect the children” is used to justify all sorts of bad laws but there is absolutely no conflict between stopping something for children and allowing adults.
You: “The US is so stupid, it doesn’t allow marketing cigarettes to children.”
So what happens to him if he does change the story? Like… The new losers will be PISSED at him. It’s a no-win situation.
Also, the video of the strike clearly exists. If he changes the story there will be many other outlets reporting on the sudden change, the bets, the public requests for the change, and showing the video which apparently clearly shows a strike on Israel’s soil.
What a stupid world we’ve allowed to be concocted.
Past few years I’ve been reading a shitty sci-fi series. In this series there’s a race of creatures whose entire society is founded on gambling. They bet on everything, and people frequently bankrupt themselves. The moment you look at that world-building with even a little bit of scrutiny it falls apart in its stupidity.
This is even dumber.
Lol pretty sure I know exactly what series you’re talking about (beer can?). You’re right - it’s dumb, and the writing isn’t exactly Dickens, but it’s funny. Almost finished with the series myself. Something to read until something better comes along, at least.
Go get yourself a juice box!
When I first started the series I almost quit at the first book, it felt very American Military masturbatory, and I wasn’t a fan. Eventually though, the worldbuilding and the cast captured me. At this point however it feels like the author signed a contract to squeeze out a quota of books and quality has suffered. It’s gotten so intensely formulaic to the point of not being interesting. I’ve fallen victim to the gamblers fallacy though so I’m still reading it; I just want it to end.
At this point you can tell that he struggles to make compelling storylines because he’s started writing self-contained short stories he’s throwing in at random parts of the book just to pad it out. It’s a good move though, I think they’re my favourite parts of the recent books.
Overall I like the series, I just wish it hadn’t been dragged out so much.
Yup.
Most cyberpunk read today.
How that shit is not illegal is beyond me. Gambling is already predatory but outside of sports and in fucking armed conflicts is abhorrent.
We are in the crime is legal era
Crime is legal… to the degree that you are sufficiently connected.
🔲 - White
🔲 - Male
🔲 - Cis
🔲 - Hetero
🔲 - Christian (preferably conservative evangelical Protestant)
🔲 - Politically conservative
🔲 - Wealthy
The more of these you can check off, the more crimes are legal.
“For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.”
Crime is legal for the powerful.
Skin color and religion varies by country.
Because Trump took charge of the SEC. The crypto just handles payments - the market itself is centralized and exists with the permission of the state.
Wake me up when there’s a bet that angers people in power, it gets censored, and someone launches a fully p2p version.
“If you decide to go with your ego and not with your head, you are leaving behind dozens of wealthy people from all over the world who will know that you performed market manipulation and stole from them. They know who you are, you don’t know who they are. It took them less than 5 minutes to find out exactly where you live … how often you see your lovely parents … and exactly who your … brothers and sisters are.”
So the guy threatening the journalist to change his story so the gambler can make money isn’t market manipulation, but the journalist not changing his story is…
What scary about this, and it was mentioned in the article, is how future stories by less than ethical “journalist” can be purchased so that one side can become rich. Fuck accuracy it’s all about the money.
Well it’s not like that is already the case with social media, but I would like to think there is at least some aspect of reporting that is based in ethics and truth.
Polymarket is one of many direct evidence of the impending fall of society.
It’s one of those things that would seem excessive in a story.
A place so decadent that everything was to bet for. Even as the world ended around them, they gambled on how.
It’s the real life version of the intro to Cyberpunk 2077, with the radio host talking about bets on the death toll in Night city.
Cyberpunk was supposed to be a dystopia, not a fucking instruction manual!
But seriously, I’ve lost about all enjoyment in cyber-dystopian stories because these days they cut depressingly close to home.
yeah I’ve had so many story ideas just end up being too on-the-nose. and a few that are “if I put this idea out there, someone will use it and make things worse for people I don’t know.” I don’t need that kind of karma.
A place so decadent that everything was to bet for. Even as the world ended around them, they gambled on how.
20 years ago, if you wrote a story about a dystopian future sci-fi setting that included polymarket, readers would interpret it as a heavy-handed metaphor for widespread cynicism and derealization
Really seems like a future dystopian sci-fi, where the main character is going to bring the whole system down.
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Oh yeah, it is messed up and doesnt even cover the section where apparently another journalist the writer knows was bribed to try and coerce the flow of information to get that win. It basically confirms that there is already a willing lack of integrity somewhere to think it would work here.
A few hours later, a colleague from another media outlet messaged me. He said that someone he knew asked him to ask me to change the report on the missile impact in Beit Shemesh, and that it would be “negligible” for me if I did make the change.
Going further, the acquaintance even offered the journalist compensation, from his winnings, if he managed to convince me to change my report.
Shame death threats aren’t prosecutable
Hey, in this world even child rape isn’t, so I don’t know what we expect.
Holy shit.
Not only this is horrifying cause of the threats, it’s also very unsettling that something with such a recipe for disaster would attract so many rubes to be a working business model.
Yeah, it sort of makes me wonder how many bets have been fixed already.
I’m guessing a lot. Our wealthy like to gamble and are not normally subject to justice.
Distressing is right, there’s a lot of potential there. Especially with all the didling going on indicated by the Epstein files.
There was an article recently about some account called like “magamaster###” creating a bet about Iran, winnining $900,000 and all within the span of about 2 days before just disappearing.
Pretty sure the people that win aren’t doing it by luck anymore.
So uh… what are the odds on polymarket for the guy getting killed?
Can you put out a contract on someone just by betting on polymarket that they won’t die by a particular date?
Advanced money laundering skill: 100
Lmao I think technically that would work… but I also don’t know how tightly polymarket polices/moderates wagers like that.
I think they already do that, didn’t people make money off betting on the ayatollahs death?
… Will you be the one reporting it? If so, I’m sure we’ll get to know each other very well.
Polymarket is one of the largest prediction markets in the world, where users can wager their money on the likelihood of future events, using cryptocurrency, debit or credit cards, and bank transfers.
So this is a market place where rich people can bet on how gruesome poor people can die in war zones and genocides. Is this any different from the rich hunting the poor for sport? Instead of a trigger, they click a button, but it’s not that different.
Isn’t humanity awesome? Can we please start jailing these (or at this point, all) psychopaths?
Seriously, 99% of the population consists of awesome people that take care of one another. The problem is that psychopaths, like the ones from the article, have the need to be on top and control everything and we let them.
Seriously, as far as I can tell, humanity could kill a few 10.000s psychopaths and all of the sudden, no more wars, no more hunger, no more conflicts, no more senseless pollution, the world could heal and humanity could enter a phase of sustainable awesomeness.
No. I am not suggesting we kill them, it was just to make the point. However, I do feel we need to start testing people for psychopathy (as far as possible and work in better screening) to ensure we keep these fuckers from positions of power and money. We need to stop psychopaths from gaining any real power.
Hell, if it were up to me, nobody would get great power or money. I’d have a world wide wealth cap, nobody can be worth over, say 1 or 10 million. Anything over that goes to taxes. THAT will stop people.frok amassing great wealth and power and just stop this shit
For the website: I wish people were still masquerading as Anonymous and would just continuously hack this site into the ground where it belongs, next to its disgusting creators.
Fuck I hate this world :(
Seriously, 99% of the population consists of awesome people that take care of one another.
hmmmm
Susan Sontag was asked what she had learned from the Holocaust, and she said that 10% of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10% is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80% could be moved in either direction” —Kurt Vonnegut
No. I am not suggesting we kill them
Why not?
Because suggesting outright premeditated killing for people with a given trait, regardless of whether they have actually offended in any way or are an active threat or whether killing them is the only way to stop them being one, is kinda genocidal. We should never advocate killing people for things they cannot control.
Killing someone is, as our technology goes today, final. It robs them of all potential, all freedom, of the most basic human right: life. It is a heartless thing to do to someone, regardless of motivation. Yes, when you’re under attack, killing your attacker is valid, but it should never be taken lightly and inherently devalues their life in favour of your own survival. It is a trade we should accept, but also be aware of.
But reflexively resorting to murder when there is no immediate need for it infringes on fundamental human rights. And doing so indiscriminately for a psychological condition is, quite frankly, no better than killing people for their ethnicity or religion.
Restrict them from seeking power for a fundamental incompatibility with the requirements for empathetic governance, but do not call for their death. Do not forsake your own empathy.
Right. Im also not suggesting to kill everyone with a net worth of 1bn+ regardless of their actions. But there are many people whose greed has killed thousands and keeps ruining the lives of millions, would you not call that “being under attack”, which you brought up as a justification for homicide? Also the countless wars that are being fought for their pleasure where people are quite literally under attack.
But just to be clear, my first comment was meant as a joke.
would you not call that “being under attack”, which you brought up as a justification for homicide?
No, with “being under attack” in this case I meant immediate, impending physical harm with probable lethal consequences. Self-defense in that sense should strive to be somewhat proportional to the severity of the attack.
But you raise an interesting point:
We absolutely should do something about the suffering arising from the greed and cruelty of the super-rich. The difficulty with removing individuals is that the institutions propping them up will continue to exist. While their ownership (and the mechanisms of inheritance / transfer of that wealth) as well as the attendant authority is accepted as legitimate, the problem will continue to exist.
The theoretical approaches to changing this system – whether from within or without – don’t strictly require violence, but the people who believe in that legitimacy will follow orders to defend it against people that would render those orders void. If they do so violently, it may be necessary to defend ourselves.
And this is where you have a point I didn’t originally consider: if we perceive the orders (and thus the ones giving them) as the ulterior enemy, self-defense could extend beyond the immediate threat of people misguidedly following them.
This could also be applied to, say, healthcare execs that make decisions with significant impact on people in need of lifesaving care, or military industrial cronies.
Whether responding with violence is a good idea or at all effective is a different question, but I can see an argument that targeting key figures behind life-threatening orders would at least be a legitimate form of self-defense.
But just to be clear, my first comment was meant as a joke.
That apparently went over my head, but it lead to an interesting line of thought I didn’t consider before, so I’ll consider that a win.
Your comment is almost exactly the follow-up I had in mind for your first point^^
That apparently went over my head
Well, not like a funny joke, just in a joking manner
Whynot? Just donate to charity to get down to 999,999,999 nw and they’re safe.
If it was communicated clearly and set as an “official” limit, sure. But I dont think thats what we were talking about^^
I mean what part of kill all the billionaires is unclear? What else could we be talking about?
I propose torture, of being a well-supported member of proletariat class just without excessive wealth.
More like 10 million psychopaths. 4% psychopathy rate.
I didn’t believe you. can you present evidence?
I can try to find. The 4% is the population rate of being without empathy. So that would cover sociopathy, psychopathy, and narcissistic personality disorder. It’s still damaging and terrifying.
how does the dsm define psychopathy
I hate it all too.
Take me out first, please.
Time to boost this post. I have received death threats from Zionist, but I have a feeling these poly market people are scarier since they have money on the line
Gambling needs to simply be made illegal
I don’t care what your arguments are gambling needs to be made illegal
laws disproportionately are used to punish already marginalized groups for the benefit of the powerful.
nothing should be illegal. abolish all law
I think it’s fair for it to be legal, but only in specific locations and contexts. I think small scale gambling between friends and coworkers is fine. I think well regulated casinos are bad but serve as a deterrent to underground criminal gambling. I think having legal gambling through the internet and on your phone, advertised everywhere is a serious problem.
Nah this needs to be illegal period. Not taking questions
Find something else to do
Prohibition of vices doesn’t work, it just pushes it into organized crime. I want harm reduction more than purity
You’re interested in solutions. The person you’re replying to is only interested in hearing his own voice.
Yeah I never assume I can convince someone I’m arguing with on the internet. My goal is to convince the readers. Or entertain myself while bored at work
I agree completely. I always assume there are younger folks in the room who haven’t formed an opinion on everything yet.
It’s not just that, even us old and opinionated people can be swayed when we aren’t in the fight, given we have the wisdom to let ourselves listen to arguments. Especially if we keep seeing similar ideas from those we see as peers. It’s just that when we feel confronted most people (myself included) dig in rather than reevaluate.
It’s the young and the ignorant who have formed opinions on subjects they don’t understand.
At least a few people learn nuance as they age and gain life experience. It’s far from inevitable, but it does happen.
Im cool with the state owning things. Its the oversize marketing budgets and no concern for harm that comes with private ownership that bugs me.
I’ve heard plenty of stories of destitute people burning all their money on state-run scratchers. It’s not a panacea.
Me too, but at least it pays for a school or something vs some rich assholes pocket. I have never seen a better acceptable solution.
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It pushes them into organized crime because the state fails to provide for people’s needs not because the vice is prohibited
Next
“provide for their needs”…? What do you mean? Sure, many gamblers don’t have a very stable economic situation, but you’re implying that something like UBI would suddenly stop people from gambling or what?
And then there are those of us for whom gambling is not a need. And I think it’s problematic to regard any unnecessary activity, especially one that’s a known focus for self-destructively compulsive behavior, as a need.
Heroin’s a pressing need too, when you’re addicted.
Gambling isn’t a need not sure how you came to conclude otherwise
I bet you one hundred dollars that you cannot enforce this.
Yes prohibition of alcohol worked so well in America, the 18th amendment, in the 1919 that 14 years later they repealed it, the 21st amendment.
Arguably prohibition did reduce alcohol consumption during that time period.
That does not mean that it “worked” in any practical sense, considering all else that was associated with it.
If the goal was to reduce alcohol consumption then it was successful at that. I’m not saying it didn’t cause other issues, and it was decided that it wasn’t worth it, but it did not fail at the intended goal of reducing alcohol consumption.
They should adopt the same approach they use in Sweden to fight alcoholism: tax the hell out of it. You won a million by doing “insider trading” on the most recent dumb government decision? Congratulations, you owe the IRS half a mil.
Not talking about alcohol try again
Well what is the difference? A vice is a vice. Both are used to distracte us from the daily life of contant reminder that we are just a flesh bag being controlled by a mass of fat that will decay and die at some point. While we circle around a massive black hole. So why is this one vice so different that you think that prohibition would work?
different things being vices doesn’t make them magically interchangeable
Sorry
So what makes it so different that you think that prohibition would work in this one instance?
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itt: 100 billion lemmings see the phrase “i’m not going to debate you” and immediately take up arms and move to debate positions, so as to maximize the insufferability of the platform writ large
Itt: the person saying “I’m not going to debate you” continues to respond.
Also: “I’m not going to debate you” is not some magic phrase that prevents your statement from being challenged.
In closing: I’m not going to debate you. So if you respond to this you’re a hypocrite.
i don’t know how i could have possibly been clearer that i don’t want the disjointed ramblings of debatecreatures in my inbox, but i know things like “consent” might be a foreign concept to such folk
“When I make statements on public forums that does not mean I consent to people responding to me!”
I don’t think you understand how any of this works.
Then dont post on social media?? Like im not even really responding to you personally, im responding to your comment. If you dont want replies to your comments then dont comment lol. You can make a substack and disable replies if you really just want to get your message out there without replies.
i don’t feel compelled to join a platform for the mere privilege of having my blog posts co-hosted in the nazi bar, with shitty default css
for you in particular, let’s permanently rectify that situation
Thinking you can say something and avoid it being challenged by adding shit like “anything you can argue against it doesn’t matter” is the insufferable thing on display here. Almost as insufferable as another person chiming in about how insufferable those who won’t just take that at face value are.
“avoid it being challenged” dear lord. if only internet forum threads had some kind of button that would allow you to insert whatever half-baked disguised-as-a-policy-suggestion reaction one has directly into the thread. maybe then those that suffer the worst from Jubileebrain could utilize that to spew forth all their intellectual capabilities’ worth without doing themselves the disgrace of demanding dissidents put up their dukes
but then it wouldn’t be lemmy now would it
Making something illegal doesn’t make it magically go away. Look at the war on drugs…
It’s how you make it illegal. Government has no business telling people they cant have poker night at their house with friends.
But, they absolutely can and should ban all corporations from engaging in gambling. It’s not about punishing people who engage in a little gambling for entertainment.
It’s about preventing corporations from unleashing the full force of capitalism and state sponsored enterprise to ruin millions of gambling addicts lives.
Prohibition on vices never works, it just sends the money to criminal organizations that kill people instead of capitalist companies that kill less people.
The solution is to have it be state run, remove the profit motive, and send any money gained from it to education and social services.
Oohh yeah, let the state run the “gambling on genocide” and “gambling on child murder”, that sounds awesome!
Not saying it’s the best situation but if the choice is between the mob running it, capitalist corporations running it, and the state running it, I’d pick the state.
The state has an incentive to decrease problem gambling. Even if you ignore any democratic pressures from the people who don’t like gambling being pushed, the state also has to bear the cost of addicts with social services so it’s monetarily incentivized to reduce problem gambling.
Not sure if you read the article but it looks like organized crime is threatening to kill people on the “above board” platforms as well.
I also am against turning the state into the purveyor of gambling as it creates perverse incentive for the state to prioritize predating on problem gamblers and poor people in order to raise tax revenues. Money is fungible and as soon as the lottery becomes a funding vehicle for education it becomes the funding vehicle and you shift more of the burden off of the rich paying taxes and more on the poor to fund it.
I’m all for the state staying out of regulating vices but also the state shouldn’t be the one providing it to the populace.
Gambling is a moral issue, the prevalence of which is showing the degradation of the values of our society due to late stage capitalism. Unregulated capitalism places no value on values and only value in capital.
it creates perverse incentive for the state to prioritize predating on problem gamblers and poor people in order to raise tax revenues
Yeah but that incentive exists for any organization running gambling. It’s just that the mob/companies will pursue that motive more ruthlessly because:
-
The state is more accountable to the public and public opinion than a company. A company is only accountable to its shareholders who will almost always tell it to pursue profits at all costs. The state, at least in a democratic system, is accountable to the people. People can vote out a city council pushing gambling to increase revenue, they can’t vote out the board of draft kings.
-
The state bears some of the cost of addiction so they have some incentive to not let it get out of hand. A destitute gambler is more likely to use social services, to commit crime, abuse their family etc. which the state has to pay for in some way. Also there’s lost sales tax revenue if they can’t buy anything else and they’re more likely to stop paying property tax or get their home foreclosed, sold for a lower price lowering the assessed value and the property tax you can charge. All of these costs are completely externalized for companies / the mob so they can, and usually do, ignore them.
Also the money can go to actually good causes as opposed to the pocket of the draft king’s CEO or the mob boss. You can even theoretically set a cap for revenue, say the state can only make $10 million off of gambling, and the rest is proportionally refunded to the gamblers, you’d never see that in a for-profit enterprise like a company or the mob.
-
I don’t care about the gambling, my issue is with the advertising. They are enticing people, mostly young men, with visions of excitement and LOTS of money. They don’t show any ads of a guy losing the rent money, and having to break the news to his wife.
I don’t mind vices being legal, but I strongly object to them being marketed. Cigarettes are banned in most media, and liquor is heavily controlled. I wouldn’t mind if all marketing for all vices were prohibited.
Gambling addiction has one of the highest suicide rates out of any addiction, so I’m pretty sure the capitalist gambling companies right now cause more death than illegal organizations could.
most are actually struggling tmk, as the stock market (the largest casino around) is more accessible than ever.
Removing the profit motive of gambling is exactly prohibition, what???
Remove the profit motive from “the house” side. The house is taking a cut of every bet as profit, which encourages them to advertise and increase their market and market share to get more money. Which in the end means them trying to push gambling on those with a problem because they make them the most money.
If it’s run by the state it’s not beholden to share holders who want as much profit as possible, social costs be damned. The state is at least nominally beholden to the people in a democratic system and the people generally don’t want gambling advertising to be pushed on gambling addicts.
…just make the advertising illegal
No it can work just fine if the state doesn’t become captured by those criminal profit seeking elements and we properly provide for people along the way
Not buying it
House always wins. It’s literally just a way to steal people’s money.
And in the city I live now, they passed a law for those stupid slot machines like 10 years ago.
Now they are everywhere.
You know who sits at slot machines?
Old people. Retired people.
People living off social security.It’s literally a way to steal money from people who need it most. And specifically, it was tax payers money.
So whenever I hear ,“but it creates revenue” I think. “Yeah by stealing it from the state and our seniors. Wtf. That’s not real revenue.”
And this whole idea of autonomy. Like people have to choose for themselves if they want to gamble.
We all know it’s addictive. And it’s designed to trick and manipulate people.
There is less autonomy there than you think.
I dunno, I find it hard to respect laws intending to protect people from their own choices, especially when the majority of people can enjoy the thing (or just ignore it on their own) without any problems.
Try to idiot-proof the world and the world just comes up with a better idiot.
Yeah unfortunately gamblers read that and just go…so what?
I’m ok with this simply being a religious principle
I think the “argument” is that it’s massively gray.
So much stuff can be considered gambling.
It needs to be handled. Idk how. But the term is too encompassing to just outright make illegal.
I can see why you’d want the state to regulate it. Gambling addicts have it really bad.
There will always be gambling since people can gamble points and fries
I’d vote for you to be dictator for a day to enact your policy.
If I were dictator for a day, I’d outlaw all overly loud personal vehicles. You’d be sentenced to 10 minutes strapped behind your vehicle while it’s blaring full blast, and then anyone who wants can be given guns to just go nuts on your vehicle.
Isn’t it already illegal in most countries? Everywhere I’ve lived there are dB maximums, plus extra penalties for modifying exhausts to be loudee etc or loud music
