Current events newsletter!

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Labor!

We’ve talked about labor a fair bit here at IWBNITGWB, though we’ve slowed down a little on that front since the end of the 2022 lockout. But with the upcoming 2027 lockout drawing nearer, and Tony Clark’s resignation as head of the MLB Players Association due to corruption sexy corruption, it’s time to look one more time at the most important issue in baseball: will there be another work stoppage after the se-

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What was that?

Did everyone else see that? A Polymarket widget asking if Jesus would return by the end of the year? I don’t know how that got in here! I mean, it’s obviously … no. The answer is no. He won’t. And, like, if Jesus does come back then we’ve got a Rapture coming and years or apocalyptic terror before the world ends, so obviously you should give that one a no and just collect the easy money, because-

Oh, they almost got me!

Hey! Hey, no making this germane to what I meant to talk about before getting distracted. Not fair!

Anyway, Substack has now partnered with Polymarket to give live odds on various prediction markets. Why? Because everything has to be gambling now. Here are live odds. Here are parlays. Here are tips and strategies to make the most out of your dollar. Here are gambling experts to tell you how to gamble, and sure it only really works if that’s insider information that most people don’t have, and this message is going out to a broad audience, but it still fills that emotional need to feel above things!

Why does Substack need this? For its intended audience of People Who Will Lose Money They Don’t Have On Gambling And Then Blame Liberals For Their Financial Problems, of course. These people are crying out for more awareness of gambling, more walkthroughs on cashmaxxing, more, uh, whatever mogging is. More of that. Unless it’s bad, in which case less of that.

What other odds do you want to see? Want to try the median home price in the San Francisco metro area on March 1? Looking for a piece of the number of posts Andrew Tate will make between February 20 and February 27? Wanna bet on the BAFTAs?

The point is, it’s all here now. Why is it here now? I don’t know. Will this actually be a good thing for anybody? Certainly not. Did this subject very rudely interrupt my labor newsletter, for reasons I still can’t quite understand? You know it did.

But that’s what gambling does. It gets introduced into an environment fairly innocuously, then gradually spreads out more and more until it covers everything. The best answer is to just keep it out altogether, no matter what arguments its supporters make. If that doesn’t work, then everything gets colonized: your phone, your media, even this newsletter. Gambling comes for all of us because in us it senses a dollar that could and rightfully should go into its pocket.

It’s a shame that things turned out this way, when they unequivocally did not have to. In closing, I guess I just have to say-

No! No!