It’s a few things from my grab bag. Comments are open to all.
More on Gambling (and Dostoevsky)
Some quick grabs on app gambling trends:
23 July 2026, Semafor: Sports betting takes a financial toll
Sports betting is degrading the financial health of the most vulnerable households, according to a new study that tees up an emerging political issue.
The study, which draws on transaction data from more than 180,000 households, found that sports betting doesn’t replace shopping or other gambling, like lottery tickets or casino outings, but adds to it, eating into savings and driving up debt. “Risky bets crowd out positive expected value investments,” like buying a house or investing for retirement, the study says. (A sizable share of bettors, according to the report, say they view betting as an investment strategy.)
….
5 March 2026, WSJ: ‘Is This Insider Information?’ The Prediction Market Bets Driving a Campus Frenzy
Polymarket’s platform is off-limits to U.S. users but can be accessed by anyone with a VPN, which can disguise location. It plans to launch an app for U.S. users soon. The company has a data partnership with Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
Kalshi’s platform is available nationwide, though courts are examining the legality of the platform in nearly a dozen states.
The increasing popularity of prediction markets comes amid alarm bells from experts who have noted an explosion in problem gambling among teens and young adults in recent years. Half of boys ages 16 and 17 have gambled in the past year, according to a survey of over 1,000 teen boys published in January by the nonprofit Common Sense Media.
I’m not linking to the various legal situations currently shaking out. In some states, Kalshi and Polymarket are running into trouble, and then there are SEC questions.
I am not a lawyer of any type, whether securities, futures, or gaming, but if one has a whiff of any of those, you may understand why there can be issues with some of the topics Kalshi and Polymarket are touching.
I’ve done screenshots and embeds of Kalshi and Polymarket on some questions in the past, but I am skeptical about them as good data sources for many items, given who may be playing in these spaces.
Dostoevsky and Gambling
But now let me jump over to something completely different:
Here is the original: [going down the chain]
I didn’t even know who Errol Holden was, and I’m certainly not going to make fun of how he pronounces “Dostoevsky”. He obviously read the book, without necessarily knowing how the various names in the book, much less the author’s name, were pronounced. Holden is from New York — not Russia.
Many are calling it a “deep cut”, but it isn’t really.
It’s like calling David Copperfield by Dickens a deep cut. Let me explain: David Copperfield was semi-autobiographical, though it did get away from him, as Dickens’s stories often did. The main aspects of Copperfield’s character and life held, though. There were key aspects of his childhood, connection to debt via Micawber, issues with women (no comment), but a lot of other stuff was put in there as well.
Dostoevsky had a gambling addiction, and some of his writing projects were driven by the need to pay off his gambling debts. Gambling debts come up as a theme in Brothers Karamazov with Dmitri — it wasn’t unusual in society of the time, even outside of Russia.
Back in 2018, I read The Gambler and posted on it on my old site:
Nov 2018: Mornings with Meep: Dostoevsky’s The Gambler
PORTRAIT OF A GAMBLER
And The Gambler… its best bits in showing how the brain dissolves from the stimulant of gambling, for those apt to get hooked…
“For why is gambling a whit worse than any other method of acquiring money? How, for instance, is it worse than trade? True, out of a hundred persons, only one can win; yet what business is that of yours or of mine?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The GamblerI have no issue with gambling itself, but it can destroy one person’s wealth rapidly. Look upon it as entertainment, as opposed to investment… and you can set appropriate limits. You want to spend $10,000 on a few hours of entertainment? Maybe you do, but I don’t.
Actually having to sit down and run a store, which is far more involved than “simply” being a middleman – it may be boring, but it’s less destructive (and far more socially useful) than gambling.
Dostoevsky shows gambling as an aristocratic disease — they’re the only people with enough money to waste on this sort of thing, and they barely earn their money. It’s all inheritances, after all – inheritances which may be punier than hoped, so the only aristocratic way to boost it is gambling, n’est-ce pas?
Dostoevsky was writing about himself and his comrades in The Gambler. He was addicted to roulette, specifically, and ran into trouble at the roulette tables in Baden Baden, a popular German spa area.
He wrote The Gambler in under a month in 1866 in order to pay off his gambling debts…keeping to what got him into trouble probably cut down on the time he needed to come up with an idea.
I talk about the mathematical probability problem called Gambler’s Ruin as well as problem gambling, in discussing the novel — the video is only 5 minutes:
Here’s the full interview with Holden: (about an hour)
Lightning Death in Thailand
No, I’m not necessarily going to make this a regular feature….
5 Aug 2026, NY Post: Lightning strike kills soccer player, injuring 12 during match in Thailand
A match was hit by a monsoon storm with players stuck under a downpour.
Video footage then shows lightning striking the ground, right next to where players are running.
A flash of flames can be seen at the bottom of a plume of smoke.
Yeah, I’m not sharing either pics or videos with you. You can click through to the article, or go searching for them.
Player Safwan Awae, 24, was struck by a lightning bolt and tragically killed.
Spectators rushed to try and revive him after he fell to the ground.
Emergency services were called, and they provided medical attention before taking Awae to hospital.
The people were out in a field, and yes, it’s monsoon season in Thailand.
Lightning strike death risk is different in Asia due to differences in weather patterns, but also living/working patterns.
Where so many of U.S. lightning strike deaths are around water (doing recreational stuff), in Thailand, it’s mainly open farm fields (working).
I’ll just share a little of this paper:
2010: An overview of the global statistics on lightning fatalities
Mohd Zainal Abidin Ab Kadir; Mary Ann Cooper; Chandima Gomes
2010 30th International Conference on Lightning Protection
Abstract:
Lightning is a major cause of weather related mortality around the world. In the United States, lightning typically kills more people in a year than any other storm disaster except floods. Due to persistent lightning safety efforts and an annual national Lightning Safety Awareness Week campaign, US lightning deaths have decreased to an average of about 50 per year in the past decade. Good statistics about death and injuries around the world are just beginning to be collected. This paper presents an update and overview of the global statistics and trends on lightning fatalities which include the gender, activity, time of event and number of casualties. In addition, meteorological info will also be considered in relation to the lightning activity and fatalities.
This paper is a bit old — in the age of the smartphone, lightning deaths have dropped even farther.
TURKEYS!
Get a load of these turkeys.
We don’t have chickens crossing the road around here, but wild turkeys.
They took their sweet time once I came to a stop. It was a Saturday morning; they knew I wasn’t in a hurry.
Comments are open.
We had a local flock/gaggle/run/rafter/etc. that used to cross the road regularly. One of the hens acted as crossing guard - stopped cars and would not let the rest of her group cross until cars stopped in both directions. At one time I must have seen 20 birds cross. Turkeys are VERY smart. I haven't seen them lately. I suspect coyotes...
I've seen a couple of headlines about rabies deaths this year. Is that a common enough cause to have meaningful statistics?