It's a year and a half after i highlighted the issue, but nice to see: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Senators demand crackdown on wildfire "prediction market" bets

Fire experts warn such markets could incentivize arson.

arstechnica.com

Molly White@molly.wiki · 2y ago

what could go wrong with running betting markets like this?

Six of the top-10 costliest wildfire disasters in world history have occurred since 2017.

George Santos has been fined $35,000 for attempting to place bets on his own attendance at the State of the Union in February. He’s also been banned from the prediction-market platform Kalshi for 3 years.

George Santos got busted for manipulating political betting markets—and seems to have little remorse

"Touché bitches lets see who wins!"

motherjones.com

"All of the speculation and hype around A.I. is hiding the fact...It is the backbone of a superstructure that merges regressive politics with unchecked economic power in the guise of technological innovation." -- Tressie McMillan Cottom www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/o...

Opinion | A Reading List for Our Age of A.I. (Gift Article)

A.I. is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy.

nytimes.com

Important and wildly undercovered news story. This article discusses whether it is insider trading, market manipulation, misappropriation, using privileged information for financial gain, and/or conflict of interest. "Major banks have shown little interest in subscribing, citing political risk..."

Jennifer Ouellette@jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 2d ago

Trump Media's paid data feed giving Wall Street faster access to Trump's posts is now live qz.com/trump-media-...

NEW: In a stunning admission, the Trump administration admitted in court documents that it canceled billions in energy grants to states "based solely" on politics -- and whether that state was represented by Democrats and backed Harris in 2024. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/b...

Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him

Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.

nytimes.com

I’m a little embarrassed to post this for the academic crowd, but in case anybody is interested about how things are sometimes done over here: “A few basic things I’ve learned about catastrophe and climate risk modeling after four years in the insurance industry.” www.wtwco.com/en-us/insigh...

I'll say it again, one of the worst things this rampant push to cram "generative AI" into everything has done is make people suspect bright kids of cheating when they're just nerdy or bookish or neurodivergent, sanding down their unique edges to fit into people's lowered, homogenized expectations.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 3mo ago

The child’s mom, a university professor, “suspects her daughter was flagged by the teacher’s AI detection tools because she used terms such as ‘the titular character.’”

Very interesting (and in some ways very predictable) congressional hearing on prediction markets today. Maybe there should have been a mention market for the number of times participants would say "BUT IT'S JUST GAMBLING!!!" www.youtube.com/live/UJvIH_C...

Examining Customer Protections and Market Integrity in Sports Event Prediction Markets

YouTube video by House Committee on Agriculture

youtube.com

Trump does so much crazy, corrupt shit that things can get lost. Last week, Truth Social announced a truly breathtaking pay-to-play scam that will allow Trump and all of his rich friends to get even richer, while everyone else is left holding the bag. messagebox.substack.com/p/trumps-mos...

Trump's Most Corrupt Act Yet (Seriously!)

He's selling Wall Street early access to market moving information

messagebox.substack.com

So when you are trapped inside because of dangerous air quality from wildfires that are getting worse because the planet is burning, you can pass the time betting on the Air Quality Index on Polymarket using crypto that has been mined using massive energy and water resources. Dystopian AF.

"Banks, funds, and every finance operation with more than $100m under management would pay...to get early access to Trump’s Truth Social posts. In...a society in which the president operates a command economy via social media...if you don’t pay for Truth API, you become the dumb money."👇

Adam Keiper@adamkeiper.com · 2w ago

NEW: "Trump is like Thomas Edison, Ray Kroc, and Henry Ford all rolled into one. But for government corruption." www.thebulwark.com/p/truth-soci...

A lot of people don’t realize the dust bowl wasn’t a natural phenomenon. It happened when agrobusiness interests dramatically transformed the plains without regard for drought, and created vicious dust storms that choked whole families to death. That’s what I think of when I read about data centers.

Good that @cnn.com is finally covering the topic of wildfire betting on prediction markets...but should have credited @highcountrynews.org Kylie Mohr's recent story. (And yes, I have written about this too.) www.hcn.org/articles/peo... aeon.co/essays/what-... www.cnn.com/2026/07/17/c...

People are making wildfire bets on prediction markets. Experts say it could lead to disaster | CNN

As the catastrophic Los Angeles wildfires raged last year, people placed bets on how how many acres the fires would consume, which locations they would reach and when they would be contained.

cnn.com

"don't cite what you haven't read" remains the basic entry level academic responsibility; & if your discpline "doesn't have that as a norm" then sorry, your discipline needs reforming for this new world. Citations are structural parts of trust and knowledge building, not trinkets or optional extras

Miles Klee 🦉@milesklee.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Academics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.

Probably more helpful to think of them not so much as “Canadian wildfires” but rather “climate change wildfires currently consuming Canada”

So...how does selling faster access to information that moves markets line up with the "prediction markets are democratizing information" argument...? www.nbcnews.com/business/med...

Truth Social to sell Wall Street firms the ‘fastest’ access to Trump’s posts

President Donald Trump’s posts on the platform regularly move markets. Early access to these could be very valuable to traders and investors.

nbcnews.com

Is anyone actually making the argument that mention markets are "trading" and not gambling...? www.nytimes.com/2026/07/16/t...

White House Teleprompter Operator Bet on Trump Speeches, Kalshi Says

A technical assistant to President Trump won around $100,000, according to the prediction market, which flagged the activity to the federal government.

nytimes.com

There are only a few hours left to comment on the proposed OMB rule that would eviscerate American science. This is the single best summary, and guidance for how to write a comment, that I have seen. PLEASE submit something, even if it is only 2 or 3 paragraphs.

What We Need to do NEXT: OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule (OMB-2026-0034)

What OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule Means in Practice

elizabethginexi.substack.com

Scholarly folks who have ever received federal funding: today is the deadline for public comment on proposed revisions that will decimate our national research capacity and replace expertise with political whim. Please consider throwing in your 2¢. See below for some useful links and encouragement.

So interesting! Gigerenzer did a study of why people misunderstand probabilistic weather forecasts (like 30% chance of rain), and now we have swung all the way in other direction to a deterministic symbol. Before probabilistic weather forecasting in the mid 20th-c., ... 1/2

Janine Gibson@janinegibson.ft.com · 3w ago

amazing discussion on the radio right now -- does the reductive system of one weather symbol for a whole day put people off visiting tourist attractions and should the met office therefore reflect day parts.

“Heat kills more Americans every year than hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes combined. The number of heat-related illnesses is even higher. Even when heat doesn’t kill, it severely compromises quality of life.”

Federation of American Scientists@scientistsorg.bsky.social · 4w ago

Last weekend was hot. So hot. Climate change means we've got more weekends like that in our future. It'd be better if we didn't have climate change (working on it), but there's actually a surprising amount we can do to make extreme temps more bearable and less deadly right now. ➡️ HeatAgenda.us

At this point I would just assume that whoever was responsible for locating this image just prompted ChatGPT with something like "Find an old black-and-white photograph of random people doing something that looks like American history worth learning"

Wendy Rouse@wendylrouse.bsky.social · 4w ago

They say: “American History is Worth Learning” [Posts picture from British history].

I have a foolproof way to make sure that your papers contain absolutely no fake references . . . . . read the papers you cite.

an Egyptian player committed a foul in middle school academy soccer which led to his pro career and thus to his call up to the national team so VAR review confirms a foul in the buildup. no goal

An important article that shows exactly how the boundary between journalism and gambling has been blurred as online prediction markets like Kalshi have negotiated partnerships with major news organizations like CNN. "CNBC is paid every time it can convert a viewer to a Kalshi user."

Judd Legum@juddlegum.bsky.social · last mo.

1. Since December, CNN and CNBC have promoted Kalshi to viewers extensively, frequently vouching for its accuracy. The existence of a financial relationship between the networks and Kalshi, however, is disclosed to viewers inconsistently. w/@atrupar.com

I see a lot of complaints that science journalists--or just outlets looking for a juicy story that will get clicks--often misrepresent/misunderstand the articles they report on. But that happens with the humanities too! All the time!

#CriticalAI4.1, Remember to check out historian Jamie Pietruska's analysis of how "bottom-up approaches" to data demystify it and reveal its political connotations! read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/...

Rant thread incoming. I have been thinking about this for days now and I am so mad about it on your behalf, Rachel. First, your book is incredible and I assign parts of it or your article almost every semester...

Rachel Hope Cleves@rachelcleves.bsky.social · last mo.

An open letter, to readers, about Charity and Sylvia. I am very pained to feel the need to write this. #queerhistory #pride

a lot of writers and podcasters need to learn that they are not entitled to freely adapt any book they take a liking to. do you want to tell an existing story in a new medium? cool. talk to the author. collaborate with them if they want. license it if they're interested. or start from scratch.

Rachel Hope Cleves@rachelcleves.bsky.social · last mo.

An open letter, to readers, about Charity and Sylvia. I am very pained to feel the need to write this. #queerhistory #pride