Explosive growth of legal gambling in America

When I was around 13 years of age, our neighbors had five children, three of whom were close in age to me. They would invite me to play card games at their place and we played for money. It was not high stakes in any absolute sense but it was for me since all I had was just the little pocket money that my parents gave me. So I did have thrill (if you want to call it that) of fearing a real loss. It was exciting to gamble and I was quickly getting drawn in and looked forward to playing after school. But I would end up losing consistently. After a while, while I could not prove it, I became convinced that the siblings were cheating by colluding against me. They were Indians and would sometimes speak and sing in Hindi, a language that is not spoken in Sri Lanka and that I did not know, and I think that they were communicating with each other. Anyway, I got tired of losing in an unfair game and stopped playing with them after a while. It was my first taste of how the gambling system is usually rigged against you and I lost my taste for it and never got attracted to it again.

Gambling in sports in the US has an ugly history with players accused of adjusting their play in order to make money by getting particular results. This led to federal laws that banned it and for the longest time it was restricted to just in-person gambling in the state of Nevada, primarily Las Vegas. Professional sports leagues vigorously opposed any attempts to legalize it nationwide, arguing that it would lead to the death of sports due to suspicions of cheating. But in 2018, the US Supreme Court overturned the federal ban, saying that the constitution did not allow for this federal power and that it was up to the states to decide whether they wanted to allow gambling or not, and then it was off to the races, as states vied to attract gamblers.
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I am definitely not avant garde

Two days ago, I linked to the amusing 12-minute short film Jane Austen’s Period Drama that was nominated for this year’s Oscar but did not win.

When it comes to the arts in any form, I am definitely low-brow. High art leaves me mystified and this was confirmed yet again when I later watched the co-winner of this year’s short film category called Two People Exchanging Saliva. From the beginning I was aware that I was in the Ocean of Deep Metaphor and that I was hopelessly out of my depth. As I watched it, trying to figure out the message, I thought to myself “There is a message here but I am so not getting it”. I was utterly baffled.

Watch for yourself.

After the film, I looked it up and even after reading about what the underlying message was, I still did not get it. I am that bad.

I wonder what the term is that signifies the opposite of avante garde when referring to the arts, because that is the label that would definitely would fit me.

What is the appeal of Cameo?

In the UK, Nigel Farage is under fire for having made Cameo videos that featured him making controversial statements.

The Guardian’s unearthing of Farage’s videos has raised questions about his relationship with the far right and who he is willing to take money from. Farage charged £155 for one video he made in 2025 for a man he was told had received a 16-month sentence for his involvement in a far-right riot. Despite knowing that the man had been convicted over his role in the disorder, the Reform leader recorded a supportive message for him, telling the man “I’m with you”.
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Farage was paid £141 for another video in which he promoted an event by a Canadian neo-Nazi group, which used the clip in propaganda alongside fascist salutes and antisemitic imagery. Farage called the event “the best thing that ever happened”. The video was removed from Cameo’s website after the Guardian’s story.

As a result of the revelations, his account says that he no longer is accepting any offers.

Cameo is a site that enables you to pay for celebrities to make personalized videos where they say things that you want them to say, if they are willing to do so. The usual requests are as gifts to friends to wish them on their birthdays or anniversaries or similar things. But clearly some are pushing other agendas.

I can understand why minor celebrities might sign up to do them, since it provides some easy money as a side hustle. If there are suckers out there willing to pay for people to utter some words, there will be those who are willing to oblige. What I can’t understand is the appeal for the buyer of the message and the intended recipient. Would the person you are seeking to impress really be flattered by getting a personalized message from some has-been B or C lister who was paid to give it and has absolutely no idea who you are and does not give a damn about you?

I can sort of understand if you knew the celebrity personally and they recorded the video as a favor to you. Then the recipient may be impressed that you knew them well-enough that they would do this for you. So this would be of benefit to you,

But otherwise it seems really tacky to me.

I guess I just don’t understand the thrill that some people feel when a sort-of celebrity mentions their name, even if they had to be paid to do so.

Blog comments policy

I will periodically repost my comments policy for those who recently started visiting this site.

As long time readers know, I used to moderate the comments with a very light hand, assuming that mature adults would know how to behave in a public space. It took outright hate speech targeting marginalized groups to cause me to ban people, and that happened very rarely. But I got increasingly irritated by the tedious and hostile exchanges among a few commenters that tended to fill up the comment thread with repeated posts about petty or off-topic issues. We sometimes had absurdly repetitive exchanges seemingly based on the childish belief that having the last word means that you have won the argument or with increasingly angry posts sprinkled with puerile justifications like “They started it!”

So here is one rule: No one will be able to make more than three comments in response to any blog post. Violation of that rule will result in banning.

But I also want to address a couple of deeper concerns for which a solution cannot be quantified but will require me to exercise my judgment.
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Neil Sedaka (1939-2026)

This prolific singer-songwriter, who was behind so many hit songs of my adolescence, many written for other artists, has died.

Here is one of my favorites Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen.

His songs were usually cheerful and upbeat, reflecting a more innocent time in pop culture. Sadly, in the post-Jeffrey Epstein era, this song about teenage love now has creepy connotations.

But I thought that it might momentarily take people’s minds off today’s truly depressing news that Trump and Netanyahu have launched a war with Iran with who knows what consequences.

Well, that’s disappointing

I follow sporting events only cursorily, just checking the headlines as they appear on the front pages of various news sites. When it comes to the Olympics, for the summer games I check out just the track and field events. For the winter Olympics, I follow them even less but if anyone asks me what my favorite event is, I have no hesitation is answering ‘curling’.

I know almost nothing about this sport other than that one has to send something known as a ‘stone’ down the ice to get as close as possible to a target, with teammates using brooms to help guide the stone to its destination. In addition to looking quaintly weird, what I like most about it is its reputation for having very high standards of sportsmanship, something I value highly.

So I was upset to read that the current games have had a major curling controversy, involving people being accused of cheating by subtly touching the stone with their fingers, which is a major no-no apparently.

You can read the whole complicated controversy here.

Well hell’s bells, who knew the ice could get so hot? The Olympic curling community is still all in a twist about everything that’s gone on in the sport since a row broke out between the Sweden and Canada sides on Friday. “The whole spirit of curling is dead,” Canada’s Marc Kennedy said on Monday night after his team’s 8-2 victory against Czech Republic, which felt like a bold take coming from the man who started this entire farrago by repeatedly telling his Swedish opponent Oskar Eriksson to “fuck off” after Eriksson accused him of making an illegal double‑touch.
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The row has turned out to be the biggest thing to happen to it since it was brought back into the Olympic programme in 1998. The slow-motion footage of Kennedy brushing the stone with his forefinger has gone viral, and the internet is overflowing with sloppy AI skits of Kennedy nudging ice hockey pucks and knocking over figure skaters at the ice rink.

Is nothing sacred anymore?

Blog comments policy

I will periodically repost my comments policy for those who recently started visiting this site.

As long time readers know, I used to moderate the comments with a very light hand, assuming that mature adults would know how to behave in a public space. It took outright hate speech targeting marginalized groups to cause me to ban people, and that happened very rarely. But I got increasingly irritated by the tedious and hostile exchanges among a few commenters that tended to fill up the comment thread with repeated posts about petty or off-topic issues. We sometimes had absurdly repetitive exchanges seemingly based on the childish belief that having the last word means that you have won the argument or with increasingly angry posts sprinkled with puerile justifications like “They started it!”

So here is one rule: No one will be able to make more than three comments in response to any blog post. Violation of that rule will result in banning.

But I also want to address a couple of deeper concerns for which a solution cannot be quantified but will require me to exercise my judgment.
[Read more…]

Blog comment policy

I said that at the beginning of every month, I would repost my comments policy for those who started visiting this site the previous month. I stopped doing so after awhile because I thought that at least long time readers would have absorbed the message. But it seems like the reminders are necessary, since there have been violations, some seemingly accidental and some so egregious that I have had to take action. But here is the general policy again.

As long time readers know, I used to moderate the comments with a very light hand, assuming that mature adults would know how to behave in a public space. It took outright hate speech targeting marginalized groups to cause me to ban people, and that happened very rarely. But I got increasingly irritated by the tedious and hostile exchanges among a few commenters that tended to fill up the comment thread with repeated posts about petty or off-topic issues. We sometimes had absurdly repetitive exchanges seemingly based on the childish belief that having the last word means that you have won the argument or with increasingly angry posts sprinkled with puerile justifications like “They started it!”

So here is one rule: No one will be able to make more than three comments in response to any blog post. Violation of that rule will result in banning.

But I also want to address a couple of deeper concerns for which a solution cannot be quantified but will require me to exercise my judgment.
[Read more…]

Hope for the New Year

2025 was a no good, very bad year. I would like to think that the coming year will be better but since nearly all the things that made this year awful are all pretty much still in place, the likelihood of that happening is slight.

But despite that, I would like to hope that at least in your personal lives, the coming year brings good things. It is admittedly a very modest hope but it is all that I can genuinely summon up.

Thanks all who took the trouble to come here and read and comment.

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