TimMar 13
JA Westenberg

Between the gamblers and the disappeared, there is almost no space left for the old model: the person who plants a tree knowing they'll never sit in its shade.

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/everythings-casino/

Everything's Casino

Everything's Casino On the evening of February 28, 2026, American B-2 bombers lifted off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. By the time they reached Iranian airspace, Tomahawk missiles were already in flight from submarines in the Persian Gulf. Operation Epic Fury hit over a thousand targets in its

Westenberg.
Mar 13 at 4:58amTypefully
Show threadRamin HonaryMar 13
@Daojoan by the way, the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls school was a tripple-tap strike. Three missiles hit the same target at a calculated interval to ensure not only that those wounded in the first strike were killed, but that first responders would also be killed. It is usually used against terrorist targets, apparently the targeting system thought 6-to-12 year old school girls fall under the category of “terrorist.”
Show threadklausiMar 13
@Daojoan great piece! I was looking for the AI section, because the LLMs are the perfect gambling machines with their unpredictable good and bad output
Show threadRamin HonaryMar 13

@Daojoan excellent article!

You alluded to the Robinhood scandal, but I was expecting you to also bring up Polymarket, and the fact that people were betting on the date of the Iran invasion which led to the Israeli government investigating some of the bets as potential security leaks.

There is a whole cluster of “Prediction Market Platforms” now, not just Robinhood and Polymarket, letting people bet on anything. I’d say this is another symptom of exactly the illness you are describing in this article.

Millions of dollars placed on prediction markets after US airstrikes on Iran as global unrest provides get-rich-quick opportunities

Bettors have placed more than $36M worth of wagers on whether or not there will be a regime change in Iran

The Independent
Show threadTimMar 13

@Daojoan It's not just the old model has little space; it's that in today's culture a person who plants a tree whose shade they'll never sit in is looked at as a fool.

Today's cultural rulers disdain stable things. They prefer instability because they think they'll have better odds of upgrading their position during the chaos.

Show threadgregg rMar 13
@Daojoan A précis of our rigged-game society: "The math doesn't pencil out and everyone knows it. When you can't see a future, you stop investing in one. You start gambling instead"
Show threadHannah Steenbock5d ago

@Daojoan

Very depressing.

And yes, I totally see that as a self-publisher, too. Every book I publish is a gamble, there's the hope of this one bringing in readers, of breaking the losing streak.

I mean, yes, I'm also building inventory, so it's partially the craft way, but still. In the current market that's dominated by Amazon and FB ads, by TikTok influencers and now getting flooded with AI slop - the casino has been gobbling up publishing for a long time.