Almost every tech platform is designed to grab and hold your attention, to keep you clicking, scrolling, and buying for as long as possible.
Sports gambling has become one of the clearest examples of this. The industry has created frictionless apps on your phone that let you bet on everything from March Madness to a pregame coin toss to who wins a minor league British dart tournament.
While betting has become easier — and arguably fun — the cost of these apps is much higher than the money that is won and lost on them.
Today’s guest is Jonathan D. Cohen, author of Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling. He and Sean discuss the rise of sports betting, why the industry targets young men in their advertising, the social costs of frictionless sports gambling, and how the industry could be improved.
50% of men have a sports betting app on their phone, 70% of people who live on university campuses now gamble. I hate the Burger Reich I hate the Burger Reich 
Anti-sports people vindicated again. 50% is ridiculous, holy shit.
Imo if we have to have gambling, it shouldn’t involve real money. You get an allowance of 100 SportsBux every month to gamble as you please. “Oh but that’s not as fun, I need the risk!” too bad sweaty, big government is coming for you
The pendulum swing against nerds in certain online left spaces feels a lot like the pendulum swing against atheists: contrarianism against a subculture because it has a lot of shitty people while forgetting that the dominant culture it opposes is in fact also shitty.
in every case the subculture is less bad than the thing it formed in reaction to, we had just successfully bullied the creationists, quiverfull frreaks, and meatheads out of normal spaces.
Gambling should really just be this:
That final scene of the show where Picard realized he was an idiot for trying to “maintain a captain’s distance from his colleagues”, and decides to say fuck it and joins their poker game…
Having fun with the comrades is what life is really about.
it’s a real shame they wouldn’t let that stay being the end