All Good Men

As Old Betting Laws Fall, New Technology May Prevail Bottom of the eighth, bases are loaded, scores tied with two outs. The batter steps to the plate as the pitcher and catcher sign quickly to each other. The crowd, already on edge, stares intently at their phones. Panicked tapping ensues as bets are placed. Two to one strike. Five to one bunt. Three to one foul ball. As the batter winds up for the pitch, screens freeze; betting is now locked. “THWAP” The ball goes flying through the air as do millions of microtransactions. Fractions of a Bitcoin, known as a satoshi, are won and lost in the time it takes to swing a bat. As the debits complete, fans peck at their phones, eager to log their bets before the next batter reaches the plate. Welcome to the world of microbetting. As the Supreme Court struck down the Bradley act this week, a Clinton-era federal bill banning sports betting, new technology comes to the forefront of sports entertainment. And this new form of sports betting

As America continues its free-wheeling descent into the hell that is a Police state, efforts ramp up to protect the common man. Department of Homeland Security officials have requested bids for a Media Monitoring Service that would have the ability to scan more than 290.000 news sources in and outside the US, and store journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, and bloggers in a database that must be searchable for “content” and “sentiment”.     Reading from what sounds like an Orwellian nightmare, the Department of Homeland security has decided that frequent human rights violations, mass surveillance, mass incarceration, and ever increasing militarized police force, and more recently, detention based on sentiment ( see the Balogun case ) isn’t quite enough. So they’re adding the mass categorization of what’s allowable thought and sentiment in the US, to borrow some newspeak, the Thought Police are going to categorize you based on goodthink or crimethink