Noah Goodall

To be clear, Mulvaney's group is laser focused on sports contracts. They seem to be fine with alien invasion, Greenland, Superbowl halftime markets. That means they are probably funded by state-regulated sportsbooks.

Which is fine, whatever. But this is not a moral crusade here.

Their "issues" page which has specifics for every topic except consumer safety where they have the default latin gibberish. https://www.caseforconsumers.org/issues/

Consumer Action for a Strong Economy is part of Mulvaney's new anti-prediction market coalition Gambling is Not Investing. CASE advocates "free-market" solutions to consumer protection. Their About page lists consumer safety last AND with Lorem Ipsum.

Yeah it's Ralph Nader's baby, in an old bank in his hometown of Winstead, CT. Highly recommend. There's an exhibit on dangerous toys of the 1970s.

Logo of the American Museum of Tort Law that shows a cartoon Ford Pinto in flames.

I adore this logo.

90% of their revenue is from sports betting (exempted from state law and taxes, yay), with some exception on presidential election years. These weirdo markets are their attempts to seem harmless and fun. Which it would be if it was capped at a reasonable investable amount instead of $25k.

Payout Criterion: The Payout Criterion for the Contract encompasses the Expiration Values that the President of the United States, any member of the Cabinet of the United States, any member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or any US federal agency definitively states after Issuance and before <date> that extraterrestrial life or technology exists. For purposes of this Contract, the Cabinet includes the heads of the 15 government agencies in the Cabinet as of Issuance, as well the Administrator of the EPA, the President’s Chief of Staff, Director of National Intelligence, Director of OMB, Director of CIA, United States Trade Representative, Ambassador to the UN, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Administrator of the SBA, and Director of OSTP.

Fun fact: Kalshi has to submit detailed proposals for their markets to the CFTC. Here's the one for "Will the Executive Branch confirm the existence of extraterrestrial life?"
www.cftc.gov/sites/defaul...

Correct, but still a lie.

New CFTC Chairman Michael Selig on How to Regulate Prediction Markets on Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-cftc-chairman-michael-selig-on-how-to-regulate/id1056200096?i=1000749404730

From the transcript of the episode --- Selig: Absolutely, so we are actually staffing up, so one hundred percent we're building that out. We have adequate resources to do so. But I want to be clear that we have a very well staffed building and we're very much on top of things with and you know, these questions are out not enforcing and surveilling. You know, I think there's a little bit of face news there. We probably should put it up to a prediction market. But I do think that we're on top of things.

From USAJobs, they have two positions posted, both unpaid student volunteers. It would take me a day to break down all of the weirdness in that interview. https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/Results?a=CT00

CFTC Chair Selig: "we are actually staffing up" = hiring unpaid students.

1 Polymarket is sponsoring this post, but the odds are not meaningfully different in other markets.

TIL that Polymarket sponsors Matt Yglesias’s Substack.

Top of my gratitude list is that I found a career that doesn't require me to be active on LinkedIn.

I also assume these will count as a child's asset for expected college contributions, thus hurting aid eligibility. A custodial account, by comparison, can be spent down on kid-expenses prior to college. Trump Accounts, by rule, will entirely go to the colleges one way or another.

It seems to be primarily a way to transfer up to $90,000 to a kid's traditional IRA ($5000x18), as they no longer have the earned income requirement. I can't imagine many people earning under $150,000 will contribute. The freebies are nice, will definitely go for those.

The Trump Accounts are weird. You're taxed going in and going out, no withdrawals before age 18, not even for emergencies. So you want to be doing pretty well to contribute, e.g. maxed 401k, Roth IRAs, 529s, emergency fund. The $5k no-income-limit contribution helps the wealthy, though.

Can we slow this train down please? h/t gamblingharm.org/polymarket-g...

Bank of America: the top 30 customers could be making up ~35% of total volume on Kalshi so far in 2026

(I get that the 80/20 rule is a thing, but still unsettling to see it be this extreme and apply to zero/negative sum outcome biz)

But basic questions are never answered. How many are employed? Where are they located? How often do they intervene? How are they trained? Good luck even finding a photo from inside an ops center.

This kind of inquiry is long overdue. The entire industry uses remote operators, but they really don't like talking about it. There are very few requirements for operators, all at the state level. In the few states with any rules, they need to have a "valid" license, and foreign ones are reciprocal.

Waymo admits that some portion of their remote operators are based in the Philippines. The video is illustrative as you can see that Waymo really does not want to answer this question. I would love to know whether they got back to @markey.senate.gov with numbers, and what those were.

Waymo tells the Senate one thing, California regulators another. So do remote operators ever take control of the vehicle? When has this happened? In what circumstances will it happen again? bsky.app/profile/noah...

I'm trying to estimate the true rate (lambda) from a small population that is trying to scale. This is an acceptable use of CIs.

Even if we solved that problem, sample sizes are too small to draw any conclusions. The 95% CI (Poisson) is 33,000 to 125,000 miles between robotaxi crashes.

It's hard to get even a decent analysis, but the Electrek take is very, very flawed.

You also need to factor in that robotaxi operational constraints, e.g. they don't run in heavy rain. Also the safety monitors do step in, and they're not drunk or distracted by phones like in the general public rates.

The claim in this article is not supported by the data. SGO and NHTSA general public data have different reporting thresholds, and the authors also seems to have used raw gen. pub. crash counts, instead of total vehicles INVOLVED in crashes. Better benchmark is around 50-100k miles b/w crashes.

Waymo is telling UK their telops can't do what they told CPUC they can do:

“Waymo does not use remote driving or teleoperation where a human takes control of the vehicle....They cannot drive the car,” George Ivanov, Head of International Policy and Government Affairs

zagdaily.com/featured/way...

This would be a great question for CFTC to ask, since they technically "regulate" them. Reminder than DJT Jr. is a strategic advisor to Kalshi and is on the board of rival Polymarket, while Crypto dot com manages events markets for Truth Social. So excited to see political markets on CNN again!

Cleveland at Orlando NBA player point total prop bets. Taken from here: https://kalshi.com/markets/kxnbagame/professional-basketball-game/kxnbagame-26jan24cleorl

Kalshi loves to talk about how they're a market, not a dirty little sportsbook that sets their own odds. Yet you can only bet "Yes" on NBA player scoring prop bets. There's no "No" option. So who's taking the other side?

No one knows! Probably Kalshi or a sportsbook partner. Nice.

I am also learning that @newyorker.com doesn't acknowledge corrections, but instead quietly edits the online article. Super.

How did someone read 80% statutory rape convictions were a group representing 3% of the population and roll with it? I was yelling at my print issue!

"The sentencing disparities for certain crimes are shocking; roughly four out of every five people who are convicted of statutory rape are Native American."

https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/quick-facts/Sexual_Abuse_FY24.pdf

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/revcoa18.pdf

It's already been corrected online, but the @newyorker.com print edition has this insane fact. I suspect they got this from the US Sentencing Commission, but that's because sex crimes involving Native Americans and occurring on reservations go to federal court. When including state courts, it's <1%.

Also, do yourself a favor and follow John Berry @aniccia.bsky.social, who is a wealth of info and videos on Waymo and other AV ops.

@aniccia.bsky.social reminded me that Waymo does teledrive in limited circumstances. This is done by the Event Response Team, who I assume are US-based since they speak directly with 1st responders, as opposed to the remote assist who use pre-recorded messages.

www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc...