Today, a Morning writer explains how he became a grudging participant in the world of online gambling.
An app on your phone lets you gamble on the timing of U.S. military strikes, on the existence of aliens and on the return of Jesus Christ. (Will he make his second coming before midnight on Jan. 1, 2027? Online speculators think there’s a 4 percent chance.)
Gambling is old — even older than Jesus. Scholars believe that thousands of years ago, the Egyptians bet on senet, a religious board game representing the soul’s path to the afterlife. A couple of millennia later, the Romans bet on life-or-death gladiator fights and chariot races. When Julius Caesar led his army across the Rubicon, he described his move like a steely-eyed crapshooter: Alea iacta est, “The die is cast.”
But the bets now consuming the world, transacted instantaneously via online prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, are different from those weightier wagers of the past. These sites empower hobbyist prognosticators to bet on virtually anything. No bet is too trivial. The world is a gamblers’ playground, and we’re all part of the game.
I recently became a grudging participant. I didn’t even get the chance to try my luck or lose any money. I simply existed, and thus became a vehicle for someone else’s speculation.
Becoming a bet
It began when I posted on X earlier this month. I wanted to share an article I’d written, about the official behind a stream of Labor Department social media posts that parroted messages used by white nationalists.
I’m not a huge social media guy, so I let myself get a little excited when my post picked up steam. 50,000 views. Now 100,000. Is this thing going viral? Then, I saw this image in the comments section:
Was this guy … betting on my tweet?
Really, I shouldn’t have been surprised. As you read this sentence, real people are betting on whether President Trump will utter the words “six seven” this week. Others are gambling on whether the price of a Bitcoin will rise in the next five minutes.
All of which is to say: Why wouldn’t someone also bet on my post?
Sure. Fine. But why did he? That’s a harder question. So I asked him. His real name is Franklin Caldwell II, and he’s an aerospace engineer. During Covid, he started down a yearslong rabbit hole of NFTs and cryptocurrencies. He became a multimillionaire in a hurry — then, in a single transaction, lost $3 million in the form of cartoon crypto tokens.
His latest obsession is Tweem, the platform that let him gamble on my post. “If I’m going to spend time viewing a tweet, I want to leave with something,” said Caldwell, 35, who added that he had “a passion for predictions.” Since creating his account around seven months ago, Caldwell has placed more than 25,000 bets — over 100 bets per day, on average.
What gives?
Online gambling now feels unstoppable, and it’s crossing over into places that once seemed unthinkable. Polymarket this year became “the exclusive prediction market partner” of the Golden Globes, which flashed “probabilities” (read: betting odds) on the screen before revealing award winners.
A side effect: Gambling is getting more abstracted, and more gamified. When betting feels effortless — when it doesn’t feel like betting — it’s easier to get addicted. Since 2018, internet searches seeking help for gambling addiction have increased more than 20 percent. The stakes of a given wager now feel “more like a concept than a reality,” Lia Nower, director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers, told me.
“From the time you’re 5 years old, you’re being primed to gamble,” Nower said. “It’s part of our culture now.”
Caldwell didn’t bet real money — for now, Tweem deals only in digital “points” — but he hopes that once the platform hits it big, it will shower him with crypto coins for having been an early adopter. In essence, he’s taking another gamble.
As for my post? Caldwell bet that it would reach nearly 378,000 views. It ran out of juice at 274,000. Better luck next time.
THE LATEST NEWS
Politics
* President Trump said he would raise his new global tariff to 15 percent after the Supreme Court struck down many of his previous tariffs.
* Trump pulled his endorsement of a Republican representative from Colorado who voted with Democrats to cancel his tariffs on Canada.
* JPMorgan Chase admitted that it closed more than 50 of Trump’s accounts shortly after his first term ended.
* Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, kicked off his book tour in Nashville, in what some see as a step toward a 2028 presidential run.
Around the World
* Jordan: Dozens of American planes are parked in the country at a base that has become a key hub for U.S. military planning for possible strikes on Iran.
* Iran: A top national security official responsible for crushing recent antigovernment protests is in charge of preparing the country for a potential U.S. attack.
* Venezuela: Since the U.S. captured Nicolás Maduro, the country has released hundreds of political prisoners. In the video below, Simon Romero, an international correspondent, describes what’s happening. Click to play.
Other Big Stories
* Parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions are bracing for a powerful winter storm, including heavy snowfall and strong winds. See how much snow your area could get.
* The Department of Homeland Security said it was suspending the T.S.A. PreCheck and Global Entry programs after the department’s funding lapsed.
* NASA’s moon mission could be delayed until at least April after data showed a problem with helium flow to the rocket.
* A ninth victim of last week’s avalanche in California was found, and the bodies of all the victims have been recovered, officials said.
THE SUNDAY DEBATE
The head of the baseball players’ union resigned last week after an internal investigation found that he had an “inappropriate relationship” with his sister-in-law, who was also an employee. At first, it wasn’t clear whether the affair was with his wife’s sister or his brother’s wife, and social media — as well as our little newsletter team — broke into an intense debate over which was worse.
To help parse this moral minefield, we consulted Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor who for more than a decade has written the Ethicist column for The New York Times Magazine.
If you sleep with your sibling’s spouse, Anthony pointed out, you’ve not only set off a bomb in your marriage, but also in what he called “your natal family, the people you’re connected to by blood.” Other siblings, parents, nieces and nephews could be collateral damage. You’ve betrayed the two people you’re supposed to be most loyal to. “It’s not just adultery,” he noted, “it’s violating the family relationship you’ve had since birth.”
If you cheat with your spouse’s sibling, it might be easier on your family. But you’re doing all that extra harm to her and her family. As Anthony put it, “You’re denying her the person it would be most natural for her to go to to seek solace.” And if it’s worse for your betrayed spouse, he said, it’s worse overall.
“In thinking about morality, we often make a sharp distinction between harming yourself and harming other people,” he continued. “Since you shouldn’t be doing it at all, what you should be focused on is the harm you’re doing to the other person.”
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FROM OPINION
As the war in Ukraine reaches its fourth anniversary, it has reoriented values and social relations that will define future generations of Ukrainians, M. Gessen writes.
These Winter Olympics have shown us the difference between patriotism and nationalism, David Litt writes.
Here is a column by Nicholas Kristof on what survivors of sex trafficking think about Jeffrey Epstein and his friends.
MORNING READS
Now you see it: For three generations, Bruno Goppion’s family has crafted display cases and exhibits for the world’s leading museums.
Modern Love: When her husband collapsed in their bedroom, it was the nightmare she had long feared coming true.
Master of the unthinkable: Toni Morrison’s greatness lay in her belief that stories could contain what our minds couldn’t confront.
Anatomy of a Scene: Watch the director Kleber Mendonça Filho break down a sequence from “The Secret Agent,” his Oscar-nominated film.
A bandleader: Willie Colón, a trombonist, singer and composer from the Bronx, helped shape the sound of the music the world now knows as salsa. He died at 75.
WINTER OLYMPICS
Aerial skiing: The Americans Connor Curran, Kaila Kuhn and Christopher Lillis won gold in the mixed team aerials.
Cross-country skiing: With his victory in the 50-kilometer race, Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo of Norway won his sixth gold medal in these Games.
Men’s curling: The Canadian squad beat Britain in a tense, strategic match to win the gold.
BOOK OF THE WEEK
By Elisabeth Egan
“A Hymn to Life,” by Gisèle Pelicot; translated by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver: In 2024, Pelicot sat in a courtroom in Avignon, France, while her husband and dozens of strangers were tried and convicted of raping her while she was drugged into oblivion over a period of nine years. (The lorazepam cocktail came courtesy of the man she loved for five decades, who slipped it into her food and drink.) In her memoir, which our critic described as a “rousing feminist manifesto,” Pelicot charts her progression from unwitting victim to global icon. “I don’t know where I am anymore,” she told the police when she learned of her husband’s crimes. It’s clear from her account that she has her bearings now.
For more: Read our interview with Pelicot, or watch the video.
THE INTERVIEW
By David Marchese
This week’s subject for The Interview is the wellness influencer Jay Shetty, who went from being a monk to being a wildly successful self-help celebrity with a goal to “make wisdom go viral.”
One of the things that’s unusual about your arc is that it looks like an inversion of a typical monk’s journey. In the typical version, somebody decides to embrace monastic life and then renounces material things. It seems as if you decided to pursue monastic life, and now you’re doing pretty well for yourself financially. You hang out with glamorous people. You’re a successful entrepreneur. Are there any ways in which the spiritual tradition you trained in is in tension with the life you’re living?
There’s a beautiful statement in the Bhagavad Gita that says attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin. Often in our Western understanding, we see detachment as better than attachment. However, the spiritual understanding is far more refined. Detachment doesn’t mean aversion. Detachment means you can be close to anything in the world and use it for a higher purpose. Now, I’m not saying I’m doing that. I’m saying I’m trying my best. Every day I’m living in the quote-unquote real world, I’m reminded of my flaws. And I would argue that I feel closer to growth in my current life than I ever did in the ashram, because in the ashram I could almost forget or think maybe I’d already found it.
Is there any part of you that thinks that’s an elaborate self-justification?
I have questioned that many times. I think the spiritual philosophy of 5,000 years is pretty clear, so I take that as my authority. However, the other side of it, to be quite frank and honest, is I think it’s also a graduation. I’m married, I have businesses, we have teams, we have companies. I’m not a monk anymore. It’s partly why I wrote a book called “Think Like a Monk,” not “Live Like a Monk.”
Read more of the interview here. Or watch a longer version on YouTube.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
Read this week’s magazine.
THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …
Make these pan-fried fritters. They’re a Korean favorite for a reason.
Safeguard your hard-earned savings from scammers. Here are some tips to protect yourself.
Watch the BAFTAs. Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars takes place tonight. U.S. viewers can see the show on E!
MEAL PLAN
It’s tax season. Summer child-care costs are looming. Are you keeping a closer eye on food spending? In the spirit of thriftiness, Margaux Laskey and the Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter pulled together delicious dinner options, like chickpea vegetable soup, that are budget-friendly and keep well in the fridge or freezer, but that don’t feel like a sacrifice in terms of fun or flavor.
NOW TIME TO PLAY
Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were amniotic, anatomic, contaminant, contamination, manicotti and monatomic.
Can you put eight historical events — including reviews of the Gettysburg Address, the beginning of the Aztec empire and the release of Dungeons & Dragons — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz.
And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, Connections and Strands.
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