The VAT on school fees reference was the highlight for me.

assuming everyone has already read this but if not: please be advised that the first time I read it I was at my desk at work and I had to go for a little walk halfway through because I thought I was about to die from quietly laughing

Fianna Fáil’s John McGuinness calls for new leadership as pressure grows on Micheál Martin Malcolm Byrne says he will not back leadership challenge but criticises Government messaging and tone

These Fianna Fail TDs really need to be careful about what they are wishing for. The idea that people who are not from representative bodies who block motorways and fuel depots should be "given the opportunity to have a direct input" is a fairly slipperly slope.

www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...

AI punters lose their shirts on Premier League bets Models by Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI struggle when asked to predict scores over football season

AI punters lose their shirts on Premier League bets ft.trib.al/GhmsVxX

And barely a peep out of our media about who is behind this. Lots of neutral "protests escalate" language without asking who is organising it.

Like what the actual .... whatever happened to enforcing the law rather than "we're going to wait around until the government implements god knows what unrealistic bullshit it is these lunatics want"?

And garda sources say "These are very decent people who have a grievance over fuel prices and we’re not intent on doing anything at this stage that might inflame the situation and hopefully the Government can come up with a solution to resolve the problem sooner rather than later”

Not least because it is being promoted via paid ads on Meta and being praised by the likes of "Tommy Robinson"

www.thebriefing.ie/who-is-fundi...

Fuel protesters’ blockade of Ireland’s only oil refinery to stay ‘until diesel capped’ Irving Oil’s refinery at Whitegate in east Cork, supplies around 40 per cent of Ireland’s petroleum

So supposedly the people causing traffic chaos and blocking fuel depots in Ireland are a group that started "organically" on WhatsApp on Sunday?

Smells like bullshit to me. You don't go from a few WhatsApp posts to this level of disruption in three days.

www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026...

Independent filling stations suffer ‘huge’ losses under soaring gas prices One filling station owner says fuel price rises have never been so bad ‘for as long as I’ve had a filling station’

"Filling stations" and "gas prices". Either the Irish Times is getting Americans to write its headlines or they are getting written by AI.

www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026...

"So will Musk ever succeed in inculcating these non-American lessons? Does he have the tenacity, force and staff for a lengthy cultural fight? We don’t know."

Of course we knew. The dude was obviously a lunatic.

Musk is right — US government badly needs a digital makeover If he can drive the change that’s required, future generations will thank him

This was the column that made me quit my FT subscription. It is an absolute classic of the "why you should not pay any attention to columnists" genre. And these people never come back and say "yep, I got that wrong. Elon was clearly a ghoul and I was talking nonsense."

www.ft.com/content/f975...

Only realised yesterday March Madness was available on Disney Plus. So many great games but this Duke-UConn game was unreal.

That's the last time I will ever send a paper to a journal with a high submission fee and no partial refund for desk rejection. I don't mind being desk rejected, so it's not me being upset. And I get my department to cover the fees, so I'm not out of pocket. It's just fundamentally a rip-off.

Can AI Beat the Sportsbooks? YouTube video by Unabated

This from Captain Jack from Unabated is much more accurate about how this stuff actually works.

Which is not to say you will make money from Unabated's services either.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BOj...

And again, willing to sit in the White House and tell the truth and say things Trump really does not want to hear. I think Micheál Martin has done far better here than most world leaders.

An incredibly difficult situation for Micheál Martin but very few world leaders have stepped into this situation and done as well.

You're just going to end up out of pocket for a bunch of subscriptions to API odds apps and AI models and you will still be worse at figuring out probabilities than the bookmakers.

I Built OpenClaw AI Sports Handicappers (And They Won Every Time) YouTube video by Scott Logan

If you think you can use a bunch of AI models to "crush bookmakers" I've a bridge to sell you.

Start with this. Do you think bookmakers don't use models? Not only do they use AI-style models but they have information from betting volume flows that no AI has.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CUQ...

Gambling addiction is a serious issue but I found this article strange. He's a smart guy. Gets good advice early on not placing sucker bets and then, for some reason he doesn't explain, keeps placing them and wasting lots of time on it. Reads a bit like cosplaying as someone he wasn't.

Reminds me of the iCarly episode where the guy from the federal government wanted to shut down ick-arly.

My favourite bit here is how Kennedy calls it Bloo-ski.

The second part focused on "predictions about prediction markets."

1. Biases will decline over time
2. Fees will fall over time
3. Sports prediction market providers will require live data feeds and suspensions for big events.
4. "Fake" taker-only prediction markets (like DK predicts) may win out.

The first part of the presentation focused on the results in my paper with Constantin Bürgi and Wanying Deng: Makers and Takers: The Economics of the Kalshi Prediction Market

www.karlwhelan.com/Papers/Kalsh...

The paper documents a strong favorite-longshot bias pattern in Kalshi's prices.

I gave a presentation on Friday about prediction markets at an NYU Stern Finance conference. Here are the slides

www.karlwhelan.com/Presentation...

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood attack on Green leader Zack Polanski for going to France.

He says she misrepresents his visit, but praises her visit to Lesbos in 2015, as a backbench MP.

Francis Edgeworth died 100 years ago on 13 February 1926. I gave a little paper about him at a very jolly event held in Oxford to mark the occasion, available here:

www.sciencespo.fr/department-e...

#EconSky #econhist

Link gremlins!

Indeed, paper is www.karlwhelan.com/Papers/Kalsh...

And summary is cepr.org/voxeu/column...

I've seen a lot of anti-Kalshi stuff on this site recently. Betting it may be but their prices are pretty decent predictors.

As long as it's not a low probability event. Research summary here

cepr.org/voxeu/column...

Full paper here

www.karlwhelan.com/Papers/Kalsh...