gambling

I was up late binging TV Friday night after the Mega Millions drawing. I caught the episode of Wings where Antonio becomes a cable junkie. Somebody said that "you start experimenting with CNN then move to hard stuff like Nickelodeon and next thing you know it's 4AM and you're strung out watching that guy paint his head." I didn't get the reference to the guy with the painted head, and it was still considerably earlier than 4AM at that point, but it did make watching Shark Tank feel like watching somebody watch QVC.

I went out walking with the dogs on Saturday then met a friend at Peddler's Village. I'd read in the paper a few days before that they'd have ice sculptures on display and that it was the last weekend the lights would still be up so we thought to seize the opportunity, though one of the sculptures had fallen before we could see it. It was cold and crowded but we found a space to talk and I bought a round of beer. We spent two hours there then stopped at a Chipotle where he bought a round of food. I arrived there first and sat in the car thinking about those who might use such an opportunity to drive home without a word never to be heard from again. He mentioned thinking similarly on his way while we ate. We made it back to my place, talking late into the night and hanging with the dogs. He took a picture with Dany and left to drive his roommate home.

We went out walking some more on Sunday with a neighbor we haven't had a chance to catch up with recently. We rested up after then I went out to watch the Eagles game with neighbors. We talked about the lottery and what jobs we'd hire if we had the money. I thought I'd employ a housekeeper, a driver, a groundskeeper, a gardener, an historian, a clown, and personal assistants for each dog. Some years ago we met a representative from Dogfish Head at a local winery. We didn't exchange more than a few sentences with each other when she pulled an album of Music To Drink Beer To out of her swag bag to gift to us. Home after the Eagles win I poured a Victory Brotherly Love and listened to it while reflecting on the games I caught during the season.

Today I made it to the city to catch up with another friend. We had lunch and grabbed coffee on our walk back to his place. The server brought out complimentary tomato shooters, and I had a Beyond Burger with a Light Hearted Ale. We talked about all the places we'd travel if money weren't an issue. He wants to visit the animals of the world, and I thought I'd spend the most time around Japan and take tours through Antarctica, Africa, and Mesoamerica. I made it back to the boro in time to catch tonight's council meeting with two neighbors then stopped to buy more lottery tickets on my way home. I received my $14 share of the Equifax settlement in the mail yesterday and thought that'd be the best use for it. According to the FTC the settlement "includes up to $425M to help people affected by the data breach." That much money could buy 212.5M Mega Millions tickets, which is roughly 70.2% of the 302M possible tickets. Considering only a billion dollar jackpot prize that puts the expected winnings around $700M or roughly 1.8 times the total settlement in this more fun universe where every winning ticket wins the full pot. Assuming a proportionate distribution I could have possibly received over $30, which would have paid for lunch today, or zero dollars, which is just as helpful as fourteen.

Years after the breach I heard commercials that mentioned people buying and selling my personal data on the dark web, which sounded scarier than but not all that different from Equifax and friends selling my personal data in their own networks. I'm not paid either way, and the only distinction I could surmise is the claim of consent to share the data in the one case that doesn't formally exist in the other, though calling it consent in the first place when the alternative is an outright exclusion from society seems illusory at best. Discretization is part of my identity as both a writer and mathematician so for ethical consistency I feel I have to promote the abstractions of capital, but I think I could fairly dispense with the veneer of choice by adopting an economics by augury. For instance the next time a financial institution gifts data to resellers, rather than moralize about dark webs and stolen identities and issue $14 checks a better way to help people affected by such a breach could be to compel the President to call Congress to the Hill. There they could count the vultures passing overhead, with the Justices of the Supreme Court watching from a window to witness and verify the outcome. If the count numbers less than seven all members of the working class would be granted one year's non-expiring vacation transferable between employers to be taken as paid time off throughout the employee's lifetime or a cash equivalent of the remaining balance. If the count is seven or more then the workers would agree to burn a third of their food reserves and add one more schedule to Medicare. Anybody who raises "well actually" points about what constitutes a vulture or challenges the political processes used to determine the time when the count begins or ends would be legally labeled a witch and publicly ridiculed in the town square until such time as a replacement clown is discovered.