Wednesday Night ONT - April 8, 2026 [TRex]

Good evening Horde. The time has come for mid-week shenanigans.

Welcome to the Wednesday night ONT which means another edition of random overnight fun and games. Pull up a chair and sit a spell. Good will offerings of amusing puns are happily accepted. Pants are optional. Be nice to your fellow commenters and AoS contributors. This is a Tucker, Candace and Megyn free zone. Please.

[Top photo: Peek a boo. NASA Artemis II mission]

Does anyone follow the prediction markets? Event contracts are simple - you put money on a bet with a binary outcome. If a designated event happens, you get paid out. If not, you lose your money.

Such bets used to mostly pop up once a year with Super Bowl bets about the length of the national anthem. Yes, big casinos or your local bookie might quote odds but now prediction markets have gone online with platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. These platforms make participation very easy.

There are no odds, but the higher probability of an event, the more expensive the contract. The lower the probability, the cheaper the contract.

There is a wisdom of crowds element to all of this. Because people are putting their money, arguably the prediction market is more credible than polls. Insider trading is prohibited (in theory).

What events? Obvious candidates like sporting events and political elections, but also financial indices, commodity prices, and geopolitical developments. Cultural bets are fair game like celebrity marriage or divorce. Distasteful or illegal bets are not allowed on Polymarket and Kalshi.

The legal eagles among the Horde will appreciate the regulatory gymnastics around federal versus state law and drawing lines between gambling and investing. That debate and argument is very active and the resolution will set precedent for decades. What is the legal difference between a prediction market event contract on the S&P 500 and an S&P 500 option or future contract?

The other interesting angle is clarity around the language of the bet. For example, an event contract for "boots on the ground" presumably contemplated offensive kinetic action, but what about a rescue mission for a downed aviator? Assassination bets are not permitted, but what about a change of Iranian leader by bombing? The bigger money involved, the more people care about the outcome.

Here are a handful of contracts from Polymarket and Kalshi for giggles (current as of Monday PM). Remember - these are predictions for what people think will happen, not necessarily wishes for what will or should happen (although both may be true in some cases).

Lancaster County Wendy's manager allegedly made fake employee, collected pay

An audit of a Lancaster County Wendy's found that a former general manager allegedly stole almost $20,000 from the eatery by creating a fake employee.

According to the charging documents, Linda Johnson allegedly clocked in and out as a "ghost employee" at the Manheim Township Wendy's from July 2021 to April 2022 and then had the paychecks go to her bank account.

Paychecks from the fake employee showed police that $19,898.15 was allegedly stolen by Johnson, who also created 128 shifts for the "worker." Detectives learned later that Johnson would be the only one who could create the shifts, police said.

When other managers were questioned about the "worker," police said some could not remember working with them, while one reported that they met him once and that Johnson did provide a timecard for the employee but never worked with him.

Shocked. No, not really.

Pigs in Space:

Mom gives birth to twins with different dads after sex with 2 men on same day

This new mom had a "one-in-a-million" conception: Her babies may be twins - but they have different bio-dads.

A 19-year-old Brazilian woman gave birth to twins nine months after having sex with two men on the same day. As their first birthdays loomed, she began having doubts over who their father was, so she decided to take a paternity test to confirm her suspicions, local news outlet news outlet Globo reported.

The anonymous woman originally suspected only one of the two men to be the father of the twins, so she collected his DNA - but it only turned up positive for one child.

"I remembered that I had had sex with another man and called him to take the test, which was positive," the new mom, who asked not to be identified, told the outlet. "I was surprised by the results. I didn't know this could happen. They are very similar."

Heteropaternal superfecundation "is an extremely rare phenomenon that occurs when a second ova released during the same menstrual cycle is additionally fertilized by the sperm cells of a different man in separate sexual intercourse," according to the journal Biomedica.

Even my small dino brain can think of another obvious reason this is a rare phenomenon. Maybe she needs a hobby. I mean a different hobby.

This winter train ride on the Bernina railway in Switzerland from St. Moritz is a nice way to travel.

The ride in the summer is pretty nice too.

Mandatory reading in case you missed it:

Was this written with help from AI? Dunno, but it hits the mark. We don't usually do geopolitical content on the Wednesday ONT. Welcome to the random.

The Pittsburgh police scanner keeps giving. Thank you people of Pittsburgh!

A little upbeat fiddle and banjo music for the big ONT finish:

Written correspondence can be sent to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Are you lurking ?? Thank you for your attention to this matter. Beware - reading ONT content may result in being whelmed.

posted by Open Blogger at 10:00 PM

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