I have something I need to vent about, that I've tried to vent to friends about as well, but where nobody has been on the same page as me before.

In short, I despise gambling (casinos, sports betting, loot boxes in games, etc.), I think it destroys lives, often slowly and discreetly, and I think advertisements for it should be as taboo as tobacco advertisements and should even be illegal.

In long:

I've seen a trend in the last few years of sports betting becoming advertised to an unbearable degree. I can't watch any sport without a commercial for draft kings or fan duel. I can't even watch youtube without content creators being sponsored by draft kings. Advertisements for sports betting, specifically, are literally everywhere. I'm even in a basketball chat and there are several people there that DON'T EVEN WATCH BASKETBALL, they're specifically there to talk about the bets they make for a sport they don't watch.

I've seen at least a dozen friends sign up due to the ridiculous amount of advertising and with almost every single one, they claim they're getting "free money" since DK does give you free bets on a first deposit or something, but then every single one, after running out of the "free money" doesn't cash out and delete their account, they put five more dollars in, then put ten in, etc. until it starts to control their life and their finances. There shouldn't be a person alive that doesn't know how gambling can destroy you, but people still sign up for this bullshit. Nobody seems to understand that the only reason draft kings can give you free money on signup is because, on average, they make MORE than that per person.

On the subject of casinos, I went to Las Vegas for the first time last year. I already knew how elaborate and rich the casinos on the strip are, that part did not surprise me. What did surprise me is that if you go just a few blocks off the strip, it's almost entirely run down low income housing. You have possibly one of the richest areas in the United States in the form of the strip and seemingly none of that wealth is being shared to neighboring communities. It just goes back into the strip, getting sports teams to move to Vegas, getting F1 races, etc.

It just baffles me that so many people gamble and, even when warned about it, even after losing money, they insist that it's fun or that it's not so bad, but I truly think that gambling culture and companies running gambling schemes are some of the biggest evils out there. My parents divorced partly because of gambling. My dad permanently fucked his life up because of it. He has zero money, is now at an age and health where he can barely work, and my sister and I will likely be stuck footing the bill for his care later in life when just 15 years ago he was in a position to be set up pretty well for the rest of his life.

And yet, people still go to Vegas and lose hundreds or thousands on slots or cards, people still sign up on draft kings and lose hundreds or thousands on bets, and seemingly everyone I talk to is entirely blind on how bad of a situation this is and thinks me radical when I say that gambling advertisements should be illegal.

I value personal freedom, I don't think gambling should be banned, but I do think it can pose just as much of a danger to ruining someone's life as cigarettes can, but as a society, nobody seems to have any issue with ads for sports betting and casinos.

In addition to all of the above, we still have loot boxes in video games and collectible card games as a whole, but that would be another 2 pages of writing and I don't want to get in that deep.

If you stuck with me this whole time, thank you. I don't expect many people to agree, but I at least really needed to vent this out, even if it's into the void.

Do any of you have positive or negative experiences regarding gambling to add?

I really enjoy Tales of Ba Sing Se. It's really nice just watching them live their lives in the big city. It's somewhat a filler episode, but unlike the filler in Naruto or something, the plot still incrementally moves along and doesn't linger too long on any one character.

So, this is something I discovered last night that is just blowing my mind: for most of the past year, the channel TeenNick is showing only Henry Danger.

I cannot emphasize how literal I am being with that. Usually "a channel is only showing X" is an exaggeration, but for once, no. As far as I can tell, 99% of TeenNick's programming has been Henry Danger or its spin-off, Danger Force, for the past year. At most, there are brief "respites" where it will have a block with another show. For example, from July 27 to 31, it aired Zoey 101 from 11 PM to 1 AM. Two hours late at night, and then back to Henry Danger. Similar story with some new Nickelodeon show called Erin & Aaron: it showed periodically starting on April 22, and was apparently last aired on July 4.

Otherwise? Most days are JUST Henry Danger. Even Wikipedia lists Henry Danger and Danger Force as the only current shows. (Along with Nick News, which apparently only airs once a month.)

This is just honestly stunning to me. For those unfamiliar with TeenNick, it's a sub-channel of Nickelodeon. As far as I can remember, it pretty much never had original programming, but would air reruns of mostly live-action shows from Nickelodeon (either older finished shows or currently airing), some older Nickelodeon cartoons (Hey Arnold and Rugrats), or shows picked up through syndication (namely Degrassi, and more recently America's Funniest Home Videos and Wipeout for some reason...?).

What I'm saying is there is no reason for them to ONLY air this one, single show. It can't be blamed on any production issues, since it primarily airs reruns. TeenNick SHOULD have access to all the other shows from Nickelodeon's library, so it can't be a licensing issue either. As stated earlier, it aired episodes of a show that premiered this year on Nickelodeon. And Henry Danger is fairly recent, ending in 2020, so I don't know if it's a matter of residuals.

The only reason I can think of is that they want to push people to get Paramount+. Except even with that logic, this channel is currently a waste of money. Henry Danger has a total of 128 half-hour episodes (though I think some are part of a one-hour special, so Wikipedia counts 121 episodes...?), so that's basically 5 days' worth of content before airing the same thing again. That's not enough to justify a dedicated channel—not for viewers or advertisers.

From a cursory internet search, they average 66,000 viewers, with a peak of 99,000 on January 1, 2023. I can't imagine that would appeal to advertisers. I feel like the costs of running the channel outweigh any potential profits. This feels like it's just a money sink.

I just... I can't wrap my head around it. What the heck??

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Or just want to join me in boggling over this weirdness? This feels like it could be a symptom of cable's overall degradation (I've seen people comparing it to Cartoon Network's limited programming in recent years), but... It almost feels like this channel is being sabotaged? Deliberately set up for failure and closure? Just, I can't wrap my head around a year-long nonstop "marathon".

As part of the ongoing quest to turn everything I enjoy into an exercise in statistical modelling, I had a look around today for a way to track what books I've read and which ones I may be interested in. I found a bit of a jumble of things in various states of development, half of which are owned by Amazon (which I'd prefer to avoid) and the other half with incomplete, confusing, and opaquely sourced data.

I use this kind of service for a handful of other topics, mainly untappd, AniList, and last.fm. I'm only really interested in the ability to keep track of read/watched items - I don't find myself rating things or making complex lists unless I started my journey with a hobby by using one of these systems. Of course for this to work out, it needs to have a fairly comprehensive library. I was unfortunately disappointed with OpenLibrary, which would otherwise be my top pick. I found systems like readarr and calibre a little clunky for this in the past since they're so focused on file management, but I'm open to retrying them.

Does anyone here have any insights in this space? Not just limited to books, I'm also interested in trackers for TV/Movies. Preferably not owned by a massive company like Amazon, I know a lot of people were disappointed when they deprecated the Goodreads API.

Hey folks! I’m looking for some audiobook ideas (preferably fantasy and science-fiction). I want them to have a TV series or Movie about them though I could watch before listening to them.

All ideas welcome!