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How Gambling Explains Our Modern, Complex World

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If you were to watch “Moneyball” today, you might find it quaint. You may recall the premise: In a world before “data-driven decisions” was a cliché, a likable nerd played by Jonah Hill helps craft a baseball roster from a spreadsheet, beating out better-funded teams who still rely on traditional scouts. These old-school baseball types are stuck in the past – more concerned with a player’s jawline and how the ball “explodes off his bat” rather than on-base percentage and hard statistics.

Fifteen years later, algorithms have taken over everything from baseball to politics to research, and the shortcomings of “software eating the world” are becoming more obvious. Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign is built on vibes and being “brat,” instead of well-articulated policies. Despite our access to information and powerful modeling software, there is an ongoing replication crisis for scientific studies. Our social media feeds are targeted and addictive, but ultimately immiserating.

Enter Nate Silver, the statistician, political forecaster, and poker player. His new book, On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, is much more nuanced than “Moneyball,” eschewing the worship of data geeks and their denigration of human cognition. Instead, he uses poker to illustrate how to live in a modern, complex world. Statistical models have raised the game, but the best players combine these probabilities with their own human intuition to make the optimal play.

The River and The Village

To most people, Nate Silver builds election models. He came to prominence for predicting all 50 states

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DeSantis Taps Florida AG Office To Oversee Investigation Into Trump Assassination Attempt

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Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order on Tuesday assigning the Attorney General’s Office of Statewide Prosecution and Florida agencies to oversee the state’s independent investigation into the second assassination attempt against President Donald Trump.

“[I]t’s not in the best interest of our state or our nation to have the same federal agencies that are seeking to prosecute Donald Trump leading this investigation,” DeSantis said during a press conference, noting how this is “especially [true] when the most serious, straightforward offense constitutes a violation of state law, but not federal law.”

“In addition to holding the suspect accountable, the public deserves to know the truth about how this assassination [attempt] came to be,” he continued.

The GOP governor’s announcement came two days after suspect Ryan Routh was spotted by Secret Service camping in bushes near Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course. The former president was playing golf several hundred yards away when agents noticed Routh, who was armed with a large rifle.

The suspect reportedly fled the scene in a car after being fired upon by the Service and was later apprehended. Routh “appeared in federal court on Monday and is being charged with possession of a firearm by a prohibited person (convicted felon) and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number,” Florida’s Voice News reported, citing a case complaint.

It is reportedly possible that more charges will be filed against the suspect, according to Fox News.

Routh is a longtime Democrat donor who has regurgitated “anti-Trump rhetoric” often used

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New Hampshire Governor Signs No-Excuse Voter ID And Citizenship Law, But It Won’t Matter In 2024

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Gov. Chris Sununu, R-N.H., signed a no-excuse voter identification and proof-of-citizenship bill into law last week, but it will not go into effect until six days after this year’s election.

The law, which passed the state’s Republican-majority House and Senate earlier this year, will require New Hampshire voters to provide proof of citizenship to apply for registration, as well as a photo ID when casting a ballot. In the event a person can’t show a valid ID, the supervisor may “review the voter’s qualifications and determine if the voter’s identity can be verified.”

“If the supervisor of the checklist determines that the voter’s qualifications and identity have not been established, the voter shall not be allowed to vote,” the law clarifies.

Current law allows people to show up to the polls without an ID, cast a ballot, and sign an affidavit promising that they are who they claim to be. It does not require voters to produce documentation until seven days after an election.

“I think this is a great bill and one needed in New Hampshire given its law allowing same day voter registration,” Hans von Spakovsky, Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow and manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative, told The Federalist. “Although it would have been good to have it in effect for this election, given that it only just got passed and just got signed into law so close to the election would probably make it extremely difficult for election officials to implement it before the

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Republicans, Stop Letting Democrats Corner You On IVF

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To boost their abortion and in vitro fertilization agenda and rhetoric ahead of the rapidly approaching 2024 election, Senate Democrats forced a second vote on an extremist legislative package that would effectively shield the multi-billion dollar fertility industry from oversight and regulation.

The “Right To IVF Act,” introduced by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., lumps several radical Democrat-led assisted reproductive technology (ART) bills into one to ensure the unlimited creation, indefinite freezing, and destruction of millions of embryos.

Included in the self-proclaimed “sweeping” bill are vague language and undefined terms that would force Americans with moral objections to ART to fund the manufacturing of motherless and fatherless children, commercial surrogacy, experimental transhumanist technologies like artificial wombs, “gene editing,” and reproduction without women via in vitro gametogenesis.

Additionally, the package would make a permanent path for taxpayer-funded ART like egg and sperm freezing, IVF, and surrogacy for millions of U.S. servicemembers and veterans. It also incentivizes the promotion of babies by any means necessary above adoption and restorative reproductive treatments that address the root causes of infertility.

The legislation aimed at punishing any entity that attempts to rein in unethical and immoral reproductive technologies already flopped once in June, when it failed to garner the 60 votes required to advance.

Instead of creating a clear and principled response to Democrats’ bad-faith efforts to jam their extremism through the upper chamber, however, Senate Republicans, who claim to be exceptionally pro-life, scrambled to promote their own “iron-clad” pro-IVF bills and statements endorsing “nationwide access to IVF.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who recognized the GOP’s inconsistency on IVF,

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