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Friday, June 6th, 2025 12:04 am
The recent "only one bed" meme (which I still haven't finished, as per usual) led to only-one-bed thoughts and this missing scene for B5 5x16.

One Safe Harbor (also on Ao3 - G'Kar/Londo, 2300 words, explicit)
Missing scene on the flight from Babylon 5 to Centauri Prime in 5x16. Two people in a very small sleeping space. Also, some feelings are had.

One Safe Harbor - 2300 wds )
Thursday, June 5th, 2025 11:26 pm

rei-ismyname:

Magneto falls from the sky

Warlock fled his people due to their unconventional inheritance practices and came to Earth. He barely noticed that he fucked Asteroid M up by crashing into it, though Magneto certainly did probably as he was somehow surviving reentry. Badman landed in Lee Forrester’s boat of all places and she was not happy to see him. She remembers being taken prisoner on R'lyeh for one of his Bond villain schemes in Uncanny X-Men #150.

Keep reading

I usually don’t blog many non-Cyclops related X-posts.

But Lee Forrester banged Magneto, and I’m very proud of her.

Friday, June 6th, 2025 03:23 pm
1. Have you ever been to summer camp?

No. But 'summer camp' is not a thing here in Australia the way it seems to have been in the USA. There were camps, yes, but they were very directly related to school - a week is the longest that I remember and I was 12. After that, it was school excusions, yes, or band camps, and a couple of times Beach Mission (yes, literally, Christian mission in the middle of summer at a beach).


2. Have you ever made a s'more?

Yes! Back visiting some friends in upstate NY in the early 2000s when their sons were just born. Her family had a holiday house on a lake and we went and stayed there, and they taught me about making s'mores.


3. Have you ever slept under the stars (no tent/tarp)?

Possibly, depending on how you take it. I've slept on a wooden porch, huddled up with a bunch of other people. We were doing an "all nighter" purely for the sake of doing it. It wasn't fun.

Actually, wait yes, I have slept under the stars. At a 'B&S' (Bachelors' and Spinsters' ball) out west, in the tray of a utility truck. We'd tossed a bunch of mattresses in, and there were about a half-dozen of us all sprawled out to sleep after the ball. It wasn't terrible. We were young, and that makes a difference!


4. Have you ever had a member of the opposite sex sleep over at your house?

Only after I became an adult. House-sharing in Sydney means you have housemates who have all sorts of people staying over.


5. What type of bed do you have (queen, twin, bunk, etc.)?

Twin. I had a queen-size at our last house (and had a queen-size pretty much since I was 24) but when we moved out into this place, there wasn't space for a queen-sized bed, so I downsized to an IKEA twin with an under-bed storage space. And, as it turns out, the queen-mattress fitted sheets fit on the twin-size when you have a super-thick mattress.
Friday, June 6th, 2025 09:04 am
It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!
Thursday, June 5th, 2025 08:00 pm

notbecauseofvictories:

I really do think life is a series of watching other people walk through doors you can’t follow them through. I’ve been thinking about it lately when it comes to marriage—my sister got married recently, and my brother before her, and while the occasions were joyful and I was happy for both of them, it was also like standing in mission control. Or maybe not even that, maybe the ‘friends & family’ section of the tarmac, several miles from the launch pad entirely. Waving as this intrepid astronaut (the one you would have sworn you knew as well as you know yourself, because you share so much and it lingers in your skin) climbed into a shuttle, jetted off into the darkness.

And then, the person who came back was….different. Not bad different! (Sometimes they come back better, this is also decidedly strange.) Just….different. They have gone somewhere you can’t follow, seen and experienced things you will never be privy to. They will go back to that dark, unknown and unknowable country again, once the holiday or other familial obligation is over. And so you spend some time talking to them, nodding and smiling on autopilot while you quietly wonder, did they do that before, and I just didn’t notice? Is that new? I don’t remember that. I can’t remember if

It’s a very strange experience, to be confronted with the fact that people exist outside of you, even those who share 99.99% of your DNA.

#I know the post is specific about siblings #but I’m experiencing this with my friends who have a kid now #like they are fundamentally different from me now #and it’s ok #but it’s also a little sad (@alan713ch)

I think this is very much the same emotion! This post is about my siblings, but I feel it with my friends who have had children recently too. Even my friends who chose to pursue graduate degrees—hell, even my parents, aunts and uncles, as they transition from work/raising their families to elder care and their own retirement. I think life is very much watching people walk through doors knowing you can’t follow; acknowledging and grieving that distance, even as you send them cute videos and “thinking of you!” texts. Understanding that you’re speaking to the black of space. Knowing that your dumb tiktok video might not distract from or make up for everything that’s happening in your respective lives, but the choices are (a) no contact at all, (b) send the stupid video anyway.

“Bittersweet” is a good word, we should use that more.

Thursday, June 5th, 2025 07:38 pm

I really do think life is a series of watching other people walk through doors you can’t follow them through. I’ve been thinking about it lately when it comes to marriage—my sister got married recently, and my brother before her, and while the occasions were joyful and I was happy for both of them, it was also like standing in mission control. Or maybe not even that, maybe the ‘friends & family’ section of the tarmac, several miles from the launch pad entirely. Waving as this intrepid astronaut (the one you would have sworn you knew as well as you know yourself, because you share so much and it lingers in your skin) climbed into a shuttle, jetted off into the darkness.

And then, the person who came back was….different. Not bad different! (Sometimes they come back better, this is also decidedly strange.) Just….different. They have gone somewhere you can’t follow, seen and experienced things you will never be privy to. They will go back to that dark, unknown and unknowable country again, once the holiday or other familial obligation is over. And so you spend some time talking to them, nodding and smiling on autopilot while you quietly wonder, did they do that before, and I just didn’t notice? Is that new? I don’t remember that. I can’t remember if

It’s a very strange experience, to be confronted with the fact that people exist outside of you, even those who share 99.99% of your DNA.

Thursday, June 5th, 2025 11:51 pm

Posted by John Scalzi

Where it is a brisk and nippy 100 degrees Fahrenheit! Sweater weather here, certainly. I am here for Phoenix Fan Fusion, and I will have panels and signings all weekend long; check the schedule for the details (I also need to check the schedule for the details. I am running slightly behind these days). If you are in the Phoenix area, I hope to see you there. If you’re not in the Phoenix area, well, I mean, have a nice weekend anyway, I guess.

— JS

Thursday, June 5th, 2025 07:54 pm
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Thursday, June 5, to midnight on Friday, June 6 (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #33207 Daily check-in poll
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 23

How are you doing?

I am OK
12 (52.2%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now
11 (47.8%)

I could use some help
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single
7 (30.4%)

One other person
9 (39.1%)

More than one other person
7 (30.4%)



Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
Tags:
Thursday, June 5th, 2025 07:28 pm
I actually took a nap today which is not a thing I normally do. 

We opened for strawberry picking today for a half day from 8am to 12pm. This meant I was down at the field setting up at 6:45am because there was much to do. Me and dad had moved the RST (rolling selling thingy which is a prototype ice fishing house they got ten years ago now) and plopped it down at the west farm late last night but didn't finish setup because it was already 8pm. I had trouble falling asleep because I ate dinner almost at 9pm.

First customer got there at 7:15am. Sigh. We had lots of pickers and everything ripe pretty much got picked. It's light picking currently, we only have a few early varieties and so they ripen ahead of the main season. We warn people picking is light and they simply don't listen. 

I was On Register the whole time. It's exhausting doing retail stuff. I understand why my mom doesn't want to do it anymore but my god I absolutely 100% don't want to do it. We're getting a worker for half of the days and she's starting next week, so I have to suffer through this weekend. I need to find a farm partner/worker who really likes that shit because it's terrible. I don't mind doing it for a little bit but ugh. Exhausting

While chatting with a customer, I got the idea to make pancakes for lunch with strawberries and whipped cream. So I did that. And then I had a 30 min nap on the couch. 

I successfully did a new thing this afternoon: fertigating! Irrigation + fertilizer, it has a whole complicated setup. 

One thing I've been trying to figure out how to manage is my garden. I haven't worked on it at all. Once I'm done for the day, I'm tired enough that I don't want to go back out and do more stuff out there. Part of it is that I thought about my work hours (6 days a week, 8am to 7pm with an hour lunch = 60 hours a week), well duh I'm tired a lot. So I think I'm just going to give it up for now and figure out something for next year. I've got peas and potatoes in the ground and I'll be happy to eat them when they're ready. I think I need to narrow my focus a bunch to maybe some small flowers around the house and then see if I can manage something else at some point. 

I started watching The Repair Shop again and boy howdy it's a delight as always. I also have realized I want to be like Jay, the host. He's so dapper and also a furniture restorer. And I started the next season of Taskmaster which has been a gosh darn delight. 

Thank goodness it won't be as hot for a couple of days coming up. Full body sweating. Ick. 
Thursday, June 5th, 2025 05:13 pm
The first sentence in this AP News article is brilliant.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-musk-tax-bill-6e7845081259c34db785182c51569c0c

Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s alliance took off like one of SpaceX’s rockets. It was supercharged and soared high. And then it blew up.

The spectacular flameout Thursday peaked as Trump threatened to cut Musk’s government contracts and Musk claimed that Trump’s administration hasn’t released all the records related to sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein because Trump is mentioned in them.

The tech entrepreneur even shared a post on social media calling for Trump’s impeachment and skewered the president’s signature tariffs, predicting a recession this year.

Trump ... ratcheted up the stakes when he turned to his own social media network, Truth Social, and threatened to use the U.S. government to hurt Musk’s bottom line by going after contracts held by his internet company Starlink and rocket company SpaceX.

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote on his social media network.

“Go ahead, make my day,” Musk quickly replied on X.


Such delicious schadenfreude.

Edited to add - Things are escalating quickly. He's only been out of the White House what, a week? Musk Calls for Trump's Impeachment
Thursday, June 5th, 2025 05:19 pm
Poll #33206 Writing!
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6


Did you write today?

View Answers

Yes!
4 (66.7%)

No!
1 (16.7%)

I thought about it..
0 (0.0%)

I plan to!
1 (16.7%)



Anything to report?
Thursday, June 5th, 2025 12:18 pm
I watched the first 15 minutes of "In the Beginning" back in May, and finally watched the rest last night. I enjoyed it, despite not being that interested in the 10-years-earlier part of the timeline (or the Minbari, for the most part). Annoyingly, the audio/video was a little out of sync for most of it, and I'm not sure why.

Spoilers for a 25-year-old TV movie )
Thursday, June 5th, 2025 02:17 pm

Posted by Athena Scalzi

A heart attack, life and all its craziness, and the loss of a close friend certainly threw a wrench (or multiple wrenches) into author Ryk E. Spoor’s life, but it didn’t stop him from writing this novel. Come along in his Big Idea for his newest novel, Fenrir, and read not only a story about perseverance, but a lovely tribute to a friend.

RYK E. SPOOR:

The Final Collaboration

Most of my readers know that I have worked with Eric Flint on multiple books – the Boundary series, the Castaway Planet books, and our first collaboration, Diamonds Are Forever. Most also know that it was through a long process – starting with me insulting his editing skills on Usenet – that led to Eric getting me published at Baen to begin with. Eric Flint was a mentor, a gadfly, a collaborator, and a friend of inestimable value to me. 

When we’d brought the Boundaryverse to a close with Castaway Resolution, we’d already been bouncing around different ideas for another collaboration. There was an odd alternate-universe fantasy concept, a few scattered other ideas, but we both ended up coming back to our successful collaboration in a genre neither of us tackled well alone: hard-edged SF along the lines of Boundary or other people’s work like Weir’s The Martian

After a few false starts, and a lot of discussion, we came up with the idea of a First Contact novel which changes up the usual approaches to this. There are a number of stories that have the aliens show up in our solar system for some purpose of their own, and at varying levels of technology (Footfall, The Jupiter Theft, etc.); there are others in which the ship in question is either automated or a derelict (Rendezvous With Rama, All Judgment Fled, etc.). We decided to intersect these by having the alien vessel approach, then experience an unknown accident that turned it into an apparent derelict. 

We created a rough outline, got a contract to write the book, titled Fenrir – and Eric became extremely busy, and then had a number of health issues, which slowed down our collaboration. I was also busy writing other books, and going through my own difficulties, at the time. COVID also intervened to make everything more complicated – and afterward, I had a heart attack of my own. But we did manage to hammer out some details, and I eventually started work on the story itself, with Eric still working on some of the key background and eventual resolution details. Naturally, whenever you’re making a new book in a new universe, you have a lot of worldbuilding to do – and you want the world to support potential sequels, as “get a long-term series” is the holy grail of a would-be professional writer. David Weber has Honor Harrington, Jim Butcher has Harry Dresden, and Eric had 1632. 

Then, one day, I picked up the phone and called Eric with a key question on the direction I was planning to take the book. No one answered, but that wasn’t terribly unusual; I figured I’d call him again tomorrow. 

I never would, though, because somewhere around the time I was calling him, Eric Flint had already passed.

His loss was felt throughout a large portion of the SF community, and none more than the multiple authors he had supported and shepherded through the beginnings of their careers – I was only one such. His publishing company, Ring of Fire Press, failed without him – which happened to include a number of my more recent books. The consequences of his passing continued for quite some time, not just for me but for other people and even the companies he had been working with. Eric had been, well, a very busy guy.

With respect to Fenrir, I felt like I’d been shot in the gut; the idea of trying to finish one of our hard-SF collaborations without Eric to provide advice, backstop, and occasional deflation of my usual space opera/melodramatic preferences was paralyzing in its quiet terror. There were huge open questions we’d just been working on when he passed, and I knew from work on Threshold, Portal, and the Castaway Planet books that my off-the-cuff inventions often improved drastically with Eric’s dry, measured, experienced input. 

But… I had a contract. I had notes. Despite my occasional impostor syndrome, I had, in fact, written those several hard-SF novels, and they’d been fairly well received. And I had Eric’s memory – his sometimes gravelly voice, his incisive and occasionally sledgehammer-hard advice, his approach to analyzing what I’d done to make it better, and, most of all, the times he’d simply kicked me into DOING things because he wouldn’t let me convince myself I couldn’t do them.

Once I’d recovered, I made myself start anew. And – sometimes with that phantom voice correcting me – I began to see how I could finish Fenrir. It wouldn’t be exactly what I’d have written with Eric; it was a fool’s errand to try to pretend I was also Eric Flint. But it was still born of both our concepts, still built on things he’d done as well as my own ideas. And slowly, it began to come together. I began to hear Stephanie Bronson speaking to me, learned about the conflicted motives of the sinister yet earnest Group that wanted humanity to just wait a little until we were sure the “Fens” were nicely dead before going to their ship; I dug into the size and power of the immense ship we called Fenrir and its owners called Tulima Ohn. I chose key technologies that weren’t utterly ridiculous to be the core of Earth’s interest, above and beyond just the appearance of another species. 

And I had a sketch that Eric had made of some very peculiar-looking creatures, his rough vision of the “Fens” – and from that sketch I found myself meeting Imjanai and Mordanthine and starting to understand the civilization that had come so far to discover our own. 

I took some old, fan-favorite technology and found a new coat of modern paint that would make it work for the story; found a ridiculous but not scientifically impossible way for Fenrir to cross the gulf between the stars, and figured out just how terrifyingly huge its energy requirements were. 

And in the end, I even figured out why FenrirTulima Ohn – had made its journey across light-years to our distant solar system.

In its final form, Fenrir tells the story of the human race overcoming its own worst impulses to show its best side, and of another species facing fear and uncertainty to discover survival and friendship. It may not be exactly what would have been written if Eric Flint were still with us – but it is still, inarguably and absolutely, a new hard-SF novel written by both Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor. I would like to think that Eric would read it and say “You got a little carried away, Ryk… but it’s still a damned good yarn.”

And of course, I hope all of you will too. Thanks to you, readers, thanks to John Scalzi for this space – and above all, thanks to you, Eric.


Fenrir: Amazon|Barnes & Noble

Author socials: Website|Facebook

Thursday, June 5th, 2025 11:18 am

fantastic-nonsense:

Charting out Shiva’s “backstories” (or rather, vaguely implied backstories) throughout the years and how Tate Brombal’s new History of Shiva in Batgirl 2024 impacts Shiva, Cass, and their relationship moving forward:

After Batgirl #8’s publication today, I thought I’d take a look at what pieces of Shiva’s history were previously depicted before now and how Tate Brombal has changed things (or kept them the same)…just to see what he did and didn’t do in context of Shiva and Cassandra’s history. I have a lot of thoughts on how he’s approached this given what little we actually knew about Shiva going in and how messed up Cassandra’s own history still is, so let’s dive right in!

1975: Denny O'Neil writes Shiva in Richard Dragon as someone who has no backstory. She’s here to kick ass, take names, and avenge her sister; her backstory, where and how long she trained for, etc. is irrelevant. Sandra’s sister Carolyn is killed by the Swiss in a getaway chase between Richard Dragon and the Swiss, and Shiva comes after Richard because the guy who hired the Swiss convinced her Richard was responsible for it.

The two shreds of Woosan Sisters backstory we do get: 1) Carolyn has an uncle named ‘Shiruto’, a weapons developer who kills himself rather than reveal his secrets to the Swiss within two pages of his first appearance, and 2) Carolyn goes to school in New York City and is O-Sensei’s goddaughter:

“I am Carolyn Woosan…the O-Sensei is my godfather!” -Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter (1975) #2

This is never elaborated on at any point after this comment and Shiva seemingly does not know who O-Sensei is when she and Richard track him down later in the series. Shiva has several adventures with Richard and Ben Turner within this book but is not mentioned again in the pre-Crisis universe after it ends. Within the actual source material, this is all we get of Shiva.

Then we start getting into the additional information and various changes that occurred post-Crisis:

Keep reading

Thursday, June 5th, 2025 12:12 pm

Posted by Hana Kiros

Gambling has swallowed American sports culture whole. Until early 2018, sports betting was illegal under federal law; today, it’s legal in 39 states and Washington, D.C. (and easy enough to access through backdoor channels even in the states where it isn’t). During NFL games, gambling commercials air more often than ads for beer. Commentators analyze not just whether a team can win, but if they might win by at least the number of points by which they’re favored on betting apps. Nearly half of men younger than 50 now have an account with an online sports book, and Americans spent about $150 billion on sports wagers last year. I regularly get ads on my phone offering me a complimentary $200 in sports bets, as long as I gamble $5 first.

As betting has overrun American sports, other forms of gambling are also on the rise. According to industry data, American casinos are more popular now than at any point on record. The age of their average patron had been crawling upward for years, but since sports betting was legalized at the federal level, it has plummeted by nearly a decade, to approximately 42. Some signs point to gambling problems increasing, too. No centralized entity tracks gambling addiction, but if its scale comes even close to matching the new scale of sports betting, the United States is unequipped to deal with it.

In its power to ruin and even end lives, gambling addiction is remarkably similar to drug dependency. Imaging studies show that pathological gamblers and people with substance addictions share patterns of brain activity. They are more likely to experience liver disease, heart disease, and sleep deprivation, whether it originates in the anxiety of concealing a gambling addiction or because someone is up wagering on contests, such as cricket and table tennis, that happen in faraway time zones. The best national survey available, which dates to well before the rise of sports betting, found that 2 million to 4 million Americans will experience a gambling disorder at some point in their life; one in six people with a gambling disorder attempts suicide. Even if their death certificate says differently, “I’ve had several patients who died because of the emotional pain from their gambling disorder,” Timothy Fong, a psychiatrist specializing in addiction treatment and a co-director of UCLA’s gambling-studies program, told me.

Fong, like the other researchers I spoke with, said that rapid forms of gambling, especially those that allow you to place multiple bets at one time, tend to be especially addictive. For decades, sports betting mostly involved wagers on who’d win a match, by how much, and total points scored—outcomes resolved over the course of hours. Now apps offer endless in-game bets decided in seconds. Last year, I watched the Super Bowl with a friend who bet on the national anthem lasting less than 90.5 seconds—the smart money, according to the analysts. He lost when Reba McEntire belted the song’s last words twice.

The ability to place one bet after another encourages a hallmark behavior of problem gamblers—when deep in the red, instead of walking away, they bet bigger. “Viewing sports gambling as a way to make money is likely to end badly,” Joshua Grubbs, a gambling researcher at the University of New Mexico, told me. “Gamblers that think that gambling is a way toward economic success or financial payouts almost always have far more problem-gambling symptoms.” And some apps actively blur the already hazy line between betting and other financial activities. For instance, the financial platform Robinhood, where millions of people trade meme stocks and manage their retirement accounts, began offering online sports “events contracts” (a type of investment whose payout depends on traders’ correctly predicting the outcome of a specified event) during March Madness this year through a partnership with the financial exchange Kalshi. (A Robinhood spokesperson told me this “emergent asset class” differs significantly from sports betting because users, not the house, set the prices, and can more easily exit their positions. But the experience of “investing” in an events contract is virtually indistinguishable from betting.) Financial markets have recently started offering services like this even in states where sports betting is illegal. State gambling regulators have called foul, but the federal government has so far made no move to stop the companies. As the courts sort out whether any of this is legal, Robinhood decided to let customers trade on the Indy 500 and the French Open.

Several recent trends suggest that problem gambling might be on the rise in the U.S. Calls to state gambling helplines have increased. (This might be partly explained by advocacy groups marketing their helplines more aggressively than ever; gambling companies also tack the numbers onto their ubiquitous ads.) Fong said that he was recently invited to speak to a consortium of family lawyers, whose divorce clients have started asking, “How do I protect my children from the damage of their father’s gambling?” Researchers and counselors are especially worried about single young men who play in fantasy sports leagues, bet on sports, day trade, and consider gambling a good way to make money. Gamblers Anonymous is rolling out groups for young people. “I’m treating guys who would never be caught dead in a casino,” James Whelan, a clinical psychologist who runs treatment clinics for gambling addiction in Tennessee, told me.

[Read: How casinos enable gambling addicts]

These imperfect proxy measures, along with incomplete data trickling out of a few states, are the best indicators that researchers have about the extent of gambling addiction. Experts are also unsure how long any increase in problem gambling might last: Some studies suggest that the prevalence of gambling problems tends to equalize after a spike, but those findings are usually limited to physical casinos and remain debated within the field. According to researchers I spoke with, no study has established the prevalence of gambling addiction in the U.S. since sports betting became widespread. Federal agencies dedicated to alcoholism and substance abuse allocate billions of research dollars to American universities every year. Yet for decades, the federal government—the largest funder of American research—has earmarked zero dollars for research on gambling activity or addiction specifically, despite collecting millions annually from gambling taxes. (The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which collects national data on behavioral health and funds research into it, declined to comment.)

Gambling-addiction treatment is “50 years behind where we are with drugs or alcohol or any other substance,” Michael Sciandra, the executive director of the Nebraska Council on Problem Gambling, told me. Doctors and therapists, even those who specialize in treating addiction, rarely screen for issues with gambling, he said. Among the handful of dedicated gambling-addiction treatment providers around the country, many deploy cognitive behavioral therapy, which studies suggest can at least temporarily improve patients’ quality of life and reduce the severity of their gambling problem. But discrepancies in treatment approaches and tiny trial sizes make it difficult to say exactly how many patients the therapy helps. Two medications used to treat alcoholism and opioid addiction have also been found to reduce the severity of gambling addiction across a handful of small clinical trials. But the evidence needed for FDA approval would require large and expensive clinical trials that no one seems eager to fund, Marc Potenza, the director of Yale’s Center of Excellence in Gambling Research, told me.

Because the federal government doesn’t fund gambling-addiction treatment, each state decides what resources to make available. A Tennessee caller to the national helpline 1-800-GAMBLER might be put through to their state’s helpline and then connected to the network of government-subsidized clinics Whelan runs across the state. But in states with bare-bones offerings, workers typically refer callers to peer-support groups such as Gamblers Anonymous, or to online resources on budgeting, says Cole Wogoman, a director at the National Council on Problem Gambling, which runs the helpline. Studies have found that each of these strategies is less effective than therapy.

[Charles Fain Lehman: Legalizing sports gambling was a huge mistake]

Texas could be an example of how unprepared the U.S. is to deal with any increase in problem gamblers. The state’s gambling laws are among the strictest in the country, and yet it still sends the second-highest number of callers (behind California) to 1-800-GAMBLER. This November, Texans might vote on a constitutional amendment to allow sports betting. The state of more than 30 million has no funding for gambling treatment and only three certified gambling counselors, according to Carol Ann Maner, who is one of them. The state’s official hub for gambling help, which Maner leads, was founded just this spring.

Once they find the money, Maner and her colleagues plan to finally set up the state’s own helpline. But first, they need to recruit and train more therapists for a job that, thanks to a lack of state and federal funding, might require turning away uninsured clients. That’s a daunting task. Finding the apps Texans can use to get around gambling restrictions is easy.

Thursday, June 5th, 2025 09:17 am
This makes a pink frosting that tastes like jammy strawberries and can easily be made vegan. Adapted from Katarina Cermelj's Baked to Perfection.

Ingredients:

28 grams freeze-dried strawberries (about 2 cups)
265 grams powdered sugar, sifted (about 1¾ cups, measure and then sift)
310 grams salted butter (or firm vegan butter), softened (11 oz)
1-2 drops of food coloring (optional, for a stronger color)

recipe )

Questions? Ask 'em!