u/Tridentata

The LDS Church (Mormons) were in the news last week when one of their leaders spoke out during their general conference to criticize the expansion of online sports betting and prediction markets. He noted that one can even bet on the timing of the Second Coming: “Where do you go to collect on that bet?”

Well, Quakers have had testimonies against gambling for a long time, and they remain in most of our faith and practice documents. So for example the 5th ed. of Britain Yearly Meeting's Quaker Faith & Practice includes among other quotations an excerpt from Baltimore Yearly Meeting's 1988 F&P:

>We are faced at every hand with enticements to risk money in anticipation of disproportionate gain through gambling. Some governments employ gambling as a means of raising revenue, even presenting it as a civic virtue. The Religious Society of Friends continues to bear testimony against betting, gambling, lotteries, speculation, or any other endeavour to receive material gain without equivalent exchange, believing that we owe an honest return for what we receive.

In the UK, Quaker Action on Alcohol and Drugs (QAAD) has taken public stands on gambling legislation before Parliament at least a couple of times since 2005. Here in North America (I'm in the U.S.), I don't see anything similar in recent years coming from the FCNL or the Canadian Friends Service Committee. (The November 2019 issue of Friends Journal did have "Gambling" as its theme, with contributors offering various perspectives on the topic.) I suspect, though this is just a guess, that one reason might be the perceived conflict between such action and the strong desire to support Native American and First Nation sovereignty and reparations, including implicitly their reliance on crucial income from tribal gaming operations. And we wouldn't avoid that conflict just by going after big-business prediction markets: CNN just reported on how Kalshi is partnering with several tribes to launch dedicated prediction market apps that will provide them with revenue. Yikes.

So while I feel a personal leading to support legislation to control and/or rein in prediction markets and online sports betting, I'm unsure whether Friends should take a corporate stand. (Though headlines along the lines of "Quakers Join Forces With Mormons" would be attention-grabbing!) Interested to hear what other Friends think!

David Fitzimmons has been the visual "voice" of Tucson for decades, with his cartoons in the Daily Star and his countless appearances at charity benefits, the Tucson Festival of Books, and more. The University of Arizona Library wants to house his lifetime archives of original art, awards, and ephemera in their Special Collections library. Unfortunately, since Fitz's contributions to the Star were on a work-for-hire basis, Star owner Lee Enterprises must sign off on the agreement, and they insist on a $$$$ licensing agreement that makes it a poison-pill offer.

If Lee doesn't come around to an agreement acceptable to the university, Fitz has an ominous plan: "I will burn my entire collection of works and ephemera. . . . Better a bonfire of all of my work than leaving it to pack rats." I expect he means it, too—remember Ted DeGrazia burning his paintings because he found inheritance taxes unacceptable and wanted to make a statement?

A rather bizarre piece on the history and fate of the buildings in Knightsbridge that Hariri combined into a palace. After Hariri's death it was given to Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz of KSA, sold for £210 million in 2020 to a Chinese billionaire, and has been empty for years apart from a homeless Swede who has lived on the front porch for months. It probably all means something but I don't know what.

Just posted by Church of the Incarnation in Charlottesville, Virginia. They sure do look like they're planning to attend Mass.