terribleturnip

Such utter insanity.

Let's first talk about Polymarket. It's a mostly legal form of gambling, betting on things that might happen in the future. There are rules as to what constitutes a true outcome for the bet. In this particular case, the bet was whether or not an Iranian missile would strike Israel on March 10. However, it had a condition that in the event the missile was intercepted, whether or not it subsequently struck Israel, it would not constitute a win for the bet.

There's a lot more that can be said about Polymarket and their ability to wiggle out of paying bets in either direction, but that's not what this post is about.

On March 10, an Iranian missile struck Israel. It was not intercepted. Fortunately it missed the town that it was aimed at and hit a wooded area about 500 meters from homes. Emergency services responded and determined there were no injuries or deaths. Reporter Emanuel Fabian working for The Times of Israel reported on the incident.

And the next day he started receiving mysterious messages asking him if it was actually interceptor missile fragments, and to post an update to his story stating such. Then the messages started getting rougher, ultimately getting threatening, to the point of saying he had the choice of updating the story to say it was intercepted, and he'd get a nice amount of cash for it, or if he didn't do it he'd be killed. These people went to the extreme of making posts on the bet on the Polymarket web site in his name that he was in the process of updating his story and had sent the change to his editors when he had done no such thing. Ultimately he went to the Israeli police and either he or the police reported this harassment to the Polymarket people.

Ultimately Polymarket posted that the people involved in threatening Fabian had been banned from their site.

It's an interesting read. But I do have to wonder if it is the end of the story.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/gamblers-trying-to-win-a-bet-on-polymarket-are-vowing-to-kill-me-if-i-dont-rewrite-an-iran-missile-story/

https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/03/16/210211/polymarket-gamblers-threaten-to-kill-journalist-over-iran-missile-story

Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels have been held in Boston, as a parody of the Nobel Prizes, doling out mock prizes for curious and weird research. One of the things they do is the winners do a 24/7 lecture: explain their work in 24 seconds, and again in 7 words. They used to give a cash prize of like 10,000,000 (some strange foreign currency that when converted is like $50US), but I don't see mention of it.

Well, the 2026 ceremony will be held in Switzerland, details to be announced.

Last year, four of the ten winners did not attend because of the customs and immigration policies of the U.S. government. Because of the fear that the situation will only get worse, it was decided to take the ceremony overseas and eliminate that friction.

The web site for the Ig Nobels, at the Journal for Improbable Research. ignobel.org also redirects here:
https://improbable.com/ig/

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/ig-nobels-ceremony-moves-to-europe-over-security-concerns/

https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/1540242/ig-nobels-ceremony-moves-to-europe-indefinitely-citing-us-safety-concerns