In These Times

Prediction markets are not just attracting everyday users hoping to make money. They are also drawing in high-frequency trading firms, crypto funds and institutional investors.

That matters because the people with the most data, capital and automation are positioned to dominate these platforms.

Hadas Thier reports that on Polymarket, most profits went to accounts that appeared to be automated bots. Everyone else lost $131 million in aggregate.

The gambling economy has a familiar rule: The house always wins.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/prediction-markets-kalshi-polymarket-inflation-silicon-valley-capitalism

As AvalonBay and Equity Residential move toward a $69 billion merger, tenants and housing organizers are already fighting the practices that could become even harder to challenge under a mega-landlord.

The Debt Collective has helped launch a tool for tenants to dispute rent debt tied to corporate landlords. The L.A. Tenants Union has been organizing with Equity Residential tenants against junk fees, aggressive evictions and opaque utility charges.

At Virgil Square Apartments in L.A., more than 40 households launched a “RUBS strike,” refusing to pay utility fees they say function like hidden rent hikes.

Rebecca Burns reports that a combination of AvalonBay and Equity Residential would place close to 200,000 apartments in the hands of a single company.

Read this piece now, co-published with The American Prospect.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/real-estate-monopoly-equity-residential-avalon-bay

Earlier this month, Minnesota’s labor movement was honored at the AFL-CIO convention in Minneapolis for its organizing against ICE.

That organizing included worker assemblies at the United Labor Centre, rapid response networks, food distribution and a January shutdown under the banner “No Work, No School, No Shopping.”

Sarah Lazare and Amy Livingston, reporting for Workday Magazine and In These Times, write that Minnesota trade unionists are among 15 people swept up in federal indictments.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/sweeping-federal-indictments-of-ice-observers-net-minnesota-unionists

Journalist Adam Federman warns that the federal charges against anti-ICE protesters in Minnesota echo the “Prairieland model”: define a loose coalition of activists as “Antifa,” argue that Antifa is a terrorist organization, then pursue conspiracy charges.

As the Trump administration escalates its attacks on immigrants and protest movements, this is a framework to watch closely.

Read his reporting on the Prairieland "antifa" trial: https://inthesetimes.com/article/prairieland-antifa-trial-protest-repression-fbi

The “cloud” is not weightless. AI runs on data centers, electricity, water, raw materials and the labor of workers whose existence tech companies often work hard to hide.

Sarah Jaffe’s 2024 conversation with Craig Gent and James Muldoon cuts through the mythology of artificial intelligence and looks at the supply chains, colonial histories and workplace struggles behind so-called smart technology.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/ai-labor-silicon-valley-technology-workers