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The Scheme That Broke the Texas Lottery

12 points5 hoursnewyorker.com
xnorswap1 hour ago

> This idea [buying all combinations] struck Nettles as immensely unfair.

I don't understand why it's seen as unfair, seems like fair game to me?

Edit: Reading further on, it seems this story is more about a person unhealthily obsessed by the Texas lottery than the lottery itself:

> In 2014, Nettles told the Texas Tribune that she was spending fourteen to sixteen hours a day keeping tabs on the lottery.

rdtsc2 hours ago

> (The Houston Chronicle eventually reported that a London-based gambling syndicate had bankrolled the operation.)

> Two years later, it has become a full-blown scandal. The Texas Rangers have been called in to investigate what Dan Patrick, Texas’s lieutenant governor, has called “the biggest theft from the people of Texas in the history of Texas.”

Someone from London is robbing our taxpayers, that's not allowed. Only we should be able to rob them!

It's always interesting to read how some of these lotteries are sponsoring "math education". They officially acknowledge it's a tax on math illiteracy.

canyp2 hours ago

When I read the title, I thought this was about the Scheme programming language, and how maybe a bug in the garbage collector or something may have broken the lottery.

Damn, I need to get out more, guys.

mistrial92 hours ago

> gamblers are mystics at heart

this is deeply offensive, to mystics!

mitchbob5 hours ago