Hey, did you know that nearly 40 years ago today, a minor league catcher named Dave Bresnahan carved a potato into the shape of a baseball, threw it into left field to trick a runner off third, got called out by the umpire, was fined $50, and was released by his team the same week? Yeah, me neither! 

But I’ll tell ya… that’s gotta be the greatest bit in the history of American sport. Second to this one, of course.  

I bring it up because somewhere in this country, a CEO in a marketing meeting is currently throwing a potato, and everyone in the room is watching it sail into left field and nodding.

I would crawl back into my mother's womb if it meant never seeing another Kalshi ad. No, seriously, I f**king hate Kalshi. I hate Polymarket. I hate them more than wearing fresh socks and stepping onto a wet rug. 

If you gave me a time machine and said I could prevent either the Titanic from sinking or Kalshi, I’d ask how much time I have to think about it. And then I’d say, “Actually, f*ck it. Where was the Kalshi guy born?” 

Because these “prediction market” guys built a company that only prints money when something breaks. A marriage, a country, a 22-year-old's savings account, all of it weather to them. They’re getting rich off the collapse of humanity, and they’re having a ball. 

It doesn’t matter if they’re breaking laws. New York sued them. A Washington judge called Kalshi illegal gambling. Arizona filed criminal charges. Then the feds sued 3 states in their defense. These men got the DOJ working their defense pro bono.

And that's just the charming stuff. Kalshi ran a market on the death of world leaders. A death pool. On living human beings. Polymarket let users bet on whether a downed American airman would be rescued, and 63% of the money bet against him, so somewhere a man in an Applebee's checked his phone and got mad that a pilot survived. 

Kalshi and Polymarket are part of a machine that turns a pilot into a NPC and your naive nephew into liquidity, using my dumb beautiful profession of marketing as the delivery system. So yes, send me back to the womb. Except, they'd buy the placement. They'd sponsor the ultrasound. First picture of me ever taken, and there's a Kalshi logo in the corner and odds on my birth weight.

But alas… If you can't beat them, join them. We created some markets of our own:

To no one’s surprise, Kalshi found a way to short civil rights

Kalshi put a betting line on segregation. I genuinely don’t know what part of that sentence needs more explanation.

For America's 250th, Kalshi ran an ad asking "Will Baseball End Segregation?" with a percentage over it, like civil rights was a coin flip that came in. The ad shows Black families in Brooklyn jerseys crowded around radios in 1947, faces lit up, listening to a man walk onto a field he was not allowed on. Kalshi printed 31% over their heads with a little arrow, like desegregation was ticking up nicely for anyone holding YES.

Someone briefed this, then someone else illustrated it, and then a whole committee of people approved a percentage on civil rights, and on top of it all, a media buyer then placed it in a marble train station under the word DIRECTORY, 4 feet from an ad for Mediterranean summer snacks.

Kalshi pulled it after the backlash. I'd love to see what their market had that priced at.

Alright, that’s my time. I’m the old man yelling at the sky. See you next week. 

— sarah suzuki harvard 🫡

Chat, are we cooked? A woman spent $11.25 and 1 hour inventing a deodorant brand that does not exist, went on vacation for 30 days, and came back to find ChatGPT recommending it to strangers, first, in 4 out of 4 answers. CMOs approve a 6-figure "AI search visibility" retainer that a stranger beat for the price of a Sweetgreen side. I've written real copy for real products with real armpits and gotten less traction. The hallucinated deodorant is outperforming me, and I have the gall to say I work "in marketing."