The election odds cited by Mr. Trump came from a crypto-powered gambling website called Polymarket. Using digital currencies, gamblers on Polymarket have wagered more than $100 million on the outcome of the presidential race, turning the site into the internet betting phenomenon of the 2024 election.

Elon Musk has promoted Polymarket’s odds on X, calling them “more accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line.” CNN and other news media organizations have featured the projections in their election coverage. And as the market has swung heavily in Mr. Trump’s favor, he has relentlessly publicized the site’s numbers, seeking to create a sense of inevitability about the election’s outcome.

“A gambling poll, as they call it,” Mr. Trump said recently of Polymarket. “I don’t know what the hell it means, but it means that we’re doing pretty well.”

But Mr. Trump’s apparent lead may be an illusion. The odds on Polymarket began favoring him this month after just four accounts, with user names like Fredi9999 and PrincessCaro, bet more than $30 million on a Trump victory, according to an analysis of transaction records by Chaos Labs, a crypto data provider. Polymarket said on Thursday that all four accounts were controlled by one person, whom it described as a French national with a financial services background, without revealing the person’s identity.

...

For much of the fall, Polymarket’s odds suggested that Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris were locked in a tight race, mirroring the polls. Then the odds diverged substantially this month, after the four accounts placed large bets on the former president.

On Oct. 11, Mr. Trump posted a screenshot of Polymarket that showed he had a 55.5 percent chance of winning the election. On Monday, he posted a new screenshot showing that his chances had increased to 64 percent.

The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper grapples with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.

The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.

The comments on the article are a torrent of people cancelling their subscriptions.

When your internet is provided via the cellular network, your router has its own phone number. So it can receive text spam!

There's no way to reply, or to block it.

HarrisHQ trolls Trump on Xitter:

FOR PLANNING PURPOSES RELUCTANTLY
August 15, 2024
***MEDIA ADVISORY***

TODAY: Donald Trump To Ramble Incoherently and Spread Dangerous Lies in Public, but at Different Home

TODAY at 4:3o p.m., Donald J. Trump, loser of the 2020 election by 7 million votes, will hold another public meltdown in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Date and Time
Thursday, August 15, 2024 at 4:30 p.m. EDT.

Venue
Not a battleground state

Preview
Not so fresh off NABJ, Florida, and Twitter glitches, Donald Trump intends to deliver another self-obsessed rant full of his own personal grievances to distract from his toxic Project 2025 agenda, unpopular running mate, and increasing detachment from the reality of the voters who will decide this election.

These remarks will not be artificial intelligence, but they certainly will lack intelligence.

Banning abortion, raising costs on families, confusing basic facts, cutting Social Security and Medicare, blocking border security, and being publicly unstable, unfit, and unwell will not help his struggling campaign for president.

Tune in for the same old thing.

To the 60th Senator to vote for a no political text spam bill.

In cash. To your door. In a brown paper bag.

I did not think Biden would actually step down. I thought he'd dig his heels in and then deliver a landslide loss in November.

This is quite the election.