Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning  look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures: • Why Almost Everyone Loses—Except a Few Sharks—on Prediction Markets : A WSJ analysis shows a small number of accounts on Polymarket and Kalshi—often pros using data-driven algorithmic trading—take home most of the winnings. Polymarket and Kalshi run on the same dynamic as every other market — informed pros take retail money. The only surprise is how many retail bettors keep showing up. ( Wall Street Journal ) •  What $25 Billion Spent on the War in Iran Really Means : $25 billion is similar to: The annual budget of NASA. Spending on military aid to Israel after Oct. 7. Spending by U.S.A.I.D. before it was disbanded. The cost to expand Obamacare subsidies for one year. These are all comparisons to other aspects of the U.S. federal budget. An Upshot interactive translating the bill into the things we said we couldn’t afford. Opportunity-cost journalism at its best.…