Odds and Ends — 12 September 2025
My wife and I watched Wings last night. It winning the first Academy Award for best picture (then called best production) was well deserved. Highly recommended. Sure, you can watch it streaming on YouTube and elsewhere but do yourself a favor and track down the fully restored version on DVD that includes a fascinating “making of” bonus track.
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, AI, and Debt:
Jobless Claims Jump to Highest in Almost Four Years
Applications for U.S. unemployment benefits jumped last week to the highest level in almost four years, indicating layoff activity may be on the rise amid a sharp slowdown in hiring.
Howard Lutnick Moves the Goalposts
https://twitter.com/PaulRudnickNY/status/1966255871719256508
Coronavirus and Public Health:
Kids with COVID had a 50% to 60% higher risk of depression, anxiety in 2021, researchers say
Politics:
Bolsonaro Found Guilty of Plotting Military Coup
A majority of Brazil’s supreme court judges have voted to convict the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro of plotting a military coup, leaving the far-right populist facing a decades-long sentence for leading the criminal conspiracy.
https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1966264206661136538
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1966264845910815179
———— The Epstein Coverup ————
Keir Starmer sacks Peter Mandelson over Jeffrey Epstein ties
Foreign Office says extent of US ambassador’s friendship with disgraced financier not disclosed when he was appointed
The Epstein Birthday Book Is Even Worse Than You Might Realize
Reading the two-hundred-and-thirty-eight-page document from start to finish is like examining a crudely illustrated contract with the devil.
———— Charlie Kirk ————
Right-Wing Activists Are Targeting People for Allegedly Celebrating Charlie Kirk’s Death
Extremists and an anonymously run website are posting identifying details about people accused of celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder online. Some of those targeted are now getting death threats.
Trump’s Dangerous Response to the Kirk Assassination
Rather than condemning violence and calling for unity, the president of the United States accused his political opposition of being accessories to murder.
It is possible that, in the history of America’s radicalization spiral, the horrifying, cold-blooded assassination of the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk will be recorded as only the second-most-dangerous event of September 10, 2025. If so, the more significant development will instead have been the speech that evening by President Donald Trump.
If you did not listen to Trump’s remarks, which have received only light attention from the media, you might have missed the chilling message they contained. Trump may have sounded like he was deploring violence and calling for unity. In reality, he did the opposite.
https://twitter.com/OurShallowState/status/1966208214309155161
Scrutiny Mounts Over F.B.I. Under Patel as Kirk’s Killer Remains at Large
On Thursday morning, a day after hastily suggesting the person who gunned down Charlie Kirk was in custody, Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, convened an online meeting with 200 agents around the country to discuss the manhunt. It was a tense affair.
Mr. Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, made it clear they were under intense pressure to catch the killer of Mr. Kirk. They expressed themselves with such fierce urgency that, in the view of some participants, it hinted at another motive: to prove they were up to the task.
https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1966177992478228596
https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1966014746601336939
Trump vows crackdown on critics after slaying of Charlie Kirk
https://twitter.com/WalshFreedom/status/1965948152693100986
More proof that Clay Higgins is a fascist:
https://twitter.com/RepClayHiggins/status/1966114479042593251
https://twitter.com/Mollyploofkins/status/1966117018798641520
Florida officials watching for 'vile, sanctionable' behavior from teachers after Kirk killing
https://twitter.com/RobertDownen_/status/1965923536348053614
https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1965982428205588644
https://twitter.com/BasketCasePA/status/1965895508393963735
https://twitter.com/commons96055467/status/1965914689881415871
MAGA’s Siege Mentality Deepens
Charlie Kirk’s Murder Is a Tragedy and a Disaster
The assassination of Charlie Kirk threatens to embolden the far right and provide Donald Trump with a pretext for crushing dissent. Escalating political violence corrodes democratic norms and poses a unique threat to the Left…
…the prospect of a descent into tit-for-tat political violence is an ominous development that threatens to narrow the space for meaningful political action. This augurs poorly for the political culture writ large, and in particular for the Left. We say things that others find extremely objectionable all the time, and we expect to be met with strenuous counterargument — not violent reprisal. While political violence has always existed around the fringes, this has mostly proven to be a reasonable expectation. It seems we have been living through a fragile consensus: in our otherwise extraordinarily violent culture, political leaders and commentators went mostly unharmed. Now the consensus appears to be unraveling, with chilling implications.
https://twitter.com/Out5p0ken/status/1966175643445637567
———— Autocracy R Us ————
Americans uneasy at Trump's moves to expand presidential power, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds
…Donald Trump’s expansion of executive power, including his unprecedented push to send troops into U.S. cities to combat crime and his attempt to seize control of aspects of the economy, has left Americans uneasy.
The findings suggest that a substantial majority of the public favors limits on presidential power and does not approve of Trump’s efforts to shatter longstanding norms.
How ICE Is Using Fake Cell Towers To Spy On People’s Phones
https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1965932147916812527
———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————
https://twitter.com/golub/status/1966118661564829719
https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1966277111813157211
https://twitter.com/raging545/status/1966412348043776341
———— Mors Imperii ————
https://twitter.com/JoJoFromJerz/status/1966142859905741055
https://twitter.com/adamscochran/status/1966152255213895713
https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1966214198850928864
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1966296943929471220
We Don’t Even Talk About the Guns Anymore
https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1966204806856585698
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totally with you on tracking down the restored Wings DVD. The making of track is catnip for film nerds, it's worth the hunt. I caught it years back and the aerial sequences hit harder in that clean transfer, defintely a different experience. Thanks for the nudge to revisit it.