Odds and Ends — 13 April 2025

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, AI, and Debt:

The whale, the hack and the psychological earthquake that hit HEX

The Underground Guide to Making AI-Generated Viral Videos

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

Biden’s administration may have suppressed COVID evidence contradicting Chinese claims

Politics:

Far-Right Republicans Tease Rebellion But Fall in Line

First, they threatened to block House Speaker Mike Johnson’s path to claiming the gavel in early January. Then they threatened to block a funding bill to keep federal agencies open in mid-March.
Then, in recent days, they threatened to block a resolution that would unlock the process to push ahead with President Donald Trump’s tax-and-border agenda.
Each threat from leaders of the House Freedom Caucus ended with the same result: capitulation. After caving on each round of threats, these far-right conservatives vowed that the next time would be different — if their demands were not met precisely as they sought.

https://twitter.com/AlHendiify/status/1910736431217291318

Trump Couldn’t Remember Details of Cognitive Test

President Donald Trump was unable to recall the details of the cognitive test he took as part of his physical Friday—but he assured reporters that he got all the answers right.

———— Smoot-Hawley 2.0 ————

Um, It Turns Out No One at the Ports Is Collecting Trump’s Tariffs

Trump Exempts Phones, Computers, Chips From ‘Reciprocal’ Tariffs

…Donald Trump’s administration exempted smartphones, computers and other electronics from its so-called reciprocal tariffs, potentially cushioning consumers from sticker shock while benefiting electronics giants including Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.

https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1911043934958035077

https://twitter.com/ArtCandee/status/1911077814754812157

https://twitter.com/JustinWolfers/status/1911073377571242042

https://twitter.com/oroborous/status/1911065013667643697

‘Something Worse Than a Recession’

Commerce Secretary Lutnick says tariff exemptions for electronics are only temporary

https://twitter.com/Angry_Staffer/status/1911111729511117117

https://twitter.com/SpencerHakimian/status/1911405794504908944

———— Autocracy R Us ————

The Real Goal of the Trump Economy

The president isn’t trying to engineer prosperity for Americans. He’s seeking power for himself.
A quarter century ago, Vladimir Putin gathered 21 of Russia’s top oligarchs in the Kremlin to let them know that he, not they, held power in Russia. The young Russian president (not yet for life) informed them that they could keep the wealth they’d amassed if they complied with his political goals. Partnership with Putin held out the prospect of safety, and even greater riches. “We received confirmation,” an attendee named Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky said, “that the development of Russian business is one of the state’s top priorities.”
Most of the oligarchs submitted, but those who didn’t went to prison or into exile, lest they fall prey to the country’s epidemic of window-plunging deaths. (Khodorkovsky was imprisoned, putatively for fraud and tax evasion, but really for supporting independent media and opposition parties.) Since then, affinity for Putin has been a sine qua non of high-level economic success in Russia.
An eerily reminiscent scene played out late last year at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Winter Palace, where Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s loyalty enforcers, met with Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. The weather was more pleasant, and presumably neither party contemplated defenestration as a settlement alternative, but many other details seemed to echo.

https://twitter.com/leftcoastbabe/status/1910728863396851834

https://twitter.com/samstein/status/1911193200896717128

https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1911195993816908106

Trump lawyers confirm wrongly deported Maryland man in El Salvador prison

Administration fails to show they have taken any steps to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego García

Surrendering in advance: Law Firms Pledge $1 Billion in Free Legal Work for Trump

America’s most prestigious law firms have agreed to provide almost $1 billion worth of legal work to President Trump — and that total will likely grow.
As more firms have capitulated, Trump has been able to extract significantly bigger concessions using significantly less leverage, even from firms with which he had no personal grievance.

https://twitter.com/CalltoActivism/status/1910888159157559510

Stephen Miller Wins This Week’s Stalin Prize for Totalitarian Flattery

The Opposite of America

Once you grasp Trump as an elected monarch, his full rebuke to the very idea of America comes into clearer view. He is precisely — almost uncannily — what this country was founded to oppose: an arbitrary, corrupt, mendacious, and utterly incompetent king.

https://twitter.com/JohnFugelsang/status/1911055724060287108

Trump Anoints Himself With The Power To Secretly Repeal Regulations

In legitimizing this silent erasure, Trump cites recent Supreme Court cases including Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which dealt a death blow to agency deference but was explicitly future-oriented and not permitted to be retroactively applied to old regulations.
Because everything Trump does exists on the malicious-to-dumb spectrum, this plan appeared obliquely in, of all places, an executive order about water pressure in showerheads

———— Melon Husk ————

https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1910887144521937260

———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————

https://twitter.com/PawlowskiMario/status/1911024094247534716

Russian strikes on northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy kill 34, in deadliest attack this year

———— Mors Imperii ————

’It’s already in the cards’: Trump impeachment urged by WSJ editorial board member

Trump’s order to expand U.S. timber production includes all of California’s national forests

https://twitter.com/will_doran/status/1910839751898279992

FEMA will stop matching 100% of Helene recovery money in North Carolina

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1910845303416115405

https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1911071717922918834

Serendipity:

https://twitter.com/MungoManic/status/1910857781499847034

https://twitter.com/dijoni/status/1910931484632113310

^{Badge thanks to @arcange}

this is fine source

^{Want a free Hive account? Join Hive using my referral link.}

What is Hive?