Odds and Ends — 13 February 2026

@preparedwombat 78

20 days ago

oddsandends

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

Binance confirms employee targeted as three arrested in France break-in

https://twitter.com/TTrimoreau/status/2022009788381769739
https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/2021833253867647117

FedEx Enters Hedera Network Council With Eye on Supply Chain Transformation

Flash Fiction:

”I was just trying to save a few bucks. Cut me some slack.”

”Cut you some slack?!? You rented this boat from a guy who didn’t even own it. He’s not a real captain. And now he’s a dead not a real captain. Didn’t even know enough to duck when the boom was swinging toward his head. Neither of us knows the first thing about navigation and we’re at sea with no land in sight.”

”But look at the big picture. It was a great deal. How could I have said no?”

Written for this prompt.

Coronavirus and Public Health:

Researchers pinpoint cause of rare but life-threatening blood clots after adenovirus-based COVID vaccination

Politics:

With no agreement on DHS funding, Congress leaves town

https://twitter.com/TheRealThelmaJ1/status/2022005256910168231

Intelligence Dispute Centers on Kushner

It was a discussion last year between two foreign nationals about Iran, not an unusual topic for American spies to study.
But an intercept of that communication, collected by a foreign spy service and given to the United States, has now become a flashpoint within the intelligence community and between the administration and Congress.
The reason is a single name that came up in the discussion: Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law.

https://twitter.com/dcpoll/status/2022075365037088974

https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/2022050686951719123

https://twitter.com/JonLemire/status/2022139774539088094

———— Minnesota Under Siege ————

https://twitter.com/tomricks1/status/2021990156136575107

https://twitter.com/HQNewsNow/status/2021990469454971311

https://twitter.com/lydiakauppi/status/2021979823019889033

He wasn’t talking about the Minnesota ICE invasion, but the analysis is germane:

https://twitter.com/AfricanArchives/status/2021962587949121848

https://twitter.com/Guru_Merc/status/2021972710461419715

https://twitter.com/BeshearStan/status/2021964769197273371

https://twitter.com/caitlinmcgowan/status/2021954692184686679

Senator Tina Smith on the Surge

“I think there is a great sense of pride in the way we’ve stood up to this bullying and this lawlessness, but also it’s come at a huge price — a huge personal price, a huge economic price. There will be, I’m sure, a sense of hope that maybe the worst of this is coming to an end. But, boy, people are going to be reeling from this for a really long time.”

https://twitter.com/BlisterPearl/status/2022113891397120060

https://twitter.com/VikingNation28/status/2022141876917440603

———— The Epstein Coverup ————

https://twitter.com/broseph_stalin/status/2021859647934853251

———— Pam Bondi ————

https://twitter.com/CalltoActivism/status/2021981729834381620

https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/2021773123779957165

https://twitter.com/shea_jordan/status/2021791756820656167

The MAGA Bubble Is Imploding

Attorney General Pam Bondi’s meltdown on Wednesday while being questioned the House Judiciary Committee was exceptional, even by this administration’s rock-bottom standards. Has any high-level official ever before shrieked at a member of Congress, ‘You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up, loser lawyer’?
Yet what truly amazed me was her demand that Democrats stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein because the Dow was above 50,000. This plumbed new depths of moral bankruptcy, effectively saying: ‘How dare you complain about child rape when the stock market is up?’
There was an unmistakable stench of desperation in Bondi’s tantrum. And it fooled no one. The cracks are showing, as some congressional Republicans have now voted against Trump’s tariffs, Justice Department lawyers are quitting en masse or just plain cracking up, and attempts to weaponize prosecutions keep failing.

https://twitter.com/GrandpaHarris65/status/2022118596714053693

———— Concentration Camps————

Republicans Are Objecting to ICE’s Human Warehouses—but Not on Behalf of Immigrants

https://twitter.com/RepRaskin/status/2022135996054159558

https://twitter.com/DarrigoMelanie/status/2022147036133609877

———— Autocracy R Us ————

”Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” — Hannah Arendt

https://twitter.com/yasminalombaert/status/2022048678823747681

https://twitter.com/WedgeLIVE/status/2021777593289064683

https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/2022105670724833480

https://twitter.com/Goblinsburg/status/2022129044767355277

https://twitter.com/TopHatOrTrilby/status/2022023649935724597

———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————

https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/2022046856591859896

Ukrainian forces say Russian troops paid them for a fake Starlink service that instead revealed battlefield locations

———— Smoot-Hawley 2.0 ————

Americans Are Paying the Bill for Tariffs, Despite Trump’s Claims

President Trump has frequently claimed that foreign countries were paying for his tariffs, not Americans. But as economists predicted, that is largely turning out not to be the case.
Research published on Thursday by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Columbia University suggests that, through November 2025, 90 percent of the economic burden of the president’s tariffs fell on U.S. companies and consumers.

———— Hegseth on the Rocks ————

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/2022003374951153701

Judge Shuts Down Hegseth’s Attempt to Punish Mark Kelly

A federal judge on Thursday shut down Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempts to punish Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly over his urging of US service members to refuse illegal orders, ruling that the Pentagon chief’s actions were unconstitutionally retaliatory…
Leon, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, wrote in a scathing, 29-page ruling that Hegseth was trampling over the First Amendment rights of Kelly and that his moves are an impermissible form of government retaliation.

https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/2022052875162333412

https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/2022149333395869962

———— Mors Imperii ————

https://twitter.com/JosephONeillx/status/2021991486196498608

Trump repeals landmark legal policy underpinning key climate rules

Nearly 17 years after the Environmental Protection Agency declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten the public’s health and welfare, the agency on Thursday rescinded the landmark legal opinion underpinning a wave of federal policies aimed at climate change.

https://twitter.com/markbland/status/2021961909201994030