Odds and Ends — 17 July 2025
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, AI, and Debt:
Coinbase Unveils Its ‘Everything App,’ Merging Wallet, Social, and AI Tools
Crypto Bills Stall Again on the House Floor
More cryptocurrency drama is unfolding on the House floor Wednesday, a day after conservative hard-liners foiled GOP leaders’ plans to advance a trio of regulatory bills.
The hard-liners climbed back aboard following a Tuesday night meeting with President Donald Trump and a last-minute negotiation Wednesday with House leaders that allowed the chamber to take an initial procedural step on the legislation. But the deal they cut — to merge the market-structure-focused CLARITY Act with a separate bill banning a central bank digital currency — has sparked backlash from members of the committees that crafted the legislation.
3 charts scream ‘It’s altcoin season’ as Bitcoin dominance hits 8-week lows
Coronavirus and Public Health:
I Was Skeptical of Covid Measures. I Didn’t Want This.
…as critical as I was of our health institutions during the pandemic, I am now deeply distressed that the Trump administration is using pandemic failures as justification for a broad assault on health and science institutions. The pandemic laid bare the fact that we needed to reform our health institutions, but what is happening now is not a reckoning but destruction.
Politics:
Trump Forgot That He Appointed the Current Fed Chair
Trump was raging against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in the Oval Office when he appeared to forget he was the one who put him in charge.
Said Trump: “He’s a terrible Fed chair. I was surprised he was appointed. I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him.”
Trump allies are reportedly getting a jump on their 2026 election-meddling
———— The Epstein Coverup ————
https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1945493293783003267
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1945503374863933687
Trump’s Epstein Answers Are Getting Worse
Donald Trump had two opportunities yesterday, and another this morning, to dispel any nagging sense that he is hiding incriminating information about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. He did not make the most of them. Instead, he delivered an impersonation of a cornered man coated in flop sweat desperately trying to talk his way out…”
Sometimes people sound guilty even if they aren’t, especially if they’re government officials. Still, whatever probability you had in your mind that the Epstein files contain damaging material, you should probably raise it after listening to Trump’s remarks on the subject yesterday.
https://twitter.com/LACaldwellDC/status/1945498488428511519
Trump Discovers MAGA Has No Off-Switch
For the first time, the president finds himself at odds with his own movement.
We are witnessing one of the more shocking political events of recent times: Donald Trump’s MAGA base, over which he has had a decade-long cultlike hold, is in open revolt against him. And his initial efforts to quell the uprising have, so far, only further inflamed it.
https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1945506251879686561
https://twitter.com/jkbjournalist/status/1945146662449565875
Epstein Prison Video Had Nearly 3 Minutes Cut Out
Metadata from the “raw” Epstein prison video shows approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds were removed from one of two stitched-together clips. The cut starts right at the “missing minute.”
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1945283493468016663
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1945214888885825787
https://twitter.com/middleageriot/status/1945542676775850221
———— Autocracy R Us ————
DHS sends migrants to Eswatini (Swaziland) in new 3rd-country deportation
https://twitter.com/ackocher/status/1945476333598851178
Trump’s Adversaries Are Not Just Wrong, They’re Evil
‘Evil’ is a word getting a lot of airtime in the second Trump term. It is not enough anymore to dislike a journalistic inquiry or disagree with an opposing philosophy. Anyone viewed as critical of the president or insufficiently deferential is wicked. The Trump administration’s efforts to achieve its policy goals are not just an exercise in governance but a holy mission against forces of darkness.
The characterization seeds the ground to justify all sorts of actions that would normally be considered extreme or out of bounds. If Mr. Trump’s adversaries are not just rivals but villains, then he can rationalize going further than any president has in modern times.
https://twitter.com/TheGenZDem/status/1945622617144057913
Trump's deportation machine is writing its own rules
A flurry of memos from ICE and the Justice Department is opening the floodgates to both indefinite detentions and immediate deportations.
The Message is ‘We Can Take Your Children’
More systematically than in his first term, Trump is rolling back protections for undocumented minors.
———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————
Putin Plans to Ignore Trump’s Threats
President Vladimir Putin intends to keep fighting in Ukraine until the West engages on his terms for peace, unfazed by Donald Trump’s threats of tougher sanctions, and his territorial demands may widen as Russian forces advance.
Putin, who ordered Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in country’s east between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops, believes Russia’s economy and its military are strong enough to weather any additional Western measures.
———— Smoot-Hawley 2.0 ————
https://twitter.com/OldManLefty1/status/1945385784431026569
———— Hegseth on the Rocks ————
Hegseth Lashed Out at DOGE Official
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lashed out at the Pentagon’s top representative from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service weeks ago in an angry confrontation arising from claims the DOGE official had summoned law enforcement to remove a subordinate from the building.
———— Mors Imperii ————
https://twitter.com/TimHannan/status/1945511801493258625
https://twitter.com/EllenBarkin/status/1945231912790057387
Serendipity:
https://twitter.com/TheMonologist/status/1945188328904487021
A 900-Year-Old Typo May Unravel a Chaucer Mystery
The Tale of Wade, twice referred to in Geoffrey Chaucer’s poems, survives only in a tiny fragment. Two academics argue a scribe’s error deepened the confusion around it.
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