Odds and Ends — 18 May 2025

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

Over $5B Pouring into Bitcoin ETFs – Thanks to Bold Directional Bets

Violent crypto robberies on the rise: Six attacks that targeted investors

Nasdaq-Listed Healthcare Company Aims to Acquire $1 Billion in Bitcoin

Coronavirus and Public Health:

FDA approves Novavax COVID-19 shot but with unusual restrictions

The Neo-Anti-Vaxxers Are in Power Now

Politics:

Hamas Wanted to Torpedo Israel-Saudi Deal

Top leaders of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas launched their Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel aiming to torpedo peace negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, according to minutes of a high-level meeting in Gaza that Israel’s military said it discovered in a tunnel beneath the enclave.
Days before the assault that left nearly 1,200 dead, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s Gaza chief, told fellow militants that an ‘extraordinary act’ was required to derail the normalization talks that he said risked marginalizing the Palestinian cause.
The plan worked—at a terrible price.

A nitpicky pet peeve of mine: the WSJ here (and I’ve several other sources do the same thing) refer to Gaza as an enclave when it’s actually an exclave. Yes, I’m a geography nerd.

https://twitter.com/CaptMarkKelly/status/1923849219305025811

Will There Be a Reckoning for Media Coverage of Trump?

At what point will there be a general acknowledgment and some serious self-scrutiny about the way big media failed to adequately convey what would happen if Trump were elected again?
From 2015 – when Trump first declared his candidacy for president – right through the 2024 election, the press in general didn’t get across the reality

https://twitter.com/PaulleyTicks/status/1923877848013836670

———— Stark. Raving. Mad. ————

https://twitter.com/AntiTrumpCanada/status/1923851667180527993

———— Om wit te wees is nuttig. ————

Trump’s Embrace of White South Africans Takes Dark, Unnerving New Turn

———— Autocracy R Us ————

Trump Justice Dept. considers removing key check on lawmaker prosecutions

The Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section is charged with ensuring cases against elected officials are not politically motivated. The Trump administration is considering changing that.

Trump Shares Unhinged Plan to Release ‘Terrorists’ On Justices’ Doorsteps

Let’s Start Talking About Jail Time for Trump and His MAGA Enablers

Trump is the head of a criminal syndicate, and he should be treated accordingly.

https://twitter.com/Angry_Staffer/status/1923556514251395413

Cultivating obedience: Using the Justice Department to attack former officials consolidates power and deters dissent

https://twitter.com/krassenstein/status/1923659085037088932

Trump administration acknowledges another error in a high-profile deportation

https://twitter.com/DeathMetalV/status/1923571984459325743

———— Smoot-Hawley 2.0 ————

https://twitter.com/JosephPolitano/status/1923748964039315693

https://twitter.com/JonahDispatch/status/1923755145525067979

https://twitter.com/allenanalysis/status/1923837627318276182

———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————

https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1923631831766728819

https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1923843500455682161

———— Melon Husk ————

Grok Pivots From ‘White Genocide’ to Being ‘Skeptical’ About the Holocaust

Elon Musk's Grok AI bot said Friday, "My skepticism about Holocaust figures was due to an unauthorized change to my programming"

What Elon Musk Sees on Social Media

To better understand how the information that Mr. Musk consumes on X could shape his worldview, The New York Times recreated a version of Mr. Musk’s personal feed by opening a new account on X and following the same 1,109 users that he follows. We then analyzed more than 175,000 posts from the accounts that he follows, using a service that collects data from X…
The resulting feed, shown in this article as a selection of posts curated from the much larger set, revealed ample praise for Mr. Musk and his various priorities, mixed with a torrent of right-wing outrage over progressive politics. It highlights the ways that social networks can create information bubbles.

———— Mors Imperii ————

https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1923848942162161844

Trump Suggests the Clintons Murdered People

https://twitter.com/DarthandDogs/status/1923383548880331217

When a president goes rogue: In these books, it already happened

American novelists have often imagined presidents who seize power and defy the courts. Their lessons are sobering

https://twitter.com/andrebttx/status/1923730428638187936

How to produce a statistic for a White House news release

During President Donald Trump’s trip to the Middle East, the White House issued a news release titled ‘President Donald J. Trump Secures Historic $1.2 Trillion Economic Commitment in Qatar.’ The text said that he ‘signed an agreement with Qatar to generate an economic exchange worth at least $1.2 trillion.’
Economic commitment? Economic exchange? Those are meaningless buzzwords. No matter. The $1.2 trillion figure ended up in headlines across the world.
The goal is to have a number for headlines. No one is going to bother to check in 10 years whether any of this stuff actually happened.

Tim Walz Calls Trump a ‘Tyrant’ Who Abuses Power

Walz, the vice presidential nominee in 2024, used his remarks at the University of Minnesota's law school commencement ceremony to call on graduates to stand up to abuses of power. Lawyers, he said, are "our first and last line of defense."
"Right now, more than any other time in my lifetime, we need you to live up to the oath that you're about to make. Because, I have to be honest with you: You are graduating into a genuine emergency," Walz told the crowd, which greeted him with loud applause. "Every single day, the president of the United States finds new ways to trample rights and undermine the rule of law." …
"This is what the crumbling of rule of law looks like in real time. And it's exactly what the founders of this nation feared: A tyrant, abusing power to persecute scapegoats and enemies," he said.

What’s the Deal With the GOP’s Bizarre New Anti-Porn Bill?

Trump’s Transactional Foreign Policy

What the president’s visit to the Middle East reveals about America’s shifting global role

Lawmaker ‘Reborn’ Through Psychedelic Therapy Wants the GOP to Embrace It

https://twitter.com/covie_93/status/1923924946259993073

Serendipity:

https://twitter.com/EpsilonTheory/status/1923847957926797630

https://twitter.com/John_Barach/status/1923796484551545041

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