Odds and Ends — 20 April 2026

@preparedwombat 78

about 22 hours ago

oddsandends

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

BIS warns dollar stablecoins could strain banks and policy

https://twitter.com/his_eminence_j/status/2045182588520939965

Strategy Adds $2.5 Billion in Bitcoin as STRC Dividend Traders Drive Largest Buy Since 2024

https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/2046043321982955969

Coronavirus and Public Health:

Study links long COVID in kids to worse grades, attention, and social life

Iran:

https://twitter.com/TheMaineWonk/status/2045488722594963926

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/2045160632492716291

Donald Distracted

In one sense, we’re right back where we were last month—the strait closed, Iran intransigent, Donald Trump threatening. But that undersells the damage. A cancer patient who goes under the knife and wakes to discover they couldn’t remove the tumor isn’t likely to be comforted that at least the doctors stitched him up properly. The ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz is becoming a global economic catastrophe, and it’s clear Trump is running out of options to compel Iran to stop throttling it.
The White House has suggested two ways this all might end, and neither seems particularly close to materializing. Trump still seems to think he can bully the Iranians into submission, even though his strategy of making theatrical threats and then backing down at the last second has already failed to accomplish this four or five times…
But it isn’t just that Trump low on options: More and more, he barely seems to understand what’s going on in the conflict at even a basic layman’s level. His pronouncements—whether they be threats, triumphant announcements, or even just descriptions of what’s underway in the strait—resemble reality less with every passing day.

https://twitter.com/TrungTPhan/status/2045208247288938830

How did the US run out of missiles in Iran?

We spend $800-billion-a-year on defense—but the US stockpiles barely lasted through a six-week-war.

Trump Says Iran Has Agreed to ‘Everything’

https://twitter.com/TheMaineWonk/status/2045145924003938803

https://twitter.com/chrismartenson/status/2045651639076368511

Politics:

The FBI Director Is MIA

Kash Patel has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences…
…he is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, in many cases at the private club Ned’s in Washington, D.C., while in the presence of White House and other administration staff. He is also known to drink to excess at the Poodle Room in Las Vegas, where he frequently spends parts of his weekends.

https://twitter.com/sydneykamlager/status/2044863699832217697

Trump Voters Have Had Enough

Midterm elections are typically rough for an incumbent president’s party. But this year threatens to be brutal. Trump’s approval is lower right now than it was at this point ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats won back the House in a historic blue wave.
Almost every new poll is a red flag for Republicans: Independents, young voters, and Latinos—groups that were crucial to Trump’s win in 2024—aren’t in the bag anymore. Even non-college-educated white Americans, once the president’s strongest group, have turned on him, according to a CNN polling average. Democratic-leaning voters are 17 points more likely than GOP-aligned voters to say they’re “extremely motivated” to vote in November.
Many Trump voters, in other words, have had it. At this point, it seems safe to declare that the historic coalition that powered the president’s second reelection is finished—kaput. The question is whether, with seven months to go until the midterms, any semblance of it can be revived.

https://twitter.com/SundaeDivine/status/2045104697443266999

https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/2045678176135942209

You’ve probably seen the story about how, at a DOD presentation, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth quoted what he apparently thought was a bible verse but was in fact the faux biblicalism delivered by Samuel L. Jackson’s character, Jules Winnfield, in Pulp Fiction. There’s a lot here. Yes, the faux godly Hegseth should really be a bit more versed in the bible. But it’s really perfectly apt that he’s not. If you remember, Winnfield is a hitman, a killer, a man of meaningless violence. He wraps his murders in stylized bible verse imitations to give them some mix of giving them retributional ooomph and just for kicks. Is there any better description of Pete Hegseth? I can’t think of one. Hegseth’s brand of Christian nationalism is a permission structure for domination and violence. The biblical text is a source of handy quotes to the extent it advances those aims. But he’s neither smart enough nor serious enough to mine the text in any serious way. He’s just a different version of Jules Winnfield.

———— Mors Imperii ————

https://twitter.com/TheRealThelmaJ1/status/2045996002377871427

Netanyahu Torched U.S. Support for a Generation

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wreaking havoc on Israel’s standing with Americans as the Iran war supercharges a deterioration in relations with the U.S.
Israel’s polling collapse among younger Americans is hitting Congress, too. Lawmakers who started out staunchly pro-Israel are becoming increasingly vocal critics.

https://twitter.com/TheMaineWonk/status/2045222259539755201

https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/2046062599650079038