Odds and Ends — 28 March 2025
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, AI, and Debt:
SEC Officially Drops Cases Against Kraken, ConsenSys, and Cumberland DRW
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1905430730290639207
Grayscale Files for Spot Avalanche ETF on Nasdaq
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
Tests show emotional, behavioral problems in adolescents with long COVID
Politics:
https://twitter.com/FrankenforIowa/status/1905231617481715727
https://twitter.com/amyspitalnick/status/1905097065526354129
https://twitter.com/IAmJohnAles/status/1905130316253254078
———— Signalgate ————
In past years, such a breach would likely have given rise to a separate and more thorough investigation by the FBI and Justice Department’s national security division to assess the extent of the potential harm and whether any laws were violated. But top Justice Department officials appear not to be mounting such an inquiry.
https://twitter.com/CheriJacobus/status/1905241313701658951
https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1905093796565823673
Signal Chat Leak Angers U.S. Military Pilots
Men and women who have taken to the air on behalf of the United States expressed bewilderment after the leak of attack plans. “You’re going to kill somebody,” one pilot said.
https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1905176792337461363
https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1905260633471562132
Signalgate scrambles MAGA’s messaging machine
https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1905228970443841896
https://twitter.com/JoePostingg/status/1904927382017905149
https://twitter.com/lawindsor/status/1905389544243077576
Israel Supplied Intelligence in Airstrike Discussed in Signal Chat, Officials Say
Houthi missile expert was tracked with help of Israel-linked human source in Yemen
https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1905281203285930457
———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————
https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1905379765294436689
How Trump’s policies have helped Russia and furthered Putin’s goals
…Donald Trump’s pivot toward Russia, through a series of concessions and policy changes coupled with threats against Washington’s traditional allies, is ushering in a world order more amenable to Moscow.
Trump’s talk of taking over the Panama Canal, making Canada the 51st state and getting Greenland ‘one way or another’ appears to be rupturing the post-World War II order in favor of a world without constraints on territorial expansion by force — and one closer to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s view.
https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1905231270889533835
US Seeks to Control Ukraine Investment, Squeezing Out Europe
Yeah, good luck with that. What possible reason would Ukraine have to agree?
https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1904976527835676751
———— Melon Husk ————
https://twitter.com/tokitaeII/status/1904978948850958541
———— Autocracy R Us ————
To understand what action to take requires clarity about the democratic assault now being advanced with brutal efficiency against the United States. Trump and his legal team have carefully studied how democracies die. And they have learned the key lesson: democratic backsliding occurs when elected leaders claim a mandate to erode the pillars of democracy—free and fair elections, fundamental rights, and checks and balances—to enlarge executive power.
The ‘autocratic legal playbook’ is the strategic roadmap to this consolidation. The targets are well-established: capture the courts; erase internal pockets of independence within the public bureaucracy; silent sources of free thought and expression in universities, civil society, and the media; replace independent public prosecutors and government lawyers with loyalists; and disable legal resistance by coopting law firms and the professional bar.
https://twitter.com/jawillick/status/1905270673951301675
The Five Pillars of Trumpian Repression
That Trump had authoritarian instincts was not in dispute among reasonable analysts. One needed only to listen to his speeches to establish that.
But how would his authoritarianism show up in practical governance? Would it be through invocations of the Insurrection Act or involve more exotic presidential emergency powers? Would it involve prosecuting political enemies? Would it be through domestic deployment of the military? In countless papers, op-eds, and scenario-planning exercises, scholars and journalists tried to game out what Trump would do and how his various opponents might respond.
Suffice it to say, two months into the second go-around, that everyone got it wrong. Or at least, nobody really got it right.
A Tufts Student Criticized Israel. Then the Trump Administration Disappeared Her
https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench/status/1905282840142422076
https://twitter.com/cmclymer/status/1905247170300977347
https://twitter.com/jonlovett/status/1905316010523242972
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1905210240888422787
Trump Targets Robert Mueller’s Former Law Firm
…Trump on Thursday targeted another major law firm with an executive order, going after WilmerHale over its ties to former special counsel Robert Mueller.
It is the latest in a wave of moves against elite law firms connected to individuals perceived as political enemies by the president. Trump’s order directs government agencies to remove the firm’s government security clearances, restrict its access to federal buildings and strip government contracts from companies it represents.
Bondi’s Dismantling of the Kleptocracy Team Threatens National Security
Buried near the bottom of the fourth page of a Department of Justice memorandum directed at “Total Elimination of Cartels and Transnational Criminal Organizations”—one of 14 memoranda issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi in the opening hours of her tenure—was this sentence: “Task Force KleptoCapture, the Department’s Kleptocracy Team, and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, shall be disbanded.”
https://twitter.com/theserfstv/status/1905353249949159595
———— Mors Imperii ————
https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1905356569010995682
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1905077842817220618
https://twitter.com/allenanalysis/status/1905354361192304998
Trump pulls Rep. Elise Stefanik's nomination to be U.N. ambassador
https://twitter.com/UrsulaPerano/status/1905335412580639218
Trump’s Pick For Ambassador To South Africa Actively Opposed Fight To End Apartheid
https://twitter.com/smalls2672/status/1905319287684039154
Artifical Intelligence Scoops Up Studio GhiBli:
ChatGPT’s viral image-generation AI is ‘melting’ OpenAI’s GPUs
https://twitter.com/ednewtonrex/status/1904975704359575837
https://twitter.com/nuberodesign/status/1904954270119588033
https://twitter.com/shilstone_arts/status/1904946796708708408
Stop Sharing The Ghibli AI Slop, What Is Wrong With You
https://twitter.com/787FKA/status/1905022938190918071
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I'm trying to write about something else, but this is a moment in history. It almost feels irresponsible to write about other things. But life goes on, and I will try.
Thanks for collecting all this info in one place.
you echo my feelings...
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