Odds and Ends — 28 October 2025

@preparedwombat 78

4 days ago

oddsandends

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

Japan sees launch of its first yen-backed stablecoin, JPYC

People are having fewer kids. Their choice is transforming the world's economy

Trump Media to Join With Crypto.com in Prediction Market Push

Coronavirus and Public Health:

Metformin has been shown to reduce the risk of Long COVID. Why isn’t it more widely used?

Politics:

Donald Trump’s Plan to Subvert the Midterms is Already Under Way

Dutch Voters Eye Return to Center

Dutch voters are expected to swing back to the center in elections this week, after a two-year experiment with a government led by the far right ended in disarray.

https://twitter.com/BrittanyinTexas/status/1982806999873003649

———— The Trump Shutdown ————

The Shutdown Is a Knife at a Gunfight

Previous shutdowns were fought over specific grievances: Republican pressure against new taxes in 1990, then for spending cuts in 1995–96 and again in 2013; Democratic resistance to Donald Trump’s border wall in 2018–19. At 35 days, that latter shutdown holds the record for the longest—for now.
These specific grievances were never the whole story, but they enabled each side to explain itself and offered an exit when the time came to resolve the dispute. For example, the 2018–19 shutdown ended when Trump dropped his demand for a $5 billion appropriation for his wall.
The present shutdown was also triggered by a single issue: the COVID-era tax credits that subsidize health-insurance premiums under the Affordable Care Act, which Democrats want to extend before they expire at the end of the year. Yet a compromise over the stated cause will barely address the real issue at the center of this fight.
That real issue is Trump’s challenge to Congress’s constitutional taxing and spending powers.

https://twitter.com/theliamnissan/status/1982843989658337450

https://twitter.com/cwebbonline/status/1982791360563351928

Behind closed Doors: Why Democrats Say the Shutdown Will Never End

Behind closed doors last week, Senate Democrats reached a grim conclusion about the government shutdown: it’s not ending anytime soon.
The most optimistic estimate circulating among Democratic senior staffers? Late November. If you ask Republicans, it’s worse — December.
Why? Because, as one Democratic senator put it at a briefing on Wednesday bluntly, Trump doesn’t even know what’s in his own funding bill.
And even worse, as another insider said, ‘Trump’s bored of it.’

———— MRI ————

Trump Says He Had a ‘Perfect’ MRI Scan

President Trump said that he underwent magnetic resonance imaging earlier this month, telling reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday that the results had been ‘perfect’ but declining to say why his doctors had ordered the scan.

https://twitter.com/SaraForTexLege/status/1982862336710066191

https://twitter.com/adamscochran/status/1982934315227922760

———— The Epstein Coverup ————

https://twitter.com/caslernoel/status/1982909087991115858

———— Autocracy R Us ————

Trump Hints at Sending ‘More Than the National Guard’

President for Life

Donald Trump is trying to amass the powers of a king…
The Founders of our nation foresaw a figure like Trump, a demagogue who would ascend to the presidency and refuse to relinquish power to a successor chosen by the American people in a free and fair election. Writing to James Madison from Paris in 1787, Thomas Jefferson warned that such an incumbent, if narrowly defeated, would “pretend false votes, foul play, hold possession of the reins of government.” Were that moment ever to come, the Founders believed, it would mark the demise of the nation that they had conceived, bringing to a calamitous end the greatest experiment in self-government ever attempted by man.

https://twitter.com/chrisjollyhale/status/1982599442651107777

Judge Slams Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem

A federal judge took Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to task Monday for their incendiary, out-of-court statements about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran native who was illegally deported from the U.S. to his home country before being brought back to face immigrant-smuggling charges.
U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw ruled the Trump Cabinet members violated a local court rule limiting comments by government officials relating to an ongoing criminal case.

https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1982804311982653738

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1982806266494726640

———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————

https://twitter.com/mouw5284/status/1982662998931251663

https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1982803535189127312

https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1982833792470704142

Chatbots Are Pushing Sanctioned Russian Propaganda

ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok are serving users propaganda from Russian-backed media when asked about the invasion of Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1982699060348723415

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1982741003044864509

———— Smoot-Hawley 2.0 ————

https://twitter.com/TheMaineWonk/status/1982820425554874830

———— Melon Husk ————

Elon Musk’s politics cost his firm Tesla more than one million EV sales, report reveals

Elon Musk’s polarizing political actions since acquiring Twitter, later rebranded X, in 2022 dramatically hurt the automaker’s U.S. sales, underscoring how deeply its fortunes are intertwined with the billionaire’s persona.
The findings quantify for the first time how the political actions of the world’s wealthiest person – including his role in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration – may have cost Tesla billions in lost vehicle sales while benefiting rival electric carmakers.

———— Hegseth on the Rocks ————

The power to do almost anything

President Trump is asserting the right to unilaterally use the military wherever, whenever and be the sole judge and jury of his own actions.
Of all the unprecedented actions, these might carry the most sweeping consequences — not just now, but for future presidents.
The new precedent is being set in real time: The only real limit on Trump appears to be Trump himself. Neither the conservative Supreme Court nor the GOP-led Congress has shown much interest in limiting this executive.

Hegseth Is Waging War Against the Laws of War