Odds and Ends — 29 May 2025

2 days ago

Since I retired, I’ve been working on expanding my cooking repertoire. Last night I tried making shrimp scampi using this recipe but I think I might have overcooked the shrimp a bit.

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

No more ETH dumps? Ethereum Foundation turns to DeFi for cash

Elon Musk Tried to Block Sam Altman’s Big AI Deal

OpenAI led a group of American technology giants that won a deal last week to build one of the world’s largest artificial-intelligence data centers in Abu Dhabi.
Behind the scenes, Elon Musk worked hard to try to derail the deal if it didn’t include his own AI startup.
On a call with officials at G42, an AI firm controlled by the brother of the United Arab Emirates’ president, Musk had a warning for those assembled: Their plan had no chance of President Trump signing off on it unless his company xAI was included in the deal.

SOL Strategies Files $1B Shelf Prospectus to Boost Solana Investment 'Flexibility'

Coronavirus and Public Health:

https://twitter.com/mroth78/status/1927699800088101360

HHS Cancels $600 Million Contract for Vaccines

The decision will be seen as a significant blow to pandemic preparedness
The Department of Health and Human Services has notified Moderna that it is canceling a nearly $600 million contract with the company to develop, test, and license vaccines for flu strains that could trigger future pandemics, including the dangerous H5N1 bird flu virus.

https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1927744317369806973

https://twitter.com/middleageriot/status/1927777321542467926

Politics:

This is in a solid-red rural area: GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson met with boos at Iowa town hall

The crowd in Decorah booed loudly when Hinson mentioned Trump or the massive spending bill House Republicans passed last week.

Bill Breaks Trump’s Pledge on Social Security

President Trump promised to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits. Instead, the House tax-and-spending bill includes a half measure.
The legislation passed by the House last week would give seniors a temporary extra deduction of $4,000, which would lower taxes for many of the people Trump was targeting with his pitch. But this alternative to “no tax on Social Security” would leave many people still paying income taxes on Social Security benefits.

Well, it’s not as if any “promise” made by Trump would have any value.

https://twitter.com/JamesTate121/status/1927800300410184149

Nancy Mace’s Former Staff Claim She Had Them Create Burner Accounts to Promote Her

According to former staffers and a deposition, Nancy Mace has allegedly used her tech background to deploy bots across social media—and asked staffers to surreptitiously post on her behalf.
Said one ex-staffer: “We were congressional staff, and there were actual things we could be doing to help the constituents.”

———— Autocracy R Us ————

Trump Stonewalls Federal Judges In New Round Of Brazen Defiance

Trump Says Harvard Needs to ‘Behave’

…Donald Trump escalated his war with Harvard University on Wednesday, accusing it of "treating the country with great disrespect" and suggesting that it should stop fighting his policies.

https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1927714213612466189

Nice business you have there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it:

https://twitter.com/FreeRangeLawyer/status/1927717364239397066

———— Blatant In-Your-Face Corruption ————

Trump’s Golden Age of Corruption

Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency. Throw away the history books; discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past. There is no analogy with any previous action by any past president. The brazenness of the self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House. This is American corruption on the scale of a post-Soviet republic or a postcolonial African dictatorship.

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1927518026649280665

https://twitter.com/acnewsitics/status/1927722963593216330

Crime is Now Legal — At Least for Trump’s Friends

A lot of attention has come in recent days to the sheer size of the corruption racket surrounding the president and the White House. The New York Times did a great piece this weekend about how Trump is pillaging the presidency, and Evan Osnos — the current reigning king of reporting on oligarchs and the super-rich — this week has a New Yorker piece about ‘Donald Trump’s Politics of Plunder.’ As one lobbyist told Evan, Trump’s influence-selling behavior in office is ‘outer-borough Mafia shit.’
But the spreading corruption around the presidency doesn’t stop with the president.
There’s also a broader, equally worrisome trend playing out at the margins of the national headlines: Day by day, we’re seeing the Justice Department effectively decriminalize and wave away crimes by Trump’s friends and instead selectively focus investigatory resources on Trump’s adversaries and enemies.
This is textbook authoritarianism, a classic example of what one-time Peru president General Óscar Benavides captured in his adage: ‘For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.’

https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1927487738883752370

Since CBS didn’t actually do anything wrong, it’s hard to see this as anything but a shake-down, a bribe to grease the wheels for FCC approval of Paramount’s pending merger with Skydance: Paramount Offered $15 Million to Settle with Trump

A month into negotiations between Paramount Global and President Trump to settle his lawsuit against CBS News, the parties remain far apart on terms.
Paramount Global in recent days has offered $15 million to settle… Trump’s team wants more than $25 million and is also seeking an apology from CBS News.

Trump’s Plane Deal with Qatar Is Not Final

Despite claims by the Defense Department to the contrary, legal teams representing the U.S. and Qatari governments have not finalized an agreement for transferring the luxury Boeing 747-8 jetliner that President Donald Trump wants for Air Force One amid outstanding requests by Qatar for Washington to clarify the transaction’s terms.
Qatar is insisting that a memorandum of understanding between Washington and Doha specify that the aircraft’s transfer was initiated by the Trump administration and that Qatar is not responsible for any future transfers of the plane’s ownership.

———— TACO ————

Trump’s not happy about Wall Street’s name for tariff flip-flops

https://twitter.com/rbrtrmstrng/status/1927777081770811705

https://twitter.com/ReallyAmerican1/status/1927768620504948765

https://twitter.com/NotHoodlum/status/1927923148072067187

———— Smoot-Hawley 2.0 ————

Trump Tariffs Ruled Illegal by Federal Judicial Panel

A panel of federal judges on Wednesday blocked President Trump from imposing some of his steepest tariffs on China and other U.S. trading partners, finding in two cases that he vastly overstepped his ability to issue those expansive duties under federal law.
The ruling, by the U.S. Court of International Trade, delivered an early yet significant setback to Mr. Trump in his campaign to strike a series of agreements that reorient the nation’s trading relationships, setting up a legal fight that could soon reach the Supreme Court.

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1927877660387967309

https://twitter.com/meiselasb/status/1927885469511209030

Trump’s Trade War Derailed

Presumably the Trumpists will try to undo this judgment, one way or another — exploiting other loopholes in the law, maybe trying to bully the Court into submission, maybe just defying the Court altogether. But this is a huge political defeat, and Trump has nobody to blame except his own overreach.”
You can bet that trade negotiators around the world are snickering, and maybe celebrating with TACOs for lunch.

https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1927867391523840274

———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————

What Putin Wants to End the War in Ukraine

President Vladimir Putin’s conditions for ending the war in Ukraine include a demand that Western leaders pledge in writing to stop enlarging NATO eastwards.
Russia also wants Ukraine to be neutral, some Western sanctions lifted, a resolution of the issue of frozen Russian sovereign assets in the West, and protection for Russian speakers in Ukraine.

Translation: Not going to happen. Note the absence of Russian withdrawal from Crimea or any other part of Ukraine. Ukraine has zero incentive to effectively sign away its sovereignty.

https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1927630835869519894

Russian Troops Massing on Ukraine Border