Odds and Ends — 30 June 2025

@preparedwombat 78

1 day ago

oddsandends

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

Kazakhstan plans to establish national crypto reserve

Metaplanet Adds $104M in BTC, Testing Limits of Bitcoin Treasury Plan

Bank of Korea Halts CBDC Project

Coronavirus and Public Health:

Murders are down nationwide. Researchers point to a key reason

Politics:

Even the freaking Wall Street Journal knows they’re fudging the numbers: GOP Declares Tax-Cut Extensions ‘Free’ to Obscure Megabill’s Cost

https://twitter.com/FPWellman/status/1939379813829271686
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1939454960267108826

Nearly 12 Million Would Lose Their Health Care Coverage

Republicans’ marquee domestic policy bill that is making its way through the Senate would result in deeper cuts and more Americans losing health insurance coverage than the original measure that passed the House last month, according to new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.
According to a report published late Saturday night, the legislation would mean 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034. Federal spending on Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare would be reduced by more than $1.1 trillion over that period — with more than $1 trillion of those cuts coming from Medicaid alone.
The fresh estimates make official what many analysts had already predicted and some Republican lawmakers had feared.

https://twitter.com/PaulRudnickNY/status/1939434136869208172

https://twitter.com/wcbuecker/status/1939401828158087626

———— Dehumanizing The Other ————

“These inner-city rats, they live off the federal government. And that’s one reason we’re $37 trillion in debt. And it’s time we find these rats and we send them back home, that are living off the American taxpayers that are working very hard every week to pay taxes.” — Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), quoted by AL.com

———— Israel/Krasnov/Iran ————

Israel-Iran live updates: Trump says he is not 'talking to' Iran

How Israel-Aligned Hackers Hobbled Iran’s Financial System

———— Autocracy R Us ————

Trump Is Building National Citizenship System

The Trump administration has built a searchable national citizenship data system.
The tool is designed to be used by state and local election officials to ensure only citizens are voting. But it was developed rapidly without a public process, and some of those officials are already worrying about what else it could be used for.

How Anti-Leftist Reactionaries Became Capitalism’s Gravediggers…
This is, after all, a philosophy blog. But sometimes the most important philosophical work is documenting how intelligent people convince themselves to commit suicide.
We are witnessing something historically unprecedented: a capitalist class so drunk on its own power that it has become incapable of recognizing its own interests. So ideologically committed to libertarian mythology that it cannot distinguish between democratic reform and revolutionary threat. So contemptuous of the very institutions that created their wealth that they are systematically destroying the conditions that make capitalism possible.

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1939485941837561923

Defense Department will stop providing crucial satellite weather data

https://twitter.com/umairh/status/1939546305027522714