Odds and Ends — 4 August 2025

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

Thousands of Boeing fighter jet, munition machinists go on strike

Big Tech’s AI Spending Is Reshaping the Economy

Big Tech’s unprecedented spending spree on artificial intelligence is getting so big that it’s starting to reshape the U.S. economy.
Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft reaffirmed this past week that they are on track to spend more than $350 billion this year building and equipping AI data centers — a massive influx of money that economists and analysts say could be a countervailing force to what appears to be a decelerating economy.

What is personalized pricing, and how do I avoid it?

Every Scientific Empire Comes to an End

America’s run as the premier techno-superpower may be over.

Coronavirus and Public Health:

Why Your Gut Hasn’t Been the Same Since COVID

'Universal' cancer vaccine heading to human trials could be useful for 'all forms of cancer'

Politics:

Texas Democrats head to Illinois to deny Republicans a quorum on redistricting

All well and good, but is it really anything more than a delaying tactic? The election is more than a year away. Surely they can’t hold out that long.

It’s Trump’s Economy Now

For all of President Donald Trump’s promises of an economic ‘golden age,’ a spate of weak indicators this week told a potentially worrisome story as the impacts of his policies are coming into focus.
Job gains are dwindling. Inflation is ticking upward. Growth has slowed compared with last year.
More than six months into his term, Trump’s blitz of tariff hikes and his new tax and spending bill have remodeled America’s trading, manufacturing, energy and tax systems to his own liking. He’s eager to take credit for any wins that might occur and is hunting for someone else to blame if the financial situation starts to totter.
But as of now, this is not the boom the Republican president promised, and his ability to blame his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, for any economic challenges has faded as the world economy hangs on his every word and social media post.

https://twitter.com/middleageriot/status/1952067076534816932

———— The Epstein Coverup ————

Legal cases could prise open Epstein cache despite Trump’s blocking effort

Cases winding through courts offer hope that documents could be released even if justice department declines

47 things Trump would rather talk about than Jeffrey Epstein

———— Autocracy R Us ————

Inside the neighborhood patrols watching for ICE: ‘They thought they could scare us – but this is LA’

https://twitter.com/Thiss_Youu/status/1952067337739509860

‘We’re Not in Hungary Anymore’

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about: Many observers, myself included, have looked at Hungary’s descent into soft authoritarianism as a model for what can happen here. (And right-wingers have seen Hungary as a role model.) Since taking power in 2010 Viktor Orban and Fidesz, the ruling party, have systematically undermined democratic institutions, creating a de facto one-party state. But the process has been gradual and relatively nonviolent: Salami tactics that sliced off effective opposition a bit at a time rather than tanks in the streets and detention camps.
Why did Orban take a gradualist approach to destroying democracy? Partly, no doubt, because too overt a power grab might finally have roused the rest of the European Union from its slumber. But it’s also true that Fidesz had the luxury of time because until recently the party remained quite popular with the Hungarian public…
It’s now clear, by contrast, that Trump and MAGA don’t have the luxury of time. Trump’s approval has already cratered…
So if Trump and MAGA want to hold on to power, they’ll have to do so in the face of low public approval and poor economic performance. This, unfortunately, doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t demolish democracy. It does mean that they’ll have to do it quickly and blatantly.

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1952177171599966503

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

Trump Sons Launch Fund to Capitalize on U.S. Policy

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr are backing a new blank check investment vehicle potentially positioned to capitalize on U.S. policy, marking the latest push into public markets by the president’s family.
New America Acquisition I Corp will target a company in the U.S. that plays ‘a meaningful role in revitalizing domestic manufacturing, expanding innovation ecosystems, and strengthening critical supply chains,’ the group said in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————

Locals beg for Putin’s help as Russian-occupied Ukraine runs out of water

Acute water shortages in occupied areas of eastern Ukraine, and angry residents’ appeals for help, contradict propaganda suggesting life is pleasant under Russian control.

Ukraine says it stole intel from the Russian Navy and found weak points in its newest nuclear missile submarine

———— Smoot-Hawley 2.0 ————

Trump’s ‘Slap in the Face’ Puts Neutral Switzerland in Trade-War Crossfire

In a land famed for its neutrality and order, the Swiss reacted with shock and confusion to Trump’s decision to impose a 39% tariff—higher than all but three nations on last week’s executive order: Laos, Myanmar and Syria. Switzerland is one of the few nations whose Aug. 1 tariff rate was higher than Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ threats in April.
The move upended months of negotiations in which Swiss officials believed they were on the verge of securing a favorable deal.

Wall St and Silicon Valley ride high as tariffs hit Main Street

A divide is widening in the US economy as the biggest banks and technology groups shrug off Donald Trump’s tariffs to post huge earnings gains while consumer-facing companies struggle with rising costs…
…large parts of corporate America are grappling with slowing profits and the extreme uncertainty generated by Trump’s aggressive trade war.

———— Melon Husk ————

Musk-linked group spends big to promote newly enacted megabill

Didn’t he slam the bill right after it passed?

———— Hegseth on the Rocks ————

Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon Is Becoming a Bubble

An already insular Defense Department is sealing itself off from outside thinkers.

———— Mors Imperii ————

Pritzker says Texas Democrats who fled state will be protected amid arrest threats

Trump, the BLS, and Our Age of Choose-Your-Own-Reality Governance

Job growth isn’t the only inconvenient statistic that the Trump administration has tried to suppress in its first seven months.
In April, the Trump administration dismissed hundreds of experts who had been putting together the National Climate Assessment, an official report on climate change that is required by Congress. This report isn’t just bathroom reading material for folks who care about sea levels. State and local governments use it to allocate funds toward possible extreme weather events. The insurance industry relies on the assessment to assess risk from extreme weather events for reinsurance coverage. But since the administration is busy waging ideological warfare against any idea that seems too progressive, climate change reports got swept up in the mass cancellation of inconvenient data.
Then in June, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the advisory committee on immunization to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
“Across government, Trump administration is commandeering independent agencies to turn them into mouthpieces for pro-Trump narratives, across climate, health, and the economy. The White House is trying to program reality as if it were reality TV.
But reality exists, whether or not you choose to measure it.

Serendipity:

https://twitter.com/TheMonologist/status/1951727856486433088

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse

An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

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