Odds and Ends — 5 May 2025

3 months ago

We bought a print to hang in our new house. It wasn’t until it was up on the wall that it became clear that the artist had a typo in the title.

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

Indonesia Suspends Sam Altman’s Eye-Scanning World Project

‘Everything is lining up’ — Tokenization is having its breakout moment

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

Discovery Explains Long COVID Breathing Problems

Politics:

Sen. Tammy Duckworth says Mike Waltz will have a "brutal hearing" for U.N. ambassador

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1919111476712775781

A Tory Wipeout in the U.K.

These results were bad for Labour, but they were existential for the Conservatives, who lost all 19 of their councils and finished in fourth place in the BBC’s projected national vote share, just four points ahead of the Greens.
I’ve argued that the Tories are at risk of terminal collapse, but yesterday was the first time I really believed it was going to happen. They’ve lost control of heartland counties like Kent and Lincolnshire before, during the Major years, but this time they were almost entirely obliterated, and by another right-wing party, not a coalition of angry Labour and Lib Dem voters.
Never in their history have the Tories faced a government as unpopular as this one and lost ground, let alone this much ground.

Trump Says ‘Good Parts’ of Economy Are His

https://twitter.com/tbonier/status/1919028092737142955

https://twitter.com/jethrostudio/status/1918770970640122322

———— Stark. Raving. Mad. ————

https://twitter.com/PawlowskiMario/status/1919195402693222763

———— Autocracy R Us ————

These Thinkers Set the Stage for Trump the All-Powerful

With a blitz of moves in his 100 days in office, President Trump has sought to greatly enlarge executive power. The typical explanation is that he’s following and expanding a legal idea devised by conservatives during the Reagan administration, the unitary executive theory.
It’s not even close. Mr. Trump has gone beyond that or any other mainstream notion. Instead, members of his administration justify Mr. Trump’s instinctual attraction to power by reaching for a longer tradition of right-wing thought that favors explicitly monarchical and even dictatorial rule.

The Destruction of the Department of Justice