Odds and Ends — 6 December 2025

@preparedwombat 78

2 months ago

oddsandends

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

Licensing-to-earn protocol turns intellectual property rights into RWAs

https://twitter.com/JohnFugelsang/status/1996640300937425003

Indiana Lawmaker Pushes for Bitcoin in Pensions, Crypto Payment Protections

Coronavirus and Public Health:

Quite the headline, but it comes with some correlation versus causation caveats: COVID Shots Tied to a Lower Risk of Death From Any Cause

CDC advisory panel rolls back universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendation

The change upends decades of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance and goes against widespread public health consensus…
The vote came after a day and a half of heated debate and confusion that included misinterpreted data and pleas from public health experts to uphold recommendations for the vaccine that protects against an incurable infection.

https://twitter.com/WalshFreedom/status/1996987781965340740

Politics:

Republicans Still Divided on Health Care

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson are both considering votes on GOP health care priorities next week — if they can figure out what those priorities are.
Democrats are unified in their demand for a three-year extension of Affordable Care Act’s enhanced subsidies, which expire Dec. 31. Republicans are still divided and debating their counter offers.

https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1996952557659295780

———— Where’s Waldo the Pipe Bomber? ————

https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1996966060784754702

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1997105934103887965

https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1996964494833316219

———— National Security Strategy ————

https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1996949186151895321

https://twitter.com/BethanyAllenEbr/status/1996838968063938999

https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1996963125434749032

https://twitter.com/rumeliobserver/status/1996848398662554095

Trump’s Security Strategy Is Incoherent Babble

The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy has landed, with not so much a thud as a kind of greasy flutter. Most of the document consists of bombast, sycophancy, lies, inconsistencies, and grotesque self-contradictions.

———— The Epstein Coverup ————

https://twitter.com/joni_askola/status/1996869100564631717

———— SCOTUS ————

The Supreme Court Goes All In on Gerrymandering

Only two decades ago, all nine Supreme Court justices agreed that extreme partisan gerrymandering could violate the Constitution, though they differed on what courts should do about it.
On Thursday, by contrast, the court’s conservative majority allowed Texas to use voting maps made to disadvantage Democrats in the 2026 election, without a hint of constitutional difficulty. To the contrary, the majority chastised a lower court for not taking the state at its word that politics, not race, motivated the maps. The court, it said, had ‘failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith.’

https://twitter.com/DougJBalloon/status/1996779269205487733

https://twitter.com/commons96055467/status/1996781806885261639

https://twitter.com/doggintrump/status/1996726848408215912

https://twitter.com/isaiahrmartin/status/1997064086773715263

Supreme Court Agrees to Review Birthright Citizenship

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would hear a landmark dispute over the constitutionality of President Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship.
The legal fight stems from an executive order signed by the president on his first day back in office declaring that children born to undocumented immigrants and to some temporary foreign residents would no longer be granted citizenship automatically.
The executive order, which was immediately paused by courts without going into effect, would upend the commonly accepted view of American citizenship guaranteed since 1898: that citizenship should be extended to anyone born in the United States.

What’s there to review? Lower courts were quite right to rule against Trump. If you go back and read some of the debates in Congress leading up to the 14th, you will find that the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was added specifically to exclude the children of diplomats. In the debates, members of Congress pointed out that even “Chinese and Hottentots” born here could become citizens at birth if the 14th was ratified. Senators fully understood that such children would be citizens at birth. They argued back and forth among themselves. BUT THEY PASSED IT ANYWAY, even though they knew they knew they were establishing birthright citizenship. And states then ratified the 14th knowing full well that it included birthright citizenship. Don’t conservatives love to praise the “original intent” of the framers of the Constitution?

https://twitter.com/freedomrideblog/status/1997033910589706243

———— It’s a Cult of Personality ————

Worthy of North Korea

The Trump administration has changed which holidays qualify for free entrance to national parks, removing two holidays celebrating Black people and adding the president’s birthday.
Now, visitors to the 116 parks that charge entrance fees will no longer get in for free on MLK Day or on Juneteenth, a federal holiday on June 19 that celebrates the end of slavery in the U.S. They will, however, on Trump’s June 14 birthday, which was added to the list this year

https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1997065565836620066

https://twitter.com/kalmantibs/status/1997147833468961195

Congress is focusing on two deaths in one strike. But nine other people died in that same attack, and the United States has killed 83 in all. Were any of those killings legal?

https://twitter.com/PiperK/status/1996729572696715613

https://twitter.com/MalcolmNance/status/1997047038643785804

Democrats Call Trump’s Bluff on Boat Strike Video

Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee are pressing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to release video of U.S. military strikes on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat that have inflamed tensions on Capitol Hill.
The lawmakers are seizing on to President Trump’s own comments this week that he would have ‘no problem’ releasing the footage to the public.

———— Mors Imperii ————

https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1997088695338623427

Trump struggles to persuade Americans to ignore affordability issues

Trump also vows that good times are coming. He has predicted that gas prices, which now hover around $3 a gallon, will plummet to $2. He has promised Americans $2,000 refund checks from the revenue raised by tariffs. He has suggested that ‘in the not-too-distant future,’ no one will have to pay income tax.
This flurry of sometimes extravagant claims comes amid a growing Republican fear, fueled by recent election results, that high prices could set the stage for a Democratic sweep in next year’s midterms. So far, there is little evidence that Trump’s urgent attempt to shift the economic storyline is working.

https://twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1997024713646764402

https://twitter.com/hissgoescobra/status/1996737768693879106