Odds and Ends — 6 January 2026
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, AI, and Debt:
Grayscale declares first Ethereum staking payout for US-listed ETF
Morgan Stanley files for bitcoin and solana ETFs, deepening crypto push
Kraken customer data allegedly for sale on dark web
Coronavirus and Public Health:
https://twitter.com/DrNeilStone/status/2008292307322192144
https://twitter.com/AlastairMcA30/status/2008282472740540479
Politics:
Trump’s ‘American Dominance’ May Leave Us With Nothing
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, the world is divided into three spheres of influence: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia, all perpetually at war. Sometimes two of the states form an alliance against the third. Sometimes they abruptly switch sides. No reasons are given. Instead, the Party tells the proles, ‘We have always been at war with Eastasia.’ Newspapers and history books are quickly rewritten to make that seem true.
Orwell’s world is fiction, but some want it to become reality. Since well before President Donald Trump’s second term, the idea that the world should have three spheres of influence—an Asia dominated by China, a Europe dominated by Russia, and a Western Hemisphere dominated by the United States—has been kicking around the internet in a desultory way, mostly promoted by Russians who want to control what they call their ‘near abroad,’ or perhaps just want their country, with its weak economy and faltering army, to be mentioned in the same breath as the United States and China.
The Danger and Foolishness of Trump’s Foreign Policy
There are no grand designs, just vanity and vindictiveness.
https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/2007960529499783305
The Fuck-Around-and-Find-Out Presidency
World leaders could be forgiven for not understanding the simplicity of the Trump Doctrine, especially those who assume that the world’s dominant superpower still possesses complicated mechanisms for the manufacture of foreign-policy strategies. The country that gave the world the Truman Doctrine and the Reagan Doctrine as well as Trump’s apparent favorite, the Monroe Doctrine, now embraces the plainest and most ostentatiously bellicose of national-security policies: Fuck around and find out.
If the Fuck Around and Find Out Doctrine doesn’t sound like a concept for a stable and predictable foreign policy—one purpose of Washington’s doctrine-articulation complex—then maybe you can sympathize with those who Rubio says are still struggling to get it.
https://twitter.com/cd_hooks/status/2008235455926739255
———— Venezuela ————
https://twitter.com/FPWellman/status/2008035783106547935
https://twitter.com/evagolinger/status/2008367545795891431
https://twitter.com/owenjonesjourno/status/2008166331552514466
Why Trump’s Venezuela Intervention Is Different
The Trump administration has illegally abducted the leader of Venezuela, a country that has engaged in no hostilities with the United States, without even the appearance of an effort to enlist the support of the American public or their elected representatives in Congress, and without even the semblance of a stated plan for how the country will be governed…
What happens next on the ground in Venezuela is anyone’s guess at this point, but it is also a logical consequence of our current political situation — one in which Congress and the Supreme Court have largely let Trump have his way since returning to office. There is, however, nothing permanent about this arrangement, and the public has the power to change it.
https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/2008037732828737748
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/2008240593013797360
https://twitter.com/JonLemire/status/2008234955323699403
International Law and the U.S. Military and Law Enforcement Operations in Venezuela
Striking Venezuela and abducting its president, is clearly a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. That prohibition is the bedrock rule of the international system that separates the rule of law from anarchy, safeguards small States from their more powerful neighbors, and protects civilians from the devastation of war.
The consequences of flouting this rule so brazenly are likely to extend well beyond the case of Maduro’s forcible ouster.
https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/2008230921535656091
https://twitter.com/Amy_Siskind/status/2008348495023903063
https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/2008252258593488997
https://twitter.com/dieworkwear/status/2008264758445940786
———— Mark Kelly ————
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/2008203147987317083
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/2008197310933877038
Hegseth’s Appalling Vengeance Campaign
The Defense secretary’s attempts to demote Senator Mark Kelly are a pernicious form of political bullying.
https://twitter.com/LarrySabato/status/2008199919903834322
———— The Epstein Coverup ————
https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/2008228047137501219
DOJ says millions of Epstein files have yet to be released
More than two weeks after the deadline to release the vast trove of files connected to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, Justice Department officials disclosed Monday that they’re still reviewing millions of documents and have released less than 1 percent of the total.
———— Autocracy R Us ————
https://twitter.com/meiselasb/status/2008069583178236234
2,000 Federal Agents Deploying to Minneapolis
The Trump administration has begun a massive deployment of hundreds of Department of Homeland Security agents to the Twin Cities area as it escalates its federal crackdown…
What Trump Learned from January 6
Five years ago today, Donald Trump and a mob of his supporters urged Congress to do what voters and courts would not: Allow him to rule over a country whose people had rejected him.
Trump learned in the final days of his first term that the Constitution is riddled with ambiguities, loopholes and untested limits. And in the years since, he learned it’s nearly impossible to punish a president who decides to test them. In fact, he was rewarded with a second term and a powerful, Supreme Court-issued form of immunity from prosecution.
Trump 2.0 has been the expression of that lesson.
———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————
https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/2008087976035688908
———— Smoot-Hawley 2.0 ————
Trump Makes Bonkers New Claim on Tariff Revenue, Says the Media ‘Hates’ America for Not Reporting It
———— Mors Imperii ————
https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/2008255918610542795
Trump Seen as Top Global Risk in 2026
The U.S. is in danger of falling increasingly behind China in 2026 as the Asian giant tightens its grip on drones, battery storage, robots and manufacturing, although the No 1 risk to global stability is the U.S. under President Donald Trump, Eurasia Group said on Monday in its closely watched annual forecast of threats, challenges and hotspots.
From the report: “The United States is itself unwinding its own global order, the world’s most powerful country is in the throes of a political revolution.”
We live in the stupidest timeline: Influencers and OnlyFans models dominate US ‘extraordinary’ artist visas
The ‘Donroe Doctrine,’ as he calls his assertion of regional supremacy—a Trumpian extension of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which established the United States’ claim over the Americas in order to keep Europeans out—is in fact consistent with his deepest beliefs. In some ways, it represents the ultimate expression of the world order he hopes to engineer.
A desire to dominate—an eagerness to bully his counterparties into submission—is perhaps the essence of Trump’s character. Trump’s unexpected political resurrection and return to the White House have emboldened his ambitions, which have spread outward. His threats against Canada, Panama, and Greenland, and his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, have little to do with national interest and everything to do with reifying a new order in which he’s the boss and the leaders of neighboring countries are his cowering subordinates.
https://twitter.com/DougJBalloon/status/2008226425392836817
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Man there is a buffet of entertainment right now if it wasn’t so impactful for real on almost everyone!
I must admit I hit your reports for a taste of somewhat unfiltered news headlines but don’t usually click through as I have to stop myself from going down wormholes. ;). Thanks for dropping some of the headlines and narratives right in the body of your posts.
You will have your hands full over the next while with developments, if they weren’t full already.
“It’s always something — if it’s not one thing, it’s another.” — Roseanne Roseannadanna