Odds and Ends — 9 July 2025

@preparedwombat 78

7 days ago

oddsandends

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

Patterns Break as Both Short and Long Term Holder Cohorts Accumulate Bitcoin

Growing numbers of users are taking LSD with ChatGPT

Bitcoin gets ‘highly favorable’ cues as DXY sets 21-year weakness record

Coronavirus and Public Health:

Adult childhood cancer survivors at 58% higher risk for severe COVID, report suggests

Politics:

Never Zohran Is Looking a Lot Like Never Trump

An insurgent outsider surges to the front of the pack to defeat, among others, the scion of a political dynasty. In doing so, he takes positions considered unthinkable to many in the party’s traditional voting base. He is considered so anathema that many in his own party vow never to support him, organizing desperate bid after desperate bid to organize a viable third party challenge in November.
The situation might describe the current predicament facing New York City with the nomination of Zohran Mamdani (of ‘globalize the intifada,’ ‘seize the means of production’, defund the police, abolish prison notoriety), but readers will recognize it as a not-too-thinly veiled reference to Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party in 2016 and the failed efforts to stop him after the primaries.
The anti-Zohran forces of today bear a lot of resemblance to the Never Trump movement of 2016, and without a decisive attempt to unify behind a single candidate, are likely to suffer the same fate.

Cuomo and Adams: You Drop Out of the Mayor Race…No YOU Drop Out of the Mayor Race

Only one of them was officially beat by Zohran Mamdani in the primary. But each thinks the other should bow out of the general election.

———— The Epstein Coverup ————

https://twitter.com/TheSaurus831/status/1942288869610906023
https://twitter.com/pesach_lattin/status/1942219897683284361
https://twitter.com/OhRick4/status/1942290209988559000
https://twitter.com/OurShallowState/status/1942315775936848160
https://twitter.com/Matthewtravis08/status/1942374778201072074

House Democrats Demand Release of Epstein Files

Oh. They sent a six-page letter, that’s going to make Bondi comply. Count on it.

https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/status/1942622237334388967

https://twitter.com/allenanalysis/status/1942629480461144460

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1942633872489152951

Jeffrey Epstein victim’s diary ‘contradicts’ FBI blackmail claims

https://twitter.com/GeauxGabrielle/status/1942379070588871079

https://twitter.com/RJHOCK2/status/1942755266753093864

———— Autocracy R Us ————

ICE Said They Were Being Flown to Louisiana. Their Flight Landed in Africa

Four Fears about ICE, Trump's New Masked Monster

We're about to pour $200 billion into immigration enforcement—but understanding specifically why this is a bad idea is important.

https://twitter.com/allenanalysis/status/1942590046088954113

https://twitter.com/TheTNHoller/status/1942613847283753380

The American Police State Is Here

While most people spent the budget fight fixated on health care policy, I suspect that in a year we will consider this legislation to be the moment that Trump created his own internal security apparatus: His goal is to have ICE supplant the FBI in national law enforcement.
This is a big deal. Because the FBI is a professionalized organization with strict standards and a well-defined mission while ICE is more or less a national brute squad.
The Trump administration realized that corrupting the FBI would be a tall order. So while they’re certainly trying to do that, they put most of their chips on a different number: Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power.

https://twitter.com/Roshan_Rinaldi/status/1942697607211725066

The Ruthless Ambition of Stephen Miller

There is much truth to the conventional wisdom that the biggest difference between the first and second Trump presidencies is that, in the second iteration, Mr. Trump is unrestrained. The same is true of Mr. Miller. He has emerged as Mr. Trump’s most powerful, and empowered, adviser. With the passage of the big policy bill, ICE will have an even bigger budget to execute Mr. Miller’s vision and, in effect, serve as his own private army. Moreover, his influence extends beyond immigration to the battles the Trump administration is fighting on higher education, transgender rights, discrimination law and foreign policy.
Mr. Miller, 39, is both a committed ideologue and a ruthless bureaucratic operator — and he has cast himself as the only person capable of fully carrying out Mr. Trump’s radical policy vision.

Trump Ominously Threatens the ‘Corrupt Media’: ‘I Think Changes Are Going to be Made’

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did not inform the White House before he authorized a pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine last week, setting off a scramble inside the administration to understand why the halt was implemented and explain it to Congress and the Ukrainian government.

———— Mors Imperii ————

Trump says he’s “thinking about” taking over D.C.

Trump is Daring MAGA to Oppose Him

In recent days and weeks, the Trump administration has repeatedly bowed to the realities of governing. It’s done things – on Jeffrey Epstein, on Russia’s war in Ukraine, on deportations, on government spending and on Iran – that risk alienating the MAGA base that brought Trump to the dance.
None of that is to say the president is about to lose his base; such predictions have long proven overzealous. And MAGA supporters often take their cues from Trump, readjusting their principles on the fly.
But everyone has their limits. Trump’s giving them reasons to be suspect about his and top administration officials’ intentions. And there’s been at least some evidence of a brewing backlash.

https://twitter.com/BlueATLGeorgia/status/1942730777927548988

Enthusiastic Surrender

Is Donald Trump a stronger and more skilled politician than he was eight years ago—or are the guardrails that once hindered him just weaker?
That question has come up often over the last six months as Trump has enjoyed a series of successes that eluded him during his first term in office. Clearly, he has used the power of the presidency in ways neither he nor any prior president has before. He hasn’t just changed the shape and direction of the executive branch and moved his agenda through Congress, but reshaped entire sectors of American society—from academia, to entertainment, to the law itself.
Yet what has stood out along the way is not how far Trump has pushed the envelope but how little resistance he’s encountered.

Serendipity:

https://twitter.com/MissesDread/status/1942337113544090003

https://twitter.com/jasonc_nc/status/1942690629299101726

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1 comments

@shanibeer 73

7 days ago

You will not be surprised to learn that experts generally think that replacing a human therapist with a bot while taking large doses of acid is a bad idea.

... just wondering about the hallucinations responding to an acid induced stream of consciousness is going to induce in AI ...