Odds and Ends — 20 November 2024
My wife has a super power. She can fall asleep in minutes, sometimes a handful of seconds. She’s more than once fallen asleep mid-sentence. Her sentence, not mine. Me? Nothing works. Melatonin, CBD, CBN, Bud Winter’s military sleep method, blue light blockers, counting wombats, I’ve tried them all. It takes me an hour to fall asleep, if I’m lucky.
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:
Michael Saylor to pitch Microsoft board on Bitcoin buying strategy
Grayscale to Launch Bitcoin ETF Options Following BlackRock’s Record Debut
https://twitter.com/allahliker/status/1858628154283147392
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
60% of Americans say they probably won’t get an updated COVID-19 vaccine
https://twitter.com/ElleSteinhagen/status/1858560766678626618
Politics:
Chinese Vessel Suspected in Cable Incident Remains Stopped with Danish Navy Alongside
https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1859026383789490439
Trump Calls for Halt to Confirmation of New Judges
President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday called for a halt in confirming President Joe Biden's nominees to the federal judiciary until he takes office…
Um, no. That’s not how it works.
Heh. This might have something to do with it: GOP Senators Lash Out at Vance and Rubio
Republican senators expressed frustration Tuesday with their colleagues who’ve been skipping Senate votes, arguing it effectively neutralizes their strategy to slow-walk or even potentially defeat President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees during the lame-duck session.
At a closed-door lunch, GOP senators took particular aim at Vice President-elect JD Vance and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), according to three attendees. Vance has been absent since he was named as President-elect Donald Trump’s running mate over the summer, which is customary. Rubio hasn’t voted since his nomination for secretary of State was made official last week.
https://twitter.com/acnewsitics/status/1858908316568875026
Appointing true believers means perhaps Trump will have a higher percentage of cabinet secretaries than in the past who will ally with him until the end of his term. (The average tenure for the heads of key security agencies — Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security — in Trump’s first term was 10.5 months.) But, at this point, he’s like the megalomaniac Roman emperor Commodus, whose obsession with spectacle ultimately required constant deaths in the Colosseum. Trump casts high-profile appointees whose power will ultimately be minimal but who create more drama when their heads roll.
It’s all a giant flex, a chain of in-your-face fuck-yous, as if he were imagining the most outrageous names he could come up with and shoving them in front of us like a series of flipped birds. In this context, his Secretary of State appointment, the erstwhile Little Marco, looks like George Kennan.
https://twitter.com/JoJoFromJerz/status/1858960967717003358
SpaceX abandons attempt to catch Starship booster as Donald Trump watches on
https://twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1858903512417022268
https://twitter.com/theliamnissan/status/1858906909224448197
Biden Approves Antipersonnel Mines for Ukraine
Trump’s Putting Together a Team of Outlaws
It’s a cabinet in his image: narcissistic, corrupt, and dangerous to America.
https://twitter.com/4HumanUnity/status/1858620952202146081
Texas to Consider Bible-Infused Lessons in Public Schools
Texas education officials are expected to vote this week on whether to approve a new elementary-school curriculum that infuses teachings on the Bible into reading and language arts lessons.
https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1858875850248098061
Hacker Gained Access to Testimony About Matt Gaetz
An unidentified hacker has gained access to a computer file shared in a secure link among lawyers whose clients have given damaging testimony related to Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman who is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be attorney general.
The file of 24 exhibits is said to include sworn testimony by a woman who said that she had sex with Mr. Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17, as well as corroborating testimony by a second woman who said that she witnessed the encounter.
https://twitter.com/kaidi_wu/status/1858911222168424577
America Is a Banana Republic Now
Yesterday the Financial Times reported that the Trump Media and Technology Group… was in talks to buy a cryptocurrency exchange. This may not seem like much, but it’s a layer cake of corruption and it’s taking place in broad daylight…
Let me bottom-line it all for you: Trump is looking to buy a moribund crypto exchange owned by the husband of one of his Republican sycophants/allies/donors. He’s going to pay for the acquisition with stock, the price of which is inflated to ludicrous levels by a combination of cultists, speculators, and people seeking to influence him.
The value proposition for this merger is that, as president, Trump can make sure the SEC doesn’t touch this exchange, while also giving actors who hope to influence him another way to shove money in his direction.
https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/1858744626590392816
Los Angeles declares itself an immigration 'sanctuary'
https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1858994938974724326
https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/status/1858991064994246977
Serendipity:
“They have removed the struggle to find anything. Book store owners and record store owners used to be oracles, in that way; you’d go in this dusty old place and they might point you toward something that would change your life. All that’s gone.” — Tom Waits
https://twitter.com/timecaptales/status/1858743292084539467
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