Odds and Ends — 15 June 2022
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, and Debt:
For #lpud, I powered up 257.07 LEO.
Also today, I hit 1,000 Account Creation Tokens:
Wall Street’s Favorite Recession Signal Is Back
The Federal Reserve’s bid to contain the hottest inflation in decades will end in a recession. That’s the message the bond market is telegraphing.
Key sections of the Treasury curve have inverted after Friday’s US inflation shock drove traders to boost bets on the pace of Fed tightening. Two-year yields exceeded 10-year rates for the first time since April on Monday, while five-year yields soared as much as 17 basis points above 30-year rates in the widest inversion in over two decades.
The End of the Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy
Something beyond rising energy and labor costs is leading to sticker shock on once-cheap urban amenities.
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
COVID numbers are rising in Germany — but who cares?
When Covid Came for Provincetown
Minnesota opens first test-to-treat COVID site in Brooklyn Park
Politics:
Ukraine won't use any long-range missile systems the West might provide to strike civilian neighborhoods in Russia, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday.
Said Zelensky: “We are not interested in shelling civilians, we are not terrorists.”
Note that he failed to say that military assets inside Russia would not be targeted.
Get a great fucking criminal defense attorney. You’re going to need it:
A message from Vice Chair @RepLizCheney about Thursday’s hearing. pic.twitter.com/SsnOOEnyVq
— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) June 14, 2022
Truth Social Is Overrun with QAnon Content
On February 10, over a week before the platform went live, the developers set up Trump’s account. But that account was not the first one set up on the platform. A full 24-hours earlier, the developers running Truth Social set up an account with a single letter in its name: @Q.
Now, four months later, the platform is overrun with QAnon content, pushed by multiple QAnon influencers who have been given verified profiles on the platform. And now, Trump himself is boosting the QAnon content, resharing dozens of posts containing QAnon imagery, phrases, or memes.
‘A huge lag time’: DoD struggles to rush cutting-edge tech to Ukraine
If Trump Wasn’t Lying, That’s Worse
On Monday, the House January 6th Committee presented evidence that Donald Trump, after losing the 2020 election, promoted allegations of voter fraud that his own advisers had told him were false. According to the committee, this evidence proves he was lying.
But the evidence actually points to a different conclusion: Trump wasn’t lying in the way that other presidents have done. He was simply impervious. He refused to accept unwelcome facts. And that degree of imperviousness, in a president, is much more dangerous than dishonesty.
Russia’s growing Ukraine occupation partisan resistance problem
Democrats Play with Fire in GOP Primaries
Democratic groups are buying ads touting some of the most extreme pro-Trump candidates in Republican primaries around the country — meddling in GOP contests to set up more favorable matchups in November.
The risky gambit assumes general-election voters will reject candidates who embrace conspiracy theories or lies about the 2020 election. But it could dramatically backfire by vaulting fringe Republicans into national office.
Um, why would Russia think it had any control over Wikipedia? But also, why is Wikipedia going through the motions of appeal?
The January 6 Hearings Are a Success So Far
I admit to having been skeptical, ahead of time, of the hearings planned by the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021. What more is there to be said, I wondered? The evidence of Donald Trump’s guilt in inciting an insurrection was already so obvious that it was hard to imagine that the committee would have much to add. This was not, after all, a situation such as Watergate, where the scandal happened behind closed doors. The entire nation saw Trump’s incendiary remarks and tweets, and the riot that followed, on national television.
I am happy to say I was wrong. The committee’s hearings are exceeding expectations, because it is not behaving like a typical congressional committee. There is no grandstanding and no preening. There are no petty partisan squabbles. There is not even the disjointedness that normally occurs when a bunch of politicians are each given five minutes to question each witness. There is only the relentless march of evidence, all of it deeply incriminating to a certain former president who keeps insisting that he was robbed of his rightful election victory.
The Right to Become a Parent Is Now at Risk Too
The courts used to understand that Roe stood not so much for the choice to end a pregnancy as for whether to end one.
Trump Team Descends Into Infighting Over January 6
We’ve seen just two relatively brief hearings of the House Jan. 6 committee. Yet already members of Donald Trump’s inner circle are accusing one another of lying under oath, taking bribes from Democrats, shilling for Marxists and being past their primes. They’re also rekindling old scandals involving their one-time allies and deriding each other’s mental faculties (including, in one particularly remarkable case, Trump’s).
Serendipity:
Whisky Wars: Denmark and Canada strike deal to end 50-year row over Arctic island
Image credit: I created The Hidden Forest using WOMBO Dream