Odds and Ends — 20 November 2022
I’ve been playing around with DeepDreamGenerator’s newish “text prompt” artificial intelligence image creator. This image was generated from the prompt “Tunguska on the Hudson.” It looks like New Jersey took the brunt of the damage.
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business. and Debt:
Grayscale cites security concerns for withholding on-chain proof of reserves
When I die I want Jim Cramer to lower me into my grave so he can let me down one last time
— greg (@greg16676935420) November 18, 2022
Musk summons engineers to Twitter HQ as millions await platform’s collapse
Several critical teams essential to keeping the site functioning were cut to a single engineer or none by the departures Thursday, leaving the company partially on autopilot and likely to crash sooner or later, engineers said.
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
The End of Vaccines at ‘Warp Speed’
Financial and bureaucratic barriers in the United States mean that the next generation of Covid vaccines may well be designed here, but used elsewhere.
Two communities find a cure for medical debt: Pandemic stimulus funds
Politics:
Trump Believes Law Is Optional
If it were possible for a criminal suspect to simply decline to participate in the process — like an extracurricular activity you simply quit — then this would also open up a gigantic loophole in the legal system. In fact, the Justice Department does not give criminal suspects an option of whether or not to partake in being charged with a crime. Trump’s instinctive response that he ‘won’t partake‘ in charges reveals so much about his view of the legal system. He believes the law is optional, and that people like him don’t need to participate in it. It is why he committed the crime in the first place.
Marjorie Taylor Greene Seeks to ‘Defund’ Special Counsel
Trump’s Critics Openly Cast Him as ‘a Loser‘
The Republican Party’s nascent 2024 class, emboldened as ever, openly cast Donald Trump as ‘a loser’ over and over on Friday as they courted donors and activists fretting about the GOP’s future under the former president’s leadership. Trump’s vocal critics included current and former Republican governors, members of his own Cabinet and major donors who gathered along the Las Vegas strip for what organizers described as the unofficial beginning of the next presidential primary season. It was a remarkable display of defiance for a party defined almost wholly by its allegiance to Trump for the past six years.
Nations reach preliminary deal on payments as climate talks grind through overtime
Herschel Walker Called on Biden to Take a Mental Fitness Exam. But He Won’t Do the Same.
As Walker acknowledges, he has a history of dangerous and reckless behavior. He played Russian roulette with a loaded gun and fantasized viscerally about committing murder, and his ex-wife says he once held a gun to his head. Walker asserts he doesn’t remember that horrific incident, but he claims other troublesome actions and violent thoughts were the result of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), which causes a person to have multiple autonomous personalities… And, Walker maintains, he has been cured. So regarding the violence in his past, Walker essentially says, It was my other personalities, and they no longer have a grip on me. But there’s no proof of any of this. Walker has not released medical records, which presumably would confirm the initial diagnosis and show the treatment he underwent. They also would disclose his current condition. Might Walker still be afflicted by DID, despite his insistence he has been ‘healed’? Walker is covering up, providing no documented details of his professed bout with DID or his purported cure.
Chinese Intrigue Behind Ukraine’s Seizure of Aviation Firm Motor Sich
Netanyahu Addresses Republican Confab
Prime Minister-in-waiting Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual confab, in a rare explicit example of a foreign leader addressing an advocacy group so closely associated with a political party.
Why did single women vote for Democrats? Republicans have an asinine theory
For experts, the evidence in two probes compels charging Trump
Two reports analyzing two different criminal investigations into Donald Trump have reached a singular conclusion: there is enough evidence to bring charges against the former president. Veteran prosecutors and top legal minds this week banded together to offer an assessment of two ongoing probes — one in Georgia examining Trump’s actions in the state leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, the other led by the Justice Department as it explores the mishandling of sensitive government documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Serendipity:
What to watch for when you are watching the World Cup: Essential reads for on and off the field
In El Salvador and Beyond, an Unsolved Kidney Disease Mystery
The ballooning epidemic has swamped hospitals and wiped out whole families. Baffled researchers can’t agree on a cause.
Badge thanks to @arcange
