Odds and Ends — 17 April 2026

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

Lies, Damned Lies and Economic Vibes

Wrench attacks often carried out by ‘cannon fodder’ thugs recruited on social media

Forget siphoning. ‘Drilling and draining’ is on the rise as gas prices soar.

With simple tools, thieves are stealing fuel from vehicles, leaving drivers with costly repair bills.

Coronavirus and Public Health:

Only 6 symptoms, conditions appear unique to long COVID, suggesting overlap with other post-viral infections

Iran:

Trump Says War Is Going ‘Swimmingly’

https://twitter.com/TheMaineWonk/status/2044474007995527461
- TheMaineWonk

Most Think Trump’s Iran War Is Not Worthwhile

As the war in Iran stretches into its seventh week, a survey from Ipsos and Reuters, released on Tuesday, has found that few Americans — 24 percent — think the war has been worth the costs and benefits.
Even among the president’s core supporters, there is a divide: 55 percent of Republicans said they thought the war was worth the costs and benefits, a far cry from the vast majority of his base who support Mr. Trump on most other issues. Instead, 20 percent of Republicans said they thought the war had not been worth the cost, and another 24 percent were not sure.

https://twitter.com/Angry_Staffer/status/2045131220506337439
- Angry_Staffer

U.S. Blockade Remains Despite Iran Saying Strait Is Open

Politics:

RFK Jr. Once Cut Off Dead Raccoon’s Penis

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an avid animal genitalia researcher in his spare time, once pulled the family sedan to the side of the road after spying a dead raccoon and swiftly cut off its sex organs so he could ‘study them later.’

A best practices life hack: live your life in a way such that when you shuffle off this mortal coil your obituary will not note among your accomplishments that you were an avid animal genitalia researcher.

https://twitter.com/Mayoisspicyy/status/2044553837089075466
- Mayoisspicyy

https://twitter.com/TheMaineWonk/status/2044565782013603963
- TheMaineWonk

https://twitter.com/DastDn/status/2044482125785702468
- DastDn

Trump Rewrites the History of January 6

Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, his administration has enthusiastically — and steadily — embraced his campaign to try to rewrite the story of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump immediately granted a blanket pardon to nearly everyone charged or convicted in connection with the attack, calling them ‘patriots.’ Earlier this year, his White House posted a falsehood-strewn retelling of that day.
Then, this week, his administration moved to vacate some of the last remaining and most serious criminal convictions stemming from the riot.

https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/2044816360803287144
- Kasparov63

https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/2044779225698209915
- RadioFreeTom

Vance’s Theory of Trumpism Is No Match for the Practice

Vice-President J.D. Vance loves big ideas, or at least the idea of big ideas. Unlike President Donald Trump, he reads books and even writes his own, and he talks, authentically, like a diploma-carrying member of the elite they both ostentatiously disdain. He aligns himself with the ‘post-liberal right’, a term so highfalutin one struggles to imagine Mr Trump using it.
Mr Vance serves as the chief emissary between the Trump White House and the intellectual ‘New Right’, the agglomeration of pointy-heads, Silicon Valley potentates and podcasters with big ideas of their own for saving Western civilization, as Mr Vance, apocalyptically, likes to describe his mission.
It is heady stuff. It must also, on some days, prove vexatious, for it has led Mr Vance to cast himself as the chief ideologist of a movement, MAGA, whose essence is that it has no ideology. MAGA is committed instead to the instincts, impulses and glory of one man. As a result, Mr Vance’s theories of governance keep taking a beating from Mr Trump’s practice.