Odds and Ends — 2 January 2026

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

December FOMC minutes show the Fed is worried short-term funding could seize up

Final nail in 4-year cycle? BTC ends year after halving in red

Coronavirus and Public Health:

COVID-19 Leaves Lasting Changes in the Brain, Even After Full Recovery

Politics:

https://twitter.com/OunkaOnX/status/2006440931151503518
- OunkaOnX

Iranians Have Had Enough

The demonstrations erupting across the Islamic Republic reflect deep economic and political discontent.

https://twitter.com/GenoVeno73/status/2006481500125147412
- GenoVeno73

———— Jack Smith’s Deposition ————

https://twitter.com/thejackhopkins/status/2006579515213099264
- thejackhopkins

https://twitter.com/maddenifico/status/2006533996226699336
- maddenifico

https://twitter.com/RetroAgent12/status/2006486456034787357
- RetroAgent12

https://twitter.com/adamscochran/status/2006541951298916467
- adamscochran

House Republicans Buried the Jack Smith Transcript on New Year’s Eve. I Read It So You Don’t Have To.

12 takeaways from Smith's closed-door testimony

https://twitter.com/politicsusa46/status/2006522815005037041
- politicsusa46

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/2006487517630193990
- Acyn

https://twitter.com/tommysantos14/status/2006815936712704084
- tommysantos14

https://twitter.com/ChaosAgent_42/status/2006827445094383775
- ChaosAgent_42

———— The Epstein Coverup ————

How Trump’s Justice Department Is Dropping the Ball on the Epstein Files

The first sign of trouble came when Justice Department leadership, sworn and ordinarily inclined to follow the law, casually blew off its statutory due date. The Epstein Files Transparency Act — passed 427-1 in the House, unanimously affirmed in Senate, then signed by the president — required that the DoJ “shall” (not “may”) produce “all” (not “some”) documents within 30 days of the law’s November 19 enactment. Yet when the December 19 deadline hit, Justice Department leadership channeled the Fast Times at Ridgemont High stoner Jeff Spicoli to explain its unlawful delinquency: Just couldn’t make it on time…
But the Justice Department’s bungled rollout shouldn’t distract from an even more serious problem: its open disregard of the law’s substantive commands…
…Blanche has declared that the Justice Department will not release documents subject to the “deliberative process privilege” — lawyer-speak for internal prosecutorial communications about whether to investigate, charge, or plead out a given case. The problem is that the Epstein Act specifically requires disclosure of precisely those documents: “Internal DOJ communications, including emails, memos, [and] meeting notes, concerning decisions to charge, not charge, investigate, or decline to investigate Epstein or his associates.”

———— Autocracy R Us ————

https://twitter.com/cwebbonline/status/2006452283563978847
- cwebbonline

(Letters from an American)

The hallmark of the first year of Trump’s second term has been the attempt of the president and his cronies to dismantle the constitutional system...They have acted as if the laws, and the Constitution that underpins them, don’t exist.