Odds and Ends — 16 July 2021

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED THAT ALL THE INSTRUMENTS SEARCHING FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE ARE POINTING AWAY FROM EARTH?

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, and Debt:

Ireland Bucks Global Tax Deal

Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe has said that Ireland cannot be part of an international agreement on a minimum global tax rate of 15 percent.
Earlier this month, the G7 and OECD countries reached agreement but not unanimous consensus on the key aspects of a global tax deal which seeks to introduce a minimum rate of 15 per cent. Ireland is among a handful of countries, including Hungary, who are opposed to a 15 percent rate.

Ireland would be crazy to go along with the 15% plan. Being a tax haven has been a huge boon to them. But pressure to comply will be massive from the EU and America.

What does the U.S. look like in 2028? Here’s a quick hypothetical picture.

Republican Senator Highlights Bitcoin’s Battle in Shedding Criminal Baggage

Sen. Chuck Grassley is using “deeply flawed” estimates of illicit bitcoin activity to call for closer scrutiny of the industry, according to multiple crypto intelligence firms.

We can’t put all the blame for political crypto FUD on Republican numbnuts like Grassley. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren is at least as bad in this regard.

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

Vaccine Hesitancy Morphs Into Vaccine Hostility

Alabama military base is first in the U.S. to require vaccination proof amid rising covid-19 rates

Myanmar funeral services overwhelmed as COVID toll mounts

Politics:

Milley Said Trump Preached ‘Gospel of the Führer’

“General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, likened Donald Trump’s effort to hold on to power after the 2020 election to Adolf Hitler, saying the president was preaching ‘the gospel of the Führer’ with his lies about the election being stolen, according to a new book by two Washington Post reporters,” New York Magazine reports.
“As chronicled in I Alone Can Fix It, by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, the Pentagon’s top general said shortly before the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol that Trump had led the country to the brink of its own ‘Reichstag moment,’ viewing him as a potential threat to American democracy.”
Washington Post: “Milley described ‘a stomach-churning’ feeling as he listened to Trump’s untrue complaints of election fraud, drawing a comparison to the 1933 attack on Germany’s parliament building that Hitler used as a pretext to establish a Nazi dictatorship.”
CNN reports Milley “was so shaken” that Trump and his allies “might attempt a coup or take other dangerous or illegal measures after the November election that Milley and other top officials informally planned for different ways to stop Trump.”

Liz Cheney to Jim Jordan: ‘You Fucking Did This’

Michigan GOP plans “shocking” scheme to ram through voting restrictions over Whitmer’s veto

Maine becomes the first state to shift the cost of recycling from taxpayers to companies

Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House

Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.
The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with the Russian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present.
They agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscow’s strategic objectives, among them “social turmoil” in the US and a weakening of the American president’s negotiating position.

Uyghurs: US Senate passes bill to ban Xinjiang imports

Cash for Kids Comes to the United States

It’s a technical change to a federal tax expenditure that is also the most radical expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society. Beginning this week, the IRS will start sending monthly, no-strings-attached cash payments to an estimated 65 million children living in low- and middle-income families, potentially slashing the country’s child poverty rate by 45 percent.
An estimated 88 percent of recipients will not need to do anything to get the cash — the IRS will send the money automatically. But an estimated 4 million to 8 million eligible children are at risk of missing out, because their parents or guardians do not need to file taxes or are not filing taxes — and because they might not even know the complicated, obscure-sounding, and scarcely advertised policy exists.

Serendipity:

AI-driven ‘clock’ predicts aging-related illness and mortality

South Africa looting: I’m struggling to find food

You never know what strange article you might stumble onto at Wikipedia: Prohibition of dying

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Badge thanks to @arcange

Meme credit: Datdeus (source)



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Anyone working for a central authority should abstain themselves from crypto lol posers.

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