Odds and Ends — 18 October 2024

in #oddsandends4 days ago


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

America Is Sleepwalking Into an Economic Storm

Inflation seems under control. The job market remains healthy. Wages, including at the bottom end of the scale, are rising. But this is just a lull. There is a storm approaching, and Americans are not prepared.
Barreling toward us are three epochal changes poised to reshape the U.S. economy in coming years: an aging population, the rise of artificial intelligence and the rewiring of the global economy.

Is Tor still safe after Germany’s ‘timing attack?’ Answer: It’s complicated...

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

The flu shot is different this year, thanks to COVID

Politics:

This is freaking hysterical:


Trump Is Convinced He’ll Win

Despite the endless and voluminous and ubiquitous polling suggesting that we are careening toward a historically tight election, Donald Trump can only see an outcome in which he wins. Inside Mar-a-Lago, I’ve heard that Trump is uncharacteristically buoyant, almost cavalier, convinced that victory is his.
Yes, some in Trump’s orbit are concerned about displaced voters in North Carolina, but the only thing that the former president believes could cause him to fail, I’ve been told, is if the Republican National Committee election integrity unit—which includes at least one 2020 election denier—fails him.

Trump’s Bizarre Endgame

It’s not really an October Suprise, but Trump’s cognitively declining, incoherent, fascisty closing argument already belongs to the Ages.
In less insane political moments, candidates try to put forward their best, most attractive selves in the final weeks of a campaign. One of the enduring urban legends of the 2016 election is that Trump cleaned up his act in the final days of that campaign, posing as a simulacrum of a quasi-normal candidate.
But WTF are we seeing right now?

Judge Shuts Down GOP Suit on Overseas Ballots

A Michigan judge suggested Thursday that Republicans waited too long to file a suit challenging the right of some U.S. citizens who live abroad to vote in the swing state.

Trump’s Rambling Speeches Worry His Allies

Some Trump advisers and allies say privately they are concerned that the dynamic may be repeating itself four years later. They worry that Mr. Trump’s impetuousness and scattershot style on the campaign trail needlessly risk victory in battleground states where the margin for error is increasingly narrow.
At a time when his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, has stepped up her attacks on him as “unstable,” Mr. Trump has struggled to publicly hone his message by veering off script and ramping up personal attacks on Ms. Harris that allies have urged him to rein in.