Link round-up for 18 February 2018

Did somebody turn up the gravity?

One basket, two attitudes.

Alien invaders have landed -- and they're chickens.

People do strange things when they're not paying attention.

It's the perfect Valentine's Day gift!

Welcome to Florida.

It's the Year of the Earth Dog.   And this doggie drama has subtitles.

Careful arrangement of lamps can create an interesting aesthetic effect.

Trust the Japanese to come up with toad vore with a surprise ending that involves a farting beetle.

A bigot suffers epic pwnage.

Nature provides colorful roofing.

Ditherpunk is, or was, an intriguing minimalist art style.

Don't have sex!

Thieves pwn a more dangerous thief (found via F3BBS).

See magnificent images of the northern skies.

The water-filled bathroom scene in The Shape of Water was semi-inspired by a real memory.

I had no idea that music used to be bound by stupid rules like this (found via Fair and Unbalanced).

Sometimes people are nice.

They start early.

Check out these role-reversal versions of old ads.

Drive-through restaurants go back a long way.

"You liberal snowflakes....."

This post on time travel provoked me to look up Rudolph Fentz and the Abydos Helicopter.  It seems safe to assume the other examples have equally mundane explanations.

When will the Flat Earth Society be invited?

One item is allowed, the other is not.

No, fictional violence doesn't cause real-life violence.

No, being fat is not like being gay.

This is very true, and I bet it happens with more people than the prigs realize.

Don't count on the FTC to protect you after the end of net neutrality.  Canada is doing it right.  Ajit Pai is now being investigated for corruption (all three found via Alle Tanzten mit dem Tod, a blog with great coverage of net-neutrality issues, now added to my blogroll).

No cuss words in WalMart, please.

Satanic panic was really a thing back then -- I remember.

The town of Bay View, Michigan, is for Christians only.

If a gasoline truck crashes on the freeway, don't go near it.

This is total bullshit.  Save the outrage for real enemies -- there are plenty of them out there.

Critics and bluenoses notwithstanding, the Fifty Shades movies have now made over a billion dollars globally.  Oh, and then there's this.

A post on progressive Christianity is followed by a massive comment thread full of argument and mutual denunciation.  After 2,000 years, Christians can't even agree among themselves on what Christianity is.

It's 2018 and people are still bitching about interracial relationships.

Unilever declares war on fake news.

Green Eagle has a round-up of wingnut reactions to the Florida school mass murder.  And beware, fake news about this is already spreading.  Here's the reality behind the claims of 18 school shootings this year.  The murderer does have his fans.  The Alt-Right, of course, blames the Jews.

This is the reality of hunger in America.

It's impossible to know what the original texts of the New Testament actually said.

Some abuse victims don't get much support from #MeToo.

The flu is exacerbated by crappy American workplace practices.

"Get a job!"

These people exist.  One other person now does not.

An artificial cave in Bulgaria offers hints of our "religious" practices before the Abrahamic blight.

Jesus's own words show that Christianity is rubbish.

Exhortation and scolding never work.  Avoiding risk is a natural impulse.

The arts matter -- they really do.

The ability to open a door is terrifying, apparently.  Then there are the fake lizard nuclear spies.

Don't worry about girls reaching puberty earlier.

Crazy Eddie observes Darwin Day with science videos.

There's a lot we still don't know about our own galaxy.  If you watch the animation at the end, consider that each second of it represents tens of millions of years -- time enough for thousands of civilizations like ours to rise and fall.

A new vaccine eradicates many types of cancer in mice, and is starting human clinical trials.

Artificial bones grown from the patient's own cells are already undergoing testing in Israel.

Different countries are different.  And they do healthcare differently.

Douglas Bader earned the right to use salty language.

Sweden has fake news, but it's easy to spot.

We could learn a lot from this small country.  But I'm guessing we won't.

One island, four seasons.

Things are getting scary in Poland.  Very scary.

Old control rooms are cool.

This is a feminist with courage.

Religious nutjobs protest in support of murderers.

Don't be fooled by a pretty face on a shitty regime.  Another woman tells the reality.  Here's who she is.  South Koreans distinguish between regime and people.

The Catholic Church backstabs its own believers in China to cozy up to the ruling gangsters.

Damage to the Leuser Ecosystem threatens one of our closest relatives.

"Shoot 'em in the pussy!"  No wonder Trump likes this guy.

Steve M. surveys polling on this year's elections.  Democrats must not water down support for abortion rights -- and must give black women reasons to turn out.  An abundance of candidates may help us by weeding out those who can't win in their districts.  But opposing Trump isn't enough of a message -- the problem is the whole Republican party.

Exposure works!  Nunes's fake "news" site goes down after being outed.

This comment dissects Republican defenses of minority rule.

Bureaucrats ride to the rescue of election integrity.

The Trump administration is riddled with incompetence and is an abject failure.  One blunder has already neutralized one of our aircraft carriers.

Hillary won't run for office again, but she's not going away.

Trump tried to make political hay out of a crime that probably didn't even happen.  The FBI has no more patience with his bullshit.

Democrats' leverage on DACA will increase with time (so long as they don't try another government shutdown).

Republicans will pay for that giant corporate tax cut -- by taking the money from ordinary people.

Kushner has a debt problem.

Even if Mueller is fired, the investigation won't end.  The White House knows it's far from over (found via Crooks and Liars).  Adam Schiff reviews the evidence for collusion.  Here's what the Russian indictments mean.  Bad as Pence would be, Trump must still be impeached.