Link round-up for 6 January 2019

Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week.

o o o o o

Now I know who took my ATM card.

If you have a family full of wingnuts, cash in.

Debra She Who Seeks observes -- indeed, invents -- National Lizard Day.

It's Cthulhu's dog!

Jono has some photos from snowy Minnesota.

Pinku-Sensei posts the YouTube Rewind for 2018.  Until he responded to my comment there, I had never heard of YouTube personality "PewDiePie".  By an odd coincidence, that same day, LGBTQ Nation posted a profile of him.  Gag.

Judyt54 posts 13 modern annoyances.

David Futrelle discovers a very, very bad writer.

I don't see why anyone thought a dance video would hurt Ocasio-Cortez's reputation.  Then there's the Mitch McConnell dance video (found via Mock Paper Scissors).

The internet didn't destroy retail -- out-of-control capitalism did.

HR Giger once designed a Batmobile.

Miss Cellania links to over a dozen 2018-in-review lists.  See also year reviews from The Onion (found via Fair and Unbalanced) and Electoral-Vote (Trump version).

For extreme fundies, even movies are taboo -- but they're as hypocritical about it as about everything else.

A kiss is just a kiss -- get used to it.

Better sex education can mean less prejudice.

She's the living embodiment of Tumblrgeddon.  And the implosion continues.

Don't let Tumblr's content purge sweep away the memory of this truth.

WordPress, too, is pushing a new text editor which most users find difficult to use, prompting some bloggers to consider migrating to some other platform.  An experienced website consultant tries to explain the problem to WordPress staff, getting almost Orwellian responses (found via a comment at the previous link by Nyssa the Hobbit, who has already found a better option).

AO3 has a lot of good features, apparently.

Here's some advice and warnings about VPNs (note: I personally don't have the technical knowledge to fact-check all this).  More here.

Pearl-clutching prigs will always find something to disapprove of.

What really happened to Amelia Earhart?

Evangelicals sink into a morass of corruption and hypocrisy.

Beware of phony "research" rigged to justify pre-existing biases.

Both-siderism puts you in very bad company.

Jerry Coyne visits Pearl Harbor.

You just know who this person voted for.

What does "sex positivity" really mean?

See political cartoons at Hackwhackers and I Should Be Laughing.

Bad companies make technology to empower control freaks.

Nan at Nan's Notebook describes how she was sucked into Christianity via fear (don't worry, she got over it eventually).

Interesting new-year point -- there are no more 20th-century minors (found via Jerry Coyne).  Anyone born in the 20th century is now over 18.

Fox News plumbs new depths of dumbth (though C+L's own closet is not skeleton-free).

This is not "schooling" in any real sense.

The "C-Street House" epitomizes the hypocrisy of political fundamentalism.

Here's a big part of why wingnuts hate government.

If you sell things on the internet, be prepared to deal with assholes like these.

A critical civil right is under attack (found via Fair and Unbalanced).

Dave Dubya has a great discussion on the nature of modern "con-servatism".

The Women's March pushes back against bigotry in its leadership.

A border wall won't work.

South Carolina lobbies to legitimize religious discrimination (found via Scottie).

Here's how Trump is viewed by those who've worked most closely with him.  Who the hell needs a leader who behaves like this?

There's more to the Kitty Genovese story than you've probably heard.

The migrant children who recently died in US custody had been looking forward to new lives here.

How vile can bigotry get?  This vile.

The overall trends are positive in the fight against global warming.

Islamist nutcases are acting up in Egypt again.

Trump has insulted and offended the world's largest democracy.  Now back to having hysterics because somebody called him a bad word.

How much is a smelly dead fish worth?

Trump's renewed sanctions on Iran are strengthening the worst elements there.  But he may be quietly backing down on his plan to withdraw from Syria.

Is forbidden to criticize Glorious Leader.

One thing has changed, the other has not.

Pelosi understands priorities.  And "GOP lost entitlement to policing women’s behavior a long time ago."

Democrats move to make candidate selection more democratic.

Romney seems more likely to be a Flake than a Murkowski.....if you will.

Are we tired of winning yet?

Two new members of Congress hid a nasty secret during the campaign.

Green Eagle has an idea to save North Carolina some money.

Vixen Strangely tries to talk sense to people who are likely beyond it.

Shower Cap contemplates the year ahead and the return of Pelosi.

[Image at top: the future confronts the past as Kyrsten Sinema, the first openly-bisexual US Senator (and the only current one to identify as non-religious) is sworn in by Mike Pence using a law book containing the US and Arizona constitutions, not a Bible.  Found via Shaw Kenawe.]