Link round-up for 29 August 2021

Here are some places you can donate to help Afghan refugees.

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No doubt this headline writer knew exactly what he was doing.

"Old" jokes here.

If "the Last Supper" happened now.....

Damn, that's an unbeatable deal.

Enough with the #@!^$% smartphones.

OK, here's a criminal-law reform I can support.

Light bulb time -- on Facebook.

Obviously New Zealand's covid minister had something on his mind.

Good advice is worth the potatoes.

Yes, fuck society.

Teh stoopid, it burns.

These critters are not what they appear to be.

Promises, promises.

Some birds are highly intelligent.  These birds are not those birds.

What if bad fiction writers wrote about men the way they write about women?

Rawknrobyn's version of school is educational in its own way (NSFW).

Halloween items are already selling out, but you can still find some.

"You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension."

Who wants some Major Dick Bong?

Even white supremacy is now racially integrated.

Stay away from the dark world of occultism.

The island of Corsica trembles before the cow menace.

These animals exist.

What is a soldier?

Murder hornets are back in Washington state, and eradication is a laborious process.  But check out Japanese bees' tactics against them.

Even ordinary yellow jackets can be a pain in the ass (and elsewhere) to deal with.

Watch the icebergs go groaning by.

Haunted places here.

Tornado!

Check out these whale skulls.

Time for some more weird trees.

Water polo champs have something in common.

Look up and see the Moon.

"What if the whole angel was the lure tho".....

Bohemian Valhalla goes for uplifting despite the pandemic, with a great abundance of Halloween items.

When writing fiction, avoid using numbers.

Remember Dorothy Parker, a smart person.

Paganism is spreading everywhere as the Abrahamic cults decline.

When people don't understand what "research" is, misinformation drives out real information.

You must accept his identity.

Girls-only trade classes lead to much higher participation.

Tax the churches!

Deal with anger in a constructive way.

You can have strong convictions without trying to enforce them on other people.

Discussion here on atheism and the burden of proof.

"And you can offend everyone of those groups with one comment" -- now there's a challenge worth taking up!

A libertarian world would be a disease-ridden nightmare.

Religion is just silly.

Shit yourself in public to own the libs.

Blogger Bluzdude went on vacation, but it wasn't a roaring success.

For a child in a traumatizing environment, fantasy -- even delusion -- can offer an escape.

Making a deal with the Devil brings dreadful consequences.

Bruce Gerencser is addressing Atheists of Florida at 5:00 EDT today.  The link includes info on how to tune in.

A couple more wingnuts go down because of their own dumbth.

The cult of fragility gets steadily more ridiculous.

Covidiots are idiots indeed.

Useful info here about the Texas religio-wingnut site for snitching about abortions.  More here.

The claim that mere speech can constitute violence is a gimmick to legitimize real violence.

Be careful what you wish for.

Postmodernism may be dead, but it left a noxious cloud of stupidity in its wake.

It's insane that the US still has so many people in prison for marijuana offenses.

Apple is introducing a new feature for generating false accusations of kiddie porn.  Bill Maher sees a broader underlying problem.

Here's a covid-19 report from the vaccine-skeptical Ozarks.

The Taliban do have some American fans.

California's prop 22 has been struck down in court, but all of these companies showed their true evil colors while they thought they had the chance.  Note their names and take your business elsewhere.

Pressure on lesbians to "date" males can extend even to a 13-year-old.

A writer's personal story illustrates the reality of abortion.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, a superstar of far-right / covidiot Roman Catholicism, is recovering from a serious case of covid-19.

Wingnut bleatings about "freedom" are hypocritical.

Even after OnlyFans has "suspended" its ban on sexual content, some creators feel their trust has been betrayed and are decamping to Fansly, a competing similar site.  Though it's much smaller (2 million users vs 130 million for OnlyFans), Fansly is striving to keep up with the influx.  Worth a look if you are into that sort of thing.

Don't waste sympathy on covidiots.  Reckless selfishness is their tribal brand.  As they eat up all the medical resources in an area, others who need help die.

It doesn't take much to trigger a "woke" witch-hunt these days.

Booster shots of the J&J vaccine appear to bring substantial benefit.

Our economy has become shit (the comment by "JiEL" is also of interest).

Some people are forgetting the dangers of the lynch-mob mentality.

Covid-19 explodes in South Dakota after the Sturgis super-spreader event.  Can governor Noem catch up with Abbott and DeSanitize in the death race?  In Mississippi, too, nurses are quitting due to exhaustion.

Nabisco workers remain determined, and are getting support, as their strike enters its second week.  These working conditions are horrific and unworthy of a civilized country.

The claim that covid-19 came from a Wuhan lab, never very plausible, now looks even less likely as evidence accumulates.

In this year's special elections, Republicans have done far better than 2020 would suggest, and the trend is escalating.  Wake the fuck up.

Oppose the bad guys by not behaving like them.

Put the blame for rising prices where it belongs.

Covid has a sound (found via Hackwhackers).

It's always better economically to give to the poor than to the rich.

Here's why some young liberals keep voting Republican.

"I am the way I am as a direct result of listening to 'trans women'."

The Bible is full of exhortations against logic and expertise, which explains a lot about fundie reactions to the pandemic (and to the modern world generally).

Gifs put assholes with no respect for history in their place (note: Nazi death-camp imagery).

Sometimes it takes someone from outside the West to properly appreciate it.  Some say we have it too good here.

The latest IPCC report on climate change tells us there's still hope of avoiding the worst.

My city's downtown continues to be a battleground for rival gangs of thugs.  Just go away and die in agony, all of you.

Who are worse drivers, Americans or Europeans?

British medical students get creative about paying for education.

Dramatic photos illustrate the reality of Afghanistan as the Taliban take over.

Welcome to America (nice dresses) (found via Hackwhackers).

"Stop putting culture and religion above women’s safety and freedom."  The Taliban are not in any sense a liberation movement.  Incredible to me that this even needs to be said.

Gay people, far from free even under the prior US-backed government, now face persecution and murder.

The Taliban have issued a death sentence for the brother of a translator who worked for the US.  They're telling women to stay home because they can't trust their own soldiers to behave.  Be willing to admit the truth -- they are brutal and evil because they're a religious movement specifically.  The reason for the threat to women is Islam.

The Taliban haven't changed, but Afghan women have.

Here's an argument that Taliban rule actually won't last long.

The tinpot gangsters who rule China are throwing their usual tantrums over American and Japanese symbolic actions and armaments sales to support Taiwan.  Let's keep it up.

Despite the regime's campaign to boost the birth rate, tens of millions of young Chinese are rejecting marriage, and many citizens openly mock the campaign (don't miss the discussion of 1991's "hundred days without children" starting at 4:50 -- this stuff is monstrous).  Bizarrely, the regime is cracking down on North Korean refugee women married to Chinese men.

More links at Miss Cellania and Fair and Unbalanced.

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In case you missed it -- this week I posted:  covid-19, science, and the religious mind; OnlyFans's retreat from banning sexual content; and a surreal creature-rich video from The Lone Animator.