Link round-up for 28 November 2021

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

o o o o o

Remember your (p)assword.

Animals can be goofy.

It's OK to knock it even if you haven't tried it.

New reason to like socialists here.

Apparently Star Wars is better in Portuguese.

Music awards here, for a crazy time.

Enjoy undersea humor here.

This person exists.

This person exists.

This person exists.

This person exists.

This table exists (slightly NSFW).

This substance exists.

Jive turkey!

Cat time!

Life imitates art.

Explore the world of giant dildos.

Whoever placed this sticker knew exactly what he was doing.

"Please close all portals when finished."

Imagine if books were really what their covers suggest.

Lady M has some Thanksgiving cartoons.

Remember the true meaning of Christmas.

Your refrigerator is plotting against you.

Leave the leaves!

Get happy.

The old Algerian lady may have a point.

The Rittenhouse verdict has created a climate of fear in the streets.

Gosh, why do people quit jobs?

Glide in for a perfect landing.

2 out of 5 stars, would not bang.

FFS not every damn thing needs to have software.

Nice song here by a group I hadn't heard of before.

This guy's efforts at being threatening need a lot of work.

Make your game realistic (found via Yellowdog Granny).

She has met her enemy, and.....

Another win for workers -- Target stores will never again be open on Thanksgiving.

Here's a huge listing of sites that offer the full text of entire books for free online.  It's five years old, so I can't be sure every single link is still good, but the ones I looked at are.

The Bible story of Satan tempting Jesus is logically impossible.

Options here for donating to help the hungry.

Fish!

Children at play tend to look remarkably alike.

Wind turbine blades are recyclable.

This is the Bigar waterfall in Romania.

This is the land of my ancestors.

Here's a new high-resolution view of the Andromeda galaxy (found via Hackwhackers).  These stars are so far away that the light now reaching us from them left them more than two million years ago.

A few hundred thousand years ago, there were several species of humans.  Why was ours the only one to survive?

NASA launches a test of technology to protect Earth from asteroid impacts.

See video of a Soviet H-bomb test from 1955.

Some want victims to stay victims.

His name was Thomas.

Oregon sex workers say that Kristoff as governor would be a threat to their safety and rights.

Never feel obligated to give strangers personal information.

Aside from its notorious anti-gay stance, the Salvation Army is racist.

Individuals are wonderful; groups are poison.

Who killed Jesus?

Narcissism ultimately defeats itself.

Don't be an asshole to retail workers.

The US can be a scary place.

These bloggers claim the media often change the skin color in photos of criminal suspects.  I have no idea how common this actually is.

Bullshit, it's all bullshit.

Walgreens and Target are closing stores and reducing hours in San Francisco due to chronic shoplifting.

Here's an examination of the "Hell is just separation from God" claim.

Religion is arrogant and immoral.

The existing covid-19 vaccines will probably still work against the new omicron variant.

The ever-sensible Arielle Scarcella explores the outer reaches of gender lunacy and takes an in-depth look at "fat positivity" and oppression.

People with unrealistic expectations and no clue how things actually get done are dissatisfied with Biden.

Kevin McCarthy appears to have accomplished a miracle -- getting Lauren Boebert to apologize for something.

Always beware of religionists trying to impose legal privileges for religion.

There are victims in the Rittenhouse case.

A pastor can tell us who is "the best person to rape".

Drunks and anti-maskers have been assholing like crazy on airplanes, and it's a danger to everyone.

Religion is toxic to mental health.

Kara Dansky pleads with the Democratic party to come back to reality.

A fringe anti-vax doctors' conference has led to at least seven covid-19 infections.

Class war is already being waged -- by the wealthy parasite class.  We just need to start fighting back.

Don't mistake cargo-cult science for the real thing.

People get raped in prison all the time, so just take it and quit bitching about it.  Some left-media reportage on the WoLF lawsuit is beyond disgusting -- discussion here.

Candidates like Lucas Kunce offer a way forward for the Democrats.

The Rittenhouse verdict has clarified some things.

Be grateful to the health-care workers who haven't quit yet.

Anthony Broadwater has finally been exonerated after spending sixteen years in prison for a crime he almost certainly didn't commit.

Teachers in Los Angeles have been caught spying on and grooming kids.

Why is the Ghislaine Maxwell trial getting so little coverage?

A top Canadian QAnon qrackpot is telling her followers to kill anybody who tries to stop covid-19 from spreading among kids.

A Toronto school canceled an event with former Dâ'ish (ISIL) sex slave Nadia Murad because it might "foster Islamophobia".

Canada is considering criminalizing dissent from trans ideology (found via Aunt Polly).  Americans, be grateful for the First Amendment.

A new attempt to menace JK Rowling provokes a backlash.  Rowling responds.  Not everyone gets the message.

In the UK, too, covid-19 is mostly a disease of the unvaccinated.

A mother struggles to save her daughter from gender brainwashing.

Preserving a minority language needs more than just people learning it.

Schools in Scotland are installing gender-neutral toilets, but girls are refusing to use them due to boys' obnoxious behavior.

Why do fast-food workers in Denmark make $20 an hour?  Because Danish workers stand up to corporate bullshit, big time.  We could do the same.

Having passed a draconian anti-abortion law, the Polish government is now considering a law that would register every pregnancy.  Belgium and the Netherlands are offering free abortions for Polish women.

The "village idiot" was the most decent guy in town.

Ukraine has uncovered a Russian-backed coup plot against its government.  Ukraine would be a tough nut to crack militarily, so expect more such tactics from Putin.

Much of the anti-vax propaganda in the US and western Europe emanates from Russian troll farms, but the scheme is backfiring as vaccine rejection spreads back into Russia itself (found via Earth-Bound Misfit).

Erdoğan's Islamic economics is ruining Turkey.

I see something that looks like apartheid.

Emerging-market funds that avoid China are doing better than those which invest in it -- and investors are taking note.

The Beijing regime is in a colossal snit about Biden inviting Taiwan to the upcoming democracy summit.  Sorry, assholes, it is a democracy.

Weary of China's arrogance and threats, free countries world-wide are rallying around Taiwan.

More links at Fair and Unbalanced.

o o o o o

My posts this week:  a song by Russian pop singer Glukoza; a note on the "Black Friday" Amazon strike; and my personal dream of offending an alien.

Reaching the stars

I doubt that I will ever go into space, no matter how cheap flights in the Bezos dong rocket and its successors may eventually become.  But it has occurred to me that I may someday reach the stars.

In some areas of the world, internet access is delivered via satellite, and the infrastructure for doing this is expanding rapidly, with thousands of new satellites planned for the end of 2022.  This means that pretty much everything on the internet will be beamed out into space, toward satellites which will re-direct the signal back to customers on Earth.  Since radio waves aimed at a satellite also continue on into the void beyond, this means that eventually the whole internet will be streaming out into the cosmos.

I don't know how far such signals can travel before weakening to the point of being drowned out by the cosmic background radiation.  But they will never entirely disappear, and even at interstellar distances, it's conceivable that a civilization with sufficiently advanced technology might be able to extract the faint signal from the noise -- and see our internet in all its glory.

I have never expected to have any sort of monument, of course.  But I feel it would be a fine thing if one day, long after I am gone, some unimaginable alien being in a distant solar system were to decipher and read one of my blog posts, and be offended by it.

Making Amazon pay

Tomorrow (on the so-called "Black Friday"), Amazon workers on every inhabited continent will be engaging in strikes and protests against the giant company's notorious abusive practices.  Their website has all the information, including a list of demands and supportive organizations.

Video of the day -- Москва

By Russian pop singer Glukoza.  Москва (Moscow) is an unusually meditative song for her.

Link round-up for 21 November 2021

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

o o o o o

Praise God, the Rapture has come at last!

Ex-wives perform a valuable service.

People are stupid.

Prophetess Kat Kerr sends a hundred million angels to pester Biden.

Eat bugs, get high.

Really, gender identity is perfectly simple.

What?

Doggie time.

Life imitates art.

Welcome to the church.

I'm not surprised this restaurant was closed down.

"He's challenging gender norms."

It's a job hunt.

Here's how to save money on Christmas.

Better have your ticket ready.

As if we didn't already have an obesity problem, now they're giving us giant candy.

Nice little creepy story here.

"You're right" (found via Funny Links).

Why isn't he chasing the carrot?

Good dog!

Gosh, why does nobody want to work here?

This house epitomizes bizarre excess (found via Miss Cellania).

If you go to Heaven, what will you do there?

It's what every Asian woman dreams of.

Teaching good manners is important.

This dog can save you money on a sex-change operation (NSFW).

Best not to think about The Lion King too deeply.

It was just a passing fad.

We all know why we all hate Mondays.

These Persian-style vegetarian recipes sound really good.

Check out the urban reality-bending art of Alex Chinneck (found via SilverAppleQueen).

Best beer ever.

If a statistic seems odd, do a little digging.

Some friends are worth more than others.

Don't let past mistakes weigh you down.

We can't afford that (found via Yellowdog Granny).

If you have a blog and a lot of people hate what you say, here's an idea for you.

Bow down before the awesome power of the furries.

A short lament by Baudelaire illustrates the challenges of translating poetry.

This is the city of Vannes in Brittany, western France.

See Europe's largest public reference library.

Catalonia has some interesting art and architecture.

He extends a helping hand to a distant relative.

Birds in the Amazon rain forest are evolving rapidly in response to global warming.

This species of salamander is so biologically bizarre that it isn't even really a species.

Coffee and tea offer some protection against stroke and dementia.

Autistic "stimming" is probably an adaptation to cope with the stresses of interaction, not a pathology.

The media are teaching chemical warfare.

Social norms have always been changing.

Sorry, Flynn, religious freedom applies to everybody.

Liking things isn't a competition.

See the artists who create various comics.

Could Airplane! be made today?

Yet another religionist clumsily attacks atheism and science while showing he hardly understands either.

Stop worrying about being replaced by robots.

People like this exist.  Believe me, they do.

Earth-Bound Misfit finds yet another reason why citizens need guns.

Do angels have racial differences like humans do?  Why would they?

Don't let these horrible-looking things anywhere near you.  There are good reasons why we feel instinctively repulsed by certain animals.

The 1987 Montreal protocol saved the world from a nightmarish future.

The Women's Liberation Front is suing to force the state of California to stop housing male inmates in women's prisons.  Here's the story of one of the plaintiffs -- if you go to only one link in this round-up, please make it this one.

As for Oregon, we've got this.....thing.

Criminalizing abortion doesn't stop abortion, it just makes it more dangerous.

Religion is a con wherever it is.

Why don't people want to work?  Try shitty customers.

Nobody needs economic advice from this guy.

A pastor running for office in South Carolina wants all US laws to be conformed to "the will of God".

After the Rittenhouse verdict, a mob in Portland smashed windows and threw things at the police, but so far, violence has been limited.  Maybe it's too cold.  Good discussion in the comments here -- see especially comments 8 and 28.

The mRNA vaccines provide two distinct types of protection against covid-19.

An extra-stupid anti-Semite gets arrested in Texas.

A nurse's job is tough enough without also being groped by diseased Republicans.

The best thing activists can do for the left is pointing out when it's embracing stupid ideas (at last, a sign of that introspection we so desperately need).  See my comment there too.

Ultimately you have to take responsibility for your own safety.

Unions get done what needs to be done.

Don't put up with family members who insist on preaching religion at you.  It's not worth it.

You can help defund Fox News (found via Mock Paper Scissors).

Bill Maher explains how to avoid losing the 2022 elections.  I predict everyone will ignore this and we will, in fact, lose.

The last US conviction for blasphemy was less than a century ago.

Remember this, as the strikes happen.

Homophobia is now "woke".  The left is becoming a bigger problem than the right.

White supremacists are deeply divided by age and class prejudice.

Two of the women who are suing fundie Liberty University for its shitty handling of sexual assault are speaking out.

Quit behaving like you might be rich someday.  It's not gonna happen.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, one in five US healthcare workers have quit, and more are considering doing so -- too much death, too many assholes.

We must not ignore and silence the victims of religion.

Parents, gay people, and others are coming together across the left-right divide to protest the "medical" mutilation of children in the name of gender madness (must-read).  They're getting a lot of public support -- and lawsuits are being prepared.

Almost all new electricity generation capacity being built in the US is solar and wind, while fossil-fuel plants are being taken offline.

The John Deere strike has ended after all, with substantial raises.  The Alabama coal strike, still ongoing after almost eight months, is getting some government attention.

"One voter remarked that if she uses the 'wrong' word for something, they label her a bigot.  That's almost guaranteed to turn the person into a Republican voter.  Permanently.  Issues be damned.  Democrats have not absorbed this lesson yet."

A Maori tribe tells anti-vaxers to stop ripping off their rituals (found via Miss Cellania).  This yellow star bullshit needs to come to a screeching halt as well.

Never forget Jonestown.

The NYT is still obfuscating and distorting the Loudoun county rape scandal.  The mother of the first victim is suing the school board for covering up the crime.

In Mississippi, vaccine access is a mess.

Reality is illusion, illusion is reality.

They made a good use of a bad guy's house.

One of the vilest men in America finally suffers some consequences.

Anti-Semites are selective in their attentions.

Those neo-Nazis are such a witty bunch.

The UK has almost eliminated cervical cancer, but the US lags far behind due to religio-sexual taboos (found via SilverAppleQueen).

It's a news channel FFS, not a safe space for delicate hothouse plants.  Fortunately things are already becoming freer.

The Thames river, once biologically dead due to pollution, now teems with life again.

What the hell is "sexual racism"?

Religious indoctrination is still a big problem in Poland.

This is a philosophy of realism.

Women's rights activists in Afghanistan are being murdered.

Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai was "disappeared" after she accused one of the regime's top-ranking thugs of coercing her into sex.  The WTA is willing to cut all ties with China unless the issue is resolved.

The North Korean regime is absurdly paranoid about the growing cultural influence of the South.

Global warming is thwarting Africa's Great Green Wall project.

More links at Fair and Unbalanced.

o o o o o

My own posts this week:  a new set of mood images, and a Lone Animator video of evil toys.

Video of the day -- evil toys

An early work by The Lone Animator -- in fact, this is the first video ever posted on his YouTube channel.  The dialog is in Swedish, but it's still just as fun even if you don't understand what they're saying.

And here's the guy who makes these, The Lone Animator himself:

Moods (2)

Link round-up for 14 November 2021

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

o o o o o

Worshiping dumb animals is hilarious.

It's a clear message.

The Beatles could out-snark any modern pop star.

Children have their own logic.

Hildegard von Blingin' and Whitney Avalon are Holding out for a Hero.

Don't be a scab adventurer.

Please be more sensitive.

The labor shortage just keeps getting worse.

Enjoy your meal.

Type carefully.

You have been warned.

What am I looking at here?

Upgrade your animals.

Different people celebrate Halloween in different ways.

Gender ideology is, at least, sometimes hilarious (do read the replies!).

Alien art takes surprising forms.

Always read the fine print.

Make a wish.

The classic romance novel cover was largely the creation of just one artist.

It's a simple matter of Umweltvermüllungsverzweiflung.

Get the point across using animals.

Ken Ham says aliens are going to Hell.

Libertarian crypto/NFT morons are re-discovering why real financial systems need all those regulations they hate.  Here's a good explanation of what cryptocurrencies and NFTs are, and (addendum at end) why it's so important to ridicule them.

If you're feeling lousy, ask yourself these questions.

Some interesting lightning photos here.

Check out the weird pop-culture-in-ruins art of Filip Hodas.

This McDonald's has a street inside it, but there's a good reason.

A baroque scam/scandal involving an ostentatious necklace engulfed Paris high society just before the French revolution.

If you are a criminal, please move to New Mexico, as there seems to be a shortage of criminals there.

Three idiots walk into a bar.....

Speaking as a Satanist, I find Christian occultism too weird and creepy to stomach.

"Forgive me for failing / Forgive me for trying....."

I'm in the wrong business.  You can make three million bucks free and clear just by asking morons to give it to you.

The Shape of Water was about humanizing marginalized people, not humanizing monsters.

Rawknrobyn remembers the Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise CA.

Big Bird has been promoting public health for decades.

A fourteenth-century tower, a drone, and photography skills produce an arresting photo.

Some practical tips here on torrenting (I don't have the technical knowledge to evaluate this).

We're going back to Venus in 2029.

Reminder:  Obama shares my view of cynicism.

This man is the king of work.

The gray rock strategy for dealing with narcissists and bullies has both positives and negatives.

Here's what some wingnut codes mean.

This is not sex.  This is not "play".  This is shit.

If he uses violence against people whose opinions you dislike -- what happens when you have an opinion he dislikes?

Chesterton's fence reminds us that drastic change should be approached cautiously.

This is the best take I've seen yet on the internet-fic "antis".

Wingnut "prophets" flounder in frustration as their predictions of Trump's reinstatement stubbornly fail to come true.

Artist Waldemar Kazak has a distinctive vision of Thanksgiving.

"Language evolves" doesn't work as a justification for woketards' forced, Orwellian twisting of words.

If you want advice from a sports star, better Kareem Abdul-Jabbar than Aaron Rogers.

Tips here on spotting hidden cameras.  It can be difficult.

Conspiratardia comes easily to some people.

Here's the actual Paul Gosar anime video that everybody's talking about.

Seasonal reminder: the Salvation Army is evil.  There are better places to donate to charity.

Racism exists.

This is not socialism.

If the left-wing media won't listen to you, there can be some practical advantages in reaching out to the right.

A North Carolina student reported a sexual assault, and the school suspended her, even though the assailant had confessed to the police.  Students have held a walk-out in protest.

Some anti-vaxers are now taking the covid-19 vaccine to keep their jobs, and then engaging in meaningless (but somewhat toxic) rituals to "undo" it.

Wingnuts increasingly support banning books and even burning them.

The John Deere strike apparently won't be ending any time soon.

My recent anti-politics post was re-posted at Angry Bear, and got more positive feedback than I expected.

Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov tragically lost his life to the corruption and bad engineering endemic to totalitarian states (found via Miss Cellania).

Whine whine whine, I'll be down to my last quarter trillion.....

Workaholics make the workplace even worse for normal people.

"Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities."

The media are lying about Loudoun county.  To avoid future election defeats, Democrats need an accurate picture of what happened in Virginia.

Job applicants now have enough leverage to be as shitty to employers as employers have long been to employees.

Giving up freedom for safety.....is dangerous.

The wealthy create a far disproportionate share of excess greenhouse gases.

More than half the workers who quit their jobs in recent months aren't coming back, ever.

Jurors in the Rittenhouse trial are being threatened.

Good discussion of the Rittenhouse case here, for those few people whose minds aren't already made up one way or the other.  More here (in comments), though more one-sided.

Check your secular privilege.

The covid-19 death rate in deep-red counties is now almost three times higher than in deep-blue counties.

The US "supply chain" as it used to be was based on stolen labor.

Denialism about the health effects of obesity is like doing the same with smoking or alcoholism; it does nobody any favors.

Anti-science propaganda rots even an educated brain.

Dead Wild Roses blog comprehensively addresses trans ideology talking points.

The clean-up of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch begins.

Opposing an ideology is not racist, and religions are ideologies.

Religio-wingnuts fume as the mainstream right wing grows more accepting of homosexuality.

When the trans ideology mass delusion finally implodes, what becomes of the crazies who kept it going?

The two US political parties are cobbled together from nine distinct categories of people.  Here's the background data.

He left Portland State University because it isn't really a university any more.

Fox "News" deceptively edited a video to make Biden appear racist (found via Fair and Unbalanced).

These insurrectionists really are morons.

The New York Times is trash.

A vast number of jobs are not just dreary, but useless.

If "queer" means almost everything, then it means almost nothing.

The key to defeating Republicans is to tie them to what their party really supports.

SickoRicko remembers Kristallnacht.

The US now lags behind almost all other major countries in covid-19 vaccinations (found via Hackwhackers), far behind even countries like Brazil whose leadership has been as bad as Trump was, even though the US has now had a competent government for almost a year.  As I said here, it's not primarily a leadership problem, it's primarily a huge-sub-population-of-idiots problem.

There's no longer any doubt that gender ideology is enabling sexual predators.

Forty countries have agreed to phase out coal.

A British university is offering safety training for sex workers, and the usual prigs are bitching about it (apparently they'd prefer that it not be safer).

On the anniversary of Kristallnacht, an anti-Semitic mob in London swarms a speech by the Israeli ambassador and tries to rush her as she leaves.

Teachers in Wales are targeted by false accusations of pedophilia.

Yet another sexual-assault victim is punished and denounced for speaking out.

An anti-Semitic murderer in Paris is sentenced to life in prison, but could be eligible for parole in just 22 years.

Americans are terminally clueless about healthcare.

A recent pro-choice march in Warsaw (after a woman died due to being denied an abortion) was well attended.

A video going viral in Brazil shows a high-school girl being viciously beaten by a boy after she had challenged his presence in the girls' bathroom.  Discussion here.

Another little step toward real peace in the Middle East.

The Saudi regime seems to be trying to sabotage the climate summit.

The largest city in the world is also one of the most livable.

The Chinese regime's bullying of Taiwan draws Europe to strengthen support and deepen ties with the island nation.

LinkedIn is getting out of China.

China's demographic implosion shows no sign of stopping despite the regime's increasingly frantic efforts to raise the birth rate.

The regime isn't talking about the mysterious explosions happening all over China.  I suspect either terrorism or the usual civil-engineering incompetence -- when the regime wants to kill or intimidate dissidents, it has much better methods available.

Chinese persecution of Uyghurs extends even beyond China's borders.

In the Congo, the work of a gynecologist involves dangers and horrors barely imaginable in the West.

More links at Fair and Unbalanced.

o o o o o

My own posts this week: a video on the global Great Resignation; an essay on historical cycles of cultural darkness and light (not about present-day politics -- not everything has to be about the country we happen to live in or the century we happen to live in); and a musical lament for wonder and awe.

[Image at top:  space pioneer Vladimir Komarov, 1927-1967]

Video of the day -- where did the wonder go?

Where is the wonder, where's the awe?
Where's dear Alice knocking on the door?
Where's the trapdoor that takes me there,
Where the "real" is shattered by a mad march hare?

Where is the wonder, where's the awe?
Where are the sleepless nights I used to live for?
Before the years take me,
I wish to see the lost in me.....

The cycles of darkness and light

A recent post on Cas d'Intérêt, citing a letter by Albert Camus during the Nazi occupation of France, posed the question: "Camus was able to write with such confidence about Germany's inevitable defeat. In recent times, lies have proven to be so maddeningly productive. Is the effectiveness of violence and falsehood ultimately doomed to failure?"

I believe it is, in the long run.  But the long run can sometimes be very long indeed.  After the great Greco-Roman civilization fell in the fifth century, enlightenment eventually won out again in the Middle Eastern revival of the ninth to early twelfth centuries; after that civilization was strangled by the triumph of Islamic fundamentalism, there was the European Renaissance hundreds of years later.  If the Nazis had won and dragged the entire Western world back into a new Dark Age, I think humane and enlightened civilization would have risen again eventually, but it would likely have taken several centuries before that happened, and no one alive in Camus's time would have lived to see it.

Petr Beckmann said that the thugs always win, but the thinkers always outlast them.  Galileo was forced to recant heliocentrism and spent the last nine years of his life under strict house arrest, his books banned, apparently defeated.  Yet today everybody knows who he was, while the name of the pope who threatened and silenced him is forgotten except among specialist historians.

I think, too, that those cycles of darkness and light are over -- the risk of another collapse is fading.  Yes, one or a few individual countries could conceivably slip back into the darkness, but not civilization as a whole, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to imagine a plausible scenario where it could happen even in one major country at the front rank of development.  Literacy and education are far more widespread than in the fifth-century Roman Empire or the twelfth-century Islamic world.  National power and a modern standard of living are totally dependent on technology, and technological progress in turn depends on science, free inquiry, and the free flow of information which non-democratic regimes cannot tolerate.  The gangster-states of today are essentially hangers-on, parasites battening on the achievements of the free societies whose ideas ultimately threaten the very survival of their regimes.  (Even in World War II this pattern was emerging -- the US built the atom bomb and the UK built the first radar-based national air-defense system and the first real computers, while the Nazis never really grasped the potential of radar or nuclear fission; see also the later Soviet embrace of Lysenkoist pseudo-science.)  Modernity is a complete package, and any nation which turns away from it will ultimately end up marginalized and irrelevant to the future.

The few remaining existential threats are quite different in character -- global warming, a giant meteor impact, a future super-pandemic -- and only advanced technology will be able to fend them off.

So, to those odd types (yes, they exist) who oppose the values of the Enlightenment and want a return to the Dark Ages -- sorry, but the Nazis were your last chance, and they failed.  It took time, but finally, Galileo has won.  Hypatia has won.  We have won.

Video of the day -- quitters unite!

It's not only the US and China -- all over the world, millions of workers are quitting, and hundreds of millions more are planning to.  Rigid employers who try to go back to the old pre-pandemic ways of doing things are dinosaurs who haven't yet realized they're extinct.

Link round-up for 7 November 2021

Only 358 days until Halloween!  Better start getting ready!

o o o o o

Step up and take your pun-ishment.

Animals meet their ancestors.

Maybe it goes well with cheese?

Seriously, don't do this.

Outstanding doggie costumes here.

Not quite an anti-vaxer.....

Labor unrest spreads to an iconic candy factory.

Makes sense -- it must have been one of those three guys.

Slide the door open and the truth is revealed.

Being a Christian is like being a pumpkin.

Merely a tax law.

If that's her boyfriend, it's been a while.

All this [giggle] movie violence [snicker] is just horrifying [guffaw].

The Jewish Buddha is smarter than the regular Buddha.

Teamwork solves the problem.

Yeah, that "fun-size" thing is weird.

Here are the winners of the Manitou Springs skeleton craze.

Get out of that box, you weirdo.

A special ingredient makes the wine magical.

Yeah, this is clown world all right.

Just tell me your name.

It must have been tough being an insurrectionist once all the fun was over.

Snow is versatile.

I don't know what's going on here and I don't want to (NSFW-ish).

Forget big pick-up trucks and guns -- the new size compensator is tungsten cubes.

It's a valid pumpkin.

Turns out Marie Antoinette was getting some on the side.

Take a last look at Lady M's Halloween.

Old letters offer an intriguing, if sometimes enigmatic, link to the past.

Why the fascination with hideous houses?

Love me back, or.....

Meta?  Try Metadata.

Some Mississippi towns actually move Halloween when it falls on a Sunday, so it won't coincide with church day.

When a billionaire dies.....

Finally, a truthful "nobody wants to work" window sign.

Better a free hug than blind obedience.

Birds are evolving.

Sixteenth-century Venice supported an important industry.

Tip here on downloading images on sites where right-click/save is disabled.

Don't stand so close to that thing.

Think you've seen waves?  These are waves.

This is Iceland (NSFW blog).

Yes, the ancient Greeks figured out all this stuff (though the date is slightly wrong -- these were discoveries of the Hellenistic period, starting with the third century BCE).

See the Moon -- all of it.

You have trillions of these.

It's a magnificent vista of South African jacaranda trees.

Keep history safe.

If you ever see a perfectly straight lightning bolt, it could be evidence of the elusive cosmic phenomenon of "dark matter".

Don't fall for the nature fallacy in farming.

Just imagine what we'll know after one more century.

Yes, there is an inescapable conflict between science and religion.

Sorry, you don't "go" anywhere after you die (found via SickoRicko).

Your website sucks (NSFW blog).  Seriously, if visiting a site means I need to use special technology to avoid feeling hassled, I probably just won't go there.

Aviation is plagued by delays and assholes.

You created it, you own it.

God made you ugly.

Sometimes a horror story is true.

Repeat a lie often enough and you will come to believe it, even if no one else does.

Smartphones take over your life and place you at the mercy of giant corporations that spy on you.

"I pee in pools" -- and shoot at schools.

This is one hell of a tough man.

If your family trashes you for trying to improve your health, you are better off ditching them.

I guess this was inevitable -- transtranswomen.

The immunity bestowed by covid-19 vaccines is five times greater than the "natural immunity" left over from an earlier infection.  More here on the differences.

Social media have essentially normalized cyberstalking.

He told her the truth -- then the real truth.

There's evidence that dietary changes can help with fibromyalgia, though the benefits aren't huge.

Anyone can see which side is committing hate speech here.

Employers often lie to applicants about jobs, apparently.

If you like seeing "sovereign citizen" assholes undergo pwnage, check out this new YouTube channel.

In some fights, compromise is impossible -- the only option is to win.

People in my state are quitting their jobs in droves, even if they don't have a new job lined up.

Great thoughts here from Albert Camus on real vs fake patriotism, and much more.

Covid-19 had help (found via Hackwhackers).

The gay movement embraced free speech -- LGBTQ++++ embraces censorship.

Stop lecturing people when you yourself aren't any better.  And this is a valid point.

Is Carville right about woketardia damaging the Democrats?  (See my comment too.)

At least when Democrats lose they don't screech about "vote fraud".

Some California counties are shutting down In-N-Out restaurants for refusing to enforce vaccination rules.  I don't see how it's any different from shutting down a restaurant over any other major health-code violation.

Cancel culture exists.

Remote workers are feeling more pressured than ever to work while sick instead of using sick time.  This entire system is shit.

The US is making progress on vaccinations.

Tomorrow marks the start of the nationwide wingnut walk-out.  I predict negligible impact on anything.

This forum discussion on the Virginia election is this week's political must-read.  Also, everybody was so busy throwing around the usual accusations of racism that they didn't notice the same voters elected a black lieutenant governor.  Meet the new face of white supremacy.

(But no, anyone who voted against our side must be racist or whatever.  It can't be that there's anything wrong with our policies and ideology.  As I said on Tuesday, "All fingers point outward, at the other side -- there is no introspection..... If Youngkin wins..... the wake-up call will be as loud and clear as an air-raid siren and they'll still manage to ignore it, still all lecturing and no listening."  So far, what I'm seeing posted about this election is pretty much as expected.)

Youngkin won on school issues, broadly defined.  Look, it really doesn't matter whether what's going on in the schools technically constitutes "critical race theory" or not.  If people find their kids are being taught negativity about "whiteness" and suchlike, they're going to lash out at the ballot box.  Insulting the party's voting base is probably a bad idea too.  Every time a piece of garbage like this gets posted, another 10,000 voters go Republican.  James Carville gets it.

On the New Jersey nail-biter, read the tale of Mr Smith (scroll down a bit)

Anti-vax militancy among NYC cops has fizzled out.

Fashionable attacks on "New Atheism", especially the accusations of "Islamophobia", are tiresome rubbish.

The creationists' irreducible complexity nonsense is back.

Some interesting speculation here on what happens if a Democratic win in 2024 leads some red states to secede.

Here's a map showing the legal status of homosexuality.  This shows a lot of progress compared to even a decade or two ago.

Socialized medicine makes a difference.

In Canada, as in the US, religious affiliation is at an all-time low.

British commuters stand up to bullying thugs.

The barbarity of halal and kosher animal slaughter has been banned in Greece.

Green Eagle provides a detailed refutation of the ludicrous claim that Israel is an "apartheid" country.  It's shameful that this is even needed, but we all know it is.

Understand the nature and roots of hatred of Israel.

Take a tour of INS Vikrant, India's first home-built aircraft carrier.

Democracies rally to support Taiwan against the Beijing regime's bullying.

Yahoo is the latest technology company to abandon China.

More links at Miss Cellania and Fair and Unbalanced.

o o o o o

My own posts this week:  a reprise rant to my declaration of blogging independence from politics, a video on the dinosaurs' failure to avoid extinction, and enemy economics.