12 December 2021

Link round-up for 12 December 2021

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

o o o o o

Find out the difference between socialism and capitalism.

Renegade philosophers push their wares.

Eat these Christmas candle salads.

Extremely-abbreviated version of A Christmas Carol here.

Don't get on Santa's naughty list this year.

Obnoxious birds get their comuppance (found via SickoRicko).

Medieval monks were all too human.

Paint the rocks, bamboozle the crows.

This is not a happy cat.

Animals do Christmas.

Image #2 is essentially attempted arson.

Advent calendar?  Try an advent puzzle.

Beware of fake etymologies, entertaining as they are.

Hassle a chicken for science.

One chair meets all needs.

Fuck this goddam motherfucking post.

Lord Meat Coin is in the moron citadel.

Robots and snow don't mix (found via Mock Paper Scissors).

"Micro-influencer" Daal has pro-choice links, punctuation funnies, and other miscellania.

Our own visions of the future are probably just as comically wrong.

Let's break the ice.

Does it really matter if you run over a zombie?

Establish healthy boundaries.

When designing an ad, consider how it will be displayed.

Reminder here about Christmas shopping on Amazon.  There are still a lot of problems.

Lady M's Creepmas dinner party is rich in ambience.  Decorations are available on the internet, or just make your own.

You will hear an echo.

Well, that's one option.

They reached the edge of the world.

St Nicholas is also the patron saint of sex workers.

Some good pithy advice here.

Commuting is still godawful.

Honor the weed.

You can opt out of Christmas.

Cas d'intérêt has a round-up of French films to check out.

Pictures of San Francisco here from 1993 and 2000.

The Babylonians were surprisingly advanced in mathematics.

Prehistoric cave paintings were more sophisticated than you think.

Looks like Mehmet Oz's candidacy is off to a rather rocky start among the religio-wingnuts.

Let this company be forever known, first and foremost, as the company that fired 900 people in a Zoom call right before Christmas.

"Detained" for wearing trousers.

Assholes gonna asshole.

English is a weird language.

By the Bible's own "logic", Adam and Eve could not have known that eating the fruit was wrong.

Apparently my state's governor is the most unpopular in the country, despite some substantial accomplishments.

Creationism of whatever kind is still bullshit.

Understand your introvert.

Republican rhetoric on abortion is a morass of regressive absurdities.

He was "the person who has reached perfection".

There's no labor shortage, there's a shortage of non-shitty jobs.

Whose side is God on, ours or the snakes'?

Drone video shows massive tornado devastation in Mayfield KY.

An anti-vax televangelist is baffled that no "big Democrats" are dying of covid-19.

If Jesus appeared to Saul of Tarsus, why not to everybody?

Fox, MSNBC, and CNN combined reach fewer than 2% of US adults.  The politically-engaged are a sub-microscopic fringe element of society.

This week saw the anniversary of the defeat of a terrible enemy.

Good take-down here of the wingnut trope that science keeps "moving the goalposts" on covid-19; also, what the "new normal" may look like.

Who was God talking to?

Stay out of the damn water -- it's full of hideous abominations.

Some common lies about sex work debunked here.

So glad I got out of academia -- you have less freedom of expression there than elsewhere.  Alumni, fighting back, are starting to withhold donations from universities that don't stand up for robust free speech.

Even back in 1968, wingnuts feared the influence of popular culture.  They're still protesting films today (and shutting down vaccine clinics).

Discussion here about how to vote if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade.

Here's an example of why it's bad that companies can get so much data about you.

Mastercard's new rules endanger sex workers.

Homophobia still exists, just in different forms.

Republican officials in Missouri are going all-out to help covid-19 spread.

"That's why Hitler went to Heaven."

81% of black Americans want the same or increased police presence in their neighborhoods.

The woke neologism "Latinx" is massively rejected by actual Hispanic voters; Democrats need to stop using it.

We may finally be about to get rid of Louis DeJoy.

This Michigan hospital is seeing more covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths than ever before -- but not a single death among people fully vaccinated plus booster shot.

UPenn's women swimmers are starting to speak out about having to compete against a man, despite university pressure to keep quiet.

Georgia election officials are being threatened because of stolen-election lies.

The House, unified for once, passes a bill to punish China for its use of Uyghur slave labor.

There's a complex relationship between inflammation and mental illness, which seems to make sufferers more vulnerable to covid-19.

Full text here of Abigail Shrier's speech at Princeton, a call to arms against the totalitarian miasma settling over the intellectual world.

Pence is being weird.

Congress is considering a bill to federally decriminalize marijuana.

Here's an engaging account of the Pearl Harbor attack.

Parents are starting to organize against the dangers trans ideology poses to their children.  Some mistakes are hard to fix.

Old, deteriorating Navy fuel-storage tanks are contaminating the aquifer of Oahu.

A religion-dominated Supreme Court could condemn the US to be permanently wracked with preventable diseases.

"Crybaby culture" is impeding scientific progress.

Smuggler and bootlegger Algoth Niska put his skills to good use during World War II.

Jennifer Rubin, who knows a thing or two about appealing to right-wing voters, has some good advice for Democrats.

Oh no, this is about somebody else, I need to make it about meeeeeeDiscussion hereMore here.

"Did you honestly not understand what a university is for?"

"The important thing is to show your tribe that you have the right morals....."

When scientific research discovers something the government doesn't like, prosecute the researchers.

Germany's new left-leaning leadership is signaling a tougher stance against China than the conservative Merkel took.

Josephine Baker, recently honored at the Panthéon in Paris, worked for the French resistance during World War II.

Religious fanatics prevent a musical performance in Nantes.  Definitely give the video at the end of the post a listen.

Chile is the newest country to legalize same-sex marriage.

Russia is considering a law that would treat all gay-related material the same as pornography (found via The Honest Courtesan).

Putin is showing everyone why NATO is necessary.  His stance toward Ukraine evokes that of Hitler toward Austria or China toward Taiwan.

Ukraine is prepared to fight back hard if Russia invades.

A 14-year-old girl in southern Mexico was jailed for fleeing a forced marriage (found via Miss Cellania).  Here is what child marriage looks like.

"Heroic stabbing".

On covid-19 vaccines, India doesn't so much need our help as need us to just get out of the way.

Chinese censorship aims to silence victims, protect powerful abusers, and destroy society itself.  It's also gradually erasing gays from the country's internet.

More and more democracies are committing to a "diplomatic boycott" of Beijing's "genocide Olympics".  The gangster regime is pissed off, which seems to be its usual condition these days.  But France is opting for appeasement, as in the 1930s.

Further links at Miss Cellania, The Honest Courtesan, and Fair and Unbalanced.

o o o o o

My own posts this week:  how natural selection will change covid-19, and a video on diet and gout.

10 Comments:

Blogger NickM said...

In the middle of Vienna there is a rather grand square - Mexicoplatz. Sounds a bit odd does it not. No, in 1938 one country objected to Hitler's Anschluss - Mexico. Now, of course Mexico couldn't really do anything about it materially. NATO can about Ukraine. If NATO stands together and declares a Russian invasion an Article 5 issue and looks like we really mean it then Putin will pull back. This is a big test for Olaf Scholz in particular. I just hope he has the mettle Angie did.

As to the trans thing...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10300295/Bearded-6ft-reporter-let-female-changing-room-stores.html

Yeah, I know it's the Mail but they have a point. The guy had a beard! I am a Quaker Warden (I am not a Quaker myself - I'm basically a live-in caretaker - and with today's rents this makes a lot of sense - I get a nice house for nowt - a house that would otherwise cost probs a grand pcm) and we have seperate male and female toilets in the meeting house. I tend to clean downstairs (toilets, kitchen etc) and my wife tends to clean upstairs. I was once asked by a deranged old biddy if I cleaned just the gents and the missus did the ladies. I was somewhat discombobulated by this question. Obviously it is easier to do both (they are next door to each other) in one go - I mean you use the same products etc but also, of course, I do this when I know nobody is using the building - as warden I also take bookings so I know. I wouldn't dream of bumbling into the ladies (or the gents) with the Flash and Domestos if people were using the building.

12 December, 2021 03:49  
Blogger Mary Kirkland said...

The tornado devastation is awful.
Candle salad. Um, sure. Candles. lol
Oh, those Amazon blunder's are awful and funny.

12 December, 2021 11:24  
Blogger Daal said...

thanks for the funnies & important facts -- & for including my post here :-)

12 December, 2021 14:00  
Blogger Mike said...

I got a big kick out of seeing the robots stuck in the snow. Even if they switched to track robots I'm sure there could be too much snow for them to get stuck also.

12 December, 2021 14:04  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

NickM: So far the new German government is signaling a tougher line against China on Taiwan than Merkel did. Hopefully they'll do the same on Ukraine.

Any sane person can see that this changing-room stuff is utter lunacy. There's going to be a hell of a backlash.

Mary K: I can hardly believe nobody realized about the candle salads at the time, especially with the white gooey stuff around the top of each banana.

If Amazon is so sloppy, they probably have stuff that's outright illegal on their site. There's no substitute for hands-on monitoring of what their sellers are doing.

Daal: Thanks for the post! And I try to bring the best of the internet each week.....

Mike: It seems robots have a long way to go before they'll be ready to take over à la The Terminator.

14 December, 2021 05:02  
Blogger CAS said...

I appreciate the stats on the MSNBC/CNN/FOX viewership. I've been questioning the influence of these outlets for years. Good to have some data. Interesting that the old-fashioned ABC/NBC/CBS news shows have significantly higher viewership. I wonder if their audience is also comprised of senior citizens. Probably.

Loved the meme of the two young women, reading their holy texts.

14 December, 2021 11:11  
Blogger Kay said...

Gosh! Thank you for the mention. I hope the week is going well for you. It’s a tough time right now.

14 December, 2021 22:35  
Blogger NickM said...

I wanted to put this one your more recent post. It is perhaps more relevant there.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/13/jk-rowling-condemns-letting-rapists-self-identify-women-guidance/

Yes, it's J K Rowling again. I recall J K R giving the Labour Party under Gordon Brown GBP 250,000. She's definitely of the left. Yet much of the left hates her for her opinions like the idea that biological sex is a real thing. Yes, it matters. It matters for exactly the reasons you state in your most recent post.

15 December, 2021 06:32  
Blogger RO said...

Hello there and I sure hope you've been well. Even though I don't get to visit as often, you're always on my mind. We love that you post these links for us to see what's going on around the blogging world. The Sex Workers post was quite interesting, and I learned quite a bit. I hope your Thanksgiving was great, and if I don't get back over here beforehand, Merry Christmas! Sending lots and lots of hugs, RO

16 December, 2021 03:44  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

CAS: The politics-junkie minority vastly over-estimates the general public's level of interest in such things. When it's brought to their attention, they tend to go into "we're the smart people and the masses are stupid" mode. It's something I've tried to address before.

Kay: Thanks for the post. The water problem over there hasn't been mentioned on any news site I look at, so if you hadn't posted about it, I wouldn't have known about it.

NickM: That link is paywalled, but I've seen the tweet and a good deal of discussion about it. That element of the left that keeps throwing a fit about Rowling talking common sense is, I think, a smaller segment of the left than they realize. They make noise and they intimidate dissenters, but that's all they've got.

RO: Thanks, and happy holidays! Hoping to see a post on your own blog at some point as well.

16 December, 2021 04:34  

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