Link round-up for 26 December 2021
o o o o o
No one makes better snowmen than Calvin.
Out-of-the-ordinary nativity scenes here.
Get your incantations right.
Oh, so those alien reptile humanoids really exist after all?
Don't be surprised if this kid accidentally summons a demon.
Plunge into the depths of ignorance.
You have two hands.
Happy Holidays! Have some amusing blasphemies; more here.
A mall Santa delivers the presents.
Some tactics don't work for everyone.
People stink at math these days.
This cat just doesn't care. And this cat hasn't quite got the "tail" thing figured out.
Everything is Satanic.
Excuse me, but you left your door open.
This guy has a highly assocentric view of reality.
See a bad sweater, crow behavior, and more.
You'd look like this too if your wife told you God knocked her up.
Upside-down video transforms a cage of bats into a Hellish disco.
This person is not a good driver.
Yeah, the Black Death disappeared without a vaccine, but.....
Here's how to say happy holidays in several dozen languages (found via Silverapplequeen).
For Europeans, here's how big Texas is.
If I had a Christmas tree, it would be this kind.
Some people really go all out with Christmas decorations.
Merry Christmas from Broken Peach!
Virginia encourages creativity with license plates.
"In the
Interesting observation here from the Finnish language.
Micro-libraries are cute.
Pretty decent rampaging brontosaurus here from 1925.
This hospitalized man got only one regular visitor.
From Québec comes a gripping New Year's Eve tale in the spirit of A Christmas Carol.
Books create memories.
Some interesting-looking buildings here. See if you can guess what country this is before you get to the end of the post where it tells you.
An online database of medieval illustrations is available.
Humans have been human for a very long time.
Spectacular views of Greek monasteries here.
Apparently this is the world's largest cave.
This egg was just ready to hatch, but never did.
Here's what brain cells in action look like.
France has opened Europe's first retirement home for elephants.
Did medium-size dinosaurs exist? Yes, but.....
Yesterday saw the launch of NASA's James Webb telescope, the largest and most complex orbital observatory yet.
Security cam video shows the moment the December 10 tornado hit a bank in Kentucky.
Beware of this "address verification" scam.
Fixating on "representation" helps corporate art get away with poor quality.
Yes, it's hard.
Prigs who berate you for reading the "wrong" things are hardly better than the fundies.
I Love Lucy was groundbreaking for its time.
Darwinfish 2 examines some wingnut anti-electric-car talking points, plus a few genuinely legitimate issues.
While the QAnon qrackpots in Dallas wait for JFK, they're passing the time drinking chemical poisons (found via Mock Paper Scissors).
The Harry Potter 20th anniversary celebration excluded the woman who made it all possible.
Not everything that hurts is a valuable lesson.
Links here for donating to help feed the hungry in the US.
Workers' goals have changed in the last half-century.
This is horrible, and it's not only models -- shoes like these are sold to the general public.
Together forever!
Evolution theory continues to erode away irrational dogmas, much to the annoyance of the dogmatists.
If Hell existed, would Hitler deserve to go there?
This is what class tyranny looks like.
Universal basic income works.
There's a lot of good news on covid-19.
Amazon may be delaying orders of "politically incorrect" books, though it might just be a matter of very popular books constantly being out of stock. Unfortunately it sounds like even Bookshop.org, which I've recommended before, is now removing books for ideological reasons. Another place to try is Blackwells, which is in the UK but offers free shipping to the US.
The brainwashing starts early for a reason.
Atheist Revolution discusses political burnout.
Anti-Semitic stereotypes are based on traditional monsters, not the other way round.
Moan-groan-doom-gloom defeatism on global warming is a stupid self-indulgence we can't afford. Don't let our culture's tired obsession with dreary dystopias distort your sense of what's possible for the future. Major progress is being made, though much more needs to be done.
Some good pithy observations here (in the first one, she's not saying the Waukesha van was a self-driving car, she's referring to the media phrasing that makes the car the agent doing the deed instead of focusing on the driver who was the actual murderer).
A court ruling in Oregon condemns discrimination against sex workers.
Here's what the log4j vulnerability is about (found via Green Eagle).
Everything old is new again.
If you don't even know a language, don't tell the native speakers how to speak it.
The US Army says it is developing a vaccine effective against all covid-19 variants, including any new ones which will emerge in the future.
More here on the deaths of warehouse and factory workers in the Kentucky tornado disaster.
QAnon maniacs drive a doctor to end his career (this story is mind-boggling).
Wingnuts freak out as Trump again supports covid-19 vaccination. As I've said before, the issue with this country isn't primarily Trump, it's primarily too many stupid people.
"Media and government celebrate assorted white felons burning down the black business district....." then one guy intervened.
Science is under attack in the West as it was in the old USSR.
US hospitals are still being overwhelmed with unvaccinated covid-19 patients. Americans are getting tired of fighting the virus, but the virus never gets tired.
Here's why it's unlikely that Manchin will switch parties.
The "white feminism" accusation goes back a long way, and there are reasons why the enemy uses it.
The Kellogg's strike has ended, apparently in total victory.
Aside from strikes, unions do important work on day-to-day issues.
US life expectancy dropped almost two years in 2020, mostly due to covid-19.
Church Militant goes all in on the "stolen election" bullshit. I guess that rule about not bearing false witness was rescinded or something.
Gender ideology is like a religion, mindlessly dogmatic and hostile to unbelievers (see the comments too).
Analysis of South African data seems to confirm that omicron is highly infectious but usually causes only mild illness.
Good overview here of multiple aspects of the trans issue.
When the police admit you're not breaking the law, but they tell you "I need to check your thinking", something is seriously wrong with the country.
2021 was the year the fight to regain sex-based rights in the UK turned a new corner. Celebrate the one courageous person who did the most to make it possible.
Germany's new left-wing leadership portends a tougher line against anti-vaxers.
Anti-Semitism at European universities is reaching Nazi-like levels.
Life in Poland is becoming nightmarish under an Orwellian anti-abortion surveillance state.
India is considering switching to a four-day work-week, but there's a catch.
The world's largest democracy uses diplomacy to pwn the world's largest gangster state.
The US and Japan are turning the Nansei islands north of Taiwan into a forward base to defend Taiwan against China.
As the Chinese economy implodes, Xi Jinping lashes out at, well, pretty much everything.
Merry Christmas from Islam!
More links at Fair and Unbalanced.
o o o o o
My own posts this week: a light musical tribute to Lovecraft, and a disquieting blog disappearance. Not much, I know, but I was stressed out. This week has been absolute hell in multiple ways.
posted by Infidel753 at 12:42 AM
15 Comments:
Calvin's snowmen are the absolute BEST!
Sorry to hear this week has been a bad one for you.
That dinosaur egg they found is so incredible. I wonder what kind of craziness they will try and do with it.
It was hard to read the depths of ignorance I mean wow. So many people just spew BS without even thinking or fact checking. And the story about the Doctor who quit - just disgusting. Really, Q anon is a menace. And the electric cars keep going longer the the gas vehicles. I lived it when evacuating hurricane Rita in 2005. My little prius sat in 14 hours of traffic. I left home with about 2/3 of a tank and got to Dallas with 1/4 tank to spare. I past a lot of vehicles stranded along the road. That's because during a hurricane, there is no gas to be had. It has all been purchased. But my little car ran off of it's battery and my daughter and I made it out of town in one of the worst traffic jams in history:
Houston, Texas, US
With news that Hurricane Rita – a Category 5 storm that would eventually cause damage worth billions of dollars – was fast approaching, over two million people were evacuating Houston, Texas, U.S., in September 2005. The rush led to a jam that stretched for 99 miles (160 km) and lasted for 48 hours.
Your links on the trans "debate"* are absolutely spot-on.
Two things struck me... The infamous JK Rowling tweet would have been seen as stunningly right-on not so long ago. It is now seen by a (very small) but very vocal part of society as utterly reactionary. It is genuinely hurtful what they did in deleting her from the history of her own ouevre - and sinister.
The second is Jelle Dekkers point about changing birth certificates retroactively - the why not change your date of birth so you can buy beer? thing is a brilliant point. Why not species? I'm a big Tolkien fan so why can't I be an Elf? If you think that is me being ludicrous...
https://metro.co.uk/2018/02/27/trans-species-woman-identifies-reptile-spent-42000-turning-dragon-7345554/
Anyways... All the best for 2022, Infidel! And keep this stuff rolling!
*It really is a one-sided shrieking-match. Which will do a lot of harm to genuine people who don't fit into the strict binary definition.
Ricko: I thought those were hilarious.
Mary K: Last week -- agh! Just for starters, three separate car problems (in one case I was literally arriving home from having something fixed and the "check engine" light came on for the next thing). And now we've got snow, so it's potentially unsafe to go anywhere.
I hope they won't do anything with the dinosaur egg (except study). It's a bit old to make an omelet.
Lady M: The ignorance in that post is amazing, but I can believe it. Years ago, at work, one of my co-workers was reading a foreign address on her computer screen and asked me "What's the United Kingdom? Is that part of Canada?" She might have thought of that because UK postal codes (zip codes) look similar to Canadian ones. I looked at the address and it was in London. How can anybody not know what country London is in?
There are so many stories of doctors and nurses being abused by these assholes. It's horrifying.
That's great that we have well-performing electric cars. I hate to imagine a 48-hour traffic jam.
Nick M: Thanks. I still see Rowling described as "hateful" by people who should know better. They obviously haven't read her essay or tweets and are just going by what others have said about them.
For whatever reason, most of the prog left has utterly committed itself to supporting a thuggish, menacing, misogynistic, and thoroughly reactionary movement, and now can't back off that position and just has to pretend harder and harder to not see what's really going on. I will continue to do what I can to amplify the voices of those who are standing up to the bullies.
I don't think it's as many of the prog left as might think... In 1917 the Bolsheviks were not the majority amongst the Russian socialists but they were most vocal and best organised.
Palki Sharma's Youtube video nails it. "What happened? Xi Jinping happened".
"How can anybody not know what country London is in?"
In 2013, the World Figure Skating Championships took place in London, Ontario, Canada .
Also, there are so many links to go through, and many of them are days old. If I reply to those links, nothing will happen because the last reply was on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Could you make these link posts more frequent?
NickM: The progs themselves are a far smaller part of the left than they believe they are. Most of the left wants bread-and-butter goals like a higher minimum wage, more jobs, labor protections, health coverage, higher taxes on the obscenely rich to support the social safety net, etc -- not all this nutty fringe stuff.
Mike: Sharma's great, especially when dealing with China.
Isabella: I hardly think that was a cause of confusion. Anybody who doesn't know what the United Kingdom is, is hardly going to know that there's also a city called London in Canada besides the world-famous London.
Some of these links are months or years old. It's entirely a matter of things I happen to run across during the week that I think are interesting, with no concern to how old they are. For me, putting together one round-up like this per week is quite enough. If you think they should be more frequent, why not start your own blog, and put together a round-up like mine every two or three days? I'm sure great numbers of readers would flock to your blog.
Never underestimated the ignorant people can be of geography, Infidel.
Hope this week is turning out better for you.
On the kid who might accidentally summon a demon...
My loved one wonders if I might convoke an entire bevy from the underworld when she hears me on the phone with the pharmacy butchering the names of my medications.
NickM: Oh, I don't.
Burr: Thanks. Yeah, those medication names can sound pretty bizarre.
What languages can you speak?
Your links are always so interesting and a lot of fun to go through! I hope you are doing well.
Anon: English and some German, and far more limited Japanese and Arabic. I do a lot better with reading and writing.
Martha: Thanks! Glad you find them of interest.
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