Link round-up for 5 December 2021

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

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A fearsome beast is captured in verse.

No, pets and Christmas trees do not mix.

The reviewers found unrealistic little details in this romance novel.

A new musical genius emerges from his shell.

Rather weird German cat commercial here.

Clever use here for leftover Halloween skeletons.

Turn the handle, get it going.

If you're gonna do it, do it right.

Camels explode.

American version of fish-n-chips here.

This person exists.  But so do birds, sorry.

This person exists.  But nobody asked for his worthless opinion.

Library signs here.

Snake problem plus stupidity problem equals, well, this.

Here's why cats don't make good snipers.

Finally, a use for those disgusting bits of metal some people stick through their noses.

Start using plain English again.

Murrmurrs has moved -- here's the new site.

Does anyone know what the last picture here is?  Update:  Solved!  See first comment by Mike below.

Apparently this was the 1945 equivalent of a USB.

Follow the saga of the vampire horse.

So that's what that thing is for.

Trees, trees, trees!

Winter in northern China can be a fun time.  Also at the Oregon Zoo (this is from 2017 -- we haven't had snow yet this year).

The kraken has been released!

Here's the original version of Carol of the Bells.

To see a world in a grain jar of sand.....

Lady M continues to observe Creepmas with festive clothes and a (petrified) "gingerdead house".

Check out the casually freaky art of Boris Groh.

Cas d'intérêt has a round-up of items from France, including Josephine Baker in the Panthéon, a chocolate festival, and a subtle change in the flag.  Of particular interest is Lireka, an online source for books in French which is cheaper and faster than Amazon.

This street is at least 937 years old and probably much older.

Two golden records hurtling out into the cosmos bear a sampling of images, sounds, and data about our world.  Here's what's on them.

From the point of view of a cat.....

This restaurant is in Tehran.  Presumably the local religio-cops don't have a deep grasp of English-language slang.

Assholes can't make up their minds about flipping burgers.

Ghosts are easy to detect, whether they're there or not.

Some good advice here for young gay people (and young people generally).

Learn ten unpleasant scenarios involving aliens.

Can elephants paint pictures?  The truth is different, and sad.

If your cat catches a mouse, don't let him eat it.

Voting is like public transport.

He is gone, but his ducks live on.

This boss got a lesson in the realities of the marketplace.

American Christmas is a dreary, oppressive morass of consumerism.  Push back against it with Creepmas.

Evolution makes Christianity untenable.

Here in Oregon, a sex workers' advocacy group has launched a petition to get an initiative on next year's state ballot to decriminalize sex work.  It can't be signed online, unfortunately.

What would a world with no gay people be like?

Fight the pandemic.

Trust in science is on the rise globally.

The French know how to get things done.

Westerners generally have a shallow understanding of meditation, which can be dangerous under some conditions.

Get off Facebook.

Online trolls are mostly just the same people who are assholes in real life too.

Dull, shallow visions of the future crowd out radical possibilities.

And now a word from our leader about the Declaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights.  I've signed it.  Standard bitching here, response here.

Green Eagle has a new tar pit of wingnut lunacy for us to wallow in.  This one is so weird I couldn't resist looking up the original; it's posted on several sites, just as he says.  Here's one.

Best-ever short description of libertarians.

A mysterious 2014 robbery at Joel Osteen's church may have been solved.

Autistic play styles aren't wrong, just different.

You can dress and live completely at odds with the gender stereotypes for your sex and still be fully a member of that sex.

Nuclear power is not our best option against climate change.  (This piece doesn't even address my own main objection to it, which is over-centralization.  100 small power plants are more resilient than one big one against terrorism and other threats, and solar and wind are better suited to small-scale, distributed power generation.)

Many people who survive severe covid-19 die within a year (found via Miss Cellania).

Our era is plagued with infantile thinking (good thoughtful article).

Interesting stuff here about the demographics of anti-police feeling.

If you eat meat, be aware of what the meat animals are eating.

They are self-made men, and you could do the same if you weren't lazy.

This is an example of the mentality that has brought me close to utterly loathing the political-activism scene:  "With the overruling of Roe v. Wade close to a certainty this coming June, the immediate practical question is how to best take advantage of this development from an electoral standpoint."  No, the immediate practical question is how to safeguard the rights of women who want abortions and avoid as many forced births as possible when prohibition descends on the red states.  Yes, work on winning elections too, but freedoms exist for their own sake and not as chips in a political game.

Social media culture has similar effects to toxic parenting.

This is self-defense.  It's not even debatable.

Pregnancy makes covid-19 vaccination more necessary, not less.

Some nutballs believe that the Astroworld concert deaths were a Satanic human sacrifice.

"We never asked you for anything."

Empower women by forcing them to do things they don't want to do.

The judgments of ankle-biting modern nonentities are irrelevant to the giants of the past.

The stuff neo-Nazis complain about is mostly the fault of the original Nazis.

Assisted dying is an essential right.  What a hideous fate, to be suffering yet forced to stay alive because of the taboos of someone else's religion.

Since Portland's city "government" can't or won't provide businesses in our riot-infested downtown with the protection that they pay taxes for, many are turning to private security.

Anti-vaxers kill other patients, and not just by spreading covid-19.

Here's why the distinction between sex and "gender" is important.

A Texas gun store celebrated the Rittenhouse verdict with a "not guilty sale".

Lara Logan is vile (found via Hackwhackers).

He was just five.

From Canada, a shocking case of transphobia.

Not by the content of their character, but by the color of their skin.

At least in Europe, trans people suffer murder at a lower rate than the general population.

This man is a monster and a thug.

Over a hundred omicron cases have been identified in England alone.  Clearly this thing is already entrenched all over the world.  But so far, globally, there have been no reported deaths from omicron.  This seems to support tentative reports from South Africa that the disease it causes is milder than earlier variants.

Doubtless this museum also has a "lack of mention" of flat-Earthism or unicorns.

It's not just the US -- in New Zealand too, the government is pushing to teach religious myths in the schools as if they were science.

Nobody expects the trannish inquisition.

France has passed a wide-ranging new law limiting animal abuse.

The French have no interest in emulating the Anglosphere's pronoun nonsense.

This is not freedom.

In certain circles it's still acceptable to openly declare intent to commit genocide.

Japan is ramping up public support for Taiwan and warning China to back off.

Taiwan is building advanced submarines to help deter a Chinese invasion.

The Beijing regime hates WION's reporting.  I guess the truth hurts.

Desperate North Koreans are selling their homes to get money to buy food.

More links at Mock Paper Scissors (on the omicron variant) and Fair and Unbalanced.

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My own posts this week:  The Lone Animator does Krampus; abortion is an essential freedom; a new list of improved word definitions.