Link round-up for 9 January 2022

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

o o o o o

Always revolve, Malvolios.

To cut up a pear, use an apple slicer.

Hellish journey.

Effective advertising makes it clear what the product should do.

Imperialist squirrels bedevil Murr Brewster.

Some heroes don't wear capes.

Model for replying to Putin?  Here's how Ukrainians in 1676 responded to another foreign tyrant who demanded their submission.

Be careful with line breaks in captions.

Astrology in reverse might be entertaining.

Mr Menno does the "non-binary" thing.

Meet a skilled giraffe.

Where do women come from?

Where do swans come from?

Too dumb to even hate correctly.

It matters how you arrange donuts (found via Dumb White Guy).

Why do anti-vaxers not lock their bikes?

Know your wingnuts.

"Creepy"?  Idiots.  It's beautiful.

Just get vaccinated.

It's good advice at any time.

See how many people are asleep at each hour of the day (found via SickoRicko).

It's OK to ignore the "holiday season".

How many legs does a millipede have?

You may have seen this baby.

Interesting little monster tale here.

Stop-motion animation from 1981 depicts dinosaurs surprisingly well.

If your internal organs could talk, what would they say to you?

Carol Seidl assesses her blogging and reading year, and has some book recommendations.

Be prepared in case you get stuck in the snow in your car.

That's a big wave.

I am immortal.

This is Ganymede.

See color photos of Paris from more than a century ago.

Reclaim your mind while you still can.

It's always possible to make air travel even worse.

If you have Norton antivirus or VPN, get rid of it -- it may be sneakily using your computer for cryptocurrency "mining".

It's an ideal restaurant for anti-maskers (found via Octoberfarm).

Here's why the mobs of thugs have been tearing down statues of Frederick Douglass.

Fight back against shitty bosses.  And if you get fired, go out in style.

Darwinfish 2 looks at dating across the political divide.  Amusingly, his blog was once banned in Bahrain.

If you really want to give people freedom.....

We have to have one religion.

Lots of good info here on N95 masks, including where to order each kind.

Here's what happened when a Muslim woman said hijab should be a matter of choice.

Use a variety of news sources -- bias is more subtle and widespread than you think.

"Homosexuality is unnatural....."

No, Rowling is not an anti-Semite.

For the first time, a US nuclear aircraft carrier is sailing under the command of a woman.

A lot of teens are trying to get vaccinated despite anti-vax parents.

The senile old dickhead is babbling nonsense again.

Evidently I'm not the only one who's getting used to life via computer cables.

This is what it's like trying to use a medical system overwhelmed with unvaccinated covid-19 patients.  Burr Deming had somewhat better luck, but his area's hospitals are swamped too.

You can't hide a picture on the internet.

This person literally wishes the communists had murdered even more people.

Hispanic leaders and groups call on Anglos to stop using "Latinx".

Cyber Ninjas (the Arizona "election audit" clowns) is now going out of business rather than pay huge fines for failing to surrender documents related to the "audit" as ordered by a judge.

Libertarian covid-19 propaganda is a mish-mash of dangerous illogic.

Some Republican senators seem ready to support some reform of the Electoral Count Act.

Once again, gender awakening leads to a torrent of threats.

Data from South Africa and the UK suggest that omicron surges in any country are likely to be short-lived.

2021 was a year of labor militancy and many victories.

An ex-evangelical considers what a US theocracy would be like (found via Silverapplequeen).

QAnon qrackpot fought the vaccine and the virus won (found via Mock Paper Scissors).  And no, that wasn't anthrax.

Biden's January 6 speech (highlights here, full transcript here, video here) was strikingly blunt and explicit in condemning the violent insurrection and Trump's role in it.  More like this, please.  And if he's so confident in describing Trump as guilty of flat-out sedition, maybe he knows something we don't about evidence to support an upcoming prosecution.

This must be the most shitty, totalitarian pro-censorship post I've ever seen that wasn't written by an outright fascist or Islamist.  Extensive discussion here, and remember to be thankful every day that we have the First Amendment in this country.

The claim that "there is no compulsion" in Islam is a flat-out lie, and the blogger learned a lot while researching the issue.

Watch how covid-19 in the US became a Republican disease.

Even some evangelicals are backing down a bit on the doctrine of Hell.  Not even they can stomach the horror and evil of their own religion.

Illinois is sneaking violent male inmates into a women's prison without public notice; one has already raped several female inmates (and one victim was punished for reporting it).  This is madness.

If you believe that "overpopulation" is real, here's something you can do about it.

Watch out for these internet defamation methods.

Beware of arguments rooted in bogus analogies.

Data on omicron suggest the end of the pandemic is in sight.

If something on the internet outrages you, you are probably being manipulated.

Absence of government is not freedom -- it just leaves you at the mercy of other powerful forces.

Democrats are on course for disaster in this year's election.

Capitalism demands human sacrifice.

"In a world where subjectivism rules, chaos follows."

Why is democracy in danger in so many countries?  Rigid ideology, too many factions (including minor parties in some countries), and failure to deal with mass immigration are among the problems.

The UN is a travesty.

Lesbian Fightback is ready to, well, fight back.

The Australian state of Victoria plans to decriminalize sex work over the next two years.

Europe's airlines are flying thousands of empty planes from airport to airport purely to satisfy stupid regulations.

France won't put up with social-media companies' bullshit.  The US, on the other hand.....

Charlie Hebdo magazine interviews Kathleen Stock (in English).  The 2015 terrorist attack hasn't tamed them at all.

Putin is sending troops to help prop up the pro-Russian government in Kazakhstan against pro-democracy protesters.

The final solution!

There's money to be made from maintaining a state of conflict.

The Iranian regime put up a statue of Qassem Soleimani, and within hours it was destroyed.

China pioneers nightmare currency, although actually much of the country seems to be reverting to barter.  Some other governments are also pushing this idea.

Covid-19 is reversing years of progress made by women in Kenya (the same is probably true across much of Africa).

More links at The Honest Courtesan -- more here.

o o o o o

My own posts this week:  the ten most important stories of 2021, my usual best posts of the year list, the return of Yellowdog Granny, and a discussion of options if my own blog ever disappears.

o o o o o

More eye problems -- Saturday morning the vision in my right eye turned cloudy and blurry, so much so that I essentially can't see out of it (I can literally barely read lettering two inches high with it at a range of six inches), though the left eye remains normal.  Made an emergency trip to the ophthalmologists.  They think they know what the problem is, and if they're right, it's not dangerous but could take a couple of weeks to clear up.  I am going back Monday for another test.  Needless to say, having only one eye really working is very distracting and aggravating.  I'm posting this round-up because it was all done already -- they're written little by little over the whole week -- but posts next week will depend on whether I can get used to the blurring enough to write.