Link round-up for 19 June 2022

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

o o o o o

I'd like this style of passport.

Not a job you can put on your résumé.

Find the truth about God, masturbation, and atheist extremists.

If math is too hard, there are other options.

Dogs, cats, and coffee here.

Even more doggie cuteness here.

Look at me, I'm so awesomely unique and esoteric with my deep forbidden knowledge.

Validate his.....name?

Man is a superior being, more highly evolved than the bestial sloth.

Annie Asks You finds a pole-dancing dog.

This dildo exists.

He has everything he needs to go hunt the lions.

The Confederate army ran on pee and poetry.

Kyiv gets topical with topiary.

Best pride flags.

Such a friendly and cheerful baby.

Spring has finally come to Colorado, and at Lady M's Haunted Parlor, that means unusual potted plants.

Re-enactor pwns drone.

A new film and novel explore the sexuality of older women.

The giant schlongs of Karahan Tepe offer clues about one of humanity's oldest fixed settlements (it's the consensus view that agriculture goes back about 13,000 years in the Middle East).

A long-extinct primordial death moggy walks the land again.

This is Jupiter.

The population within the red circle is equal to the population outside it.

Kay at Musings reports on Norwegian seafaring history, including the historic ship the Fram, which carried the first expedition to reach the South Pole.

Leon discovers his eyebrows.

Never feel embarrassed about your harmless unusual interests -- even if there's only one.

WAHF Substack is a new feminist news aggregation site that looks worth checking out.

If you know any good books about the 1980s Satanic panic or witch-hunting in colonial America, Atheist Revolution would like to hear from you.

Each of these counties has more people than Wyoming.

This person literally doesn't know how to write a letter.

Here's a necessary reminder about dogs and cars.

Watch for signs that you're too nice for your own good.

Sell that genuine holy water.

Men refusing to take "no" for an answer from women is nothing new.

Liars fear the truth.

Don't bother talking to people who don't listen.

The Tesla story just gets worse and worse.

Stop the Karen-calling FFS.

If you're still using Chrome, switch to Firefox no later than January 2023.

Be thankful for an early childhood.

Oops.

An obsessive need to make everybody look at your dick does not constitute "art".

A company here in Portland is making 3D-printed, recyclable shoes.

You will never be forgiven for being right.

Religion is basically an accident of geography.

The crypto implosion continues.  Panic is now sweeping through the cryptocurrencytardosphere.  If you can't get your "money" out of the "bank", is it really yours?  No mercy.

Apple just gets shittier and shittier.

Stanford university has destroyed its student culture.

Stop re-writing history to fit into whatever the current fad is.  Orwell warned us about this.

Crazy Eddie looks at Loving Day.

Bullying sets the stage for sexual harassment.

Secrecy and censorship are the keystone of tyranny.

This is why so many women's shelters don't allow men.

Atheist pwns religious pest.

It's optimists who build the future.  Pessimists and cynics are basically parasites.

The US dollar will stand long after cryptocurrency is forgotten.

Pride month has changed.

Congratulations Starbucks workers!

Trumpanzee anti-covid-vaccine nonsense is now also leading to lower rates of flu vaccination.  Natural selection in action.

Social media ruined "web 2.0".

Can the Democratic party be saved?

To master cryptocurrency, keep repeating these steps.

"The real problem..... is..... that there are now many 'progressive' environments where saying the right things is more important than doing the right thing."

Musk is a poseur, Ford is real (found via Yellowdog Granny).

The San Francisco recalls illustrate how "woke" policies are driving black, Hispanic, and Asian voters away from the Democrats.

Americans' abandonment of religion is still accelerating, across all demographic groups.

Tips here on obtaining and using abortion pills.

Critically evaluate all media.

"Hobbies have been ruined by trying to turn them into jobs."

Now that the ACLU has abandoned the battle for free speech, a new organization, FIRE, is stepping up to the plate.

It's harder to cope with heat than cold -- not good news as the climate warms.

These people exist.

Nobody wants a neo-Nazi in the basement, even if he's family.

A self-aware lesbian encounters bullying -- and acceptance -- from unexpected quarters.

Don't normalize pain and disappointment.

The hard evidence from the last few elections is that boosting turnout won't save the Democrats.  Only going after swing voters in the political center can do that.  They exist and they are reachable.

The #ChurchToo movement unmasks an epidemic of sexual abuse by Protestant clergy.

Assange is one step closer to facing justice.

A Congressman dismisses Constitutional rights as "bullshit".  This kind of talk should set off nuclear-air-raid-siren-level alarm bells, for people of all political persuasions.  If one Constitutional right can be ignored, so can they all.

Darwinfish 2 looks at the first round of the January 6 hearings.  Annie Asks You summarizes the second.  The hearings may expose Trump to a wave of lawsuits (found via Annie's post).

The audience for the second round of hearings fell to ten million, less than 5% of the US adult population, probably because it was broadcast during work hours.  Atheist Revolution asks whether the hearings are changing any minds.  The hard-core Trumpanzees are just doubling down on teh crayzee, but their rationalizations sound increasingly strained.

God is worse than Dâ'ish (ISIL).

A Republican has flipped an 85%-Hispanic district in Texas.  Cue a wave of posts on the left internet trying to convince themselves this doesn't mean anything.

An anti-Jewish hate group in Boston is doxing Jewish institutions and people "so that we can dismantle them".

The Fed's interest-rate hike probably won't help fight inflation because they're mis-diagnosing the problem (found via New Witch).

A deranged ideological nutcase (seriously, look at this person), who revels in wrecking people's lives because she doesn't like their opinions, gets her comeuppance.  But beware, there could be people like this in your company's HR department too.

Many other Republicans follow Trump in ripping off their supporters.  This could mean charges of wire fraud.

The fight for DC statehood continues.

Some Christian leaders are speaking out against the danger of far-right, authoritarian fundamentalism.  But always remember that the roots of Christianity are largely evil.

The ACLU is being blatantly dishonest about men in women's sports.

If abortion becomes illegal, data-collecting platforms like Google and Facebook will become all the more dangerous.

Homophobia is back..... "and this is exactly why, ladies and gentlemen, f@gs should not be allowed to speak."

The Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania is a religious fanatic and wants to destroy public education.

Trans rhetoric is conservative rhetoric.

Hillary Clinton is as sharp as ever.  Our country was really robbed in 2016.

What used to be "gay pride" has mutated into a form that turns off a lot of actual gay people.

A certain kind of fraud is apparently widespread among some fertility doctors.

Cambridge academics want debate, not enforced conformity.

Scotland's forest cover is now greater than at any time in the last nine hundred years.  Note the graph showing that England's forests, too, are recovering.

Just leave the damn party -- they're hopeless.

A French feminist campaign has been infiltrated and bizarrely turned into its own opposite.

He won't commit robbery again.

The UK's top military officer says Russia has already basically lost the Ukraine war.  The Russian offensive in Donbas is largely stalled and continues to suffer high casualties and equipment shortages.

Even most Arab countries no longer give any money to the Palestinian Authority.

Shanghai is out of lockdown, but far from back to normal.

More links at Fair and Unbalanced and Miss Cellania.

My own posts this week:  a short whimsical SF animation, some brief observations, and a Russian politician as cracked as any US wingnut.

o o o o o

Hating things that are popular doesn't make a person sophisticated.

In a conflict, the blame almost never lies all on one side. But it also almost never lies equally on both sides.

If you can denounce the country you're in as "fascist" or a "police state" in public and not get arrested, it probably isn't one.

They can ban whatever they want to, but they can't see inside your head.

[Image at top found via Hackwhackers]