Link round-up for 13 November 2022

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

o o o o o

Four billion years of evolution -- for this?

Watch tests of different types of rocket fuel.

The collapse of Twitter is descending into farce.

He made himself a tempting target.

Emma has a life plan.  Cats get spooked.

It's not easy being a Russian mapmaker.

Two dancers of different backgrounds perform the tango together.

Awesome interior decoration here.

Wide range of interesting images here.

Alien invaders attack Baltimore, live to regret it.

See the winners of the Manitou Springs skeleton craze.

Visit creepy, surreal Kitty City.

Advertisers aspire to desecrate the sky itself.

Here's what three million flamingos looks like.

Dramatic car chase here.  The actual chase part is about an hour, but you won't get bored.

Blake Masters is now ionized (found via Hackwhackers).

Don't mess with the loon.

Why bother taking care of our planet?

Don't give up your individuality.

Elon Musk's Mars colony would be great fun to live in.

Quack!  Quack!

Now they want you to need an "app" to avoid getting hit by cars.

Learn why most Japanese houses of prostitution don't accept foreign customers.

Do not speak the name of the bear.

This is easy to believe.

Cas d'intérêt has some non-fiction book recommendations.

Jeff Milstein sees our world from above.

A newly-developed procedure seems effective at "vaccinating" people against lies on social media.

The Near Shoemaker spacecraft far exceeded expectations.

This is like Google Maps for the Roman Empire (found via Fair and Unbalanced).

Some of the oldest human cultural sites were already melting pots of different peoples and cultures.

See impact craters from around the world.

There's a civil war among mushrooms, with one side allied to trees.

Chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and meat consumption are probably part of why Americans are getting fatter.

Sky-high prices and staff cuts are ruining Disney's theme parks (found via Miss Cellania).

The director of a classic comedy laments the death of humor.

Musk's mass firings are probably already destroying Twitter.  Even executives are fleeing.  The platform is becoming a morass of fake accounts and identity theft.

If you're on Twitter, think carefully about what, if anything, to use instead.  Tribel Social may work for some, but not all.  There's also Mastodon.

Never have so many been so wrong about so much.

He's transgender and transdisabled (from commenter NickM).

There was no red or blue wave, but the voters were sending a clear message.

Darwinfish 2 reviews a few more items of misinformation.

DeSantis isn't the only Republican that Trump is picking a fight with.  Perhaps Trumpism is finally on the wane.  Even Ann Coulter is fed up.

So-called "psychic powers" illustrate why we must rely on evidence, not wishful thinking.

The wingnutosphere went bonkers when the red wave fizzled.

Republicans face a big challenge -- getting Trump to shut up for 23 days.

She reported being raped -- and the cops arrested her.

The media fell for junk polling and a manufactured narrative.  Abortion was a big issue after all.  Maybe the voters are smarter than the pundits believe.  And women voters are critical to any analysis.

In the last round-up I observed that "[Oregon's] fifth Congressional district has been represented since 2008 by moderate Democrat Kurt Schrader.  This year, he was successfully primaried by a prog and now the district race is likely to be won by the Republican."  Well, now the Republican has indeed won the district.  Ideological purists threw away a safe House seat.

Update:  In Washington's red-leaning third district, the moderate Republican incumbent was primaried by a MAGA nutball -- who has now lost the general election to a Democrat.  The voters are rejecting extremists.

Affordable-housing tenants in Portland unionize to stave off a massive rent increase.

Make politics boring again.

Bruce Gerencser has a warning for educated people -- and Democrats.

Arch-wingnut Nick Fuentes is calling for a dictatorship to suppress "a godless country".

Listen to trans people.

Election denialists did poorly on Tuesday.  Republican extremism alienated centrist independent voters.  "The more MAGA a candidate was, the more they tended to underperform....."

Some big-picture observations on the election here.  More reflections here.  Turnout among young voters was still disappointingly low.

Beware of evangelicals in nondenominational clothing.

Peltola is winning in Alaska again.  Palin is going nutzoid -- sorry, your fifteen minutes are up.

"Anti-racism" is not the same thing as not being racist.

Republicans had huge advantages this cycle -- and thus no excuse for doing so poorly.

Dismissing voter concerns about crime proved unwise for New York Democrats.

There was a blue wave, in Michigan.

Trump is taking his defeat hard, raging on Truth Social.

The official hymn of the IFB church movement celebrates mental rigidity.

Andrew Anglin is about to suffer some consequences for his campaigns of harassment against innocent people.

Bitcoin "mining" is ruining the lives of Niagara Falls residents.

For Michael Moore, it all came down to theocracy.

Don't shop at Mall-Wart.

This is what social murder looks like.

"A society cannot function on lies for long."

Congress can and should stop the Fed from wrecking the economy.

Female leadership scored some successes this year, and not only in the US.

Trans ideology is a major threat to free speech in the West.

A British girl who was given a double mastectomy at 15 and puberty blockers at 13 is now suing the doctors who wrecked her body.

Kherson citizens celebrate their liberation by the Ukrainian army.

A unit of 570 new Russian conscripts was sent to the front in Ukraine.  Within hours, only 130 were left alive as their officers abandoned them in battle.

Russia's much-hyped nuclear torpedo turns out to be just as crap as the rest of its military hardware.  How confident can Putin be in even his nuclear-missile arsenal?

Violacion y muerte!

In rural Pakistan, a rapist's punishment follows a curious logic.

Japan still doesn't have same-sex marriage, but the city of Tokyo is offering partnership certificates.

More links at Angry Bear, Fair and Unbalanced, WAHF, and Miss Cellania.

My own posts this week:  election eve, immediate post-election observations, and two videos on the crazed evangelical reactions to Trump's defeat in 2020.

o o o o o

The system worked.  The votes were counted.  Intimidation and vote suppression failed.  Turnout was high.  The process ran smoothly.  The courts held the line against bullshit wingnut lawsuits.  Most extremist candidates were rejected.  There were few claims of vote fraud and, as far as I've heard, no violence related specifically to the election.  Our country's institutions once again proved robust and stable, far stronger than the vermin who sought to subvert them.  Across this vast nation, the true will of the people was made known, town by town, county by county, state by state.  American democracy is not in danger.  It never was.

[Image at top made by Pliny.]

Those who watched the wingnut/fundie videos I posted on Friday may enjoy this compilation set to music: