Link round-up for 20 November 2022

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

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It's the tool of choice for any car thief.

This menu lost (or gained?) something in translation.

Quit pestering me while I'm talking.

Offer a human sacrifice to this packing insert.

These fake Twitter accounts are better than the real ones.

He came to pick up his lunch, but apparently it wasn't ready.

Faces, faces everywhere!

Watch the graceful beauty of martial-arts moves.

It's a dog's life.  Yes, a dog's life.  This dog was saved.

It was a tiresome event.

This farm seems to produce mainly LSD.

The hunter tracks his prey.

Elon Musk works hard, but..... (found via Hackwhackers).  There's a better job for him.

Family values can get complicated.

At last, a giant skeleton of her very own.

The US military has used gravity research to annoy cats.

If only Jesus had included this little detail.

A few last pics here from the Manitou Springs coffin races.

No, I would not try this.  Nor this.

Good doggie!

Mother holds baby for the first time (found via Hackwhackers).

There are places where crystals (or "crystals") should not go.

See 2001: the techno remix.

Private Wojtek served with distinction in the Polish army.

You can visit a Viking village.

If you have any art posted at DeviantArt, read this.

Johnny Profane contemplates his place in the history of the cosmos.

At Halloween, our ancestors believed, the spirits of the dead can walk the Earth for a while.

An unusual set of twins has been born in New York.

This is the Dettifoss waterfall in Iceland.

This is Arizona.

It's a versatile medical card.

Here's a map showing the distribution of plant diversity.

The Earth naturally moderates its own temperature (the effect is too slow to save us from global warming, though).

This symbiosis between monkeys and wolves may resemble the first beginnings of human domestication of dogs.

The correction of an error in dating human footprints in North America exemplifies how science self-corrects.

There's a better option than prayer.

This tool enables you to extract images from any website.

"It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country."

Sexually abused as a child, Suzzan Blac expresses her trauma through painting (disturbing images) (found via Dead Wild Roses).

"Intersex" conditions are far less common than is often claimed.

The belief that crystals have mystical powers is a tragic scam.

Not all correlations are meaningful.

They're putting ads in baby sleep soundtracks now.

Learn from Militant Mary.

Want cheaper gas?

Learn the warning signs of fake social-justice movements.

Yes, abortion was a decisive issue in the election.

If you're unhappy about something -- anything at all -- just go destroy something that isn't yours and has no connection to your problem.  It's a way for asshole bullies to feel self-righteous.

Twitter's San Francisco HQ shows how to do a protest (found via Hackwhackers).

Musk's petulant persecution of anyone who criticizes him shows that his claimed commitment to free speech was bullshit.

Meg Smaker went to extraordinary lengths to document a program to rehabilitate Islamic terrorists -- but a lot of people who haven't seen her film want to make sure you don't see it either.

The pollsters weren't far off, if you disregard the wave of Republican-leaning junk polls just before the election.

These things don't make a person more credible.

Here's how you can support the HarperCollins strike.

Why should atheists care what religionists believe?

Here are things you can do about political spam.

Christianity is a creepy and disgusting blood cult (I wrote about this topic here).

Oregon voters very narrowly passed a strict gun-control law, but it remains surrounded by uncertainties.  Gun sales are skyrocketing as people rush to buy before it takes effect.

Reaching the eight billion population mark is cause for celebration.

Despite fears, the election was pretty much problem-free.

Religion is just silly.

Islamists are enemies of freedom.

It doesn't pay to underestimate Biden.

FTX's crypto holdings were worth about one ten-thousandth of what it claimed.

Appreciate a true American leader.

The public is becoming less susceptible to political disinformation.

How glorious it would be if Twitter and cryptocurrency were to both go down for good.

Here's an overview of some alternatives to Twitter (found via Reaganite Independent).  Here's some guidance for switching to Mastodon.

Fake pronouns are mental rohypnol (found via Aunt Polly).

Who are America's missing workers?

Kari Lake's "stolen election" protest rally drew a pitifully tiny turnout.  This particular lie seems to have lost most of its bite.

Fundamentalism wastes a lot of TV sets.

A serious measles outbreak is now under way among unvaccinated (of course) children in Ohio.

Minnesota is destroying its own educational system.

Homophobia and disdain for unmarried women have become fringe positions and politically toxic.

A Texas woman almost died -- and may become sterile -- because of the state's forced-birth law.

"Republicans campaigned on a house of cards and were surprised when it all collapsed."

What will the election mean for Title IX?

Non-religious Americans are becoming politically active, countering the influence of the fundies.

The disaster at Twitter is likely worse than it looks.  Many employees Musk didn't fire are opting to leave.  With whole departments gone, things are getting comical.

The problem is not right vs left, the problem is extremism.

Child labor is back, in the service of the US meat industry (found via Hackwhackers).

Recent elections in the US and Israel show that democracy can thrive even in deeply-divided societies.

In highly-secular Britain, the moribund Church of England is divided over how to stay relevant.

"Civil liberties have become distinctly uncool."

How can you hold a day of remembrance for something that never happened?

All over Russia, men who couldn't escape the country are in hiding from conscription (found via Reaganite Independent).  Pundits are comparing the society's condition to the year before the Russian revolution.  The country is sinking into surrealism.

Negotiating with Russia would be pointless.

Mexicans rally to uphold democracy.

The Iranian theocracy is handing out death sentences to protesters.  In Iran, minors are not only sentenced to death, but often raped before execution.

The regime's enforcers are not invulnerable.

However the current protests end, the theocracy's ideology is dead among the masses.

Iranians continue knocking off the turbans of asshole clerics.

Elderly Japanese women are committing petty crimes in order to go to prison, because they have nowhere else to go.

It's shade, safety, and clean electricity all in one (found via SickoRicko).

Censorship in China just gets worse and worse.

A Chinese woman is gaining online celebrity by pushing back against pressure to marry.

North Korean censors destroyed more than half of letters from soldiers to their mothers on Mother's Day.

More links at Angry Bear and WAHF.

My own posts this week: an image round-up, and a video on China's ghost cities.

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If Twitter falls, it will truly be cause to celebrate.  The overwhelming dominance of one giant platform in the global public square has been toxic and dangerous.  Since there are many possible alternatives, it would be best for freedom of speech if Twitter is replaced by several platforms of roughly equal size rather than by another single colossus.  In that scenario, views which are censored on one platform may still find another where they can be expressed freely.  If this happens, Elon Musk will indeed have struck a great blow for freedom by taking over Twitter, though not in the way he intended.