Link round-up for 5 February 2023

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

o o o o o

They evicted a squirrel.

Cats work in mysterious ways.

He dodged the attack.

Things are tough for snowmen.

The pope finds Heaven disappointing (from commenter NickM).

Work, work, work.

His aggression was instantly punished.

See how break dancing got its start.

Liven up North Korea with some creative video editing.

A short film predicts 2023.

Tigers go sliding around.

It's a kissing robot.

Add a letter, get a new movie.

The free market at its finest.

Cas d'intérêt reviews January in cartoons from France.

Not the best positioning for this tool, I think.

God has his priorities.

Artificial intelligence teaches sign language.

Tornado, too close.

I don't think I'll take the elevator.

Different cultures, different music.

This Tesla didn't explode, but.....

Happiness between Tails blog reviews some books and music.

You can connect with people online -- just stop trying to placate the toxic types.

Four of these five, I never use anyway.

Disneyland is a relic of what was destroyed.

Medieval armor was more flexible than you probably think.

Why is it so hard to grasp that lesbians aren't attracted to men?

Beware the conspiracy mentality.

See video of London 1890-1920, in some cases juxtaposed with modern footage of the same locations.  Includes the first motion film ever taken in the city.

If you find something like this, don't pick it up.

He gave a voice to one of the greatest minds of our age.

That's a lot of crabs.

Sometimes you can see natural selection at work.

We're approaching the point where use of fossil fuels for electricity will go into decline, as renewables become more cost-effective.  Switching from coal to wind and solar saves a lot of money.

Australian scientists have developed a new method for removing toxic chemicals from water.

If you use "artificial tears" eyedrops, read this warning (important).

In most cases, you are not liable for the debts of a deceased relative, no matter what a collection agency tells you.

YouTube is tightening censorship of videos.  Remember, there are alternatives such as Odysee and Vimeo.

At least for some people, Blogspot is restricting access to blogs that post sexually-explicit material.

Memes and outrage politics ruined Twitter's sense of community.

This person exists.

Efforts to let religion into government go against American law and tradition (keep reading -- lots of interesting historical stuff).

We need more real diversity among writers.

There's a case to be made for lowering the voting age.

The question refutes the dogma.

Beware of subtle anti-Semitic propaganda.

This is what living in a bubble does.

Leave the smartphone at home.

The YMCA seeks to silence those who try to expose its gender policy.

Both of them are heroes.  And so is this clerk.

Big Pharma makes obscene profits off of human need.

The "soul" is an absurdity.

Strikes work.

The gender-ideology juggernaut is just an artifact of big money and astroturfing, not a grass-roots phenomenon.

Even in the US, most top scientists don't believe in God.

Annie Asks You blog looks at the political information war.

The police need to behave like adults, not like enraged barbarians.

Homosexuality is bigotry.

The Satanic Temple has opened an abortion clinic in New Mexico.

Bosses complain of losses even when they aren't losing anything.

Parents resort to home-schooling to raise their children according to their own values (found via Hackwhackers).

The dignity index rates the behavior of politicians.

There's no obligation to respect the fantasies of others -- especially those of rapists.

Bad laws give the police incentives to steal.

Americans show signs of finally turning away from the cult of work.

The alt-right and the far left have startling similarities.

Belief kills children.

California passed a law mandating better conditions for fast-food workers.  The companies are spending millions to block it.

Rail workers continue the fight for paid leave and other demands, despite the government's betrayal in December.

Why do so many leftists support the theocratic, misogynistic far-right?

Trump still has enough support to cause serious problems for the Republican party.

In 1958, a North Carolina Indian tribe battled the KKK and won.

"We -- the women -- we want our fucking stuff back.  We want our women's prisons, our women's sports, our women's refuges, our women's bogs, our right to same-sex care, our fucking WORDS.  And we will not wheesht for all you jelly-spined bloviating cowardly politicians and hacks."

Here's a look at changes to the Democratic presidential primaries.

The US needs a windfall profits tax.

Here are the provisions of the new Illinois gun law, which most of the counties there have indicated they won't enforce.

Britain's politicians are afraid to even talk publicly about the erosion of women's rights there.

At his coronation, king Charles will be wearing almost four billion dollars worth of jewelry.

Religious dominance over education is still fomenting division in Northern Ireland.

JK Rowling helped to get hundreds of endangered women out of Afghanistan.

Workers in the UK launch the country's largest strike in over a decade.

The latest battle over putting a male sex criminal in a women's prison has severely damaged Nicola Sturgeon's government and its ideology.  Even the UN is getting involved.

Russia's much-hyped hypersonic missile has some problems.

Israel is restoring the Sea of Galilee.

After a mass shooting in Jerusalem, Israel's government is making it easier for citizens to obtain guns to defend themselves.

See video of the crime for which these two got more than ten years in prison.

The Iranian uprising deserves the support of the free world.

Turkey's opposition parties promise to reverse Erdoğan's erosion of secular democracy if they win the elections in May.

The Taliban are so into beheading that they even wanted mannequins beheaded.

Under the religio-nationalist Modi government, India has seen an increase in violence against religious minorities.

Some women in South Korea are abandoning repressive traditional life.

Education is becoming more widespread in western and central Africa, but the region still lags behind most of the world.

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

My own posts this week:  an image round-up,  France's mass resistance to raising the retirement age, and a Chinese bird sanctuary.

o o o o o

What happened to "I can read whatever the fuck I want"?

You don't lose much by burning bridges, if all the traffic was one-way.

In the internet age, pretty much everybody is convinced that his own beliefs, ideology, and values are much more widespread among the general population than they actually are.  This stems from how easy it is to limit one's online interactions to like-minded people, so that that "bubble" of homogenous thinking comes to feel like it's the social norm.  The right is notably prone to this due to its tendency to dismiss any data that might undeceive them as "fake news", but it also exists on the left, where people are increasingly prone to similarly dismiss (for example) polls that tell them things they don't want to hear.

Today marks sixty-six days since railway workers were robbed of their right to strike for paid sick leave.  Issue the executive order, Biden!

[Image at top found via Cas d'intérêt]