Link round-up for 21 May 2023

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

o o o o o

He battled his enemy at the edge of a cliff.

You can tell they're never going to settle this argument.

It's just a light snowfall.

Maybe he's jealous?

Dogs are appealing, but cats rule.

This guitarist has a unique style.

Next time, he should just use the bridge.

Don't stop brushing.

The mighty hunter stalks his prey.

Why are you building that?

Appearances can be deceiving (the last one took me a moment to figure out).

This safari includes a live sex show.

She's got a good reason for having that rifle, but.....

You kids need to go outside and play.

Stay away from that thing.

Let the cards fall.

An actor acknowledges the role of CGI in movies.

Impressive Lovecraft-esque art here.

There's a new dating site for stupid people.

Fear the invasion of the invincible Canadian super-pigs.

"Live in your head."

Don't let your cats out.

By their hats ye shall know them.

An Egyptian woman spoke up against Netflix's trashing of her country's history -- and got deluged with ignorant hate from Americans.

Don't rush a baby's development.

How similar are the Chinese and Japanese languages?

A temple of ignorance and superstition was converted into a temple of knowledge.

Heresy Press is a new publisher promising to embrace creative freedom and reject censorship based on ideological crap.

An author explains what "literary fiction" means, and how chatbots are likely to affect writing.

We may be able to fight global warming by sinking biomass deep in the Black Sea, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

Evolution from single-celled to multi-cellular life has been observed in the laboratory, and can happen surprisingly fast.

The actual evidence shows that many sex-based behavioral differences are biologically innate, not a "social construct".

Due to certain new domain names on the internet, you now need to be extra-careful with URLs.

Fast-food meat contains..... stuff.

An Anheuser-Busch ex-executive admits that the Bud Light boycott is effective and probably has staying power.  Remember all the people who sneered at this early on and said it wouldn't last.  Remember who they were.  And never trust their pontifications again.

Here's how some dating sites scam people.

Abuse your workers, pay the consequences.

Twitter is being swamped with global-warming-denialist nonsense and personal attacks on scientists.

"They're not doing it to kids" -- they have done it to at least 14,726 of them just since 2017.

Montana has banned TikTok.  How is this even enforceable?  Don't most downloads happen directly online so that location is irrelevant?  Do politicians not understand how the internet works?  Am I missing something?

As blogging platforms, Substack and Medium have some flaws that turn off readers.

Internet scams are still pervasive, and chatbots may soon contribute to the problem.

YouTube is already so ad-clogged that it's unusable without an ad blocker -- and it's about to get even worse.

With average prices of $48,000 for a new car and $29,000 for a used one, it's no wonder people aren't buying.

Electric bug zappers zap the wrong bugs.

For job interviews, learn to grovel correctly.

Lauren Boebert really is this dumb.

Religious "morality" punishes disobedience, not bad actions.

If you get a phone call from somebody claiming to be at the IRS, it's probably a scam.

Chloe Cole, who now regrets being surgically and hormonally transed starting at age thirteen, responds to the NYT's despicable hit piece on detransitioners.

Inconsistent state marijuana laws create a lot of confusion and silly inconveniences.

To give credit where due -- in California, religious broadcasters are standing up for freedom of expression.

The BLET rail workers' union has secured a deal for paid sick leave with Norfolk Southern, and will carry on the fight at other railroad companies.  This exemplifies a point I've often made before -- when government fails the people, as it so spectacularly did on this issue, the people can and should take action themselves instead of just begging politicians to do something.

Migrant crossings at the US-Mexico border are down 50% since the end of Title 42.

Hitchens utterly pwns the "religion promotes morality" bullshit.

Public housing residents are subjected to Orwellian surveillance and evicted for trivial reasons.

Yes, they are coming for your kids.  Quit shopping at Target.

Salman Rushdie, still recovering from the Islamist attempt to murder him, receives a Freedom to Publish award.

Jamie Raskin is now cancer-free (found via Hackwhackers).

Some Republican legislators are going beyond book-banning to fines and jail time for librarians.

If you have a gun in your car, it's best not to have a sticker advertising it.  In fact, it's best not to have any car stickers at all.  Any position you take on anything will eventually offend some asshole who will take it out on your car.

A large majority of medical students don't want to practice medicine in forced-birth states.

But they keep telling us this never happens (click blurred-out text to read).  And yet I keep hearing about it happening.

Teach real black American history -- all of it.

Religion disgustingly perverts and reverses the concepts of suffering and pleasure.

Tennessee becomes the second state to enact a women's bill of rights based on model legislation from IWV and WoLF.

My state is giving Amazon a billion-dollar tax subsidy.  With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?

"Shut up."  "OK, I and a few thousand other voters are gonna switch to the other side."  This is a non-recoverable error -- the jackass legislator needs to resign.

Most fines for financial malfeasance are too small to be effective.

A gang of men attacked a woman, and then the usual asshole pundits blamed her -- commonplace enough.  But this time it backfired.

We're making good progress on holding the January 6 insurrectionists accountable.

Martyrdom is an argument against the existence of God.

The Nation recently posted an unbelievably ridiculous article about the participation of men in women's swimming.  Discussion here and here, notes on the article comments here.

Some truckers are threatening to refuse deliveries to Florida because of DeSantis's policies.  There's some anecdotal evidence that it's working.

Obnoxious, violent students are driving teachers out of the profession.

A proposed Alabama law would treat abortions and even miscarriages as homicides, even in the case of non-viable pregnancies.  The pregnant woman or girl could be charged as well as the doctor.

When this women's cycling race was "won" by a man, the women racers found a way to protest.

The FBI is illegally spying on Americans, and Congress needs to act.

Unless there's serious public pressure, the Jefferson National Forest will soon be crossed by a three-hundred-mile natural gas pipeline, with all the usual risks and damaging effects.  The project has already racked up "hundreds" of violations.

There's been a vicious attack on two members of a congressman's staff in Virginia.  In Louisiana, a congressman physically assaulted a news conference attendee.  This kind of thing is inevitable in a society where people increasingly believe that violence is an appropriate response to differences of opinion.

"Queer theory" enables homophobia.

Hospitals that deny emergency abortions because of state laws are violating federal law and will be held accountable.

Giuliani spewed vile accusations against Noelle Dunphy (on Gateway Pundit, of all places), then thought better of it -- or perhaps his lawyers gave him a talking-to.  If you don't know about the Giuliani-Dunphy case, see here.

Buy my drugs.  Look into my eyes.  Buy my drugs.

Kari Lake's attack on the integrity of the 2022 election is going down in flames in court, again.

Besides the Fourteenth Amendment, there are several other reasons why the debt ceiling is unconstitutional or illegal.  Of course, the true problem is not what's actually unconstitutional but how the Supreme Court would rule on the issue, which are two very different questions.

"An America led by DeSantis as he has portrayed himself thus far would be a dystopian hellhole."

Strippers at a California bar have succeeded in unionizing.

The data don't remotely support the "live son or dead daughter" myth.

Dianne Feinstein needs to resign, and we can't trust Nikki Haley on abortion.

Trump is helping the Christian Right to get in touch with its inner misogyny.

Support the campaign to eliminate blasphemy laws.

Afghan refugees pose certain challenges.  Discussion here.

It's easy to believe nonsense if you are determined to ignore all the evidence.

Dangerously-low birth rates in the West are being exacerbated by conservative policies, not by "cultural Marxism".

Australian police tazed a 95-year-old woman using a walker, because she was holding a steak knife.

In the wake of the New Zealand establishment's disgraceful response to the attack on the Let Women Speak rally in March, the country now has a new Women's Rights Party.  There are some possibly interesting new parties in Canada too.

Cyprus, long aligned with Russia, is now moving toward the US, to the annoyance of its arch-enemy Turkey.

See how impressively the Ukrainians have re-built Bucha in the year since the Russians devastated it.

Ukraine shot down all 18 missiles of a Russian barrage against Kyiv, including six supposedly "hypersonic" Kinzhals.  In a later attack, they shot down 29 out of 30 cruise missiles.  It's a stunning accomplishment that shows not only Russia's weakness, but even a fundamental change in the traditional balance of power between offense and defense.

Russia's Victory Day celebration this year was a depressing dud.

Younger Russians who support Putin's war have absorbed a fascistic mentality, but they're only about 10% of all young people there.

The G7 is tightening sanctions on Russia, while some of the southern democracies are getting off the fence about the war.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is down substantially since Lula was elected.

In Iran, the theocracy's enforcers are shooting people in the eyes.

The Chinese regime is stepping up its efforts to browbeat people into having more children.

Uyghur people in China are subject to Orwellian surveillance and harassment, even in their own homes.

Countries that borrowed money from China on unfavorable terms are now coming to regret it.

More links at Fair and Unbalanced and WAHF.

My own posts this week:  a video of the deep sea, some truths and inspirations, and the dangerous delusion of denying objective reality.

o o o o o

"Cutting spending" by refusing to raise the debt ceiling would be like "saving money on food" by eating at a restaurant and then refusing to pay the bill when the waitress brings it.

The most naïve and gullible people of all are the cynics and conspiracy-theory believers.

I never worry about becoming a "burden on society".  Society has been a hell of a burden on me.

Not only do I support abortion, in the case of certain people I'd like to see it made retroactive.



[Image at top:  parts of a shot-down Kinzhal missile on display in Kyiv]