Link round-up for 2 July 2023

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

o o o o o

His attack failed beautifully.

We need to get tough on flashers.

Yeah, it's time to pray, but.....

I guess this dog is a dance critic.

Play fetch with your pet.

You can tell it's getting hot.

Hear a promising young piano player.

Philosophy has become irritatingly advanced.

It's the ultimate pain endurance test.

Be careful when unwrapping a new mattress.

Cats are taking over.  Mice just have to deal with life.

A civic-minded citizen offers free moose washes.

Make a salad with demon-possessed vegetables.

He must have picked up a hitchhiker.

Worst dating attempt ever (link from commenter NickM).

Pwned, I think.

Climb a tree while sitting down.

He welcomes a new arrival.

Big truck, big mess.

After the dam burst, the reservoir drained quickly.

Summer's here -- time for mosquito defenses.

Sometimes a dog is a devoted companion.

See photos from the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario (click for full size).

Whatever the hell was on this truck, it probably shouldn't have been going via regular freeway (this is in Russia).

Going to the beach?  Here's what's waiting for you there.

The invader is big, but we are many.

Three million years ago, quarter-ton otters roamed eastern Africa.

There is only one "way of knowing" -- science -- and it's universal, not tied to any specific culture or region.

The US government is beginning to study geo-engineering solutions for climate change -- an option that must be on the table to ensure that we can really deal with this problem.

Why does the US Army own so many fossils?

Bud Light really doesn't get it.  At least they've finally dumped Blake and Heinerscheid, who have been "on leave" since this mess started.

Those "sensitivity training" videos are ridiculous.

Apparently South Dakota is overrun with communist demons.

You can be located with surprisingly little information online.

It is possible to do erotica without wallowing in nastiness and cruelty.

If your library doesn't have what you want, ask them to order it.  It might be easier than you think.

Starting this weekend, 5G signals near airports could interfere with instruments which planes rely on to land safely in bad weather.  Most airlines say they have countermeasures in place, but it all sounds very iffy to me.

Nature is horror.

There is no such thing as actual AI and robot dogs aren't dogs.

Your car is spying on you.  This is why even if I could afford a new car, I wouldn't buy one.  I'll just keep getting my current old one fixed as long as possible.

NewPipe is a "client", whatever that means, for use with YouTube and a few other services, which offers some extra utilities like downloads and ad blocking.

Whatever happened to boundaries and consent?

Commuting just gets more and more shitty.

Give money where it will do the most good.

Don't work any more than you need to.

The arrogance of some men is outrageous.

Nope, this ain't writing.

Twitter and Reddit are in a death spiral.  Don't be fooled by the fact that they haven't actually crashed yet.

Twitter is now blocking anyone who doesn't have a Twitter account.  Since I don't link to anything that requires a login to view (because most readers wouldn't be able to see it), this means that for now I can't include links to anything on Twitter in these round-ups.  Musk claims it's just temporary, but given his track record, who the hell knows.  In the meantime, the bungled execution of this policy is causing Twitter to DDOS itself.  Truly epic incompetence.

This is part of why I've always rented an apartment instead of owning -- if the neighborhood goes to shit, home-owners can't leave because nobody wants to buy their place.

Ideological purism leads to stupid behavior.

A major grocery chain is threatening to close some stores due to out-of-control theft and violence.

Nurses in Texas and Kansas are striking against understaffing that is creating dangerous conditions.

This woman and her critics are both idiots "thinking" in clichés.

Trump has declared war on atheists.

"There are some actions which are unnecessary to do -- until someone tells you that you can't do them."

Texas has passed a law which will kill construction workers.  Certain leaders need a taste of their own medicine.

A full state and federal government switch to electric vehicles would save $11 billion while greatly improving air quality.

When they literally proclaim in the streets who they are, people will listen and believe.

Here are ten US cities that will supposedly escape the worst effects of global warming.  I'm a bit skeptical since several of them are in areas that are already hot or desert.

The "No Labels" scam is tricking voters into changing their party affiliation.

The mayor of New York is an arrogant asshole.  No elected official should talk to any voter like this.

When a country as rich as the US has so many homeless people, the system has failed.

In North Carolina, a Democratic state senator is being harassed for voting to keep men out of women's sports.

My city lost 3% of its population between 2020 and 2022 as residents fled rising crime.  Shootings tripled over the same period, and the homicide rate is now the highest ever.

A Texas teacher was punished by school bureaucrats for teaching her students about their Constitutional rights.

NARAL joins the fight to expand the Supreme Court.  But Biden still doesn't get it.

The IRS is cracking down on the use of cryptocurrency for tax evasion.

Voters overwhelmingly oppose Social Security cuts.  There's not even much difference between Democrats and Republicans.

Americans have come to accept homosexuality between consenting adults.  They won't tolerate men in women-only spaces and sports or sexual indoctrination of children.  And everybody damn well needs to get clear on the difference.

Biden's age isn't affecting his mental sharpness, despite some wingnuts' obsessive belief to the contrary.

The Teamsters have won air conditioning for UPS trucks, a vital benefit for drivers in hot climates.

Remember the persecution of Alan Turing.

If "academic freedom has to take a back seat to student sensitivities", you no longer have a university, just an overpriced day-care center.

Next year my state will hold a referendum on ranked-choice voting.

During the Biden administration, the US has had the fastest economic recovery of any major advanced country, and now has the second-lowest inflation rate after Japan.

Now that the Supreme Court has struck down racial discrimination in college admissions, maybe we can start addressing the real problem.  California's experience after banning the practice in 1996 suggests that minority students could actually benefit.

There's evidence that mainstream Americans are getting tired of the relentless pushing of gender ideology and the Orwellian language that goes with it.

The governor of Maine vetoed offshore wind development because she objected to a rule requiring collective bargaining for workers.

Don't worry about the polling for the 2024 election.  It's far to early for it to be really predictive of anything.

Marriage is declining in the US, though the trend varies substantially by race and education.

In 2020, Trump pressured the governor of Arizona to subvert the election result in his state.  The governor refused.

In California, parents are fleeing from public schools, driven away by ideological curricula and falling standards.

65% of Americans support arming Ukraine, up from 46% in May.

In Europe, as in the US, high inflation during the pandemic was driven largely by corporate price-gouging rather than by wages.

The US needs to learn from Europe on treatment of gender dysphoria.

New Zealand plans to exterminate its entire rat population.

Germany's political establishment is still infested with Putin-appeasers.

Italy is full of tourists behaving like jackasses.  This is disturbing to me personally since Italy is the #1 place I'd like to visit if I can ever afford to travel again, and these people are making the locals resentful of foreign visitors.

Retail workers in Spain are holding nationwide strikes for better wages.

The Wagner putsch revealed Putin's unpopularity with many Russians.

The Russians who missiled this kids' party knew exactly what they were doing -- they had a spotter at the site directing the attack.

In Brazil, you can now be fined for simply stating a fact the dominant ideology doesn't want mentioned.

Almost two years after the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan, their policies are ruining the country, though women continue to resist.

Pakistan is still prosecuting people under medieval blasphemy laws.

The Chinese yuan plunges in value against the US dollar as China's economy continues to stagnate relative to the booming US.  The death of optimism in China is taking the form of plummeting birth rates, declining entrepreneurship, rising interest in emigration, and even defiantly despairing graduation photos -- for all of which the regime seems to have no response but scolding people.

In South Africa, it's not just electricity that's failing but also water.

More links at Fair and Unbalanced and WAHF.

My posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, James Cameron on the Titan implosion, and the current movie dark age.

To suggest an item for inclusion in the next link round-up, you can use the e-mail address on the left in my profile, or if you don't want to use e-mail, leave it in a comment to the previous link round-up.

o o o o o

Silence is much to be prized, because it's becoming so difficult to get.

People in groups are almost always stupider than those same persons as individuals.  Instincts easily express themselves quickly and in mob action -- they evolved that way -- but introspection and contemplation are always and inherently individual, inward states.  They can never be shared, much less collective.

Words describe reality, or sometimes fail to do so.  They cannot create or change reality.