Link round-up for 13 August 2023

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

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You're doing it wrong.

It's easy to tell this drunk driving PSA was made by "AI".

Where did the baby go?

You smell so bad even fish can't stand it.

Sibling rivalry starts early.

He who cuts ahead in line must be punished.

You will never get free gas here.

Cats always manage to cause trouble.

Apparently "smell-o-vision" works both ways.

Cleaning the refrigerator has never held such drama.

Round up them critters and bring 'em home, cowboy.

They figured out the illusion pretty fast.

It's an animal, pecking at the innards of a corpse.

What if God actually punished sin?

Maybe he should join the race.

Existentialist shark cartoon here (yes, really).

This kitchen is too fancy.

Sometimes the monster under the bed is real.

I don't know what this is.

Next time, keep the effing window closed.

Reader poll here on fonts for use in images.

Bugs -- cool or creepy?

Whatever the hell this is, it needs to go extinct immediately.

These people have no idea how communes work.

Drive into Sequoia National Park in California, home of the world's tallest trees.

Here's why you need to keep your dog -- yes, your dog -- on a leash.

In a misogynistic culture, schooling is subversive.

Discussion here of the song "Sebona Fi" which I posted three weeks ago.

Don't trust bots to suggest recipes.

Yes!  Cas d'intérêt is back, with a visit to Japan.

Here's a listing of 358 blogs to check out, grouped by category.

Bud Light still doesn't understand the damage it's done to its brand, which is now irreparable.  This boycott was a crushing success because it reflected the feelings of the cultural mainstream, in contrast to the failed crusades against Barbie and Sound of Freedom, which were just obsessions of ideological weirdos and never resonated with normal people.

Scandinavia is rejecting that hideous "modernist" architecture of all rectangles and block shapes, and returning to more traditional design.

Flat roofs leak.  There are reasons why traditional architecture in rainy regions nearly always uses sloping roofs.

Modern criticism of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings goes absurdly off target.

Good video here on the scale of the universe.

Various dingbats are claiming that photographs prove the Earth is flat and the seal levels aren't rising -- here's why they're wrong.

Good analysis here of how misleading claims about food can fool you.

Stay off of roller coasters.  They're not as well-built, and thus not as safe, as you think.

Ming-dynasty China kept massive stockpiles of gunpowder in urban areas.  In 1626, the inevitable happened (found via Miss Cellania).

The world-wide abolition of slavery during the nineteenth century was mostly due to the efforts of just one country.

Yet another parasitic "AI" company is unmasked and is probably about to get its creator sued into oblivion.

The Ten Commandments are un-American.

What's really going on when people are shitty toward kids?

Windows 11 will overload and bugger up your computer, even if it meets the official requirements for installing it.

Most conspiratardia has certain points in common.

Freedom can be won in one generation.

Here's another way jackasses using "AI" are creating headaches for real writers.

Censorship today takes several forms, and we need to return to the forceful and uncompromising condemnation of all censorship shown by those who fought back in the McCarthy period.

Many black employees find that working from home has mental-health benefits compared to offices.

One of Twitter's few remaining tech experts (now fired) reveals some of the chaos prevailing there as Musk flounders.

Is it possible to make yourself believe something purely by an act of will?

The story of the cancer patient dumped by OHSU is now going viral, despite media spin efforts.  I hope she sues and wins big.

Before-and-after views show the devastation of the town of Lahaina in Hawaii by this week's wildfires.  More pictures here.

Several senators are pushing for a federal ban on law-enforcement use of facial recognition technology, which has already led to abuses.

Standard "DEI" programs are actually detrimental to the country's largest historically-disadvantaged group.

AAA joins other insurance companies which are abandoning many Florida customers because climate change is making it uneconomical to insure them.

The most effective weapon against inflation is affordable housing.

It's time for federal rent control.

Yes, in these three ways, woketardia is a religion (if you get a pop-up, click "continue reading").

Attorney Laura Brill has a plan to increase voter registration among young people.

Work-from-home workers are successfully resisting bosses' push to drag them back into offices, and those companies that have succeeded are finding that it's backfiring on them.

Tuesday's vote in Ohio shows that abortion rights are still a powerful tool for Democrats to win elections -- the issue has won every time it's been on the ballot since Dobbs (discussion here).  The forced-birthers don't get it -- they think their problem is just money and messaging.  Note that all these wins in purple and red states show that many Republican voters are pro-choice -- they are not all evil fascist demons as the ideological crazies want you to believe.

Lesbianism is not defined in relation to men.

If you explicitly reject the teachings of Jesus, are you really a Christian?

Biden is backstabbing federal workers by aggressively pushing home workers to return to offices.  This will backfire on the government the same way it's doing on private companies, as the best workers decamp for employers who continue to offer remote work.  A true leftist, pro-worker party would be firmly on the workers' side in this fight.

Back in the real world, it's time for cities to clear away the regulatory obstacles to converting their no-longer-needed office buildings into affordable housing.

Global warming is now even affecting company dress codes.

We're living through a time of censorship enforced from the top down.  All people who care about freedom need to explicitly oppose and resist this.

After one coal-fired power plant in Pittsburgh shut down in 2016, there was an immediate 42% drop in emergency-room visits for strokes and heart attacks.  The decrease over the next three years was even greater.

One company at a time, unions are winning paid sick leave for railway workers.

"God is the author."

In Arizona, voters may get a chance to decide about abortion rights.  In Florida, too, activists are trying to get an abortion-rights initiative on next year's ballot (link from Annie).

66% of financial-sector executives who work from home say they would quit if dragged back to offices full-time.  The sheer hypocrisy of back-to-office mandates is surely unsustainable.

Name-calling is the last resort of those struggling to defend the indefensible.

Florida high schools are censoring Shakespeare due to sexual content, even though any sexual material in his works is tame compared with what most teenagers have access to generally, and it certainly doesn't constitute indoctrination.

The US finally seems to be realizing that China under its present regime can only be an adversary, not a partner.

It's OK to work with people you have ideological differences with if it helps achieve your goals.  Getting concrete results is more important than ideological purity.

Across the country, forced-birth laws continue to inflict horrors on women and girls.

82% of US voters oppose cuts to Social Security for future retirees, preferring higher taxes on the wealthy to preserve the program.  The opposition is consistent across party, age, and other categories.

Two non-religious workers win a lawsuit against Christian harassment in the workplace.

Identity politics is reactionary and bigoted, not progressive.

Here's the story of one of the January 6 insurrectionists.

In Oklahoma, supporters of separation of church and state are suing to stop a government-funded religious charter school.

In the UK, as here, library censorship is a problem.

West Yorkshire police brutally arrested a disabled autistic girl for a casual remark that a hypersensitive officer construed as homophobic.  So far the cops are doubling down defending their behavior (they've deleted their original statement, so here's an archived copy).

A British hospital canceled and then delayed a woman patient's surgery because she asked to be attended by female nurses only.  The hospital is now apologizing and trying to make amends, probably because of a public outcry supporting her.

A religion that shows no respect deserves no respect.

Pro Familia, Germany's leading "professional association on sexuality", has recommended nude groping rooms for kindergarten-age children.  The idea got as far as official guidelines being issued by a state ministry of education before being squelched by protests from outraged parents.

Western delays in getting weapons to Ukraine continue to hobble its defense.

Russians, wisely distrusting the country's banks, are going back to a cash economy.

The Black Sea is Putin's weak spot, and Ukraine is starting to exploit it.

The Putin regime has arrested almost twenty thousand people for protesting the Ukraine invasion.

Russia has launched over a thousand attacks on Ukraine's health-care system.

A court in India has ordered the ruling religio-nationalist party to stop its large-scale demolition of Muslim homes and businesses, which it suggests constitute "ethnic cleansing".

China's biggest property-development company is on the edge of a default, threatening the whole economy.

Xi Jinping is purging top military officers and replacing them with toadies chosen for loyalty rather than for ability (this is how Stalin crippled the Soviet army in the 1930s, which is what enabled the Nazi invasion of 1941 to have so much success at first).

The Chinese regime's alliance with Putin is backfiring badly.

More links at WAHF and Fair and Unbalanced.

My own posts this week:  truths and inspirations, the Ohio referendum, and closed and open minds.

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

If the system truly rewarded people based on the value of what they contribute, then medical researchers would be the richest people on Earth, and guys like Trump and Musk and Bezos would be begging for spare change on street corners.

"Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist.  This is elementary common sense.  If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other." -- George Orwell

Publish Epstein's client list!
Publish the Nashville shooter's manifesto!
Televise the Trump trials!
Turn over all the rocks and let us see the hideous things beneath.