Link round-up for 20 August 2023

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

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Watch the adventures of cats.

Mario isn't messing around.

It's just not this guy's lucky day.

Fetch!

Fighting off a bear can get a bit tricky.

If you have cats, you may find this tool useful.

Take a daring look at the far future of American space exploration.

This soccer player scored a perfect goal.

Sometimes you need to use trickery.

It's a dog's life.

This is no way to run a universe.

What has he been eating?

Not everything should be taken literally.

You can imitate, but it's just not the same.

It is appropriate to follow the church's dress code.

They're up to something, I'm sure of it.

She gets her money's worth out of this garbage can.

The Honest Trailers people do The Little Mermaid.  Also, see some reactions from a fish.

There's even a Jesus Barbie now (link from commenter NickM).

It's all fun and games until the duck explodes.

Cool zoetrope here.

Make shoes practical with the touch of a button.

This restaurant has a unique atmosphere.

Respect your cat's feelings.

Smart bird.

Nice rocks.

Unique design.

A tornado can happen on top of a mountain.

Here's a spectacular sunset (the effect is called "Rayleigh scattering").

CD sales are rising again as people become aware of the problems with non-physical digital media.

Patreon appears to be buggered up.  If you're a creator or supporter, check to make sure that donations are going through properly.

This is what happens when you use chatbots for research.

HP allegedly designs its printer-scanners so that the scan function stops working when the printer is out of ink -- even though scanning doesn't need ink.

Never get really close to a tornado.

What were they smoking when they designed this piece of shit?

A surgeon explains what really happens to human bodies in a deep-sea implosion like that of the Titan.

There's some evidence that a particular blood protein can treat or even reverse dementia, but it's a long way from being usable in humans.

Bee survival is a legitimate concern, but the issue is a bit different than what most people think.

Marriage can accommodate the challenges posed by autism -- some impressive art here too.

Voters overwhelmingly support the SAG-AFTRA-WGA strike and its goals.

Professors are going back to paper and handwritten exams to stop students from using ChatGPT to cheat.

The anti-car nutjobs can't accommodate issues like disability, women's safety, and the practicality of including multiple errands on a single trip.  For myself, I know it would be physically impossible to create a bus or rail system that would work for the stuff I do by car, none of which takes me more than four miles from home.

The last silent-film star has died.

Twitter is delaying access to links that go to sites Elon Musk doesn't like.

Barbie bizarrely provokes religio-wingnuts to disturbing displays of pseudo-violence.  Ben Shapiro posted a forty-three-minute rant about a movie he didn't even like, which starts with him burning Barbie dolls while loud screams play on the soundtrack.  Never forget that when militant Christians were in power, they literally burned people.  The religious lust to kill and destroy, it seems, is always seething just below the surface, expressing itself in whatever ways it still can.

Good leadership is possible, but not common.

Here's one asshole boss who got his just desserts.

Michael Shermer proposes a modern Ten Commandments.

Don't fall prey to the current reefer madness hysteria about opioids.

This is a public drinking fountain, said to be in downtown Portland (NSFW/disgusting).

If you post photos you've taken yourself on the internet, get rid of EXIF data first.

Fathers react to video of their daughters being catcalled in the street.

The SheWon website (a database of women athletes robbed of victories by male competitors) has had an upgrade -- it's now sortable by every column.

"The Bible doesn't teach paganism.  It is paganism."

Elon Musk, king of crap engineering.

The mayor of New York, recognizing that work-from-home is here to stay, announces a formal plan to convert office buildings to housing.

Forced-birthers are now attacking contraception too.

It doesn't matter that we can't absolutely prove God doesn't exist.

The Kansas newspaper raid was shocking, but the paper itself may not be totally blameless.

Democratic voters overwhelmingly favor school choice, and the party needs to get on board.

"They're not doing it to minors" -- yes they are.  Most adolescents who have "gender dysphoria" grow out of it on their own if they're left alone.

Despite what you may have seen lately on right-wing blogs, science still doesn't support claims that ivermectin is effective against covid.

Workers at the San Francisco Federal Building are being told to work from home because crime has made the area near the building too dangerous.

Have you seen this guy?

Housing-price inflation has created an explosion of homelessness in my city.  There are some areas where the sheer number of tents I see is appalling.

Even in the US, the pronoun plague seems to be receding.

Republicans aren't so keen on "leaving abortion to the states" now that they see what the states are actually deciding.

The affordable-housing crisis is being caused by skyrocketing rents and stagnant wages, not by lack of supply.

DeSanitize is desperately trying to disengage from his fight with Disney -- but Big Mouse is closing in for the kill.

Both political parties need to listen to politically homeless voters.

A 13-year-old Mississippi girl is the latest victim of the horror of forced-birth laws.

A Georgia Republican legislator wants to impeach Fani Willis for doing her job.

The Fed's insane mismanagement of the economy is now threatening a stock-market crash.

Trump is a delusional whiny toddler.

So far this summer's extreme heat hasn't caused any power failures in the US, and the growth of clean energy is part of the reason.

Canada is preparing for the possibility of the US turning authoritarian.

"Her penis".

The UK continues its return to sanity on public accommodation.

Never trust or support those who try to silence their opponents.

"Let me be absolutely clear: As Muslims, we reject democracy, we reject secularism, and freedom, and human rights. We reject all of the things that you espouse as being ideals."

Denmark joins the growing number of European countries that are repudiating the "transitioning" of minors.

This analyst suggests we could end the Ukraine war quickly by bringing Ukraine into NATO without waiting for the fighting to end.  It sounds very dangerous to me, and the fact that all the existing NATO members would need to agree would give Erdoğan and Orbán a fresh opportunity to be a pain in the ass -- but see what you think.

See video of a Ukrainian drone strike on central Moscow.  The war is coming home to the aggressor.

I don't recommend flying Aeroflot these days.

Many Russian officials are ignoring Putin's orders, so far mostly on trivial matters.

Ultra-religious assholes are bullying women on mass transit in Israel.

Some Muslim regimes have banned the Barbie movie for "threatening conservative values".

Remember the Afghans we left behind.

A minor girl in India was raped, had the resulting baby, and then was raped again in the hospital.  (A "tantrik" is a devotee of some kind of religious nutball movement -- evidently India's religionists are as corrupt as ours.)

Ramaswamy shows a willingness to abandon Taiwan (and Ukraine).  Taiwan needs its own nuclear deterrent since the US is potentially unreliable.

Democracies can and must cooperate against modern gangster-states despite enmities from decades past.

China's rigid and incompetent totalitarian regime is deeply ill-suited to dealing with the country's looming economic disaster.  As usual, official data are hiding the extent of the problems.  The country is becoming too dangerous for foreign businesses, and not only financially -- foreign nationals are at risk of being arrested at random if the regime's thugs suspect them of things.

Taiwan's vice president paid a short visit to the US, and the Beijing regime is throwing the usual tantrums.

The US dollar remains the essential global currency, and probably will for the foreseeable future.

More links at Fair and Unbalanced and WAHF.

My own posts this week:  An image round-up, and the need for the human touch in filmmaking.

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.

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Yesterday was the seventeenth anniversary of this blog.  A person the same age as my blog would be eligible to vote next year.  I can't recall any other project I've stuck with this long.

[Image at top made by Pliny.]