Link round-up for 10 December 2023

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

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Ads here for candy that makes you strong, but not smart.

Sometimes things don't quite go as planned.

Christmas shopping spoils everything.

Use your gadgets to confuse your cats.

She's determined to make this trick work.

Birds, birds, birds.

This company might be interesting to work for.

He tried to cater to his wife's apparent sexual preference.

Let me show you how tough this guy is..... oops.

Keep the truck balanced.

This is stop-motion animation with actual people.

At last, the train is here..... yikes!

Some things just don't go together very well.

Nobody's quick enough to fool this cat.

All three of these people are idiots.

What would be on your "to-don't" list?

Suffering does not improve or ennoble you.  It's just pointless pain.

During 2022, Finland got 89% of its electricity from non-fossil-fuel sources.

CRISPR technology is giving us a powerful new weapon against sickle-cell disease.

Two scientists who developed mRNA technology, which made the covid vaccines possible, have received the Nobel prize in medicine.  Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian women's rights activist, received the peace prize.

China now produces 26% of total world greenhouse gas emissions, more than twice as much as any other single country.

Your candy may have insect secretions or parts in it (found indirectly via SickoRicko).  Have a barf bag ready when reading this one.

Awesome Elonmuskian engineering here.

Playstation is deleting TV shows that users have paid for out of their viewable libraries.  Always get physical media like DVDs that can't be taken away.

Here are thirty-five books for those with a special interest in France and things French.

Norman Lear used humor to influence American culture.

Facebook has shut down thousands of China-based fake accounts created to spread polarization and division in the US.

Idaho wingnut threatens judge, sends mob to attack hospital, loses court case, runs and hides.

This taco restaurant was burglarized and turned the security-cam footage into an ad.

"Ongoing staff training"?  These people need to be fired.

The choice of Taylor Swift as Time's Person of the Year was a vote for the positive and uplifting in a year full of the dreary and depressing and the outright evil.  The wingnuts are throwing a tantrum about it.  Also, this person is a racist idiot.

A Lyft or Uber driver can abduct you with little risk of criminal charges.

Americans' support for unions is at an all-time high, yet membership in unions remains low due to a hostile legal environment.

Here's a dissection of three lies which are spreading on social media.

Texas Republican party leaders have voted down a ban on the party associating with neo-Nazis.

There cannot be a "community" of people who are polar opposites in every important way.

A US military commander tried to evangelize his subordinates via a mandatory Christian event disguised as a Christmas party -- and flew into a rage when stopped.

The new Nazi movement lies and denies and desperately avoids any evidence that would force it to confront the truth.

An eleven-year-old girl was assigned to sleep with a boy during a school outing.  Discussion here.

Here's an example of how the Mormon church tries to hide child sexual abuse by clergy, although in this case they did at least excommunicate the accused perpetrator.

Women and Jews have something in common.

Remember the banana massacre of 1928.

Several US towns have canceled innocuous expressions of Jewish culture, not wanting to "take sides" between a gang of torturers and rapists and the Jewish state which has the effrontery to fight back against them.

When medicine stops prioritizing the individual over society, it sets off down the path to horror.

Resist -- while you still can.

Half the idiots out yelling and screaming in support of Palestine don't even know where it is.

The Ohio legislature is frantically trying to change and water down the marijuana legalization initiative the state's voters approved last month.

Must-read of the week:  dismantling the lies about Israel currently circulating in the West.

The US government is finally getting serious about cracking down on cryptocurrency and the associated crime.

The MSM's employment of "journalists" with ties to Hamas may be breaking the law against supporting terrorist organizations.

Some Republican politicians are now trying to sound (slightly) more moderate on abortion.  Don't trust them -- watch what they do when in power, not what they say.

Mike Johnson is trying to protect January 6 insurrectionists from being prosecuted.  You can see what he said here (that news anchor blathers on and on and on -- the actual quote is from 2:17 to 2:37).

US universities now censor almost everything except anti-Semitism.  This piece of garbage at least had enough decency to quit.

Left-wing identity politics is fueling the spread of far-right ideology.

Santos was too corrupt for even House Republicans to stomach -- but what about Trump?

Should the administration just ignore rulings by the wingnutized Supreme Court?  It's not that simple.

"By a 9-point margin, voters see the Democrats as more ideologically extreme than the Republicans..... progressives have identified the party with stances on immigration, crime, gender, climate change and Palestinian resistance that are so far from mainstream sentiment that they can even eclipse MAGA extremism."

The Washington Post published an editorial arguing that Trump is trying to establish a dictatorship.  A Republican senator is demanding that the author be investigated and perhaps jailed.  You know, like a dictatorship would do.

In several states, the fake electors of 2020 are finally suffering legal consequences for their actions.  This is important, since it is vital to deter others from pulling similar scams in the future.

The case of Kate Cox in Texas exemplifies Christian sadism.  More here.

Despite a booming overall US economy, conditions remain harsh for the "lower" 60%.  Far bolder redistributionist policies, not just rhetoric, are needed.

New lawsuits by victims of transitioning are targeting the AAP itself.

A new report confirms that post-pandemic inflation has been caused mainly by corporate price-gouging.

Some Republican politicians are quite worried about another Trump presidency.

Steven Spielberg is starting a project to document Hamas's atrocities.

Carville is right -- Johnson is wrong.

The House has passed a firm condemnation of anti-Semitism.  The vote was 311-to-14.

Some US Muslim leaders, irate at Biden's support for Israel, plan to campaign against his re-election -- which, if successful, would elect Trump, who also supports Israel and hates Muslims.  Idiots.

"Here in North America, whether we go MAGA or woke: both sides are hell bent on tearing down the checks and balances that keep the system from breaking down."

Missouri Republicans are pushing bills that would allow women who have abortions to be charged with murder.  If these pass, Democrats' chances in that state next November should improve dramatically.

Mississippi is relaxing its childhood vaccination rules, raising the risks of outbreaks of diseases which had been nearly eradicated.

Stop donating to the International Red Cross.

A California businessman who has long voted Democratic has finally had it after a $100,000 loss to robbery.  If Democrats keep claiming that the recent rise in crime isn't real, they're going to stampede voters toward the Republicans.

Anti-Trump Republican leaders are fumbling the ball again, due to cowardice and disorganization.

Fetterman talks sense on border security, hopefully a step toward a compromise that would enable Ukraine aid to move forward.

A Nazi mob in Philadelphia chanted accusations of "genocide" at a restaurant purely because it's kosher.

The Biden administration is threatening to cut off federal aid for schools which don't allow boys access to girls' spaces and facilities, such as restrooms.

In the last twenty years, there have been five cases where a presidential candidate who seemed inevitable the December before the election actually failed to win the party's nomination.

Experience is bringing people to their senses, one person at a time.

Younger voters are motivated by issues, not candidates.

In Canada, too, some conservatives are trying to backstab Ukraine.

A memorial ceremony for the women mass-murdered at the École Polytechnique in 1989 was dominated by a man talking about himself.

An Ontario ex-teacher silenced and defamed by gender ideologists has won a legal ruling against her persecutors.

Thousands rallied in Ottawa in support of Israel, even though one bus company refused at the last minute to provide the chartered buses that had been paid for.  Toronto police seem willing to take anti-Semitic vandalism seriously.

One London borough tried to respond to the recent upsurge of anti-Semitism -- by canceling Hanukkah.

The dismantling of women's rights in Scotland is part of a conspiracy which has been brewing for decades.

In the UK, male prisoners are being removed from female prisons, though it sounds like loopholes such as the "gender recognition certificate" will allow some to remain.

British parents are fighting back against the promotion of sexual perversion in schools -- and winning.

Jenny Watson tried to create a dating service for lesbians.  She wound up being harassed and terrorized.

Yes, this does sound all too much like certain "professors".

Kemi Badenoch is trying to put a stop to gay conversion therapy.  Background here.

The UK is strongly committed to helping hold the line against China, and this policy will probably remain even if Labour wins next year's election.

Scandinavian unions are standing up to Elon Musk, and he's not happy about it.

Italy is leaving China's "Belt and Road Initiative".

Venezuela is laying claim to more than half of neighboring Guyana's territory (background here).  The US is conducting military exercises to support Guyana, a parliamentary democracy.

The Ukraine war has become bogged down into a stalemate.  The West needs to be bolder in its support.

Russia is holding hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Ukrainian civilian hostages.

The Putin regime is bribing and coercing foreigners to join the Russian army.

Russia has suffered substantial naval losses in the Black Sea -- even though Ukraine doesn't have a navy.

Israel is making private gun ownership easier.  More than a quarter-million Israelis have applied for gun permits since October 7.

At least ten of the hostages released by Hamas were sexually abused in captivity.

The immense scope of the sexual torture and mutilation committed by Hamas on October 7 is gradually coming to light.  More here.

Only the most depraved and hate-filled people claim moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel.  Hamas is irredeemably evil and must be destroyed whatever the cost.

Islamists have claimed responsibility for a deadly terrorist bombing at a Catholic mass in the Philippines.

More links at WAHF (good stuff!) and Elder of Ziyon.

My posts this week:  truths and inspirations, a Christian's judgment day, and a personal difficult time.

If any links in this round-up are paywalled or require a log-in to view, please let me know so I can avoid linking to that site in the future.

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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[Image at top:  Tel Aviv, Israel]