Link round-up for 24 December 2023

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

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How far will they get?

Here's how to cheat in a drinking contest.

If you're careless, you may be "unseated".

Sometimes flirtation can be misinterpreted (mildly NSFW).

Hear what the Kazakh language sounds like.

Such an enticing skill.

When it's snowy, watch out for bad drivers.  And bad skiers.

They will slay the fearsome dragon.

If Star Trek used water guns, they'd be like this.

Some people need to relieve stress at the office (slightly NSFW).

Looks like a fun wedding party (but I'm not sure such a marriage is legal yet).

Dark Thoughts blog brings us the cutting edge of canine fashion.

Come visit Santa!

Gimme that old time religion.

Some tips here for dealing with holiday stress.

There's no point in watching a show at all if you treat it as a chore to be rushed through.

Next time don't be so impatient, jackass.

A lead "curse tablet" found buried in a latrine (interred in turd?) offers a glimpse of medieval occult beliefs (found via Miss Cellania).

Christmas means it's time for the slightly-terrifying Welsh tradition of Mari Lwyd.

You're doomed.

It's a bird's-eye view.

In the seas around Antarctica, giant abominations lurk.

I don't think this one is from Antarctica.  Pluto, maybe.

Physics works in mysterious ways.  If you keep your eye on any one individual ball, you'll see that it's simply swinging back and forth the whole time.  This is a good illustration of how complex patterns can naturally emerge from simple ones, with no conscious intervention.

See up-close video of an erupting volcano -- so close that the drone which filmed it was melted (found via Hackwhackers).

A Japanese scientist claims to have developed a treatment that can double the lifespan of cats.  Now let's see if it works on humans.

Artists are fighting back against "AI".

People are experimenting with make-up as a tool to defeat facial-recognition software.

Is it real feminism?

This is perhaps somewhat petty, but considering how Trump childishly insults other people, I don't see how he can complain much (found via Hackwhackers).  Background here.

The data sets on which "AI" is being trained include sexually-explicit images of children.

This man, who has buggered up everything he has ever attempted, now wants to mess around with your brain.

Everything has to be about me me me me me me me.....

Facebook is being swamped with fake "AI" images and stolen art.

These people are total assholes and need to start suffering serious consequences for their behavior.

She quit her job rather than be dragged back to the office after working from home.

Like obsolete shopping malls, obsolete office buildings will need to be adapted for other uses.

You're not just imagining it -- homelessness is at a record high.

A New York ob-gyn sexually abused patients for more than twenty years while the university where he worked ignored what he was doing.

This map shows county-by-county election results for 2016 and 2020 in various formats.  I recommend "population circles" with "no county overlap" to get a real sense of the vote.

John Oliver gives a thorough assessment of Elon Musk.  I don't usually link to videos as long as half an hour, but this one is worth the time.

What an asshole.  Even his customers are pissed off.

The Colorado judges who ruled Trump ineligible for the presidency are predictably getting death threats from wingnuts.

Workers are winning the battle to preserve working-from-home.

Now they want you to literally work while you're asleep.  It's way past time to bring back the tumbrels.

Republicans are ignoring the will of the voters and escalating their war against abortion.

Hundreds of synagogues and other Jewish institutions across the US are getting bomb threats.

Essential viewing:  This website has numerous unedited videos of Hamas atrocities on October 7, many of them filmed by Hamas men themselves or by Israelis who were among the first at the scene (you need to click on individual posts to see the videos they contain).  It's far from being the worst of what happened, but you can see for yourself some of what the both-sidesers and the yes-butters are trying to deny or minimize.

Texas businesses are challenging the state's draconian forced-birth laws.

Annie Asks You blog assesses Kamala Harris.

Hard-line Catholics are freaking out over the pope's recent approval of blessings for same-sex couples (the article is mostly jargon, but click the speech-balloon icon at the lower left to see the comments).

A recent Rasmussen "survey" claims that huge numbers of 2020 voters admitted to committing vote fraud.  The claim is not remotely true.

If they win next year, Republicans are planning to build a totalitarian surveillance state to attack abortion.

A Catholic bishop in Minnesota says that the fast-growing number of non-religious Americans is his top concern.  Maybe you guys should consider buggering fewer altar boys?  Or at least call the cops when it happens instead of dealing with it via some half-assed internal Church procedure?  It couldn't hurt.

At last -- the names of many of Jeffrey Epstein's "associates" will be released at the end of this year.

Giuliani won't easily be able to weasel out of paying that $148 million judgment to Georgia election workers.

More and more students accepted by Harvard are nevertheless going elsewhere due to the anti-Semitism there and the resulting stigma.

Bumbling, quarrelsome Republicans may manage to lose their House majority before next year's election.

Hundreds of sorority women across the country are supporting the Wyoming KKG sisters who were forced to accept a male member.

Fatalism and despair lead to inaction and defeat.

Senator Fetterman is trying to block the sale of US Steel to Nippon Steel.  This is a small example of the focus the Democrats need -- he's thinking about what's good for the workers, not for the GNP or the stock market.

If a man can be judged by the enemies he makes, Fetterman should be proud.

This is child abuse of the worst kind.  The victim will never recover.

Don't believe the lie pushed by the Republican "No Labels" scam that a third candidate could win the presidency.

The Christian-supremacist attack on the MRFF has failed pathetically.

A teenager accused of planning a mass shooting at an Ohio synagogue received an insultingly light punishment.

Title IX is being twisted into a tool for forcing schools to let boys into girls' spaces and sports.

To strengthen Social Security, stop fiddling around and remove the tax cap.

Here are the major issues raised by excluding Trump from the ballot based on the Fourteenth Amendment.  The Supreme Court needs to rule on the matter quickly.

If this video is for real (I'm slightly skeptical), it's a shocker.  A man posed as a fundraiser collecting money to murder Jews in several countries, and got a lot of support on the SFSU campus, including offers of donations from half the student he approached.

The Republicans' own witnesses make it clear that there's no case for impeaching Biden.

The Senate has ended Tuberville's blockade of military promotions.  It's outrageous that this was allowed to drag on for almost a year.

Cornell West is going all out to help Trump win.

60% of the voters in my city say things are on the wrong track, with homelessness and crime being the top concerns.  56% would consider leaving if they could.  78% say crime has increased; 74% worry about becoming victims.

Even those who claim crime is dropping admit that it's not dropping in the large cities.  The reality is probably much worse, since the lack of police response means people likely don't bother reporting even major crimes in many cases.  The place I've lived in for thirty years is being destroyed, as innumerable links in these round-ups have attested, and if one more oblivious fucktard tells me we're all just imagining things or being tricked by propaganda, I'll be half minded to start voting Republican myself.

Biden has issued a blanket pardon for marijuana users.  He can only pardon federal "crimes", but if marijuana is legal in your state, you don't need to worry about federal charges.

The right wing is desperately struggling to prevent any more referenda on abortion rights.  They know they'll lose.

The Biden administration plans to seize the patents of drugs developed with government funding, if the manufacturers price them too high.

A nuclear attack on the US, even if it targeted only military sites and not cities, would be catastrophic.

The future will judge our era harshly.

In the UK, 2023 was the year women fought back and won, reversing many of the encroachments of trans ideology.

Louise Distras was threatened and harassed -- so the police arrested and interrogated her despite telling her straight out that she hadn't committed a crime.

Some people just aren't suited for a career in politics.

Jenny Watson is still fighting to create a women-only lesbian venue in the UK.

In New Zealand, women's sports will go back to being for women.

I've been saying for more than a decade that if mainstream political parties in Europe refuse to respect their voters' concerns about high immigration, the voters will turn to those who do listen, even if it means voting for extremists.  It seems that France's ruling party has finally gotten the message, passing a tough new immigration law.  The move was explicitly motivated, in part, by a desire to avoid further gains by the "far-right" National Rally party, which has come steadily closer to winning over the last few election cycles.

A German pedophile group is demanding that lesbians be excluded from Berlin's Gay Museum because of their historical hostility to pedophilia.

The city government of Stuttgart, Germany, is facilitating the funding of Hamas.

Russia plans to attack Poland by swamping its eastern border with migrants.

The US should use seized Russian assets to pay for Ukraine aid.

"Putin must be defeated in Ukraine, or he will not stop there."

History shows that Russian calls for negotiation can't be trusted.

A Russian officer crashed a $15 million mobile missile system into a railway bridge.  Drunk?

Police have foiled a Hamas plot to massacre Jews in central Europe.  This was never just about "Palestine".  It's a war against all Jews everywhere.

In the Red Sea, shoot the archer, not the arrow.

A doctor who examined Israeli hostages freed by Hamas has found evidence of sexual abuse, branding, and other forms of torture.

This man has seen raw video of Hamas's atrocities and grasps that the perpetrators cannot be allowed to prevail.  Show the world what they did, all of it.

Despite deep political divisions, Israel stands united in the fight to destroy Hamas.

Majorities of Palestinians support Hamas and the October 7 atrocities.  But that may be changing in Gaza, as its people come to realize the magnitude of the disaster Hamas has brought down upon them.

Afghan women, among the most oppressed people in the world, still struggle to improve their lot as best they can.  Four countries now grant them automatic asylum -- shamefully, the US is not among them.

More links at WAHF, Fair and Unbalanced (more here), and Angry Bear.

My posts this week:  new hope for eroding political polarization, some truths and inspirations, and a rap version of A Christmas Carol.

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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