23 June 2024

Link round-up for 23 June 2024

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

o o o o o

Some dogs are very smart.  These dogs are not those dogs.

Is this any way to choose a national leader?

Here's another scam to watch out for -- a rather silly one.

It must be divine intervention -- there's no other way this could have happened.

These young ladies arrived at the prom in their own style.

It's clearly a close and special relationship.

This is painting with fire.

You can create a Goth garden.

Cockington Forge has stood the test of time.

This is the HMS Victory, which served as the British flagship at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805.  It is still preserved due to its historical importance, 219 years later.

I didn't know they ever flew so low.

Beekeepers are gods.

Cas d'intérêt discusses Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Take that, vile heretics!  More and more scientists now recognize that Pluto is a planet after all.

Some people seem immune to covid, and we're only just starting to understand why.

The Loch Ness monster is actually rather useful, despite not existing.

New technology may soon enable us to use concrete to store electricity, reducing the need for batteries that require toxic and difficult-to-obtain materials (link from commenter NickM).

Covid vaccines produce broader protection than we thought.

We're steadily learning more about the effects of puberty blockers.

Celebrate World Giraffe Day with some necking.

This is the best essay I've seen yet on the "AI" fad.

Not content with treating its employees like shit, Amazon is now also treating its customers like shit.

Don't subscribe to Adobe.  In fact, don't subscribe to anything "tech-y".  You just can't trust those jackasses these days.

Here is why shopping malls don't have windows.

Trans ideology is profoundly anti-gay.

Much of the nonsense which now infests society can be traced to the toaster-fucker problem.

A new book dissects the fatuous "Ark Encounter" theme park.

She contacted thirteen churches.

It can be done -- these former conspiracy-theory believers broke free of the madness and came back to reality.

An Oregon school coach has been fired for his efforts to keep boys off girls' sports teams.

Montana activists have gathered almost twice the required number of signatures to put an abortion-rights initiative on the November ballot.

Some intolerance is necessary.  Religion stops us from being able to tell the good intolerance from the bad.

Get this trite, Christian-supremacist drivel out of our schools.

You really don't want guys like these around.

The Putin regime is spamming the internet with fake celebrity quotes.  I don't really see the point -- do they think we'll cut off aid to Ukraine because we think Jennifer Aniston is against it?

It's beginning to dawn on the business world that "AI" is neither useful nor profitable.  This scam is about to collapse as so many others have before it.

Sir, you may ogle freely -- but don't be surprised if all the real girls just leave.

Insurers are tricking and even forcing retirees into giving up their real Medicare for inferior "Advantage" plans.

The forced-birth movement will eventually go the way of Prohibition.  I think the same could be said of the anti-gun movement.

An invader on someone else's turf can't claim any rights.

More here on the FBI crackdown on landlords and the Biden policies that led to it.

Yes, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

Prominent activists are working to expose the Republicans' totalitarian, theocratic "Project 2025".

Abortion rights have even broader support than polling suggests.  Outdated survey questions fail to capture the real views of the public.

A girl given a double mastectomy at thirteen due to trans delusions is suing the doctors who did it.

Jew-hatred is now entrenched on both the left and the right.

Lots of links and analysis here on the Republican war against birth control, which is already under way, not just something that might happen in the future.

The forced-birth movement is now using every dirty trick it can think of to sabotage ballot initiatives supporting abortion rights (more here).  They desperately don't want the people to vote on this issue -- because they lose every time we do vote.

As in the US, public support for "LGBTQ" rights is declining rapidly in Canada.  As in the US, it's not difficult to see why.

Maya Forstater keeps on insisting that 2+2=4, and Big Brother is not happy about it.

Five years after the first time a menacing male mob tried to terrorize women resisting "self-ID" into silence in Scotland, a feminist book on the subject is a huge success.

The Putin regime is trying to eradicate evangelical churches in the part of Ukraine it controls, with pastors being abducted, tortured, and even killed.  Make sure the pro-Putin evangelicals in the US know about this.

A proposed law in Brazil would treat all abortions as homicides, putting women and doctors at risk of twenty-year prison sentences.

It's Hajj (pilgrimage) season in Islam, and so far more than a thousand people have died in Arabia's summer heat.  Saudi bureaucratic rules are part of the problem.

The UN will hold a conference on Afghanistan a week from now.  The Taliban are demanding that no Afghan women be allowed to attend and that women's rights not be on the agenda.  This is like holding a conference on South Africa in the apartheid days, with that country's government demanding that no South African blacks be allowed to attend and that there be no discussion of apartheid.

Thailand is about to legalize same-sex marriage, the second Asian country to do so (after Taiwan).

More links at Fair and Unbalanced and WAHF.

My own posts this week:  truths and inspirations, and more music worth remembering.

o o o o o

The temp job has ended.  It lasted for five months.  Due to various unexpected expenses, I was not able to save as much money as I had hoped, so I'll need another one sooner than I had anticipated.  Still, I'm going to take at least one month off before I start looking again.

10 Comments:

Blogger NickM said...

I never knew Jennifer Aniston was so into geo-political issues. Also that picture is from the '90s.

Reminds me oddly of a question I got asked on Quora... "Did anyone in Queen know who Galileo was?" Well, I dunno about the other three but Brian May has PhD in astrophysics. So...

Basically after Freddie joined the choir eternal Queen tried to soldier on but found him irreplacable so May dusted off his old research from his grad student days made some inquiries and discovered not much had been done on that specific subject since he quit because Queen were getting big. So he re-worked it and re-submitted it. Cool!

23 June, 2024 06:42  
Blogger Liam Ryan said...

Maya Forstater is a real hero and brave lady.

23 June, 2024 13:32  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

NickM: I suspect Russian propagandists aren't up to speed on current celebrity photos.

I think most people have some idea who Galileo was. But understanding the real significance of his discoveries might well take some knowledge of astrophysics.

Liam: She certainly is!

23 June, 2024 15:46  
Blogger NickM said...

Infidel,
We are constantly reminded of the horrors that cybernauts from Russia/Iran/China/North Korea can inflict on us. The use of an image of Aniston from when people were still watching NTSC/PAL CRT TVs and wondering if Rachel would ever really hook-up with Ross in Friends is risible.

I have never taken this threat seriusly because it is only free societies that are good at media. When did you last play a Russian computer game or watch an Iranian comedy? And as to the newly emerged genre of North Korean girl-pop... Well, they ain't making your occasional "music to keep" posts. Do look it up on Youtube. It's fucking dreadful.

Totalitarian states just aren't good at this sort of thing. People within them can be but that is against their enslavement such as Soviet samizdat and the like.

The "real" import of Galileo is something I'll leave til later. I have just watched two very dull Euro football games and am tired. Suffice to say none of the four teams displayed that much knowledge of mechanics.

But, I do wonder where you put Galileo in the Pantheon? For me he is a lot below Newton (obvs) and Kepler but above Tycho and Copernicus.




23 June, 2024 16:24  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Totalitarians certainly almost always fail absurdly when they try to do pop culture. They do do better with straight-out propaganda and subversion efforts (going on Western social media and posing as Western activists arguing against voting, for example).

The last time I played a computer game was around 1980. Fairly sure it wasn't Russian.

Reaganite Independent, who did that post on Russian fake celebrity quotes, lives in Czechia (as they now prefer it to be called), so he's around a lot of people who have actual memories of living under totalitarianism. They probably find such efforts all the more silly.

24 June, 2024 01:17  
Blogger Mary Kirkland said...

My daughter used to work at a call center who called people and tried to get them to sign up for the Advantage Plans. These poor people would call back really mad because they didn't understand what they were signing up for. My daughter quit that campaign because she said she couldn't lie to these people anymore.

These trans women should not be able to be in women's sororities and sports. It's wrong.

If the Loch Ness Monster was real I think someone would have gotten a good picture of it by now.

Using fire to make a picture is very cool.

I like the goth garden.

Those dogs are funny.

Have a good week.

24 June, 2024 13:04  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

I can understand your daughter feeling that way. Some jobs just aren't right for an ethical person. I once had a temp job doing collection calls on credit cards. I quit after a few weeks. I wasn't actually lying to people but I was expected to pressure people who were often in tough situations.

We're now starting to see audiences at sporting events actually booing boys and men who compete in the female sports. Normal people know it's unfair even if the ideologues don't. As for that sorority, the girls are now stuck with this guy living there and staring at them while getting a hard-on. They joined what was supposed to be an all-female house so they wouldn't have to deal with stuff like that. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they literally all just leave. Maybe they can start their own private club somewhere.

A garden can sometimes really reflect the personality of its creator. I hope Lady M will post more pictures of hers.

25 June, 2024 08:06  
Blogger NickM said...

"Maybe they can start their own private club somewhere."

...great idea... until it is persecuted and prosecuted for "discrimination".

Samuel Johnson (who knew a bit about defining things) when he heard of Berkeley's Idealism kicked a stone and said, "I refuth him thus!"

"Look, pal, you are not a trans-woman who identifiies as a lesbian - you are a heterosexual male who is seriously fucked-up".

It really fecks me off. I like discussion and difference but trans-ideology is, for me, it's flat-earthism.

Actually. That's not what annoys me. What really gets my goat is that it is taken seriously.

25 June, 2024 15:35  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Laws about whether that would be "discrimination" vary from state to state. I'd think Wyoming would be fairly tolerant of it. The problem with the sorority was that the sorority's own governing body was against the girls' efforts. It was almost impossible to win in court in that situation. Just having their own club would be a different matter. Of course I don't know how practical that is or whether it's what the girls would want.

26 June, 2024 13:59  
Blogger Lady M said...

This is all I need to know about Noah's ark https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-trp-018&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-018&hspart=trp&p=Ricky+Gervais+on+noah&type=Y143_F163_225899_091823#id=2&vid=5614f09b6dbfeb56f01c8245f17ebd48&action=click

28 June, 2024 14:14  

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