Link round-up for 24 November 2024

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

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This wheel ain't big enough for the two of us.

He made the best of a sudden opportunity.

There are faces everywhere.

Keep your cats properly organized.

These are signs of the times.

This boat takes hitchhikers.

Blogger Ami posts some amusing images.

They are true copycats.

If you must have marital arguments, at least be classy about it.

No car you ever own could possibly be as awesome as this.

It's the damn ocean -- what did you expect?

Wow, this pole dancer performs totally naked!

This was an unfortunate headline (found via Miss Cellania).

He wasn't expecting his victim to be so well prepared.

What if Nietzsche had lived seven thousand years ago?

Time to get into the Christmas spirit.

He's driving too fast for such a crappy truck on such a crappy road.  And when the roads are icy, it's best to not drive at all.

From 1882, this is the first kiss ever recorded as a moving image (NSFW).

Nice dance, but that might not be the best location for it.

And unto him the ancient sacred text was revealed.

Cool-looking lamp.

Some useful info here about trucks.

Here's what happens when you flush sodium down the toilet.

Here are some tips for unclogging a toilet (but don't use sodium).

Sometimes it's good to remember all your positive qualities.

This is Sainte Chapelle in Paris.

I don't recognize this building, but right away you know this is Europe.  Nowhere else on Earth looks like Europe.

This animal is twice the size of a basketball court.

This cube has colors it doesn't have.

See the Moon go through its phases (one half-orbit).

Wildfires are changing in character and becoming more dangerous.

Plant domestication was a definite improvement.

An example of why caution is needed when examining the evidence for implausible claims:  This study purports to have found that high egg consumption is linked to lower cholesterol levels and reduced cognitive decline with age.  I know a bit about how this stuff works, so I clicked on the link for the actual study, scrolled down looking for "funding", and found "an unrestricted grant from the American Egg Board's Egg Nutrition Center (award #20194881) funded this research".

Rabies is no joke.  Stay away from the %$#@!^# animals.

Protect your Microsoft Word documents from "AI" theft.

Most meat labeled "humane" is nothing of the sort.

Market forces will keep the clean energy revolution going despite the Republicans.

Kids who sit still too long are at higher risk of life-long blood-pressure problems.

This is fascinating -- the particulate pollution, excess heat, and terrain "roughness" produced by large cities actually increase local rainfall and even storm activity.  There's also an odd reason why Austin TX is an exception.

The 2021 heat dome here in the Pacific Northwest was an event that would normally occur once every hundred thousand years.  Of course, climate conditions now are far from normal.

This is Earthrise over the Moon, filmed from Japan's Kaguya Lunar orbiter.

NASA chooses the best and worst science-fiction movies.

Elon Musk doesn't know shit about how science works.

Trump will definitely win this debate (really, do watch this!).

The Europa Clipper spacecraft, now en route to Jupiter, carries a special name of honor on board.

This Autumn, leave your leaves alone.

Maybe we should bring back the traditional family.

People need to stop claiming that getting upset or offended about something is "trauma".  That's a backdoor attack on freedom of expression.

Here's yet another scam to watch out for.

Try this civics test administered to prospective new citizens (found via Bilbo).  It seems absurdly easy to me, but apparently even quite a few natural-born citizens flunk it.

"Venting" anger doesn't do any good, but there are other things that do.

Worst neighbor ever.  This person needs to be locked up for assault and threatening behavior before he kills somebody.

We need to pressure businesses and institutions to get off Twitter.  If they get enough complaints to realize that maintaining a presence there is a public-relations negative, they'll pay attention.  More info here on Bluesky, which is now gaining a million new users a day.

Here are tools to import your Twitter feed to Bluesky or to Mastodon.  You can also have accounts on both platforms with only minimal extra effort.  Leaving Twitter really does pwn the wingnuts.

Muslim persecution of Jews dates back to the beginning of Islam.

A bill that threatens non-profit organizations has passed the House and his heading to the Senate.  The link includes resources for contacting Congress.

Officials at this school knew a student was making and sharing "AI" fake nudes of classmates, but did nothing.  Now parents are suing and have forced several school officials to resign.

Republicans in Louisiana have cut corporate and personal income taxes (which mainly benefits the rich), while increasing the sales tax (which hurts mostly the poor and middle classes).

Organized disinformation campaigns, and the difficulty of verifying what's true in a time of computer-generated fakery, are becoming a serious problem.  Buttigieg, as always, is a voice of clarity on the issue; this video (less than six minutes) is worth watching.

Food-service employment is impossible to satirize.

Will the left finally learn to stop lecturing and start listening?

If you don't want men to be barbarians, teach boys not to be assholes.

Trump is using frivolous lawsuits to attack freedom of the press.

What does "non-binary" really mean?

Some pragmatic suggestions here for what Democrats can do to win in the future.

A dozen of these is still a dozen too many.

Jews have the lowest gun-ownership rate of any religious group in the US -- but with rising anti-Semitism since October 7, that's starting to change.

Some Democrats seem determined to continue losing elections.

Why do so many US companies do their manufacturing in Mexico?  The Mexican healthcare system is part of the reason.

More and more girls are refusing to be silenced by bullying adults.

When Americans say they want to leave the US because of Trump, I generally ask, "what place do you think would want to take you?"  Well, the village of Ollolai in rural Sardinia would.  If you're serious about leaving, have a look.

Abortion is a blessing.

Colorado employers are viciously retaliating against employees who make use of the state's family-leave benefits.

A Trump-appointed judge has struck down a Biden administration rule extending overtime protections to millions of workers.

No thanks, we're already more aware than we ever wanted to be.

Trump's most dangerous agenda items probably can't pass Congress.

For once I agree with Marjoreene -- let the truth come out and let the guilty face justice, no matter who they turn out to be.

The "exceptions" in forced-birth laws don't stop them from killing women and girls.

Here's how Biden is using his last two months in office.  Harris will help.

Why is it Nancy Mace who understands this while so many on the left refuse to get it?

Fairly sure it's against the law to publicly threaten to murder an elected official.  Death threats seem to be this guy's hobby.

A Wyoming judge has struck down the state's ban on abortion pills.

These Muslims oppose extremism.

The Democrats need to stop kowtowing to the parasite oligarchy.

There's ever more anecdotal evidence that the tide is turning on trans ideology.  Some of the bad guys are starting to realize they need to back off on the most extreme stuff, at least.

Elon Musk's plan for shrinking the federal bureaucracy:  eliminate work-from-home so that huge numbers of employees quit.  Of course, it's the best people who will quit since they are the most confident of being able to find other jobs.

This former Trump cultist freed his mind and is now trying to help others do so.

As the job market deteriorates, US workers increasingly feel trapped and resentful.

The Texas government is planning a variety of tricks to get round the Constitution and push Christian mythology in the schools.  Jewish parents and organizations are resisting.

Several school districts across Washington state are passing measures to keep boys out of girls' sports.

RFK Jr is the avatar of a new age of disease and death.  Vaccines have done a hundred times more good than all the politicians and religious rabble-rousers in history combined.

Hospital closures in the rural South force patients to travel hundreds of miles, sometimes relying on Uber or Lyft.

Abortion did matter, but it wasn't the only women's rights issue on the ballot.

Trump wants Ann Selzer investigated for publishing a poll that showed him losing.  He's becoming completely ridiculous.

Insurance companies are abandoning the failed Medicare Advantage model.

McConnell has told Trump there won't be any recess appointments.

The Washington Post has finally noticed what has been obvious to everybody going back to the Stone Age.

The "International Criminal Court" is now just as corrupt, hypocritical, and anti-Semitic as the UN.  The US should sever any connections with it that we still have, and pass a law making any cooperation with it a criminal offense.  In general, the world's global institutions have been ruined beyond redemption.

This sick freak scared the hell out of a bunch of little girls, and when a mother complained, all she got was a barrage of evasive jargon.

Scandinavian countries are informing their citizens how to prepare for a possible Russian attack.

The Danish navy has detained a Chinese ship implicated in sabotaging the undersea cable linking Germany and Finland.

Peter Cherif, a jihadist who helped plan the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo, has finally been brought to trial in France.

The US has built a missile-interceptor base in Poland to help defend that country; Putin is throwing the predictable tantrum.

Japan supplies Ukraine with advanced mine-clearing equipment.

Total Russian casualties in Ukraine are approaching three-quarters of a million.

Jihadists in Lebanon are using modern Russian weapons, though these are probably being filched from stockpiles in Syria rather than donated by Russia directly.  It's not like Russia could spare them these days.

Israelis and Iranians are fighting the same enemy.

In India, the growing of millet crops almost ceased in the 1960s.  Now farmers are bringing them back because they're resistant to climate change.

Xi Jinping can go fuck himself.  Our democracy doesn't take orders from some snotty little tinpot mafioso who never won a real election.

More links at Red State Blues, WAHF, and JP McJefferson.

My own posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, and Biden and Ukraine confronting a risky future.

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So, the Bible was right -- the Gaetz of Hell did not prevail against us.

Never assume that just because I link to something here, I therefore agree with every word written in it.  I judge posts on their overall value, not on "purity".

I'm not generally a fan of videos, except for music videos and other artistic endeavors.  I rarely watch videos more than five or six minutes long -- to get me to watch one longer than that, it has to be on a topic that really interests me.

Sorry, but I don't have the foggiest idea who "Morning Joe" and "Mika" are (nor do I care, so don't bother explaining).

Any historical period feels like it is of epic importance, to the people living through it.  But I think Trump will not actually turn out to be a very significant figure in the long run.  A hundred years from now he'll be remembered like John Tyler or Chester A Arthur -- one of those guys you vaguely know was president, but (unless you're a historical scholar) you don't really know anything about him, and you're not even sure which century his presidency was in.

I support gun rights, but I don't understand the weird fetishization of guns on a lot of right-wing blogs.  To me a gun is like a can opener, a tool to be used for a specific purpose when the need arises.  Nobody would repeatedly put up posts containing dozens and dozen of pictures of various types of can openers, people holding their can openers and the cans they are about to open, scantily-clad women posing with can openers, etc.  I don't get it.  It's just a tool.

How much of a threat Russia poses depends on which type of threat you're concerned about.  Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.  The threat of a nuclear attack against the West is probably negligible -- Putin has already drawn so many "red lines" and then backed down when they were crossed, that his bluster has lost all its credibility.  But the risk that he would invade other eastern European countries if he's allowed to gain anything from the Ukraine war is very real.  He's already invaded one (Ukraine) and has shown that he will battle grimly on even after the invasion has turned out to be a disaster for Russia.

One way to make polling more accurate on certain social issues would be to make sure that polls are conducted in plain English -- a lot of mainstream voters are not fully acquainted with current Newspeak.  Many poll respondents probably don't realize that "undocumented immigrant" means what normal people call an illegal alien, or that "transgender woman" means a man pretending to be a woman, as opposed to some odd category of actual woman.  Using such absurd gobbledygook confuses people and renders the results of such polls practically useless.

The argument about whether the Democrats went too far left or not left enough is missing the point.  The point is the type of issue.  A platform of universal healthcare, national rent control, strong federal support for unionization, a national $15 minimum wage, restoration of reasonable tax rates on the wealthy to reduce the deficit, and suchlike economic populism would probably have won the election.  Such policies are often described as "far left", but all those things have polled well at various times.  We lose with crap like DEI and coddling criminals and men in women's sports and identity politics.  That's often called "far left" too, but it's a completely different thing.  A lot of Democrats are backing away from the woketardia, and most have repudiated things like "reparations" and defunding the police, but the left has become strongly associated with such drivel in the mass public mind, and it hurts us badly.  We need a sustained, high-profile repudiation of all that stuff to stop it from dragging us down in future elections.

[Image at top:  Ollolai, Sardinia]

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