Link round-up for 21 December 2024

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

o o o o o

Santa must escape the Grinch to get his job done.

Always put your truck in park.

Cats celebrate Christmas.

Dogs celebrate Christmas.

Worst tow truck driver ever.

I'll just quickly overtake this slow car..... oops.

That was a bit careless.

Writer Anne Carson has some pithy advice.

Don't worry too much about this alien invader.

My truck is better than your truck!

A flasher makes a mistake (mildly NSFW).

Some last-minute Christmas shopping tips here.

We parked near the restaurant, but.....

It's like cooking with glass.

She'll keep you spellbound with bubbles.

Santa's coming to town -- oh shit!

Opulence has grown steadily uglier and less tasteful over the centuries (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

Today is International Dalek Remembrance Day, celebrating the evil mutant toilet-plunger-wielding aliens from Dr Who.  Exterminate!  Exterminate!  Quick Dalek language lesson here.

Atheist activist Penn Jillette created a noble invention, inspired by Debbie Harry.

See some cars of the future, as anticipated by the past (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

Some pretty nice photos of Oregon here.

Taylor Swift's Eras tour pretty much broke the record for number of records broken.

Honoré Daumier was a pioneering caricaturist of the nineteenth century.

Pretty impressive sleight-of-hand here.

When is a tree not a tree?  When it's two trees (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

Sometimes the aurora is pink (filmed in Norway).

This is Mars, a desert more barren than any on Earth.

There's some evidence that weight-loss drugs can help against a wide range of other medical conditions.

Precautions during the covid pandemic have apparently driven one strain of flu to extinction.

Mangione's gun was partly 3D-printed, illustrating how far 3D printing has come as a work-around for gun control laws.

The Earth is heating up faster than global-warming theory predicts.  Loss of cloud cover may be the explanation.

How hideous is nature?  This hideous.

Reminder:  keep burning objects away from Christmas trees.

The iPhone sounds like a complete pain in the ass.

This diagram shows how "the American dream" actually works (click to enlarge).

Will the police catch this murderer?

Hackwhackers blog is hinting at a possible return in January.

Vote here for blogger Bilbo's ass clown of the year.

Some Russian motorcycle troops need a bit more training.

TV's most pugnacious doctor pwns an insurance guy.

How stupid can you be and still be a senator?  This stupid.

Tips here on deleting tracking cookies from your browser.

Blogger Annie has some issues with Verizon.

Here are evaluations of some image hosting sites that don't ban NSFW content.

"The body always watches" -- poetic and angry reflections on autism and abuse.

Why is Christmastime so depressing, and can it ever be improved?

An old cartoon gets a current update.

Good discussion here debunking defenses of "AI" "art", written by an artist.

Expect a sharp increase in VPN use in Florida next year.

Someone in Seattle reprogrammed this digital roadside sign.

Lawrence Krauss gives a brief talk on religion in the modern world.

Part of the reason modern American life is so depressing is that nearly everything -- our cities, our websites, and even ourselves -- has gotten uglier.  Besides the examples given, I'd also cite tattoos and piercings, and those hideous all-right-angles "houses" that look like two or three shipping containers welded together at random with some entire walls replaced with floor-to-ceiling windows.

The enemy is using bot accounts to wage psychological class warfare.

Schools are full of hidden dangers these days.

In Wisconsin, the Catholic League celebrated Christmas by putting up a billboard announcing how shitty they are.

Time missed the obvious choice for Person of the Year.

Read what one of the most important leaders in the twentieth century thought about Christianity.

Watch what United Healthcare does, not what it says.

Tenant unions are on the rise, pushing for rent control and seeking to counter the influence of landlords and their lobbyists over politicians.

Louisiana has set out to become the disease epicenter of the US.

Anti-Jewish indoctrination and harassment of Jewish students is happening in elementary schools, not just colleges.

The Teamsters have launched a massive nationwide strike against Amazon.  For now, doing business with Amazon is not only unethical (because of how they treat their workers and you're supporting Bezos) but is also crossing a picket line.

Somebody really doesn't want you to see this video.

Michigan is seeing its highest level of pertussis in twenty years, due to increased rejection of vaccines.

Digital license plates (yes, apparently that's a thing) can be hacked to facilitate crime.

JK Rowling has been fearlessly speaking up for women's rights and safety for five years, despite an avalanche of threats and smears.  Others have had it even worse.

To the system, they matter, we don't.  More here.

Why can't the military just shoot down the mystery drones pestering the east coast?

This is American healthcare.

Bluesky has a serious problem with death threats and doxxing, which it seems totally inept at addressing.

Lat night's last-minute budget deal passed the House 366-34 and the Senate 85-11.  All the House no votes were Republicans, as were all the Senate no votes except one (Sanders).  It was a clear defeat for Musk and Trump.  Musk had been positively gleeful about a shutdown which would have left millions of government employees, including active-duty military personnel, without paychecks until it was resolved.

For years, this California women's prison was infested with such rampant sexual abuse that it became known as the "rape club".  Aside from keeping male inmates out, women's prisons really should have all-female guards and staff.

Even some establishment Democrats are abandoning the worthless, billionaire-owned mainstream media.

United Healthcare is cutting back on autistic kids' access to essential therapy -- perhaps breaking the law.

Certain people don't want you to read this book.  I've read it.  Everyone should.

Here are five suggestions for opposing the second Trump presidency.  More worthwhile thoughts here.

"I can't afford my oxygen" -- and the country can't afford to go on with this sadistic bullshit.

Last year the Miss Netherlands pageant crowned a man as winner; now it's shutting down entirely.  Discussion here.

After a bigoted act of vandalism in New Hampshire, local artists re-assert the presence of the one true religion.

This graph probably reflects the country as a whole.

The Biden administration has withdrawn a rule that would have forced all public schools in the US to allow boys in their girls' sports.

The LA Times is all in for Trumpism.

The super-rich now have so much power that it's a serious threat to democracy.

Discussion here on Nancy Mace's initiative to protect emergency shelters.

The US carried out more deportations in 2024 than in any one year of Trump's first term.

Always remember -- we don't yet know for sure that Luigi Mangione is the CEO shooter.  He's innocent until proven guilty like anyone else.

It is barbaric to subject prison inmates to this.

Here's what healthcare populism might look like.

County sheriffs across the US are divided on whether or not to help enforce Trump's mass deportations.

This is how the enemy wages war upon us.

The ACA dramatically reduced the number of Americans without health insurance, but we need to go further.

Israel-bashing and coddling of anti-Semitism are alienating many Jewish voters from the left.

Here's how Trump's billionaires plan to destroy Medicaid.

If a man can become a folk hero for assassinating a rich CEO, then the Democrats surely have nothing to fear about embracing anti-billionaire policies.

"Islamophobia" is a made-up issue, not to be compared to the genuine menace of anti-Semitism.

Trump says he may reverse Biden's decision allowing Ukraine to use US-made long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia (found via Earth-Bound Misfit).  If so, it will be up to Europe to provide such weapons without the restriction.

Billionaires evade taxes even in death.

Free speech is a fundamental liberal value.  More here.

The business elite is starting to get scared of the possible consequences of Trump's tariffs.  Should've supported Harris, dumbasses.

Greed is keeping poor people with HIV from accessing the antiviral drugs that could save their lives.  Millions have probably died already as a result.

Amanda Marcotte thinks that DOGE is far more bark than bite.  Best quote:  "MAGA is rife with gutless sadists, people who like to wage 'war' at a distance, when they don't have to look their intended victims in the eye.  That cowardice is a weakness and one that can be exploited -- if it's met with resolution and courage."

Stop trashing Fetterman -- he's trying to lead the Democrats back to sanity.  (I don't condone this writer's sniping at Pelosi.)

Americans spend a larger proportion of their lives being unhealthy than people in any other country.

Europe will build its own satellite system to replace Starlink, to avoid dependence on Elon Musk.  The US would never do this, but hopefully the Europeans will let us use theirs.

Ireland's government has gone full pro-jihadist, so Israel is closing down its embassy there.  The US should do the same.

Germany's openness to non-European asylum-seekers has been a disaster, and its next government will need to defy EU institutions to deal with the problem.

Poland and Finland have pragmatic responses to the presence of a huge expansionist gangster-state next door.

The US is handing over the management of Ukraine aid to NATO so it will be harder for Trump to bugger it up when he takes office.

Russia is facing massive crop failures, leading to sharp rises in food prices.

Workers on a major Russian government construction project haven't been paid since September.

The Russian media are struggling to come to grips with their country's massive defeat in Syria.

Good discussion here of what's happening in Russia's economy.

A recent change in Israeli policy will facilitate a surge of new housing construction in the West Bank, alleviating Israel's housing shortage and helping further squelch the "Palestinian state" nonsense.

As I've pointed out several times, all those "casualty figures" from Gaza that the MSM keep uncritically parroting come from the Gaza "health ministry", which is part of Hamas -- that is, they're jihadist propaganda and there's no reason to think they have any connection with reality.  Now an actual study has shown that those figures are indeed seriously inflated.

The Iranian theocracy is putting its new, even-more-draconian hijab law on hold, apparently fearing a new eruption of protests.

Syrian rebels burn the coffin of Hafiz Asad, founder of the recently-overthrown regime.

There are some grounds for cautious optimism about the new Syrian government.  The city of Idlib was ruled by the rebels for seven years, providing some indications of what their future rule over Syria might be like.

Syrians show their feelings about the Russians who propped up Asad.

More links at WAHF and Red State Blues.

My posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, and why Trump's second term won't be the Apocalypse.

o o o o o

Trumpocalypse? Maybe not

Many seem to expect that Trump's second term will bring about the Apocalypse.  There's no doubt that it's going to be very bad for the country, as his first term was.  But it's possible, even likely, that not much will fundamentally change.

To begin with, as I noted in the last link round-up, Trump is already backing down on most of his nutzoid campaign promises.  He's either beginning to realize, or knew all along, that most of these things are either not doable or would take a lot of effort and fighting.  He said them to get elected, but that's now done and can't be reversed.  He's got no real incentive to spend his time fighting for them.

The one major thing he hasn't backed down on, and which (given his character) he likely is really determined to do, is going after "enemies".  That's not going to be so easy.  From the link above:

The President-elect also stuck with his threat that he would lock up his "enemies," like Liz Cheney.  This is not likely to go smoothly.  If he just ordered the DoJ to arrest Cheney and lock her up, she could certainly get a court to do its habeas corpus thingie and release her.  In America, even Trump's America, the president can't just lock people up because he doesn't like them.  He could ask the AG, probably Pam Bondi, to investigate Cheney, but to lock her up, Bondi would first have to convince a grand jury that the former representative committed a crime.  Finding a grand jury in very heavily Democratic D.C. to do that would be a challenge, especially given the tiny little technicality that Cheney hasn't committed any crimes.  Then there would have to be a trial.  Good luck with that, too.  Trump could make Cheney spend a lot of money on her defense, but since Democrats sorta, kinda like her now, she could probably start a GoFundMe campaign to pay her legal bills.  When asked if he would prosecute Jack Smith, Trump said he would leave that to Bondi.  She would never do that.  She may be Trumpy, but if she did, she could never get a conviction and then Smith would have formal recognition that he did not commit a crime and she and Trump would have enough egg on their faces to provide the entire cabinet with omelets for breakfast for a week.

Also, anything that involves spending money requires Congress to pass something.  The Republican House majority is even narrower than last term, and there are already signs of the same kind of infighting that produced recurring deadlocks then, so that the speaker usually needed to get some Democrats on board to work around the flaming nutballs and get critical legislation through.  There will also be the problem of billionaire ignoramuses who were never elected to anything meddling in the process and creating further complications.  That's bad when it holds up essential spending legislation, as in this case, but it suggests a lot of the nutty stuff will also get obstructed by squabbles over exactly how nutty to be.  Even if Trump tries to dictate an outcome, all it will take is a few Republicans to not go along, and they'll be back to needing Democratic votes and thus Democratic input.

And almost all of Trump's really radical ideas would hurt this or that corporate interest -- high tariffs would hurt manufacturers who depend on imported materials, mass deportation of illegal aliens would hurt agribusiness and construction, etc -- and Republican politicians tend to listen to such interests.  Maybe Trump himself won't, but Republicans in Congress will.

His intent to bugger up the executive branch presents a bigger threat, because much of that wouldn't require Congress to be involved.  But even there, an institution the size of the federal government has an enormous inertia to it.  His major cabinet picks seem to be mostly a bunch of grifters, sex offenders, and crackpots.  Whatever damage they try to do will be resisted by experienced people far more intelligent and capable than they are.  Yes, they'll do some harm, but probably not nearly as much as he's been threatening.

One thing Trump will likely make a high priority is trying to abolish birthright citizenship for the "anchor babies" of illegal aliens, simply because it's something a lot of his base really wants.  But even if he uses ruthless tactics, this is likely to get bogged down in the courts for years, with nothing much actually getting done before the end of his term.  He and the wingnut media ecosystem will talk and talk about his efforts, and his base may even believe that he's making serious progress, but nothing will really change.

This would repeat the trajectory of his signature campaign promise of 2016, the wall.  All through his first term there was a lot of talk of how he was working on it, construction was happening, etc, but in reality very little wall actually got built -- certainly not enough to have any impact on illegal border crossings.

Aid to Ukraine has been a serious concern.  However, since the election Trump has said that he won't abandon Ukraine, and that it will get less aid, not zero aid.  A lot of Republicans in Congress are strongly anti-Russia and pro-Ukraine -- and Congress controls the money.  It doesn't seem likely that Trump will want to invest a lot of energy and political capital in fighting them over this issue.  He has even been acting less subservient to Putin than he used to, though with that relationship one never knows exactly what's going on.

Remember, too, that in reality Trump will have only two years to do most of his worst, not four.  The president's party almost always loses seats in Congress in the midterms, and with the House majority so narrow, it's almost inevitable that the Democrats will win the majority in 2026.

And finally, Trump is an elderly, lazy, obese, not-very-bright con man whose recent social-media posts and public appearances show evidence of sporadic episodes of dementia -- hardly the profile of the Antichrist or even of a new Mussolini.  During his first term he spent a ridiculous amount of time golfing, watching TV, tweeting insults, and exploiting the presidency in petty ways to line his own pockets.  His second term is likely to be more of the same -- even more so.  There will again be a tsunami of wasted and grifted money, and yes, again, a lot of people will get hurt.  But also like the first time, it won't be the Apocalypse, just a lot of common garden nastiness and blundering and a huge pile of shit for the next president to clean up.

[Please, no comments along the lines of "when Trump is president all the rules will magically vanish and he will have infinite dictatorial power and be able to do anything he wants".  I'm trying to stay reality-based here.]

Update (early Friday morning):  After Trump and Musk sabotaged the bipartisan House budget deal on Wednesday, the Trump-approved replacement deal also failed yesterday, with thirty-eight Republicans voting no.  This shows that (a) plenty of House Republicans won't just fall into line whenever Trump issues a diktat, even with the threat of billionaire-funded primary challenges on the table; and (b) they're going to be just as chaotic next term as last term.  Several Republicans are already saying that they won't vote for Johnson as speaker again, foreshadowing another embarrassing round of endless repeat voting trying to fill the position.

Truths and inspirations for 17 December 2024

If something's hard to see or read, click to enlarge.

[For the link round-up, click here.]

What an asshole.