Link round-up for 31 May 2025

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

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Adorable little kids have their own take on the world.

Here are some soggy doggies.

This cosplayer's attempt at a Supergirl-in-flight trick photo didn't quite come out as she hoped.

Always try to make the job easier.

Desperately they flee, with a terrifying monster in pursuit.

Chinese engineering strikes again.

He's using a scooter to get around.

It's clear who's the boss in this household.

You can do it the hard way, or the easy way.

What an odd parade.

Escaping was his destiny.

Here's an old device for putting candles out at a pre-set time.

Cheetahs are not all they're cracked up to be.

See pictures of Malta here.

An accident involving 29,000 rubber ducks turned into a bonanza for science.

You can make an effective bow using rigid pieces of wood.

The works of engraver Jacques Callot illustrate the lives of ordinary people in the Middle Ages.

Penguin turds help protect Antarctica from global warming.

See how two sets of waves create an interference pattern.

Some striking views of the Milky Way here.

Jupiter is the biggest planet, but four and a half billion years ago it was even bigger.

Here's how long the year lasts on each planet.  There are two planets where nobody would live to see their first birthday (I mean, even aside from the fact that they'd freeze to death in less than a minute).

Yes, countries can reduce greenhouse-gas emissions while still growing economically.  Many have been doing so for twenty years.  The EU has reduced emissions by 37% since 1990 while its economy grew by 70%.

Reverse desertification by digging semi-circular holes.

Moderna was making progress on an mRNA flu vaccine -- then RFK Jr pulled the funding.

Backyard bird feeders create an example of evolution in action.

If you don't hear about disease outbreaks, that doesn't mean they're not happening.

Nice collection of images here.

Some of these tips may prove handy.

At Lady M's, it's never too early to be preparing for Halloween.

Google is paying to produce propaganda movies in an effort to make people hate "AI" less.

The Messiah has come.

The Messiah has come.

Get some tips on life from "AI".

Tell Congress to do something for the downtrodden.

Societies can go backward, when religion gets the upper hand.

"The damnation of imagination is one of the ugliest social crimes."

Good information here on handling debt-collection scams.

This guy is perfectly sane and normal, nothing to worry about.

"Rent-seeking", a form of parasitism, explains a lot about why the internet is becoming increasingly shitty.

Hey, we need to steal or we can't make a profit!

"We know..... It is visible from the moon."  The attitude alone is enough to tell the tale.

For most people, the US home-ownership system is a trap.

In ten years of work, Tesla has made no real progress on self-driving cars.  It's not going to happen.

This Supreme Court decision involved some surprising votes from the justices.

RFK Jr's new "report" on health is filled with garbled citations and references to studies that don't exist.  There's strong evidence that it was generated by "AI".

Such charming people.

On the ninth test flight of Elon Musk's SpaceX "Starship", the "re-usable" booster blew up, the cargo doors failed to work so that test satellites couldn't be deployed, and the main ship went out of control and disintegrated during atmospheric re-entry (here's video of the debris).  Yep, I'll be signing up for a ride to Mars on this thing, sure.

Put the media in their place by telling the truth.

A widely-circulated Eisenhower quote about military parades can't be verified in its exact wording, but does reflect Eisenhower's known views on the issue.

"AI" continues to guzzle more and more energy -- and the excuses and obfuscation from its defenders are escalating too.

This wealthy fraudster has some tough talk for you.

"None of it is real.  None of it is deep.  None of it is serious."

Red State Blues blog, like its predecessor Fair and Unbalanced, has been attacked from overseas, this time unsuccessfully.  All bloggers should look to their security and watch out for suspicious activity.

"Women are put in situations where the only way to prove we are 'rational' and 'undamaged' is to give in to male demands."

Germany keeps 1,200 tons of gold stored in the US.  German leaders are starting to wonder whether it's safe here.

It has been six hundred days.

This writer gets it -- Democrats need to drop the gimmicks and identity politics and focus on the message of economic populism.  And FFS stop pushing women out of the party -- Fetterman should be ashamed.

This is the kind of shit that for-profit healthcare produces.

Steven Pinker speaks out on Trump's war against Harvard.

It's a moral horror that the practice of putting male sex criminals in women's prisons, inevitably terrorizing women inmates, wasn't enough to end trans ideology.

Schumer is going all out to fight the "big beautiful bill".

Foreign tourism to the US is down 61% over the last few years.

Terrifying:  this asshole techbro company has been running self-driving 18-wheeler trucks on Texas freeways, which must constitute reckless endangerment of the public at the very least.  They eventually stopped at the request of the truck manufacturer, which presumably does not want its name linked to the disaster this would inevitably lead to.

Information about dealing with ICE is spreading around.

Real Republican policies are bad enough -- don't bother making up easily-debunked lies about them.

"Men are allowed to be afraid of male violence, but women are not."

Bruce Springsteen's recent denunciation of the Trumpazoid attack on American values was uncompromising and well-thought-out.

There are monsters dwelling among us.

Eighty-two senators are ready to move on the next stage of crushing Putin -- sanctions on countries that buy oil from Russia.

Many of the wealthy are getting nervous and keeping a low profile.  They know we hate them.

All religions are terrible, not just Christianity.

Here are the seven stages of genocide (scroll down a bit).

Growing numbers of US doctors are seeking to move to Canada.

Everybody hates Elon Musk, even Trump's cabinet people who had to deal with him.

All over the world, the political divide between the sexes is widening, and the likely reasons go back decades.

At least some Canadians still welcome US tourists, so long as they don't behave like assholes.  I'd still be worried about getting back into the US, though.

"AI" stole her voice.

So here's the story on Doozer McDooze and Birdy Rose.  Here's Rose's site.  Here's some background on this truly Orwellian campaign of harassment.

European airlines are cutting back flights to the US as their customers increasingly opt for other destinations.

See a Russian military fuel train wrecked by Ukrainian drones.  More drone attacks here.  Base going kaboom here.

Russian soldiers survey the burned-out remains of their unit's vehicles.  Notice most of these are ordinary cars, not proper military vehicles.

No, Israel is not a settler colonialist state.

Iranian women continue to defy hijab laws, in such numbers that the regime cannot enforce them effectively.

The Saudi regime has secretive prisons where women are incarcerated for arguing with men -- or for being victims of sexual abuse.

India is now the world's fourth-largest economy, having overtaken Japan.  India's income per person has also doubled over the last eleven years.  It won't be long until the country also overtakes Germany and becomes third-largest, behind only the US and China.

South Africa's chief rabbi speaks out on the escalating racial violence and hatred in that country.

More links at Red State Blues, WAHF, and Chop Wood Carry Water.

My posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, a video of Europe, and a poetic meditation on human extinction.

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Seven-hundred-year-old Ming dynasty construction is still standing strong.  The junk the ridiculous modern Chinese state builds falls apart in a year:


Putin tries to intimidate Romania -- Romania stands up to him:


YouTuber "SerpentZA" was born and grew up in South Africa and left at the age of 25.  He spent 14 years in China and now lives in the US.  Most of those people you hear railing about Afrikaner refugee status know nothing about post-1994 South Africa -- they're just parroting what they've learned is the "correct" opinion.  Here is the reality.  If you want to understand the issue, you need to watch this:

Would you stay there?