Link round-up for 12 July 2025

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

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Cats are just crazy for those cardboard boxes.

It's the attack of the sausages.

What kind of "fun" exactly?

Here are some more people (and animals) being not good at things.

I'll just jump over this branch..... oops.

He came to regret teasing this fox.

Not all dogs are alike (mute the sound, it's irritating).

Apparently trees in China are of the same quality as everything else there.

These people exist.  But probably not for long.

See an unusual piece of modern art.

July?  Bah.  At Lady M's place it's always Halloween.

Strong winds turn trees into random weapons (link from SickoRicko).

It's the only way to fly travel.

This is art, not food.

Strong willpower is a good thing, but don't take it too far.

The painter's work lives on after him.

Carol Seidl commemorates a feline death in the family.

This is a scarlet ibis, a bird known for its striking color.

Work smarter, not harder.

This is Earth viewed from directly over Antarctica.

The US has seen a net increase in total tree cover over the last two decades.  Even some urban areas have increased numbers of trees.

High-tech brain stimulation can reverse some of the deterioration associated with Alzheimer's.  So far it has only been tested on mice.

The French have developed a wind turbine that doesn't need blades.

We have space probes in permanent orbit around Mars, monitoring the planet and relaying back data from rovers there.  Trump wants to shut them down.

In Congress, there's a bipartisan effort to save NASA from destruction.

See the face of a woman who lived 10,500 years ago in what is now Belgium.  If you think the skin tone seems too dark for that latitude, remember this was barely after the end of the last ice age, and humans hadn't been living in northern Europe long enough for natural selection to lighten their skin color substantially.

Interaction with chatbots is tipping some people into literal psychosis.

A subduction-zone quake off the Oregon/Washington coast could cause a wave of toxic spills in industrial areas.  Given the catastrophic level of destruction expected, it's hard to see how the casualty estimates for the big inland cities can be as low as just a few thousand.

Eating hot dogs substantially increases your risk of diabetes and colon cancer.

RFK Jr wants to let the bird flu virus run rampant through US poultry farms, causing economic disruption and escalating the risk of a human pandemic.  Given that he seems to have replaced most of his competent scientists with quacks, there's no one left to stop him but the farmers themselves.

Interesting house-building technique.  I suspect the main barriers to widespread use would be regulations and zoning, not technical issues.

Being able to change your mind is not a flaw, it's a sign of intellectual honesty.

"AI" is not intelligence and cannot understand anything, even if it superficially looks that way.

Albatrosses can actually be useful.

Phone booths are getting worse, but at least we know exactly where the Moon is.

Don't be the stupid American.  Jesus, these people are embarrassing.

Anti-Semitism crops up almost everywhere these days.

Laziest lie ever.

Draw!

Here is a book (pdf format, 104 pages) for people considering suicide.

Here are some reliable Ukrainian news sources.

Let's not bring back the bad old days.

An emergency-room nurse reports on Independence Day.

I don't know what "Google Docs" is, but apparently a lot of people use it for writing, and it's not reliably private.  A better option is available at Proton, which also offers e-mail and a VPN.

You can't always trust picture captions (found via Miss Cellania).

Choking (actually partial strangulation) during sex is very dangerous, sometimes causing permanent injury.

Persons who don't want to go to an in-person immigration hearing for fear of ICE raids can call this hotline for help getting an online hearing instead.

If you go to a protest, take precautions against electronic surveillance.

If these idiots can't even agree on what "AGI" is, then they shouldn't be writing multi-billion-dollar contracts based on it.

Here's what Elon Musk's new political party is likely to amount to.

Is disbelief in gods a claim about reality?

Veo is supposed to be the hot new thing in "AI" video generation.  And it's terrible.

Do not make threats, even jokingly.  It can get you into serious and totally pointless trouble.  I delete all comments on this blog that make threats against any identifiable individual, including by indirect or euphemistic language.

Morale among ICE agents is terrible, for a range of reasons.

One-quarter of Americans have a medieval concept of biology (found via Angry Bear).

Besides self-driving that doesn't work, Tesla also has "lane assistance", which does this.

Many bosses are now using "AI" to decide who to fire.  I feel sorry for anyone who is still in the workforce -- you're basically living in Hell now.

The Trumpazoids set up a feedback site inviting the public to bash the National Park Service, but most people are doing just the opposite.

Companies are resorting to desperate tactics to push "AI" on customers who don't want it and certainly don't want to pay for it.  And pro-"AI" rhetoric is starting to sound pretty desperate too.

81% of Americans are worried about how tariffs will affect them; 60% expect them to harm the overall economy.

"Maybe he didn't get the memo -- men don't get to tell women what to do anymore."

Politicians ignorant of science are not qualified to regulate science.

The Epstein cover-up is infuriating MAGA world.  This is true.  Usually, when the left-wing media claim that the right wing is agitated about something, I actually see almost no mention of it on the right-wing blogs, but there have been a lot of posts about this one.

The idiots who lost money betting that Elon Musk's robotaxis would work are in a huge snit, with one even threatening to sue him.  This is hilarious.  I can hardly imagine a more obviously bad bet.

Here in Oregon, three girl high-school athletes are suing to make the state stop letting boys participate in girls' sports.

Here's a wide range of real-world examples of the damage being done by "AI".  Apparently in one case a judge actually issued a decision on the basis of "AI"-provided "case law" which of course turned out to be bogus.

A Trump voter notices that nothing has gotten any better.

"Do not trust your brain to someone who didn't bother to use theirs."

When you understand what "due process" means, you'll see why it needs to apply to everybody.

Elon Musk's pet "AI" is now spewing anti-Semitic garbage and praising Hitler.

This politician cannot be trusted.

Epstein and his pedo parties probably had over a thousand victims.

This rural county voted for Trump, and now his policies are dooming hopes to re-open its only hospital.

McDonald's has been using a hiring chatbot which frustrates applicants by sometimes failing to understand basic English -- and has terrible data security.

Mayor Adams urges Jewish New Yorkers to "stay and fight" against the rise of Mamdani rather than leaving the city.

Cloudflare, an "infrastructure provider" (whatever the hell that is) for 20% of the internet, will block "AI" bots from "scraping" (stealing) content from websites under its jurisdiction, unless they pay a fee.  They should be just blocking them without the option to pay a fee, but this is a great start, and we can hope other companies will follow suit.  The post takes a ridiculous line about "ending the open internet", a contemptible and absurd way to describe drawing a line in the sand against mass plagiarism.

Blogger Annie passes along some suggested responses to the planned expansion of ICE.

Despite all of Trump's insults and economic aggression, Mexico is sending rescue crews to help the flood-stricken areas of Texas.

More and more cases are coming to light of schools tolerating anti-Semitic bullying and harassment or even punishing the victims.  And the left-wing political blogosphere continues to ignore the rising tide of anti-Semitism -- it's all just "Trump, Trump, Trump" around the clock with them.  They're ignoring and evading the issue much as people did in Germany in the 1930s.

Companies that tried to save money by using "AI" are now having to spend huge amounts of money to fix all the mistakes it makes.  Serves you right, dumbasses.

A new wave of nationwide protests is being planned for this coming Thursday, July 17.

Mike Lindell's lawyers have been fined for filing an "AI"-generated legal brief full of fake citations.  It figures he can't get anyone but shit lawyers to work for him.

Ideological purism is mostly just fear of needing to think too hard.

Here are some pictures and videos from the anti-Trump protests on Independence Day.

Elon Musk's xAI company is running a massively-polluting data center in a largely-black area of Memphis TN, while the authorities do nothing and ignore complaints.

It's OK to acknowledge that you don't know enough about a foreign conflict to take sides.  I have a deep understanding of the Middle East because I studied it for years, but it really is very complex, and I'd be very hesitant to claim understanding of a conflict in some area like South America or Southeast Asia which I know far less about.

For those who were not aware of this, the Republican budget bill that passed on July 3 enacts its tax cuts immediately, but delays its most unpopular service cuts until after the 2026 election.  Don't count on most voters being aware of the latter when they vote, unless there's a large-scale effort to inform them.  Many people don't even know they're on Medicaid because it goes by different names in different states.

US soldiers are increasingly questioning the legality of their orders under Trump, but their legal position when doing so is murky.

These political news items caused some people to panic, but turned out better in the end.

In Melbourne, Australia, July 4 was a night of terror and violence.

This what a brand-new car is like in Russia.  And it's not any fun being a farmer there.

Trump is souring on Putin and understands the importance of arming Ukraine, at least for now.

The Russian army in Ukraine has reached the Volkssturm stage.

Drone finds fully-loaded Russian missile launcher -- kaboom!

Former hostages of Hamas testify about the sexual violence that they suffered in captivity.

The Saudi regime is honoring the families of jihadist murderers.  This regime is not substantively different from the Iranian theocracy, and its overthrow is just as morally imperative.

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

My own posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, a review of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, and some uncomfortable realities.

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If a man wants to pretend he's a woman, in most situations that's not a problem.  If he wants everybody else to pretend he's a woman, that's going to be a very big problem.

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You do not owe loyalty to a political party.  It's their job to win your vote by doing what will benefit you.

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If the system actually rewarded people based on the value of what they contribute, then medical researchers would be billionaires, and guys like Musk and Trump would be begging for spare change on street corners.

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A reminder to focus on your actual surroundings:


The Democratic party is poorly suited to the demographic realities of the US today.  It can win national elections when the Republicans seem so extremely horrible that Democrats look like a tolerable alternative -- but that doesn't happen often enough.  The party needs to adapt.