Link round-up for 26 July 2025

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

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This was, to say the least, rather unwise.

Personally, I think they're guilty.

Let's orbit mama!

You can tell who is the brains of this group.

The sign says "free wifi".

There is a place where time stands still, but only for cats.

Watch where you're going, idiot.

It's a sign from God.

I didn't know it was possible to drive a train this badly.

It might be best not to pet these kittens.

I wonder if their auto collision insurance covers this.

Make the glass things.

Save the baby.

It's a colorful display of dance.

See a waterfall become as fire.

Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky took color photographs before color film was invented.

This is my home city, except that in these pictures you can't see all the homeless encampments and boarded-up storefronts (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

Love that lasts is what's real.

Nice view.

Here's a huge dark cloud over a beach.

This looks like another planet.  It's actually South Dakota.

In 1930 an entire eight-story building in Indianapolis was rotated 90° while occupied and in use (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

Regulation of the sulfur emissions from cargo ships has produced an interesting side effect.

A new malaria treatment will save hundreds of thousands of babies in Africa.

Most of the Middle East is in the grip of a nightmarish heat wave.

The DuckDuckGo search engine now offers the option of filtering out "AI"-generated images from image searches.  See also the comments from "Readercat2" on how to turn off other "AI" features.

Applying for a job can be very difficult if you're not internet-savvy, but librarians can help.

Decreasing your time online can improve mental health.

To avoid sounding like an idiot, pay attention to what you're reading.

Demons need to keep up with the times.

Video captures a shocking case of police misconduct.

This was a really stupid place to take a picture.

Wise up, you heron-fucking weirdo.

Blogger Annie draws poetic inspiration from the Epstein saga.

Bizarre psychiatric problems are now emerging as one of the major consequences of "AI" usage.

Know your rights and fight back.

Pressure Mastercard to reverse its policy of refusing to process payment for "adult" services.

PBS and NPR have been defunded, but the public can help.

"Just using ChatGPT doesn't mean I'm a bad person" -- yes it does.

Be aware -- people are circulating fake pictures of Auschwitz.  Not sure what the motive is, but it's disrespectful.

In Brazil you can get sent to prison for noticing the obvious.

For a woman alone, traveling in India can be a terrifying experience.  (I've seen other videos by Westerners who went there and everything was fine, but those were either men or couples.)

Not all managers are bad.  Here's a good one.

In a time of "AI", it turns out, it's being inappropriate that makes us human.

Must-read of the week:  conspiratardia is addictive, and can take several forms.

Most people's political fantasies aren't well thought out.

This was inevitable -- the anti-Semites are trying to link Epstein to Israel.

Google Docs is randomly deleting people's writings saved there, so don't use that either.  I notice these posters saying they backed up their stuff "on Scrivener" or "on LibreOffice", whatever the hell those are.  It's still somebody else's system.  I back up all my stuff on flash drives locked in a safe in my spare room.  Let's see some censorious fucktard or moron "AI" delete that.

Many big law firms have caved to Trump, while smaller ones stand up to him.

Los Angeles grand juries are reluctant to indict ICE protesters.

My state's government plans to make some changes to its ridiculous bureaucratic micromanagement of what farmers are and aren't allowed to do on their own farms (I was getting a headache just reading about all these nitpicky rules).  The farmers claim the changes will put many of them out of business; the legislators deny it, but I suspect that the farmers are the ones who understand their business best.

"Community is not a spectator sport."

There are plans to incorporate "AI" into browsers so that it can sink its fangs even deeper into our lives.  It still doesn't work properly.

With Q2 financial results now out, Tesla's situation just keeps getting worse.  So they've done the obvious logical thing and started selling hamburgers.  They suck at that, too.

"The economy" is not my problem.

The Pentagon has ordered the US Marines deployed in Los Angeles to leave.  The National Guard presence there is also being reduced.

An airliner cleared for landing at Minot ND needed to dodge abruptly to avoid a B-52 bomber which was on a collision course.  DOGE cuts to air traffic control starting to have their effects?

The Epstein cover-up is a failure (scroll down a bit) -- a large majority of the public believes the administration is hiding something and wants the truth to come out.

The "and" is not necessary.  But it's a step in the right direction.

Lawyers assigned to defend Trump's policies are quitting in droves.

If you talk about the Holocaust, remember what it was actually about.

CEOs aren't important.  These people are.

Learn about Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and the men he inspired.

Before Ed Zitron was so focused on "AI", he was addressing bosses' schemes to drag remote workers back to offices.

Pro-genocide, anti-Semitic elements aspire to call the shots in the Democratic party, and have an alarming presence among Republicans as well.

"This is a part of Trumpism that I think a lot of urban blue area people don't get.  It's not just politics, it's more or less about the entire community."

OpenAI has raked in tens of billions in venture capital and still needs more.  But it sounds like investors are becoming a little cautious.

How did a two-hundred-foot radio tower get stolen?  It didn't.  Most "mysterious" things (the Bermuda triangle, psychic powers, etc) turn out to have mundane explanations like this once you do some digging and find out the actual facts.

Health insurers are making huge profits, but still plotting to impose massive premium increases on Americans.

A tech journalist asserts that some billionaires are plotting to replace democracy with corporatist techno-feudalism, updating Mussolini's vision for the twenty-first century.

In case you haven't seen it yet, here's the actual Trump birthday letter to Epstein.  There's now a report that Bill Clinton also sent one.

Authoritarians in the West support the Iranian theocracy.

Private equity is chewing its way through the US healthcare system, destroying what insurers haven't already ruined.

Switching to a four-day work-week improves workers' mental health and job satisfaction.  The US will likely be the last developed country to adopt this concept, though -- our "work ethic" is more about culturally-mandated masochism than actually getting results.

Journalists face an escalating struggle to stop media executives from posting "AI"-generated junk in place of real news stories.  Note that even widely-trusted news sites like Axios and Politico are doing this, meaning their content may be unreliable.

We need to ban targeted advertising.

Again and again, the enemy reveals his true nature.

Ghislaine Maxwell has been hoping that Trump would get her out of prison.  There are already signs of a dirty deal in the works.

OpenAI has released a new "AI" agent, and it's as bad as you'd expect.

To win back working-class voters, the Democrats will need to make a lot of changes.

People can get used to anything.  But they shouldn't need to.

Trump wants to allow 401(k) money to be invested in cryptocurrency, private equity, and God knows what else.

"AI"-generated, error-filled legal documents pose a real threat to justice in the US.

Some business owners in Providence RI have established "immigrant defense zones" in defiance of ICE.

The UN punishes truth and rewards lies.

The UK's new Online Safety Act is a serious threat to privacy.

The word "genocide" has really become absurdly misused lately.

France is threatening to recognize a "Palestinian state", something that doesn't exist, never has, and never will.  I assume that recognition of Mordor, Narnia, and Wakanda will follow in due course.

The Ukrainian government has been planning a new law to undermine the independence of its anti-corruption watchdogs, reportedly because those watchdogs were sniffing around people in Zelensky's inner circle.  The move prompted strong pushback from Europe and street protests in Ukraine.  Now Zelensky is backing down.

Australia is sending Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

The Putin regime is blocking the bank accounts of Russians who spread misinformation contradict official propaganda.

Brazil is using "AI" to process Social Security claims, and of course it's bungling the job.

Here's an example of what's really going on in Gaza.  When you see MSM reports about this, remember that they have been (and for all I know still are) uncritically reporting casualty numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry as fact -- that is, since the Gaza Health Ministry is part of Hamas, they were simply parroting jihadist propaganda.  They have zero credibility about Gaza or Israel.

Here's why it's ridiculous to claim a "genocide" is happening there.

More links at Red State Blues, Angry Bear, Comedy Plus, and Chop Wood Carry Water.

My own posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, a video from comedian Dara O'Briain, and speculations on the near future.

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Look, this is not complicated.  Just release the damn evidence taken from Epstein's mansion.  Fuck all the hand-waving and distraction.  Nobody cares about the grand jury testimony or whether Epstein was blackmailing people or what Ghislaine Maxwell can be induced to say in exchange for a pardon.  What we need is to publicly identify the men who committed sexual abuse of minors at Epstein's parties, all of them, Republican or Democrat or whatever -- every last name.  Nothing less will do.

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It is now slightly over one month since Trump bombed three nuclear sites in Iran.  Remember all those people who proclaimed that this act constituted "starting a war" and that there would be all kinds of terrible consequences?

In reality, of course, as I pointed out at the time, the war had already been going on for twelve days before the US butted in, Trump's limited bombing had very little effect compared with the wide-ranging attacks which Israel had already carried out, and the war actually ended shortly after the US bombed those sites.

I don't really blame those people for being so wrong about this -- the Middle East is a complex place and they know almost nothing about it -- but I do blame them for not recognizing that they didn't know, and for not acknowledging since then that they got this completely wrong.  A little humility, at least, wouldn't go amiss.

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More from Dara O'Briain -- this isn't science, but it's funny:


Don't trust the New York Times:


China is not handling the heat waves well: