Link round-up for 6 September 2025

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

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Magic tricks startle cats.

Some people take things too literally.

Sweet dreams and frustrated sharks.

This high-rise apartment complex has attracted many tenants.  And this mansion has been in the family for a long time.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

You don't need to be a leopard to eat these faces.

Being bitten on the ass can be a deflating experience.

Hey, there's something you forgot to do.

The kid wants to check out the strange new thing.  Mom is not so sure.

A perfect catch!

This is remarkable art, and on a grand scale.

Visitors to Paris often find Versailles seriously overcrowded -- but there's a better place to find the same kind of relics of the old royal lifestyle.

This is Egypt seen from space.  The dark strip is the farmland along the Nile and the wider dark area at the top is the delta.

This Arizona town uses traditional Mediterranean methods to keep cool.

There's evidence suggesting that rapamycin, an immuno-suppressive drug, can slow aging by protecting DNA from damage.

These are the states where covid is surging now, as best we can tell.

Michigan is home to a remarkable feat of engineering.

People are less likely to buy a car if it has self-driving technology.

HOAs are nosy, bossy, and meddlesome, and most people don't want them, and yet more and more people live under them.  Now a Florida legislator is considering a law to ban them.

Have some "AI"-generated images.

The Burning Man festival is dead.

Don't let them put you "in the system".

Bossy language purists are making idiots of themselves again.  The new terms they're pushing will not catch on because they're longer than the words they're supposed to replace.  Generally people will only accept a new word for something if it's shorter than the word it replaces.

Here are some suggestions for fighting back against YouTube's "AI" shittyization of videos.

The implications of wearable spy technology are starting to hit home.  There will be more and more stories like this.

Some unethical therapists are betraying their patients by using "AI" to guide treatment.

Rabies is on the rise all across the US, and many pets are in danger because owners don't vaccinate them.

"AI" is never creative.  Whatever you think you see in it was stolen from some human, somewhere.

Here are some tales from the working world.  And here's a seriously assholesque management policy.

These people are dangerous psychopaths and not even trying to hide it.

Boys in California protest in support of girls.

I've posted before about Klarna, which was an "early adopter" of "AI", using it to replace its whole customer service unit and then frantically trying to hire back human workers after the "AI" totally failed.  Well, it hasn't been able to hire enough customer service specialists and is now dragooning its engineers and marketers into handling customer phone calls.  I bet they just love that.

A CEO gives advice for job applicants on interviews.  Notice how the answers he recommends giving are glutinous chunks of weird robotic corporate jargon that no actual human would ever utter in any normal situation.  These creatures don't even know how real people talk.

Americans need to read foreign media to understand what's happening to people who try to visit our country.

Tesla's new "master plan" is a meaningless fog of buzzwords and hype.

This fake journalist fooled several publications before being unmasked by some basic fact-checking.  Editors really need to be more vigilant.

What specifically do the haters object to about what JK Rowling has actually said?

The Epstein victims' press conference on Wednesday drew a large crowd.  Here's when the fighter planes Trump had ordered to fly overhead briefly disrupted the event.

Here's an ad which is being run in several Republican congresscritters' districts to pressure them to support the Massie/Khanna discharge petition.

The more people know about "AI", the less they want it or trust it.  It's people wholly ignorant of tech who are swallowing the hype and going gaga over this nonsense.

I've occasionally compared Trump with Caligula, but here's another similarity -- wasting soldiers' time.

Here's a good discussion of why, even though porn is degrading and damaging, banning it would only make things worse.  (I covered the broader issue of prohibition vs regulation here.)

A high Justice Department official was recorded admitting to a plot to manipulate the Epstein files for partisan gain.

Tariffs are starting to bite, with prices increasing and some products becoming unavailable.

Medicare is planning to use "AI" to screen and possibly deny coverage for certain medical procedures.  They will even pay the "AI" companies a share of any money saved by denying treatment.  The mind boggles at the magnitude of the fuck-ups and abuses this will lead to.

Citizens in Washington DC have formed "night patrols" to resist the Trump military occupation.

A Republican congressman fled his own town hall in Alabama after being relentlessly mocked and heckled for defending Trump's policies.

Florida's government is planning to abolish all childhood vaccination mandates, potentially making the state a cesspit of epidemic disease.

California, Oregon, and Washington will establish their own vaccine guidelines rather than rely on RFK Jr's crew of quacks.

Here's an overview of anti-Trump protests and actions in the next couple of months.

A new book discusses the ideological attacks on liberal values in our time.

Trump's commerce secretary is effectively gambling on a Supreme Court affirmation of the lower court ruling striking down Trump's tariffs.

ICE in South Dakota is detaining Lakota Indians.  Where the hell are they planning to deport them back to?

Elon Musk seems to be having some kind of mental breakdown involving "AI" and sexual weirdness -- even compared with how he usually is.

Here are some anti-Semitic dog whistles and codes to watch out for.

Judges are losing respect for the hopelessly-politicized Supreme Court.

US businesses that cater to tourists continue to suffer as foreigners avoid the US due to Trump's assholery.

The Trump administration is rushing to deploy Musk's "MechaHitler" "AI" throughout the government.

Resistance takes courage -- but some people have it.

Here's more on the attack on three Scottish girls I linked to last week, along with a fundraiser for the girl was was arrested for heroically defending her friend.

When the British police aren't arresting kids for defending themselves against violent adult thugs, they also arrest people for voicing opinions most people actually agree with.

The land of my ancestors is no longer truly a free country.

Once again they want to silence women in order to avoid dealing with an uncomfortable reality.

This Ukrainian girl escaped to Germany, but Germany held its own dangers.

Parties of the nativist/nationalist resistance (called "far right" by the MSM) are now leading in the polls in the UK, France, and Germany.

Albania's prime minister wants to make the country into a "cashless society", where every transaction can be monitored and controlled, a major step toward totalitarianism.  He probably won't succeed, but people in all countries need to be on the alert to fight such initiatives anywhere they are proposed.

Here's a sample of pamphlets being given out to wives of Russian soldiers (not sure whether they're put out by the Putin regime or some crackpot church).

Brazil shows how it's done, putting Bolsonaro and seven other powerful figures on trial for trying to stage a coup in 2022-2023 -- treating the ex-president like the ordinary criminal defendant he is.  This is what we should have done after January 6.

Remember this when you hear the next horror story from Gaza (and FFS don't get your news from Tucker Carlson).

Learn why the Palestinians have always rejected a Palestinian state.

This is the nightmarish world of Qatar.

In Afghanistan, women who aspire to even minimal freedom are chained up or locked in a mental institution.

Pressuring India with tariffs won't work.

More links at Red State Blues and Comedy Plus.

My posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, a meditation on the cult of decay and death, and the victims speak in the Epstein scandal.

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This is the full news conference on Wednesday.  I haven't watched it (it's 93 minutes and I prefer written transcripts, especially over really long videos), but I'm posting it here for the benefit of those who might want to see it in this format: