Link round-up for 17 January 2026

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

Please don't try to add links to the round-up via the comments.  These link round-ups are my project and I get to decide what to include or leave out.

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This post reports that resistance, much of it in the form of guerilla warfare, is continuing across Iran despite the crackdown.  I have not been able to verify it from other sources, and I consider this site a bit suspect (it's MEK-aligned), but of course getting accurate information out of Iran continues to be difficult given the ongoing internet and communications blackout.  Guerilla warfare against the regime's enforcers, rather than mass rallies (which would just get machine-gunned again), seems like a logical course of action in the current situation.

Eyewitnesses describe the protests earlier this week.  The turnout in Tehran alone was apparently one and a half million, almost a tenth of the whole metro area population.

The theocracy's sadistic repression includes forcing the families of murdered protesters to pay for the very bullets that killed them, and refusing to release corpses for funerals unless their families promise silence.

The US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and its battle group are en route to Iran.

Added:  The best US option would be to attack the Revolutionary Guards.

Here's a good overview from ISW on the current situation.  The current level of mobilization of the security forces cannot be sustained for long.  Leaders of the regime are moving US dollar holdings to accounts outside Iran, suggesting continued lack of confidence about their ability to cling to power.

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Karma moves fast sometimes.

Go for a drive around the skating rink.

It's a daring robbery with a twist.

Have fun chopping wood.

Here comes a rock.

The cactus strikes back (this is a true story -- I checked).

It's the invincible dog.

I don't think this guy actually reads much.

This impoverished Frenchman found an unusual way to pay for his wedding suit.

This Czech artist built a miniature forest fire.

Here is an astonishing literary achievement from fourth-century China.

Here's how camera lenses stay dry while filming in rain or snow.

Mouse studies suggest that Alzheimer's can be reversed, fully restoring normal mental function.

The claims of large amounts of microplastics being found inside human bodies are probably false.

California is drought-free for the first time in a quarter-century.

If you get the flu, consider Xofluza.

Here's one blogger's experience with upgrading from Windows 11 to Linux.

If you can't afford medical care, you can use this website to search for a free clinic in your zip code.

Take this quiz to find out how many South American countries you can locate (I got all of them right in 27 seconds).

If you're on Medicare, watch out for this scam.

No, Dell has not stopped trying to push "AI" on an uninterested and annoyed public.

This man went insane and ruined his life via lengthy interaction with a chatbot.

The demand for home care workers for the elderly far exceeds supply, partly because it's unstable and low-paid work.  But now worker-owned cooperatives are solving the problem.

The "Poison Fountain" project aims to sabotage "AI", inflicting real large-scale damage on its systems.

Software should be unobtrusive.  "Just fix the bugs and get out of my face."

Vietnam just showed the whole world how it's done.  (It's true -- I checked.)

After weeks of global uproar, Twitter claims that it has stopped its Grok "AI" from creating fake nude images of women and children.

Uruguay now gets almost 99% of its electricity from renewable sources, resulting in cheaper electricity and more jobs.

It's time to unleash one of the world's most creative cultures.

Paul Keating was better than Trump at Trump's favorite activity.

The Bandcamp music site is being praised by fans for banning "AI"-generated fake music.

"It is only our patience, restraint, and deep commitment to a peaceful society that provides this vile crustacean the freedom to parade his twisted perversions openly in society."

This is the reality of working for ICE.  So is this.

Celebrate a cheater.

"I am the con, I am the hoax....."

The Marsh family repurposes some traditional American songs for current events.

The Trump administration has quietly restored the funding for Planned Parenthood.  The forced-birth nutjobs are predictably in a snit about it.

Left-leaning Americans are buying guns, citing concern about personal safety in the current political environment.  As of 2022, 29% of Democratic-leaning Americans had a gun at home, up from 22% in 2010.  It's probably gone even higher now.

This is the behavior of a criminal gang, plain and simple.

It's now almost a month past Congress's mandatory deadline for the release of all the Epstein files.  Some of Epstein's victims are demanding an investigation of Bondi's refusal to comply.

The Trump administration is demanding a list of Jews and Jewish organizations at the University of Pennsylvania.

Tish Hyman, a fierce advocate of women's rights, plans to run for mayor of Los Angeles.

Here is why ICE has been fielding so many grossly-unqualified agents.

Senate Republicans claim they will stop Trump from attacking Greenland.

No, billionaires will not be able to escape into space (or to Mars) if Earth becomes less habitable.  It's not a grey area.  Such fantasies are flat-out impossible.

We have leaders who can't distinguish between a TV show and reality.

"The pattern is now unmistakable.  The White House escalates, but the public and the opposition do not back down."  A good discussion of why Trump's efforts to assert unconstitutional powers are backfiring.

Here's a report from an anti-ICE rally in New Jersey last Sunday.

A lot is being done to stop Trump.

Sometimes it just takes one courageous person to stand up to the thugs.

A plot to gerrymander Kentucky has probably been stopped.

"AI" still can't get anything right.

One auto worker expressed the blunt truth that the mush-talking politicians refuse to say.

This kind of crap keeps on happening and we need to have zero tolerance for it.  The perpetrator is, well, pretty much what you'd expect.

This Democratic congresswoman is trying to get the party back in touch with what voters really want (long, but worth the read).

Here's video of an anti-ICE march in Minneapolis last weekend.  Minnesotans are really mad at ICE.

There are some signs that Trump may have had a stroke several months ago.

Stop trying to make everything about the US.  Americans need to stop being so narcissistic.  Not everything is about us.

Things are getting weird when Marjorie Taylor Greene makes more sense than most mainstream politicians (yes, I'm aware of all the insane things she's said in the past, but that just makes this even more striking).

Sometimes the CEO's mask slips.  Update:  He's bogus, according to this link from blogger Pinku-Sensei.

A New York hate rally openly cheered for torture, rape, and mass murder.

71% of Americans, including 60% of Republicans, oppose taking over Greenland by force.  Only 4% support the idea.

Here's a close look at the Minneapolis community patrols working to protect the city from ICE.

The American Federation of teachers is leaving Twitter, disgusted by its facilitation of kiddie porn.

Steve Bannon will not be president, but if he runs, it will make a difference.  Actually, "no more forever wars, economic populism, and opposition to Big Tech" sound pretty good to me.  Too bad he's just another Mamdani where Israel is concerned.

The Bondi Beach attack was the inevitable result of normalizing anti-Semitism.

In Minneapolis, the people are fighting to affirm reality itself.

Here's what Elon Musk and a few other parasite oligarchs have been up to lately.

"Lived experience" does not trump reality.

Senate Democrats have some power to block ICE funding.

Even the way polls of the issue are conducted shows how anti-Semitism has become normalized.

Canada can fight back against Trump's economic warfare by helping Americans defeat the US oligarchy.

Should an entire country be relying on a fantasy novelist to protect its children?

Kara Dansky celebrates the artist Birdy Rose.

British police denied for weeks that they use "AI", then finally admitted that a decision to ban Israeli soccer fans from the UK was based on bogus information generated by "AI".

France has replaced the US as the largest provider of intelligence assistance to Ukraine.

Russia was probably behind a major cyberattack on Poland's power grid in December.  I hope that the West is considering retaliation in kind.

This Russian ground drone blew up real good.  See more Russian military stuff blowing up.

Chinese TikTok viewers are flocking to a testosterone-soaked video calling for Chinese seizure of Russian territory as Russia is weakened by the Ukraine war.  Remember, China is a totalitarian state -- if this video stays up, that means the regime wants it to stay up.  Well, it might be interesting to see a clash between two of the world's most corrupt and bumbling militaries.

More links at Red State Blues, WAHF, and Comedy Plus.

My posts this week:  a video by The Synthetic Dream Foundation, an image round-up, and the rebellion in Iran.

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No political party or leader that supports gerrymandering in any state, for any reason, can claim to be pro-democracy.

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It's obvious now that the DoJ is not going to release the important parts of the Epstein files -- the parts that name and confirm the child-abusing clients -- but will just keep stalling and making excuses indefinitely.  Time to escalate.  Massie should make good on his threat to read out client names aloud in the House.

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If a man truly believes he is a giraffe, most people would agree that this is a serious enough level of delusion to qualify as a mental illness.  The case of a man who truly believes he is a woman is exactly the same.

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I'm not saying that everybody who still has a Twitter account is into kiddie porn, but clearly it's not a deal breaker for them.

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The Iranian theocracy's murderous rampage against the Iranian resistance should, at least, remind Americans what real fascism looks like.  Just imagine if Trump had responded to the No Kings rallies by machine-gunning twenty thousand protesters to death.  Yes, the repression in the US is very bad, but comparing it to the repression in Iran is absolute absurdity.

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Even if you go to China, you need to learn Chinese to understand the country: