Link round-up for 25 April 2026

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

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This dancer has acquired quite an audience.

A daring explorer crosses a raging river.

English needs more Swedish words.

You can do fun things when you have a twin.

Horses are stupid.

What were you doing?

Next time, just use a real ladder.

"Whale?  What whale?"

Showing off can produce unfortunate results (and that one guy needs a better belt).  This didn't work out very well either.

I'm not sure this is how you actually play golf.

Observe National Library Week.

Dogs do not understand mirrors, apparently.

Sisyphus was actually a pretty cool guy.

She wanted to pet the horse.

Here's an unusual paper airplane design -- it's called a "flying pig" for some reason.

The USSR had some very odd-looking bus stops (found via Rade).

These monoliths are part of Gibson's Steps in Victoria, Australia.

Behold the abominations of the sea (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

In the forty years since the Chernobyl meltdown, life has adapted to survive and even thrive amid the radiation.

Many of the neuro-degenerative diseases of aging seem to have a common origin.

See how much the Aral Sea has shrunk in the last half-century (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

This is Autism Awareness Month.

Light Motifs blog has some random observations for Earth Day.

Don't use Amazon drone delivery for anything fragile.

Even if you get rid of CoPilot, Adobe Acrobat will re-install it on your computer without your consent.  Microslop is getting really desperate to force this crap on people.

Gmail's "AI", similarly, is a huge irritant you can't permanently get rid of.

Inability to read well makes a person easy prey.

Don't work too hard at your job.  You'll exhaust yourself and gain nothing of value.

Some hospitals are now using remote monitoring instead of on-site doctors, even in the ICU.

Here's a site that will help you find privacy-positive alternatives to widely-used programs.

Beware of this text-message scam that's going around.

You've probably never heard of haemophilus influenzae type b, but you will.

Successful anti-data-center organizers provide tips on how to resist.

This movie looks like fun.

"Good reminder to assume that 9 times out of 10 when actors open their mouths to say something that wasn't written for them it's gonna sound really dumb."

At the beginning of June, Israel will host a huge four-day gay pride festival at the Dead Sea, near the claimed site of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Just try that in any Islamic country.  Predictably, not everyone is happy with the plan.

Using "AI" to order coffee results in an utter fiasco.  Then there's this.

"The woman dies."

The ruling class has its ways of winning an argument (Mazdak was a real person -- I posted about him here).

These people are perfectly normal and nothing to worry about.

Happy Independence Day.

This Indian medical student harnessed the power of MAGA dumbth to pay for his studies and save up to emigrate.

"A message from the 'be kind' brigade."

Does modern Christianity still have anything to do with Jesus?  And can that even be a meaningful question?

Remember the town of Trochenbrod.  Because memory is all that's left.

Blue Origin's recent bungled space launch, along with SpaceX's succession of failures, could imperil the success of the Artemis program.

Only a true asshole video-records in a public bathroom.

Never forget Ann-Marie Murphy and her narrow escape.

Tesla owners are fed up with Elon Musk's unkept promises.  One is suing.

"Looksmaxxing" is a dangerous cult.

Remember the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Today is a national day of action against inhumane ICE detention.

"Do you feel better having someone lower than you?"

A Palestinian state has already been tried.

Every fad has a beginning and an end.

This person exists -- and apparently JD Vance is a fan.

The Satanic Temple intervened to stop the humiliation of a child.

If you're not sure how to classify yourself politically, try out this political spectrum quiz.  Here's the result it gave me:

A recent survey suggested that young men in the US are becoming more religious, but there are good reasons to doubt the truth of this.

Trump is obsessed with punishing the Indiana state legislators who stood up to him and prevented the super-gerrymandering of their state, but it's not going very well.

There's still some hope of stopping the similar super-gerrymander in Virginia.

The forces of evil always seek to silence the victims.

A male inmate in a Maine women's prison assaulted and harassed female inmates over a long period of time.  Now one woman is suing.

The next Democratic presidential candidate should run on a platform of standing with fellow democracies and firmly against the Chinese and Russian gangster-regimes.

These are the acts of deeply religious people.

The government is beginning to issue refunds for Trump's tariffs which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional.

No, the US public's rapidly-growing rejection of trans ideology is not due to people becoming more conservative.

A group of just eleven data centers will produce more greenhouse gases than the entire country of Morocco.  Data centers as a whole are a colossal contributor to global warming.

Hasan Piker is the Tucker Carlson of the left, but probably even more dangerous.

According to this report, Trump was largely left out of the loop during the rescue of the downed American airmen in Iran, due to fear that his erratic behavior would likely disrupt the operation.  However, Trump is also the main obstacle to a ground invasion of Iran which would probably fail disastrously; he has consistently rejected such plans when the military presents them.

Anti-Semitism is the racism of choice for the educated.

In response to overwhelming public demand, a California city has permanently banned data centers.

A Senate candidate praised a deadly Hamas raid into Israel.  This is the same guy who has a Nazi tattoo and once posted a tweet in support of a neo-Nazi.

Trans people have been sold a mirage.

During World War II, these three Dutch women used an unusual strategy to resist the Nazis.

The disruption of oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz is pushing most countries to speed up their move away from fossil fuels (the article claims that there is "sharp disagreement among nations", but the US is the only actual example it cites of a country still "bullish on fossil fuels").

They're globalizing again.

The immigrant man who ("allegedly") attacked and sexually taunted three young girls in Scotland last year has finally gone on trial.  One of the girls brandished an ax and knife in self-defense, an image which has become iconic to the resistance in the UK.  Discussion here.

And the British government hasn't learned anything.

MrMenno has a new song out, commemorating the anniversary of the British Supreme Court ruling on women's rights.

Germany and Italy have quashed a move to suspend European Union cooperation with Israel.

France is deploying fighter planes armed with nuclear weapons to Poland for military exercises simulating war with Russia.  France is rapidly expanding its role in the defense of eastern Europe, replacing the unreliable US.

Romania has suffered a series of measles outbreaks due to falling vaccination rates.  That one country now accounts for 87% of the whole EU's measles cases.

While anti-Semitism is on the rise and increasingly fashionable in the West, Ukraine is taking a stand against it.

Russian anti-Putin dissident Garry Kasparov has little patience with Westerners' complaints.

Russia is apparently destroying the graves of the Ukrainians it killed in Mariupol.

The fire at this Russian oil refinery is so bad that the nearby town of Tuapse is getting covered with oil residue (two videos at that link).

See Ukrainians destroy a Russian base.  Even on a motorbike, you can't outrun drones.  These guys tried to hide in an ammunition depot.

This is life in Russia, far from the war zone.

Something is rotten in the state of Kyrgyzstan.

Israel should not be assigning women to do this job.

Israel's ultra-religious population is growing faster than its secular population, leading some of its best minds to emigrate and raising questions about its long-term ability to maintain a modern society.

The Iranian theocracy is desecrating the graves of protesters it murdered in January.

In a win for free speech in India, the country's Supreme Court has halted legal proceedings against a Catholic priest for preaching Christianity.

Democratic Taiwan, Ukraine, and Europe are cooperating closely in drone warfare to deter and defeat threats from Russia and China.

The Iran campaign has exposed China's weakness and sent the Beijing regime a clear warning of what we can do if it misbehaves toward Taiwan.

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

My own posts this week:  a video on intelligent design, an image round-up, and some possible developments in Iran.

[Image at top:  vandalism at a Jewish cemetery in Strasbourg, France]

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