Link round-up for 29 August 2026

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

Nine weeks to Halloween!

o o o o o

These people are at work.

He's good at acrobatics, but not very observant.

Ever run into a wall so hard that your ass caught fire?

These are indeed signs of the times.  Here are some more signs.

Watch the adventures of drunk people.

Have a last few memes for August.

They look a bit shocked (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

Summer is almost over -- get ready to enjoy the Fall.

Dave Barry discusses using technology to de-technologize your life.

Best shot ever.

Sometimes, being an asshole has consequences.

Petrica Kerempuh was the "Robin Hood" of the Balkans.

An Ohio blogger visits the waterfalls of Oregon.

This is the aurora borealis seen from the International Space Station.

India is not heating up as fast as the rest of the world, but the reasons aren't all that encouraging.

Many types of physical activity reduce the risk of dementia, but strenuous work has the opposite effect.

Beware of dangerous medical quackery which has somehow become respectable.

Human babies still learn language far better than "AI" does, on the basis of far less data -- and they eventually develop actual intelligence, something which current "AI" is not even a step in the direction of.

More than a million voters in Texas have been "suspended".  If you live in Texas, that link will tell you how to find out if you're one of them, and what to do.

Here's why some food companies are intentionally adding allergy-triggering ingredients to their products.

Beware of this fake CAPTCHA scam.

The anti-"AI" backlash is actually getting results in some areas.

Police in Florida set up a fake surveillance camera as bait to catch would-be saboteurs.  The tactic may spread to other jurisdictions.

It's not just LG -- more and more "smart" monitors now come pre-loaded with malware that will track you and/or show ads.

This roller coaster seriously injures some of its riders.

People who destroy surveillance cameras are becoming folk heroes in their communities.

To preserve a free society, we need to tolerate being offended.

Since Trump is threatening to rename Lake Ontario, here's a counter-suggestion.

Failed "AI" investor Leopold Aschenbrenner hoped to become so rich that he could buy entire galaxies.  Uh, who was he going to buy them from?

Here's how the "already there" gambit works and how to counter it.

Dolly Parton has died.  She was 80.  She was one of the rare rich people who attained wealth via the mass popularity of her art, not by exploiting the labor of others.  And she spent much of her money on making the world a better place, from promoting literacy to supporting medical research.

Bloggers Annie, Bilbo, and Anita Bowden post on Dolly Parton.  Here's a memory of one of her more unusual acts of charity.  Republican legislators are cutting support for her Imagination Library, doubtless to allow more billionaire tax cuts.

Ghouls are selling mummified parts of human corpses online, but buying them could be dangerous.

This was the great moral test of our time -- and much of the West failed.

Gosh, why are women leaving this pastor's church?

This is what a war of cultural annihilation looks like.

Useless Democratic politicians won't support Bernie Sanders's call for a halt to out-of-control "AI" proliferation.  I smell the stench of billionaire donations bribery at work.  Not that the Republicans are any better, but it's giving them an opportunity to get out ahead on this issue.

Ninety cities and counties ended their contracts with Flock during August, a far greater number than during any previous month.  Of course it's difficult to know how significant this is without knowing how many of them abandoned surveillance cameras entirely, as opposed to just making a replacement deal with some other camera company.

When some on the left abandon the class struggle to cheerlead for authoritarian regimes, are they truly still on the left at all?

"AI" is taking over San Francisco's billboards, as the pushers go all out to sell us on their malignant junk technology.

Here are some of the reasons why Democrats and Democratic Socialists fail to connect with working-class voters.

Here's why Mark Zuckerberg is the opposite of Dolly Parton.

Impeaching Trump again would be a major mistake, distracting Congress from working on the problems the voters actually care about.  Of course it would be worth doing if there were 67 votes in the Senate to actually remove him, but that's very unlikely.

What if Natalie Harp is something much more sinister than just a sycophant?

A grand jury in Ohio has refused to indict a man for destroying a surveillance camera.  Read the comments too.

Here's why we don't see more solidarity against anti-Semitism.

Darline Graham glorifies misery, overwork, and early death as the proper way of life for Americans.

Tech-bro CEOs and their defenders are clueless and in denial about the wave of mass rebellion against data centers and other intrusive tech.

The love for Hitler endures.

Last month a House bill was introduced to prohibit the federal government from buying surveillance cameras or similar spying equipment to monitor Americans.  That site gives it a low chance of passing, but perhaps the current public mood will change that.

Politicians who pledged not to take PAC money still find ways to make it work for them (the article is about Democrats, but I'm sure Republicans do this stuff just as much).

JD Vance's presidential ambition acts as a Trojan horse for anti-Semites seeking full acceptance within the Republican party.

Trump's midterm convention looks like it will be a ludicrous flop.

YouTubers who promote "AI" face a backlash from their viewers.

The prog fringe are throwing a massive tantrum over Hakeem Jeffries meeting with Jared Kushner to discuss "potential areas of common ground".  What are Congressional Democrats supposed to do, pretend the Trump administration doesn't exist?  Even if the Democrats get control of the House and/or the Senate this November, Trump or Vance will still be president for the next two years.  To get anything done about the issues people actually care about -- prices, jobs, stopping data centers, etc -- some degree of cooperation will be needed.

Most CEOs now recognize that using "AI" in the workplace has not increased productivity -- but they're still using it as a pretext for layoffs.

Trump has been sending out his top-ranking toadies to talk up his "accomplishments", but voters insist on talking about their issues instead.

The stock market is now massively over-valued by all standard measures, highly vulnerable to the inevitable collapse of the "AI" bubble.  If the trade war with Canada escalates, I suspect it could be the final straw.

Even Abdul El-Sayed is distancing himself from the latest hateful comments of the loathsome Hasan Piker about Jews.  But both men have a long track record of repeatedly making excuses for jihadism, and El-Sayed has refused to say whether he believes Israel has a right to even exist.

"AI" is reducing job-hunting to chaos, with some companies even rescinding job offers after applicants accept them.

Independent candidates can't act as spoilers for the Democrats in places where there is no Democratic party left to spoil.

Trump's approval rating with his own base has suffered a massive drop.

Ken Paxton posted a proposal to restrict "AI" in various ways, but he used "AI" to write it.

"Human beings do not become less defensive when they feel threatened.  They become more defensive."

The Wall Street Journal is officially allowing "AI" usage by its writers, after one of them was caught submitting a fake article.  I suppose the paper may back down if there are enough protests and subscription cancellations; in the meantime, any factual statements in its stories must be treated as all the more suspect.

Trump made completely crazy demands on Canada during recent trade negotiations.  The man's mind is going.  Almost everything he said about Canada after negotiations broke down was factually wrong.  Carney's defiance of Trump is proving very popular with his own people.  Here's a Canadian reaction.

Contrary to Trump's claims, the US economy is highly dependent on trade with Canada.

Trump is an incredibly arrogant asshole.  For any Canadians who are wondering why he's suddenly picking this trade fight now, it's because he got his ass kicked in Iran (he failed to bring down the regime or get control of the Strait of Hormuz), and so now he desperately needs to get a "win" over somebody, to feel that he's beaten somebody down and forced them to bend to his will.  It's the way his mind works.  If he can't get that with Canada -- and he won't -- he'll start threatening Greenland or Cuba again or go bully someone else.

Here's an entertaining assessment of Carney's response to Trump, by an Australian blogger.

Patients in South Yorkshire are skipping doctor visits because a widely used "AI" receptionist program can't understand their accents when they call to make appointments.

The new British prime minister is pushing for ethnic cleansing in Israel.  But what's really going on there?

In France, a murderer was released after a mere four years in prison.  And they still wonder why more and more people are voting for the "far right".

French nativist leader Marine Le Pen is polling higher than ever before and is projected to win the next presidential election; however, that election is not until April, so it is really too early to make such projections.

Portugal has banned Islamic face veils.

See the result of a drone strike on an oil refinery in Perm, Russia.

Gasoline shortages are just getting worse.

Ukraine is now attacking warehouses of Ozon, a company similar to Wildberries but less huge.  They burn just as good.  Here's another.

Wildberries and oil refineries are not being neglected, though.

This was the end of some Russian drone operators who had been "hunting" civilians.  And here's a tank that was well loaded with ammunition.

This gas and chemical complex suffered a huge explosion.  It's thousands of miles from Ukraine, so it's not clear whether this was actually a Ukrainian attack or just typical gangster-state incompetence.

"From darkness to light," in this one case.

Some devotees of India's prime minister Modi are now treating him as a god.

Here's video of the monstrous flood that struck the Nepal-Tibet border area this week.

More links at Red State Blues, Abortion Every Day, and Comedy Plus.

My posts this week:  a bus ad from Denmark, an image round-up, and a case of democracy in action.

o o o o o

The UK's Houses of Parliament illuminated in blue and gold this week for Ukrainian Independence Day

o o o o o

Democracy in action

Three weeks ago, commenting on this post at Annie Asks You blog, I said:

Also not surprising that the MSM and political leadership are mostly ignoring the grassroots resistance.  They think in top-down terms, with leaders setting their agendas and the people merely choosing between what competing leaders offer.  True grassroots activism makes them nervous -- there's no telling where it might go or what issues it might bring to the forefront.  But that’s precisely because it reflects the people's real concerns.

We're now seeing the explosive rise of a national movement that precisely embodies this principle -- the rebellion against data centers and surveillance cameras.  No one in the insider universe of politicians, activists, and pundits had any hand in starting this, or even foresaw it.  It wasn't on either party's agenda.  It welled up, leaderless and barely organized, from the masses themselves.

And it doesn't fit the model pushed by the activist fringes and extremists of both political "sides" -- the "hate and fight the other party at all times" model.  All across the country, ordinary people of different political views have been coming together to fight data centers.  Both right-wing and left-wing blogs and sites are cheering on the campaign against surveillance cameras, and that campaign is at work in both deep-red and deep-blue communities and everything in between.

(I emphasize the importance of using the term "surveillance cameras" rather than "Flock cameras".  There are multiple companies that make these things, and the problem is not just with one company.  In several cities, officials have pretended to bow to citizen pressure by canceling their contracts with Flock, only to turn around and contract with some other vendor for essentially the same thing.  Thus no improvement is achieved.  Don't fall for such tricks.)

The politicians and the billionaire-owned MSM have reacted with nervousness and confusion.  Practically every MSM story I found about the anti-data-center resistance early on, and to some extent even now, tried to frame it as a "controversy", something with two sides among the broad public rather than a mass uprising against tech-bro billionaire power and arrogance -- even though the only people they could ever find to quote in support of the data centers were business people and local politicians.  The elites want the political energy of the masses to be channeled into "safe" causes, causes they can frame and guide, aimed at the "opposite" political camp rather than explicitly at billionaire power and wealth, thus keeping the masses safely distracted from the class struggle.  This spontaneous uprising doesn't fit the script.

As the politicians started to understand the size and power of the movement, they tried to play things both ways, talking about limits and restrictions (that would mostly have ended up being meaningless) rather than outright bans, trying to appear to take the people's side while still in reality defending the interests of their billionaire donors.  Lately some have begun to take tougher stands, though most are still trying to fudge things a little rather than fully siding with the resistance.  Even governor Abbott of Texas, formerly an open supporter of data centers, has abruptly changed course, clearly recognizing the risk of political disaster if he stays too visibly on the wrong side.  Only Trump, notoriously insulated from public opinion by a thick layer of toadies who tell him only what he wants to hear, has continued to fully champion data centers, recently causing fury with an attempt to limit public input on them.

It's important to note what is happening here, and what is not happening.  No politician orchestrated the uprising against data centers and surveillance cameras.  There are no leaders or large-scale organizers (who, if they existed, could be bought off or neutralized by scandal).  There is no guy somewhere with some "vision" who "inspired" people to take action.  The impetus for all this came entirely from the masses themselves, spontaneously.  And now the damn politicians are falling over themselves to get in line because they are running scared of the people's anger and determination.  This is how democracy is supposed to work.  The politicians we elect should be carrying out our will, not trying to chivvy and "inspire" us in some direction of their choosing.

Warning to politicians -- the public is in no mood for you getting all nuance-y and yes-butty about data centers.  We want them stopped.  And it's increasingly looking like this will be a pivotal issue for this year's election.  We will not let you water down or turn aside our fury about this.  You will sit down, shut up, get to work, and do as you are told.  Or we will kick you out.

As for the tech-bros, they still don't understand what they're up against -- how deep the hatred of data centers and surveillance cameras runs.  "AI" CEOs are the most clueless of all.  The CEO of Flock is sounding a bit shell-shocked these days, but he believes there can be a "compromise".  Screw that.  We won't compromise on living in an Orwellian panopticon.

This rebellion is democracy in action, in the purest sense.  More of this, please.

Image round-up for 25 August 2026

More pictures from my collection -- to see any image at full size, right-click and open the link in a new tab.

[For the link round-up, click here.  For the Danish bus video, click here.]

A rural wall in the Lake District, Cumbria, England

Naples, Italy

Tollymore Forest Park, Northern Ireland, UK (thanks to Leanna for the identification)

England

A hurricane seen from space

Nancy, France

The Jersey Shore

HR Giger and Debbie Harry in 1981

The Golden Bridge, Da Nang, Vietnam

Genoa, Italy

Triton, the largest moon of Neptune