Link round-up for Halloween

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

Here's my post on the true meaning of Halloween.

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The usurper seizes his opportunity.

This is the worst possible result for pole-vaulting.

Next time, wear normal pants, you silly person.

Cats like to push other things off the table, but in this case.....

A shocking abduction case has rocked Las Vegas.

Spooky season is upon us!

Blogger Lady M has conjured some ghosts.

It's just not a proper Halloween without Heather Franzen's kitten night adventure.

Here is The Skeleton Key blog's final round of Halloween photos from Salem MA.

"Um..... actually, neither of us are."

Trick or treat cartoons!

He's a true Halloweenist.

The Manitou Springs CO Skeleton Craze includes ghosts and some traditional decorations.  Here are a few more skeletons.

How evil are vampires, really?

Well, he was "the god of wine and sensuality", so.....

One of Star Trek's classic lines was just two words.

They removed the sign -- perhaps they found it offensive.

Pajamas are a relatively recent innovation.

Blogger Mr Shife reports a personal milestone -- and presents a profoundly embarrassing dinosaur.

Blogger Johnny Profane recalls a wildly indulgent Halloween past.

Modern science has finally solved the mystery of ancient Roman color-changing glass.

This is called the Tyndall effect.  The air is misty, and the floating micro-particles of moisture make the rays of light coming through gaps in the foliage visible.

By the end of this year photovoltaic solar power will account for 10% of global electricity generation, surpassing nuclear power.

The administrator of NASA (a billionaire appointed by Trump), is determined to land men on the Moon before the end of Trump's term despite the ongoing technical problems with rockets built by companies owned by billionaire megalomaniacs.  This is putting human lives at risk for a pointless political stunt.

Yes, people can unlearn hatred.  Never give up.

You are better off with Firefox (I still use it as my main browser, which may be why I haven't experienced some of the shittyization of the internet that people complain about).  And doesn't that song take you back to when the net was fun, before "AI" and targeted ads and everything being fake and corporate?

Proton now hosts a detailed map tracking Flock cameras (though apparently not surveillance cameras made by other companies).  Proton is very much privacy-focused and is based in Switzerland, so the map is essentially impervious to being taken down.

Unfortunately, Proton's CEO "is in full AI psychosis", fanatically pushing the fake technology throughout the company (that article is partly paywalled, but you can see a lot of it, enough to get the picture).  If he remains in his position, the long-term reliability of Proton is questionable.

We must never bring back the stench.

You don't owe anyone sex -- or sexual attraction.

Here's the latest bullshit Meta is hitting you with if you have a Facebook or Instagram account.  I can't even be bothered to figure out exactly what it all means.

Let's go back to subsistence farming!

Walter Koenig, who played Chekov on Star Trek, has died.  He was 90.

Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard) has died.  He was 86.

China's first completely "AI"-generated full-length movie has just come out, getting a full theatrical release, and it's turkeying out pathetically.  Evidently the Chinese don't like this crap any more than we do.

These voters turned their votes into a show of solidarity with a dead man.

This culture exists.

Blogger Bilbo recognizes the biggest and worst of the oligarchs.

"When someone tells you who they are, believe them."

Governments hate VPNs because they're a vital work-around for citizens against censorship of all kinds -- yet it's proving almost impossible to ban them.  Even the Chinese totalitarian gangster-state is struggling to deal with them.

Traditionalist Catholics are in a huge snit because pope Leoxiv voted in the US election.  I don't see what the issue is -- he's a US citizen and over 18, so he's entitled.  Moonlighting as primus inter molestores in the Funny Hat Boys Club doesn't change that.

Three-quarters of likely voters say they'd be less likely to vote for a candidate if they found out that candidate had accepted money from the "AI" industry.  One-quarter even said they would switch parties to support a candidate who takes a strong anti-"AI" stance.

Most voters hate "AI"-faked ads as well.

Would you want this guy around your kids?

The parasite oligarchy has banded together to fight California's proposed wealth tax.  With all that they're doing, it'll be a huge win for people power if it passes.

The kind of idiots who still use Google for searches tend to just read the error-riddled "AI" summary instead of following links to sites with real information.  The problem for Google is, it's losing them ad money.

Hell no, I have too many logins and passwords already.  If Reddit goes through with this I'll just go read something else.

"Palestinians got 75% of Mandate Palestine.  They were offered ALL of Gaza and 96% of the West Bank (plus 4% of Israel proper!) multiple times and turned it down or walked away because their precondition of the Jewish nation ceasing to exist was not met."

What an arrogant asshole.  I assume he'll be voted out at next opportunity.

Labor organizer Dolores Huerta has died.  She was 96.

"If people started trying to decenter black people from what they experienced in the jim crow era....."

Here are some of the experiences of voters from various parts of the country.

In the Montana Senate race, Democrat Alani Bankhead is acting as a spoiler, undermining independent Seth Bodnar's chances of beating Republican Kurt Alme.  This is an example of how the two billionaire-dominated parties de facto collaborate to thwart the rise of independents, just as they de facto collaborated against the people's voting rights earlier this year by gerrymandering states they each controlled.  Bodnar is not such an economic populist as Nebraska's Osborn, but he's a true common-sense independent, supporting abortion rights and gun rights and opposing tariffs and data centers.

Tech stocks fell dramatically this week, with Intel down 28.6% on Friday alone and Alphabet down 12% on Thursday.  Tech stocks in Asia have fallen too.  The declines seem driven by growing investor realization that "AI" will never generate anywhere near enough revenue to cover its gargantuan costs, leading to fears that this could be the start of the long-awaited collapse of the "AI" bubble.

"You don't care about genocide.  There is no genocide in Gaza.  But there is genocide in Sudan, in Tigray, in Myanmar, in China ... and you haven't done a damn thing about these genocides while wailing about a nonexistent genocide in Gaza."

NRO wonders whether Republicans will actually learn from their near-certain-defeat next week, as opposed to taking refuge in the usual "Democrats stole it" bullshit.

The struggle against data centers is on the ballot in many parts of the country.

Hackers have released vast amounts of information about more than forty thousand employees of ICE and other parts of DHS.

A large Democratic majority in the House will be better than a small one, because it will be less beholden to the nutball fringe since it can pass things without them.

"[AI] technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech..... there are still no signs of AI boosting productivity growth."

In the Canadian province of British Columbia, the Conservative party has won power for the first time since 1928.

Sorry, nothing but the death penalty would have been sufficient here.

You cannot win if you cannot even name the enemy.

Last weekend Ukraine launched a massive drone attack on the Belgorod city center.  Here is the city's shopping mall now.  The attack happened at night, when the mall was closed, to avoid targeting civilians.

Smoke from this burning refinery turns the Russian sky almost surreal.

Watch Ukrainian drone hits on a variety of smaller targets.  More similar attacks here.

It's lucky that she took Mom's call.

This is one of Russia's biggest chemical factories.  Hate to think what kind of stuff must be in all that smoke.

See damage from an earlier attack on this military parts factory in Yelets.

Scratch one helicopter.

Explosions and fire are seen in Omsk after an attack apparently targeting the local oil refinery.  Omsk is about fifteen hundred miles from the Ukrainian border.

Watch a Russian tank unit get spectacularly destroyed.

80% of Ukrainians support continuing strikes against Russian oil facilities, even if the US cuts aid as a result.

Netanyahu backstabs the UK over the Falkland Islands.

This is the reality of Gaza.

The Alawite religious minority in Syria (an offshoot of Shiite Islam) was dominant under the regime of Asad, who was himself an Alawite.  Now, under the new Sunni regime, Alawite women are being targeted for systematic sexual abuse.

The Saudi Arabian regime has executed Hassan Zaki al-Faraj for participating in a peaceful protest when he was fourteen.

Brazilians take to the streets to celebrate Lula's election win.

The Chinese stock market has lost almost two and a half trillion dollars in value since May, mostly due to the collapse of "AI" and tech companies.

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

My posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, and a few last election thoughts.

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The thing about elections is that somebody always wins -- "none of the above" is not an option that exists in reality.  If you refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils, you increase your risk of getting the greater.

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Peltola recruiting a second Dan Sullivan may have been slightly unethical, but I can't believe some Democrats are making a fuss about it.  Seriously, you've got a jihadist sympathizer running on your ticket in Michigan and you're worrying about this?

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My personal nightmare vision of the future is that the "AI" bubble never collapses and "AI" just continues to exist -- that we never stop seeing "AI"-generated pictures and "AI" fake writing and all the rest of the slop, it just goes on and on.  Luckily, this seems unlikely to happen.

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Reminder -- tomorrow (Sunday) morning we'll need to set our clocks back one hour again because our useless Congress cannot get its act together and put a stop to this one damn thing that pretty much everybody in the country, left or right, hates doing.

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For about a month I've suffered from chest pains after drinking alcohol.  This week I had such a severe episode that I ended up going to the emergency room.  After doing a variety of tests, the doctor concluded it was not a heart problem (so I guess the world will be stuck with me for a bit longer than I thought), but another issue related to alcohol.  Nevertheless, the chest pains are a severe nuisance, and it would be stupid to keep on drinking until I do develop a heart condition.  Also, the alcohol is undoubtedly what's keeping me overweight -- I eat pretty healthy otherwise.

I've "quit" drinking before, but this time feels different.  It really no longer appeals to me.  This time I'm not going back to it.

o o o o o

o o o o o

A few last election thoughts

The feeling of confidence in a "blue wave" that I'm seeing all over the left political internet is giving me really strong flashbacks to 2024.  Don't forget that polls can be wrong -- even far wrong.  Some of them were far wrong in 2024.  Some of them have been in this year's primaries.  The Democrats will probably win the House majority -- it would be astonishing if they didn't, under current circumstances -- and it's certainly possible they'll get a large majority and also win the Senate.  But remember, nothing is guaranteed.

I've already said what I consider to be the most important races to watch next week.  But in fact, the real significance of this election comes down to just the first two -- Osborn's Senate campaign in Nebraska and the billionaire wealth tax in California.  If they both lose, then even a big Democratic win will be just another ordinary alternation of power between the two big parties, such as have happened back-and-forth many times over the last few decades without any noticeable impact on the fundamental problem of growing concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny parasitic oligarch class and deepening privation among the masses.  It would mean a wait of, at the least, two more years for the next chance at real change.

But if Osborn and the wealth tax both win, it will signal the start of a true break-out from the old pattern.  It will mean that large numbers of voters -- majorities in two very different states -- have at least begun to see through the surface conflict between the two parties (nearly meaningless now that they both are dominated by billionaire donors) to the deeper fundamental reality of the class struggle, and are starting to fight back against the oligarchy.  Sending a hard-core economic populist to the Senate, and directly taxing billionaire wealth in the largest and richest state in the country, will constitute acts of head-on popular resistance to the oligarchy's power, in a way that a mere transfer of offices in Washington from one billionaire-dominated party to the other never could.

Current polling is mixed.  In Nebraska, the most recent poll that Electoral-Vote found worthy of inclusion had Osborn leading 48% to 41%, but most other recent polls have shown it much closer.  The California wealth tax now seems to be headed for defeat, perhaps not surprising since the billionaires have spent nearly half a billion dollars on propaganda against it, as well as putting up their own scam initiatives (41 and 42) which, if successful, would negate the wealth tax even if it passes.  But polls are not elections.  Either one of these races could still go either way.

But whatever happens, I still take heart from the ongoing and vigorous grassroots campaign against data centers -- itself a determined pushback against the efforts of obscenely-wealthy tech-bro corporate oligarchs to further enrich themselves at the expense of the quality of life of communities across the country, even if it's not explicitly expressed in class-struggle terms much of the time.  This campaign has brought together ordinary people of widely varying political orientations, and the political parties had nothing to do with it -- the rise of the issue took them totally by surprise, and politicians have only reluctantly and grudgingly gotten on board with it since it goes against the interests of their billionaire donors.  It's true populist activism, pushing the parties and politicians rather than following them.

This is not to say that nothing else matters.  It's important to restore and protect abortion rights in those states that will be voting on that issue -- this is a fundamental personal freedom.  It's important to keep El-Sayed and Paxton out of the Senate.  If Texas elects a Democratic governor and/or senator, it would be a clear signal to the Republican party that the path they're on is a dead end and they need to change, as well as breaking the mold of that state's ossified, stagnant one-party politics.  Democratic control of Congress would create a chance to rein in some of Trump's abuses.  All these things, and others, do matter.  But our country's most fundamental problems can be solved only by a vigorous, powerful economic-populist movement.  That's why it's Osborn and the wealth tax that are the true potential game-changers next week.

Truths and inspirations for 26 October 2026

If an image is hard to see or read, right-click and open the link in a new tab for the full-size version.

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

I congratulate the voters of Brazil for refusing to return Bolsonaro to power.  They did not repeat our own country's mistake of 2024.  (Update:  The defeated candidate was actually Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the earlier president Jair Bolsonaro, not the same person.  I had not been following the story closely, being so focused on the rioting in France and elsewhere in Europe, and missed this.  The general point remains valid.)

Here is some of what the barbarians destroyed.

We need to bring back penalties like public whipping for corporate executives in cases of major business corruption.  Imposing fines in such cases is a joke.