Link round-up for 1 November 2020

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

o o o o o

Time for some farting.

It's the universal cartoon caption.

Debra She Who Seeks celebrates Halloween (though not candy corn), complete with costumes.  So do some pet owners.  And cats.

Spooky faces emerge, and a few last Halloween images appear.

You need to play a little game to lure this cat indoors.

Free car wash!

In one situation, antagonizing a cop can pay off.

One goat + basic pool supplies = endless amusement.

I wonder what kind of pilgrimage this badge was for.

The 1950s idea of future electric living wasn't so far off the mark.

Carve that pumpkin, with whatever tool you prefer.

Dancing skeletons go bonkers.

Helium is like money, sort of.

His Halloween was ruined -- until a chance meeting allowed him to be a hero.

The eyes have it.

In the old days, people mostly improvised their own Halloween costumes.

Death rides a pale (and poo-covered) horse.

Punkie Night is a local variant of Halloween (found via Mendip).

OK, so there are some people to whom our constant reminders to vote don't apply.

Shaw Kenawe has a truly scary Halloween post.

The veil is thin.  Honor your ancestors.

This is real, not science fiction.

Her nerves are getting on her nerves.

Apparently National Black Cat Day exists.

No, Marilyn Monroe was not fat.

With enemies this dumb, who needs friends?

Don't say these things to high-risk people suffering through the pandemic (found via By Hook or by Book).

Best MAGA hat ever.

Here's how Bruce Gerencser met a demon.

A blog can be a lifeline to sanity in isolation.

Cartoonists review the week.  More here.

Keep working from home, avoid this kind of bullshit.

Dump on Trump.

Independent bookstores are struggling to survive during the pandemic.

Falwell Jr is suing Liberty University.  More fundie infighting, please.

Imagine if Trump had to apply for a regular job.

Even in rural Ohio, younger people are turning away from religion.

Tom Toles retires from cartooning (found via Hackwhackers).

This is not censorship.

Call me a socialist, but.....

"Good god, what toads are these blithering fuckwits licking?"

Republicans help spread covid-19 in Idaho.  Florida parents sue for the right to help it spread among their kids.

Elon Musk needs to STFU.

Still a timely speech, if you imagine the person he's talking to is Trump.

QAnon is the unified field conspiracy theory.

The fake masculinity of wingnut culture is at war with human feeling.

Don't argue with people on Facebook (applies to blog trolls, too).

Trump was sick before he got covid-19.

There's no atheist agenda, however much fundies rant about it.

Condemn one lie, condemn the other.

Blogger Keith has a few reminders about Trump's character.

DeJoy takes time out from vote suppression for some ordinary corruption.

I keep seeing ludicrous articles like this one claiming that employees are miserable working from home, while actual surveys of actual employees show that overwhelming majorities want to continue it after the pandemic (I've linked to several such).  This idea is being pushed, and pushed hard.  I suspect there's money to be made telling clueless business executives what they want to hear.

Tyrants hate rebellion, and the ultimate tyrant hates it most of all.

Twitterers are fed up with Trump's bullshit (don't miss the parade at the end).

Purity/abstinence culture ruins lives (found via Miss Cellania).

This is what Orwell warned us about -- words re-defined to enforce "correct" thinking, and dissent damned as thoughtcrime.

Covid-19 is raging out of control in the Dakotas.

Trumpism is simply who Evangelicals are.

On the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, it's American women who are poised to save the world from Trump and his party.

This is luxury grievance.

Another church, another stupid viral outbreak.

If you think the hard-core Trumpanzees can be persuaded back to reality, read this, or watch the video.

The swastika has a long pre-Nazi history, though I'd argue that it's now irredeemably tainted by the Nazi association.

On debt, there's one set of rules for ordinary people and another for rich assholes.

No, you can't just self-identify as anything you want, not and make it stick.

Russia legalizing abortion in 1920 started Satan's 100-year rule and now Coathanger Coney will end it, or something like that (these people are nuts).

They stabbed him 27 times for telling them to wear masks (these people are nuts).

Forget the Cletus safaris, they're just assholes.  If we win big, we must show them no mercy (must-read).

Barr's authoritarianism is rooted in his Catholicism.  The Republicans are now more like an eastern-European-style authoritarian-nationalist party than a normal conservative party in a Western democracy -- see also the next item there for the magnitude of the demographic abyss they face.

Coathanger Coney has already disgraced the Supreme Court.  More options here for fixing it.  Schumer has had it up to here with Moscow Mitch, and he's not alone.  Here's a reminder from Elizabeth Warren.

The global "elite" is full of loathsome, boring, untalented people who were merely born lucky.

Work hard, get dementia (click through to the actual study too).

NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe is bringing a sample of asteroid material back to Earth (found via Hackwhackers).

"We're not going to control the pandemic" -- but Canada did.

An American fundie brings US-style covidiocy to Wales.

A Conservative member of the British Parliament is banned from some eateries in his constituency for voting against school meals, while a notorious coddler of anti-Semitism finally faces some consequences.

Solve homelessness and drug addiction the Scandinavian way.

Murderous Islamic terrorism strikes again in France as the nation moves to deport extremists in response to the Samuel Paty murder.  Turkey's fascistic president whines about blasphemy, while hate-filled religious mobs in Bangladesh and the West Bank offer displays of tedious rage.  Sorry, assholes, "the more you threaten the more we think your religion sucks."

Poland's near-total abortion ban sparks protests against the root of the problem -- the Catholic Church.

Russia lays claim to a vast new territory even more inhospitable than Siberia.

Egyptian women are making some progress against the country's rape problem, but there's a lot to be done.

If you're a woman, you might want to stay the hell away from Qatar.

Japan's new prime minister commits to net zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050.

The former prime minister of Malaysia is an asshole.

Trump's campaign ends in whining and self-pity.  Waaah, waaah, the media are so unfair to him.

Republicans prepare to challenge individual ballots, maybe including yours.  There's no negotiating with terrorists.  Vote-suppression efforts are backfiring by making people angry.

Yes, woke-ism and political correctness are dangerous, but that's not a reason to vote for Trump.

Endorsements tell the story.

Young people are voting in unprecedented numbers, at least in Texas.

Stealing an election is a lot harder than you think.  Election security is better than ever.  The ACLU, which has grown five-fold (!) during Trump's term, is ready to take action if he tries anything.

The New York Crank has voted, but it was neither easy nor pleasant.

Even if we don't win Texas this time, it will never again be solid Republican.

More links here.

[Three days left to vote -- today, Monday, and Tuesday!]