05 September 2021

Link round-up for 5 September 2021

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

o o o o o

How many cookies do you need?

A truckload of rice triggers a day of drama.

I don't think this is a standard medical procedure.

Look at it backwards.

See a dick pic from the dawn of time.

Airlander 10 is an aircraft made for photo-manipulation (found via Miss Cellania).

These sausages are so small.....

Annoyingly, cats fall asleep in the most inconvenient place.

Nineteenth-century British porn was, well, like this.

Be careful when you follow the masses.

Get lunch here.

God is in his Heaven, encased in a cube of gelatin.

The future isn't what was hoped for, and that may be a good thing.

I guess this was meant to be an anti-smoking ad (the French caption says "smoking is being a slave to tobacco").

Trae Crowder deals with the horse-dewormer nonsense.  Maybe we should try to promote a different horse accessory (found via Hackwhackers).  Or, just let it happen.

Here's how to do a pretty convincing home-made volcano, but frankly the first two brief simulations, and the bottle at 2:50, look to me like depictions of something else.

How can she be older than I am and look thirty years younger?

Green cat here, blue cats here.  Then there's this one.

Three species have fun together.

Most depressing explanation of UFOs ever.

One root, two words.

Your stories don't need to be for everyone.

Some are already counting the days to Halloween.  Very cool witch hats here.

Esme's Cloud is bedeviled by tales yearning to be told.

Wordifull Melanie defies a bully in verse.

Here's what the surf looks like from underneath.

This is Lofoten in Norway.

This is Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

This is the planet Jupiter.

Drip, drip, drip.

This animal exists.

Artists depict alien worlds.

The Lone Animator, creator of the "Ghooric Zone" video I posted last week, has made a panoramic portrait of the various critters appearing in the film.

Don't waste energy on trolls -- let them leave empty-handed.

An extra set of headphones can be very useful.

Why did God create people?

So many selfies.....

Shitty fake art is shitty.

Know what kind of plant you are.

See the work of a real artist who lived ten thousand years ago.

Learn the dramatic story of the Gimli glider of 1983.

In reality, the T-rex sounded very different from the roars heard in Jurassic Park.

Lo Imprescindible looks at Christian music (the video at the beginning is also pretty interesting).

Afghan street artist Shamsia Hassani evokes the evils besieging her country.

Easy-to-understand graphics illustrate how disease spreads, and why the delta variant is so much more dangerous than the original covid-19 (found via Nan's Notebook).

Why do we tolerate places that look like this?

Well-regulated militiamen train for battle (found via Hackwhackers).

Religion is baloney.

Holding your urine too long is unhealthy.

Education and learning aren't really well understood.

In 2020, renewable energy accounted for 21% of US electricity generation.  There's a long way to go, but we're making progress.

Did Joe Rogan really take ivermectin?

Interesting point here about the usage of the "Karen" slur.

With chronic pain, even a good day isn't all that good.

Republicans never miss a chance to be pointlessly evil.

Watch Bruce Gerencser's speech to Atheists of Florida -- from fiery fundie pastor to self-aware atheist.

No, you dingbat, you do not have "authority" over hurricanes.

This person exists.

Be the wet wood, not the dry kindling (found via Yellowdog Granny).  Remember who is vaccinated and who is not -- and who is filling up the hospitals, like this one in Idaho.  Save your sympathy for those who deserve it, not for those who suffer the consequences of their own stupidity (found via Miss Cellania).  Covidiocy is turning the red states into plague spots, making life unsafe for the few sane people there.

More covidiots here, plus a good chef and an old shark.

Religio-nutter self-pwns by "reviewing" book he didn't even read.

TRA nutter self-pwns by misunderstanding Harry Potter.

At least here in Oregon, hospitality workers' wages are improving as the shortage of willing workers starts to bite.

Ivermectin is becoming its own mini-pandemic.

It's very fortunate that Christians don't really follow the Bible.

Now these scumbags are defending sending rape threats to a 13-year-old.

It's 2021 and some people still literally believe in demonic possession.

Don't turn the Texas abortion law into a race or class issue -- it's a religious war on women, period.  And it's even worse than you've heard.  If you need an abortion, this information may help.  Or, claiming a psychological emergency may work.  The abortion snitch system is already being attacked by pro-freedom activists, and one "religious" group is fighting the law (found via Nan's Notebook).  Maybe it's time to boycott the state -- list of Texas-based companies here.   Momentum is building.  Biden has condemned the law, but what's needed now is concrete action.

Lyft and Uber say they will cover the legal fees of drivers who are sued under the Texas law.

Anti-abortion fanatics have no understanding of the circumstances which often drive women to seek the procedure.

The term "intersex" has been hijacked by ideology and should be abandoned.

What if people don't want a "career"?  (What sane person would?)

Teachers in Michigan face the dual threat of coronaviruses and deranged Trumpanzees.  In Pennsylvania, this asshole is even threatening the school board.

No, misogyny did not originate with colonialism.

Felony charges have been filed against the man in the Wi Spa incident -- who turns out to be a registered sex offender with prior indecent-exposure convictions.  Remember the names of all those "news" sites that claimed this incident didn't happen or was a hoax (links to some of their posts in this thread), and never, ever trust them again.

Nurses and doctors report from the covid-19 front linesHere is another.  It's no wonder so many are quitting.

Here is a dramatic time lapse video of hurricane Ida (found via Hackwhackers).  New Orleans is in a real mess.  It seems very bad design that the electricity for such a large area was dependent on a single tower.  Here are places to donate to help hurricane victims.

A California women's prison responds to the public backlash against mixing male inmates in with the women -- by suspending condom distribution.  Three of the four male inmates already in the women's prison are HIV-positive.

Anti-vax thugs in the South are threatening and attacking vaccination sites -- yes, even RedState disapproves, but check out some of the comments on the article.  These people are not about individual freedom of choice.

QAnon qrackpottery slowly fades away.

Is Rowling "transphobic"?

Covid-19 is surging disastrously in Hawaii -- as usual, almost entirely among the unvaccinated.

This is one of the US Marines killed in the Kabul terrorist attack.

Globally, at least 115,000 health-care workers had died of covid-19 as of May.

Seems a lot of Brits are getting tired of the narcissistic pronoun nonsense.

In Scotland, free speech gets prosecuted, but actual threats don't.

A covidiot campaign in Australia and New Zealand to get truckers to shut down those countries in protest of pandemic mandates -- much talked-up on some US wingnut blogs -- has fizzled out with little effect.

Stop legitimizing Islamist repression of women as "culture".

"The extremists are afraid of books and pens. The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women."  Any one of these women is worth a hundred sniveling Western Islam-apologists.

Culture?  The Taliban have just murdered a popular folk singer.  But the country they've just taken over is very different than when they ruled it twenty years ago.

Beware of fake news -- recent reports that the Taliban hanged a man from a helicopter are not accurate.  One refugee claims that they are raping dead women (with their penchant for executions, perhaps they anticipate a shortage of live ones?), but some right-wingers' assertions that Islam endorses necrophilia are based on misunderstandings of one hadîth and on a book, the Kanz al-'Ummâl, which Muslims do not accept as authentic.

A huge volunteer clean-up transformed a beach in India from a garbage dump to a safe turtle hatchery.

More here on China's "lying flat" movement.  In a totalitarian state, dropping out is the only safe way to rebel.  The regime is banning "effeminate" men from the media and otherwise trying to fascist-ize popular culture.

UN peacekeepers in Haïti left the locals a few mementos of their presence.

More links at Fair and Unbalanced.

o o o o o

My own posts this week:  Afghanistan before Islamist extremism, effective freedom of speech, what religious rule in Afghanistan really looks like, and what's revolutionary about the Texas abortion law.

[Image at top:  Afghan artist Shamsia Hassani]

10 Comments:

Blogger SickoRicko said...

The good, the bad, the ugly. My favorite was the ammosexual shooting the other.

05 September, 2021 10:44  
Blogger Daal said...

I just read a book you might enjoy? - Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich. perhaps you're familiar with another book she wrote called nickel & dimed?

05 September, 2021 14:33  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

May I ask something?

You were born in the early sixties, years before Stonewall. Even in the 70s and 80s, gays and lesbians were widely seen in a negative light.

So how did you break through those messages and become accepting of them (people, not messages)?

05 September, 2021 20:41  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Ricko: Actually, he just shot his cap off. If the guy's head had come up an inch or two higher, he'd be dead. Guns should always be handled carefully.

Daal: I'll check into that one. Haven't heard of either title, though of course I've heard of Ehrenreich.

06 September, 2021 00:30  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Anon: For one thing, I grew up in a non-religious home, which was unusual at the time. So I didn't have as much opportunity to absorb the taboos on homosexuality. Then, at university, there were two gay men I got to know very well. It is much harder to demonize a group when you know some members of the group as individuals.

I've always been interested in ancient Greco-Roman culture, which is the true root culture of the West, and well aware that that culture did not have anything like the Christian taboo on homosexuality. I've always considered Christianity and its taboos as an alien infection in our culture, which needs to be expunged.

On legal rights, I've kind of gone back and forth over time. Back when homosexual activity was actually illegal, it was always obvious that such laws were an injustice, since consensual homosexual behavior doesn't interfere with anyone else's rights. It took me some time to come to terms with the idea of same-sex marriage, but again, the key point is that there was simply no valid reason to deny that right to gay people who wished to make use of it. Opening marriage to gay people doesn't violate anyone else's rights or intrude on anyone else's spaces. It's an innovation, but one which brings greater security to some people while taking nothing away from anyone else.

Finally, most of the anti-gay elements in our society are obviously bullies by nature, and I hate bullies. It's still an issue; see for example the renewed problem of pressuring lesbians to accept biological males as sex partners, about which I've included links in the link round-ups occasionally.

There are various reasons why I consider the issue important, but I hope this clarifies things.

06 September, 2021 00:48  
Anonymous Esme Cloud said...

'Mom is making everyone eat food while we wait. Ironically there is no rice on menu' - The rice thread has cracked me up, thank you for the laughter Infidel. I shall peruse the rest soon, and also thank you for the linkage *beams*

- Esme falling off the Cloud laughing at the rice lorry.

06 September, 2021 09:15  
Blogger Lady M said...

Wow - it is incredible to me that the right wing pundits are continuing to spew baloney that will kill their followers. Like suggesting Invermectin as a treatment for covid when we have a safe, efficacious vaccine. I give invermectin to my 1800 lb horse. It has never seemed like a smart idea to have any myself.

06 September, 2021 09:52  
Blogger Lady M said...

On a lighter note, I had to share that ammosexual video around the family - it is just too funny.

06 September, 2021 09:54  
Blogger yellowdoggranny said...

holyshit..that low growl of t-rex was scary as shit..thanks for the shout out..js

06 September, 2021 10:58  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Esme: It's a funny story, and all too plausible.

Thanks for the post! I'd hoped you would be writing again.

Lady M: They'll accept almost any treatment unless it's supported by actual evidence.

If those camo clowns ever actually try to overthrow the government, the biggest threat they'll pose to the US Army is making it laugh its collective ass off.

Granny: Since mammals existed at the same time as T-rex, I've seen speculation that the reason we find that kind of sound so ominous is that ancient mammals developed an instinctive fear of it (since it signaled the approach of a dangerous predator) and the instinctive fear has been passed down genetically to their descendants, including us. Unlikely, I suppose, but it's an interesting idea.

08 September, 2021 03:07  

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