02 January 2022

Link round-up for 2 January 2022

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

o o o o o

First, Vagabond Scholar's Jon Swift Roundup of the best blog posts of the year is posted.

Unusual tree pics here (somewhat NSFW).

Cats are agents of chaos.

Know how to do CPR -- I don't think this is correct.

Perfect way to choose a Christmas present!

Oh yeah, right, doing a headstand.

Lamentably, the Hawaii orgasm fungus seems to be a myth.

It's a gingerbread existential crisis.

The game ended when a clear winner emerged.

I'd consider this a good review, not a bad one.

Choose a more entertaining option than "eat the rich".

Seventeenth-century wingnut offers conspiratard warning (found via Hackwhackers).

What's the difference between an atheist and an evangelical Christian?

Celebrate year-end with a few cartoons from France.

How to humiliate your dragon.

Mr Menno has a song for international pronouns day.

Have some rotating cow brushes.

Nice little horror story here (found via Miss Cellania).

We don't need "accommodation" from those who are simply wrong.

I bet this happens a lot.

Good life advice here.

Sometimes you have no real choice.

Well, I wouldn't be there to see it either way.

This is the narrowest city in the world.

Here's a round-up of best books of the year lists.

Farran Smith Nehme analyzes the death of American movies (found via Vagabond Scholar).  She doesn't much like science fiction, but it's a moot point since there are almost no real science fiction movies being made any more.

Reconstruction of ancient Minoan women's clothes here.  You can tell this is from before Christianity.

This huge underground city was built almost three thousand years ago.

The Apollo Moon landings were actually very dangerous.

Smithsonian lists the top ten science stories of 2021 (found via Miss Cellania).  I don't agree that narcissistic billionaire assholes holding dick-measuring contests in space has anything to do with science, but the rest of these are substantive.  More top science stories here.

NASA's Mars helicopter has far exceeded expectations.

The Johnson & Johnson covid-19 vaccine is highly effective against omicron.

Mask tips here.  They aren't all alike.

People dehumanize the homeless.  I've run into such attitudes myself.

Shower Cap blog reviews 2021.

This "trans-species" person (disturbing images) identifies as a reptile and has had physical mutilations done to match (link from commenter NickM).

I've seen this sign posted around the internet, but it's fake.

You're not imagining things -- pop music really is getting more and more bland and homogenous.

Monopolies ruin everything, sometimes even themselves.

No, most "ugly" fruit and produce doesn't go to waste.

Darwinfish 2 examines a last few memes and images (wingnut and otherwise) for the year.

Fake history is "supported" by fake artifacts.

Religion is not analogous to race.

Sometimes assholes get what they deserve (this is glorious).

After Time's fatuous choice of Elon Musk as "person of the year", The Guardian invited its readers to vote for their own choice -- then shut down the vote when they saw who was winning, and pretended it never happened.

The love of money is the root of.....

Observations on the state of things here, addressed to a new parent.

Tumblr is going through another round of deleting anything vaguely sexual, this time at the behest of Apple (short version here).  The vile influence of these giant companies is poisoning the internet.

In fact, just stop buying from Apple at all.

Some wingnuts believe that equality, individualism, and even giving women the vote were bad ideas.

Rise of the machines?  They're actually trying to kill people now.

Don't tell the truth -- it makes us look bad.

You're not obligated to put up with assholes on your own turf.

He thought women are weak (found via Hackwhackers).  He no longer thinks that, or thinks anything.

Expect plenty of flight attendants to join the Great Resignation soon, as the CDC loosens quarantine rules for dubious reasons.

US covidiots keep going down like dominoes, including the QAnon qrackpots who insisted they had anthrax instead of covid-19.

Love is..... (more here, with Palki Sharma snark).  But what about the men?

As Hawaii's tainted-water crisis grinds on, blogger Kay discovers that even commercially-available water filters don't remove petroleum.

Mr Menno's "top surgery song" is funny but also gross and disturbing -- but it's a gross and disturbing issue.

Losing weight can greatly reduce the risk of severe covid-19 if you get infected.

The last few years have seen some decline in "sex-trafficking" hysteria (well, aside from the QAnon conspiratardia).

Yes, we are mostly free, and people who live under religious rule are not.

Even if you survive covid-19, you may not be OK.

Arielle Scarcella discusses OnlyFans and internet harassment.

Contrary to expectations, the new Congressional-district maps look pretty good for the Democrats.

Vigorously criticizing this guy is freedom of speech.  Making threats is not.

Amazon collaborates with the Chinese gangster-regime's censorship.

After two years, everyone is fed up with the pandemic -- but don't give up now.

A venerable institution of fundie bigotry closes its doors.

Not all those quitting in the Great Resignation are permanently retiring -- some are switching to jobs that offer better pay or continued work-from-home.

WoLF posts a guide to bad gender arguments, and debunkings of same.

American work practices seem bizarre to people in other countries.

Conspiracy bullshit is not harmless.

A new lawsuit exposes the hypocrisy of evangelical opposition to anti-covid-19 measures.

This sounds like mental illness to me.

Some slaves fight back.

Watch out for fake news using photographs.

This is how smoking kills you.

According to this, the head of a genocidal fascist regime is the third most admired man in the world (found via Nan's Notebook).

With "allies" like this, who needs enemies?

Scotland didn't quite reach its 2021 target of 100% of electricity coming from renewables, but it came very close.

Sexual-assault victims in Scotland are protesting police plans to record male rapists as being female (and force victims to treat them as such in court).

Trans ideology is more entrenched in Scotland than anywhere else, yet polling shows strong majorities opposing it there.

2021 was a stellar year in the fight to restore gender sanity.

Putin has threatened a "complete rupture" if the West punishes him for invading Ukraine.  He's also shutting down human rights groups and independent media.

The first astronaut from the United Arab Emirates carried a surprising item into space with him.

Traditional misogyny in India drives a wave of sex-selective abortions, resulting in a growing imbalance of the sexes in the population.

Japan is setting up a military hotline with China, to reduce the risk of tensions escalating to war.

South Africa confirms that the surge of omicron cases there is already subsiding.

o o o o o

My own posts this week:  the music of Anna von Hausswolff, and a prediction of victory over covid-19.

[Image at top found via Hackwhackers]

7 Comments:

Blogger SickoRicko said...

I loved the cat video; the narrowest city; and the underground city.

02 January, 2022 11:15  
Blogger NickM said...

Apple is a bizarre personality cult. A cult centred on a dead guy - sound familiar? Jobs was in many ways a very nasty piece of work and Tim Cook was kinda of annointed from Jobs' death-bed like the passing-on of a medieval crown. I hate that every big new Apple release gets covered by UK media showing very middle-class people sleeping rough to get the very first offering from the Apple Store. I have seen that in Manchester where there are a lot of people sleeping rough who can't dream of having a home let alone a GBP1300 phone. And Apple are so fucking sanctimonious in the way they have portrayed themselves as the anti-establishment "rebels" when they have a totally closed OS unlike Windows*. Example: New iPhones don't tend to ship with a charging cable (for environmental reasons) because they want you to use an induction pad for the 'tricity. Problem is they are a massively less efficient way to transfer power... It's bollocks but bollocks that doesn't slip past me (BSc Physics - Nottingham, MSc Astrophysics - London, least said about my PhD...). And then there's Foxconn. Foxconn in China actually builds Apple kit. Foxconn has jail-style anti-suicide nets. Yeah, that's how bad the T&C are for the poor sods in the PRC who actually build your righteous machine.

You want a desktop machine? I build my own (and for clients**) with (low end) stuff I scavenge. Or high end magic out of Taiwan or Japan. Crafted by me and I can make serious kit.

*Yeah, I know - not perfect but I have tried Linux and I want to actually use a computer for stuff rather than being an eternal beta-tester.
**I do other stuff - mainly repairs and data recovery and the like now seeing as desktops have alas become a bit niche with the rise of the laptop.

02 January, 2022 13:55  
Blogger Mary Kirkland said...

Makes me not want to east or make anymore Gingerbread houses. lol
I've never had a cat as a pet but with the stories my friends who do have cats have told me, they are crazy little animals.

02 January, 2022 15:14  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Ricko: I think those cats are demons. They made some incredible messes.

NickM: I'm not that familiar with Apple, but the behavior of some of its devotees does seem cult-like, and their business practices are increasingly arrogant and Amazon-like. I don't think I've ever owned anything from them.

Mark K: Remarkable how an artist can wring so much drama out of something as simple as gingerbread going bad. Dogs have a reputation for being more boisterous than cats, but they don't seem to knock so many things over.

03 January, 2022 06:53  
Blogger Green Eagle said...

"Trans ideology is more entrenched in Scotland than anywhere else..." Well, what do you expect when they let guys wear kilts?

03 January, 2022 09:11  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

I wonder if the men who claim to be women there give up kilts because they're too masculine?

05 January, 2022 01:10  
Blogger yellowdoggranny said...

that meme made me so sad..

11 January, 2022 13:17  

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