03 April 2022

Link round-up for 3 April 2022

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

o o o o o

He will pack a snack.

Ah, those backwards days.....

It's Putin's war, Gilbert-and-Sullivan style.

Little sign of brains at work here.

See (and smell) the ultimate in faith healing.

A new grocery store is coming.

The elephant loves peanuts.

Amazing make-up effects here.

Never put too much weight at the back end of a trailer.

Weirdest criminal ever.

Handy tip here for visiting a park.

It's big enough for the bird.

I want to go on a date with her.

The jester or "fool" is a tradition with a complex history.

Star Wars depicts a society where only death and destruction are important, and all the non-military technology is crap.

It's a space shark!

SickoRicko remembers the great HR Giger, with some art pieces I haven't seen before.

See video of New York, London, Paris, and other cities in 1920.

Always buy real printed books.

This is Fall River, Massachusetts.

This is the Dasht-e Kavîr desert in eastern Iran.

Air travel has changed.

These creatures exist.

For survival, kick hard.

Stay the hell away from deer.

Interesting trees here (he's been posting them all week).  More here on the "root bridges".

Why is one-third of France severely underpopulated?

See clothes inspired by various sub-Saharan African cultures.

The California gold rush left vast amounts of toxic waste.

Learn how large the meteor that killed the dinosaurs was.

It's not "inclusivity", it's.....

Why don't you trust Jesus?

Choose the "intelligent" option.

Dealing with dementia is very tiring (this sounds so-o-o-o familiar).

The new Trump "Truth Social" app is already turkeying out.

They use the same tactic when threatened.

Don't use the enemy's language.  Don't use the enemy's language.

Shitty bosses are shitty.

There were no video games back then.

Awesome response to "April fool" bullshit here.

Political orientation doesn't define you (unless you're effectively a cheaply-programmed robot).

If you live in Texas but support Putin.....

Dragging workers back to offices is a pointless return to an inferior system.

Why is Biden driving up gas prices in all these places?

If only solving global warming were this easy.

Autistic people sometimes experience selective mutism, a sudden inability to speak in particular situations.

If you want to be more attractive, just contract toxoplasmosis (found via Miss Cellania).

An entire Pacific island is being dedicated to the cryptocurrency scam.  The scheme will replace (and presumably destroy) a preserve for endangered coconut crabs.

Read of how "the perfect man" got married.

The Hunter Biden laptop thing is still a big nothingburger.

How did transgenderism become politicized?

No apologies for ridiculing religion.

Here's why (well, part of why) Amazon's obscenely-expensive Rings of Power series will be terrible.  I've seen a lot of videos about this and it looks like an epic disaster.

If abortions are prevented by force, what kind of outcomes can the resulting children expect?

This is not justice.

The important thing is what you're doing, not who you are.

Religion has rules.

In Utah, at least, girls' sports are still for girls.

The Great Resignation is still ongoing.

Workers on Staten Island form the first union at an Amazon facility in the US (found via Hackwhackers).

The Republican lunatic fringe is just getting crazier and crazier (this is funny).

When science is politicized, it's no longer science at all.  When science is influenced by religion, you get, well, this.

Raise a legitimate question, get a torrent of abuse.

Stem-cell technology offers hope for a cure for diabetes.

Congress has clearly learned nothing from the SESTA/FOSTA disaster (found via The Honest Courtesan).

Darwinfish 2 looks at the Ketanji Brown Jackson "soft on kiddie porn" smear, plus a few other items.  She will be an educational presence on the Supreme Court.

Apparently this doctor abused a patient for expressing a "wrong" opinion.  She has been reported.

The Republican party officially supports Ukraine, so why is there so much wingnut support for Putin?

No matter how loyal you are to a totalitarian ideology, the moment you dare any dissent at all, you too will be canceled.

A new California law could force farms to treat their pigs slightly less hideously.  Needless to say, big meat hates it.

Marijuana can be a winning issue for Democrats, if they seize upon it.

It's smart to go slow on indicting Trump.

Brandeis university takes a stand against anti-Semitism.

Putting men in women's prisons is immoral and dangerous (a growing number of US states are doing this).

The anti-vax trucker convoy is giving up and going home (probably to wash their pants).

He's an expert on homelessness.

Multiple cities show support for Ukraine.

The Great Resignation is still underway in many countries, not just the US.

The BBC decides to speak English (people insisted).

A man brutally abused by false accusations finally gets some justice, though a few thousand pounds hardly seems like enough, and the people responsible really should go to prison.

British women cyclists fended off a looming Lia-Thomas-type situation by threatening a mass boycott, despite earlier efforts to bully them into silenceMore here.

France has been doing better than the US in upholding freedom of expression.

A Ukrainian blogger responds to various forms of whataboutism.

The bodies of hundreds of Ukrainian civilians murdered by Russian soldiers have been discovered in the recently-liberated Kyiv suburbs.

A prominent Russian blogger calls for an armed uprising against the Putin regime.

Ukraine has every right to retaliate against Russia's own territory.

Covid-19 is hammering China hard despite its draconian policies.  People who think US covid-suppression measures are "anti-freedom" should check out what China does.

More links at Fair and Unbalanced, The Psy of Life, and Miss Cellania.

o o o o o

My own posts this week:  a Texas tale of dynamite, shit, and stupidity, some more "dream world" images, and authoritarianism as a formula for failure.

[Image at top:  HR Giger (rhymes with "eager", not with "tiger", please note) at work]

15 Comments:

Blogger SickoRicko said...

Thank you for the correct pronunciation of Giger, I never knew. Dealing with dementia was very sad, and I got that Bill Mahr was issuing a warning more than making fun. Scary prospects for the future of this country. And, thanks for referencing my blog.

03 April, 2022 11:55  
Blogger Mary Kirkland said...

I've been seeing a lot of the pictures coming out of Ukraine and it's awful. It's hard to wrap your head around all the hell these people are going through.

That's one of the reasons I like print books much more than ebooks. I don't buy ebooks, ever. I either win them, get the free ones from Amazon, get ARC's from publisher's and authors for reviews or I borrow them from friends using Amazon. I do buy print books though because they are mine and can't be taken away.

I think there are going to be a lot of kids being abused that we will hear about when it's either too late, or when they get older because they were forced to have these kids instead of having the abortion they wanted.

03 April, 2022 12:36  
Blogger Mike said...

Selective mutism, interesting. Sometimes I wish I had it.

03 April, 2022 21:44  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Ricko: Giger's name is often mispronounced in the US, but the vowel "i" standing alone is always pronounced like the vowel in "sin" or "seen" in German, never as in "sign". There is a word that's pronounced "guy-ger" (rhyming with "tiger"), but it's spelled "Geiger" and means "fiddler" (type of musician).

I dealt with my mother's advancing dementia for years. It's a tragic and stressful situation to be in.

Mary K: I think we should escalate the kinds of weapons we're giving the Ukrainians so they can liberate the rest of their territory more quickly. With such atrocities going on, people can't be left under Russian rule. The Russians have also been abducting large numbers of Ukrainians and transferring them to Russia. We'll need to force them to return all those people, which may mean keeping sanctions in place even after the war is over, until they fully cooperate. I can't imagine accepting Putin staying in power now.

It's insane that these e-book peddlers can just take things back like that, even if they give refunds. They must think customers will tolerate anything.

Mike: I find it's easy enough to simply refrain from talking, if one prefers not to. Having one's ability to speak freeze up like that when one needs to communicate, must be terrifying.

04 April, 2022 01:53  
Blogger Pliny-the-in-Between said...

Thanks for the occasional shout out in your round-up. Other than when you provide a link, my site is the Tristan Da Cunha of the Internet.

04 April, 2022 10:11  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

That's unfortunate -- it deserves more attention. Keep on keeping on.

04 April, 2022 11:13  
Blogger Martha said...

You always share the most interesting links and such a variety, too! I can't wrap my head around anyone supporting Putin. It shouldn't surprise me and yet it does.

04 April, 2022 18:33  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Thanks! As for the American fringe-right types who support Putin, they have a simple formula -- all inconvenient facts are "fake news". I assume they'll say the same about the Bucha killings.

05 April, 2022 02:41  
Anonymous Annie said...

Thanks for mentioning my post about Judge (soon-to- be-Justice) Jackson. So good that after all the disgusting attacks. 3 Republicans have figured out which side of history to be on.

And a shout-out to the Staten Island Amazon unionists. May their numbers multiply throughout the US!

05 April, 2022 13:11  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

It's encouraging that even three Republicans are voting to confirm when McConnell has pretty firmly signaled his opposition.

Unionizing under Amazon is a hell of an accomplishment. I hope many other Amazon locations follow their example.

06 April, 2022 00:51  
Blogger yellowdoggranny said...

I feel guilty..I've felt so shitty I haven't read any of them...need a shot of whiskey and a bullet to bite on

06 April, 2022 07:42  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Don't forget it takes me a whole week to accumulate them each time.....

06 April, 2022 21:23  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Would you be interested in this twitter thread ? It's the funniest thing I've read this week.

07 April, 2022 14:43  
Blogger jenny_o said...

Thank you once again for the link, Infidel. I wondered if it was your mom whose dementia you experienced and see in your reply to Ricko that it was. I'm sorry you had to go through that.

I'm working my way through the links. Always interesting, as usual. I am blown away by the video of 1920s cities, and am currently down the rabbit hole created by watching that one. The same channel has video from 1906 San Francisco, four days before the earthquake and fires, and it's amazing how much MORE chaotic it is than even the 1920s one! I don't think drivers needed licenses in the early days, though, did they? Might account for some of the hair-raising driving on display! One of my mother's often-recounted stories (!) is of seeing the first car in her home town, driven by the principal of the school. She said the car had no top or sides, and he gripped the steering wheel with both hands and stared straight ahead, not smiling or acknowledging all the crowd that came to watch. I imagine he might have been pretty nervous.

07 April, 2022 16:52  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Anon: Yeah, I've seen that -- kind of funny.

Jenny_o: That's right, it was my mother. Dementia is a terrible thing to deal with, and of course far worse for the person actually suffering from it.

Hackwhackers blog posts those videos of early film from various cities every so often. I suppose it did take a while to introduce driver's licenses. When cars were new and rare, it wouldn't have been obvious what was the best way to regulate them. We still haven't entirely figured it out. I think we need to make the enforcement for bad driving a lot tougher -- things have been going downhill lately.

07 April, 2022 21:06  

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