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26 March 2023

Link round-up for 26 March 2023

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

o o o o o

Have some Bible cartoons.

Plowing through Life blog returns from an antibiotic misadventure, with plastic bags, stupid stair climbing, and fashion for the zombie apocalypse.

Librarianship is a dance of grace and elegance.

Learn the nine rules of the Road Runner cartoons.

Time for some animal adventures.

It's a dog's life.

Grab 'em while you can.

An actor must embody his character's motivation.

Maybe it's best not to overthink fairy tales.

Walk on water?  They can run on it.

This bug is too large.

Colorado Springs knows how to do Halloween.

There are four US states where the highways are actually nice.

The next generation will know century-old pop culture.

Mini haunted coffin.

This is a really nice piece of work.  It's remarkable what some people have the skill to make.

Blogger Daal goes shopping in Kolkata, encountering abundant food, malls, and cows.  Also, some advice on translation.

The painter Hubert Robert visualized the world in ruins.

This is the Biblioteca Vasconcelos, a library in Mexico.

This is the town of Chefchaouen, Morocco.

Some things are bigger than the game.

The works of Ursula K LeGuin are about to be vandalized Dahl-style, with the collaboration of family.  Buy 2022 editions or earlier.

If you use "artificial tears", read this -- there are some serious bacterial infections going around that seem to be linked to them.

Stop letting idiots drive cars.

A new, free tool called Glaze is available to protect digital art against AI.

Learn about SA Andrée's failed 1897 balloon expedition to the North Pole.

Traces of a recent glacier have been found on Mars, suggesting that there may still be large amounts of sub-surface water.

Why are wetlands important?

Dilemma schmilemma, just exterminate the fucking things.  It's worth the risk.

More reasons here to switch to Firefox.

See the Putin-Xi summit summed up in one cartoon.

At this point they're just plain bullshitting us.

This aircraft factory had an entire fake town built on its roof (found via SickoRicko).

Sloppy bitcoinery makes some hackers rich.

Let kids disengage when they need to.

The lord is your shepherd, but.....

Man loses weight, professional offended person gets offended.

Strict school attendance policies are stupid.

Are women safe at this fitness center?  It's oddly difficult to find out.

Working from home allowed him to transform his life.

There are reasons why people tend to be gullible.

A lot of job ads are fake.

Not everyone is happy with Twitter's latest service.

Yes, men have a right to express opinions about abortion.

She had the determination to save her child, but it was tough going.

Biden must nominate an FCC commissioner fully committed to net neutrality and citizen privacy.

The residents of Blastrop TX are not happy that one of Elon Musk's companies is planning to dump wastewater in their river.

Denying bullshit and denying facts are not the same.

The Catholic diocese of Albany is being inundated with child-abuse lawsuits after New York state suspended the statute of limitations.

Doctors and nurses are leaving states with forced-birth laws.

Librarians report an unprecedented campaign to get books removed from the shelves.

Businesses are backing off from subjecting their employees to racist "DEI" practices.

Here's a round-up of the various investigations into Trump.  His increasingly-deranged ranting against his likely indictment is just deepening his legal jeopardy.

Don't worry about the news until there actually is some news.

"Valentina" cheats at sports.

Why do some people crave power?

Laid-off workers get revenge.

Republicans' planned spending cuts would be disastrous for tens of millions of Americans.

School workers in Los Angeles win big after a three-day strikeWe don't need to sit and wait for politicians to dole out favors by passing legislation.  We can take action ourselves.

Muskified Twitter is about to face consequences for refusing to pay its bills.

Another woman is now suing Kaiser Permanente after being started on "trans" hormones and surgery at twelve.  Anyone who tells you they aren't doing this stuff to children is either a liar or working very hard to stay uninformed.

Even truck drivers can't escape management spying.

The House is now considering a bill to cut off US aid to countries that discriminate against gays.  You may be surprised at who introduced it.

Politics is getting depressing.

Freedom of speech must apply to everyone, even the worst people.

A champion woman cyclist decides there's no point in staying in the sport now that men are allowed into women's competitions.

Ivermectin was tested on Arkansas prison inmates without their knowledge.  A lawsuit is now moving forward.

Are Democrats turning against Israel?  It's not that simple.

An Idaho hospital is ending all pregnancy-related care, citing danger to doctors from the state's draconian forced-birth law.

Those Republicans who oppose US help to Ukraine are de facto Putin sympathizers.

The Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act is already driving massive investment in clean energy.

If DeSantis runs for president, Florida's covid record needs to be an issue (found via Hackwhackers).

Fed chair Jerome Powell is trying to hide the Fed's culpability in the Silicon Valley bank collapse.  Biden needs to fire him.

Absolute evil does exist, and this is what it looks like (note: disturbing content).

2022 saw the highest level of anti-Semitic incidents in the US since the ADL began keeping track in 1979.  The problem has been getting steadily worse for several years.

The federal Department of Labor acts against flagrant exploitation of workers in New York state.

People speak out on the various reasons they left religion.  This stuff is morally revolting.

In New Zealand, Kellie-Jay Keen's "Let Women Speak" event was attacked by a violent mob (discussion here).  The brownshirts reveal themselves to the world for what they really are.  But in the long run they will fail.

Since France's president Macron forced through his hated "pension reform" raising the retirement age without a legislative vote, protests across France have turned violent, with police and administrative buildings coming under attack.  Macron arrogantly refuses to budge, hypocritically condemning the violence which his own actions made inevitable.

In Switzerland, dozens of minors between the ages of ten and eighteen have undergone surgical "transing".

An independent commission has documented 4,815 victims of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in Portugal, and states that these cases are probably just "the tip of the iceberg".

Not everyone in Russia is falling for official brainwashing.

The Putin regime can't even keep up with payments to its soldiers.  Nor can it deliver weapons to customers who have paid for them, because it's diverting them for its own use in the war.

Russia has recruited violent criminals from prison to fight in Ukraine.  What happens when they go home?

The China-Russia alliance increasingly resembles the Axis coalition of the 1930s.  But Xi is still eager to encroach on what Putin considers Russia's turf.

Russia needs to be crushed and humiliated for the Ukraine invasion.

Misogynists in Brazil compile an enemies list, and also can't spell.

In Afghanistan, schooling for girls continues underground despite the official ban.  The Taliban themselves are increasingly divided on the issue.

An Indian MP has been sentenced to prison on a ludicrous defamation charge, another sign of the Modi government's dangerous lurch toward authoritarianism.

South Korea's government is backing off from a plan to lengthen the work week, after a backlash from unions and younger workers.

More links at Fair and Unbalanced and WAHF.

My own posts this week:  a video on why the US can't be divided, and some truths and inspirations.

o o o o o

[Image at top:  Protest in France.  Mort au roi means "death to the king", while 49.3 is the legal provision Macron used to impose his "reform" without a vote.]

14 comments:

  1. Ahh, Tesla...

    https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/scratched-ev-battery-your-insurer-may-have-junk-whole-car-2023-03-20/

    I mainly do web-design but I'm also the local computer hardware guy. If your laptop's battery is knackered then it's pretty much new laptop time. Wasn't always that way. An EV battery is basically a big laptop or phone battery. This is environmentally, economically and in every other way utterly unsustainable. God knows how much of industry is going to have to be LiPo production to hit a sort of "mythical net-zero"* by making everything electric that way.

    *Mythical in the sense that you have to factor in the production. But that's all going to happen in China anyway so...

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  2. "Grab 'em while you can." That was funny! And I agree, just exterminate those damn mosquitos! What an interesting and fun round-up. I always enjoy the diversity. From funny links to very serious ones, you've got it all!

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  3. Always plenty to peruse. Thank you for linking to me.

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  4. The Ursula K Le Guin thing is odd. Especially if you have read the "Left Hand of Darkness" which I thought was bloody brilliant*. Apparently I had heard Le Guin had kinda regretted using male pronouns for the bi-gendered inhabitants of Winter... But, also, it was published in 1969 and therefore it will be public domain not that long from now... That might be a very compelling financial reason for the family to have an interest in a re-jig. Especially if movie/TV stuff comes into play...

    The odd thing about Le Guin is her SF has historically got a lot of stick from males for not being "hard" (in the SF sense) enough. I think it's very hard -the very minimal dodge of the ansible being the very notable exception. I could write a lot more on that but...

    *I found it in a second hand bookshop in Manchester a few years ago. I thought, "I vaguely recall liking, '"A Wizard of Earthsea' as a kid and it's 50p so..." One of the best 50 pennies I ever spent.

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  5. NickM: Tesla has done a great deal of harm by damaging the reputation of electric cars. Musk rushed the car into production before the engineers had quite finished inventing it.

    I'm not familiar with Le Guin's work, other than The Dispossessed. But if I ever do read any more of her novels, I want to read them the way she wrote them, not some vandalized, sanitized pabulum. Changes in morality and standards don't stop at the present moment. Are we going to end up re-writing all our literature every half-century to fit whatever each new period decides is offensive or not?

    Martha: You may have noticed that the "grab 'em" video was captioned as video of the Silicon Valley Bank run. But I really doubt that the tech-bro types could have mustered the dignity and restraint shown in the video.

    I suspect the Africans who suffer the most from mosquito-borne diseases would be baffled and impatient about Western hand-wringing over wiping out the pests.

    Ricko: Thanks for posting about the factory disguise.

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  6. Very quick Google...

    "The mosquito is the single deadliest, most dangerous animal in the world and also one of the smallest. Mosquitoes are estimated to cause between 750,000 and one million human deaths per year."

    Sharks kill about 10.

    I think that's about the same number as those killed by chiropractors. (look it up).

    In the USA you are roughly twice as likely to be killed by a vending machine than a shark.

    Unlike vending machines (or chiropractors) sharks don't tend to charge for the service.









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  7. How many years you’ve been doing this, infidel? You seem to have quite an impressive following. Thanks for including me 😎

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  8. NickM: I can think of a few people I'd pay a shark to eat.

    Reaganite: I started this blog in August of 2006, so it's about sixteen and a half years old. Of course, building up an audience takes time. Thanks for posting the cartoon, it sums up Putin's ignominy well.

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  9. but wait - now I want to know what are those birds, why are they running, & why so fast lol

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  10. I think if they stopped running -- that is, stopped pushing off hard from the water with each step -- and just stood still or walked slowly, they'd sink. As to why they're running instead of flying, no idea. The expression "bird brain" comes to mind.

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  11. I cannot watch those teens drive those cars - I was having heart palpitations.

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  12. Wetlands are so important for so many reasons - flood control, wildlife habitat, filtering and cleaning water, carbon sinks (the peat bogs), and bird migration. I am sure I am forgetting a multitude of other valuable characteristics. Why are developer being allowed to still destroy them??

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  13. I think those are flightless birds that are running in the water not on it. My guess would be the videographers are driving an air boat which can operate in very shallow water. They look like ostriches to me hence why they do not fly.

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  14. The car videos are pretty scary. Let's hope they learned their lesson about being careful.

    Unfortunately the regulations on development are probably set much more based on short-term financial considerations than on science. Things will change when people find they can't get flood insurance on these places. Insurance companies are one of the few big-money interests that has to look to problems far down the road to protect their own bottom line.

    That would make sense about the birds being flightless. They do look like ostriches, but if something the size of an ostrich can run on water like that, it would be amazing. The water doesn't look like it could be so shallow they're just running on the bottom.

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