Link round-up for 2 April 2023

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

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The cops don't always get their man.

Visual pun-ishment here.

Watch a drive-by shooting as it unfolds.

The second coming of Jesus runs into an unexpected difficulty.

Exercise can be easy if you use the right technique.

Tough cat, cute police car.

I have no idea what these dogs are doing.

Play music with rubber chickens.

And the windows of the heavens were opened, and rain fell upon the Earth.....

Lady M finds some amusing signs.

Sounds like juicy gossip.

Now this is a car crash.

Which of these guys is qualified to be a pastor?

#@!%^$ cats destroy everything.

Clearly, this man is a music critic.

Learn why this British town has no signs with its name on them.

They moved into a mobile home.

Next time, just arrive by car like everyone else.

Let's move the furniture a bit.

Disney princesses face the tough questions.

Think you had a busy day?  Check out what Van Barfoot did on 23 May 1944.

After the train passes, wait for the gate to go up before proceeding.

Do it your own way.  You only get one life to live.

The Wizard of Oz had a sequel.

To today's kids, the recent past is an alien world.

"Brownie Mary" saved many men from pain and left an enduring legacy.

Info here on which forms of birth control are most effective, plus the pros and cons of each.

Besides humans, one other animal uses fire.

See the birth of an iceberg -- and a rainbow.

Must-read of the week:  Why sending humans to Mars is the worst idea ever.  This one should convince even the most deluded true believers.

Agatha Christie's novels are the next target for cultural vandalization (discussion here).  Given how this practice is metastasizing, anyone buying literature more than a couple of decades old should probably seek out older editions just to be on the safe side.

AI-generated writing isn't writing.  But it will very much facilitate the proliferation of bullshit that already plagues us.

In a post written for the UN's World Autism Awareness Day, blogger JohnnyProfane1 explains how artistic creativity has been a lifesaver.

The proliferation of junk AI "art" is driving some real artists to despair.

Should Ukraine hold peace talks with Russia?

Do not plug a flash drive into your computer if you don't know where it came from.

"Archiving" enables you to create a copy of any web page that will be permanently preserved and accessible, even if the original disappears.  You can do it here, here, or here -- they all look identical to me, but there may be some difference I'm not aware of.  Archive copies also eliminate any pop-ups or malware on the original page.  I tested it on one image post and one text post from my own blog, and the results look good.  It takes at least a couple of minutes for each post, so it's not really practical to back up a whole blog this way, but it can be used to safeguard any post or page -- your own or anyone else's -- that a censor or other enemy might especially target for removal.  Discussion here, including links to avoid.

Plastic can't be recycled, and pretending it can be just creates more pollution.

There have been several cases of giant wind power turbines collapsing.  Rushed production to meet high demand, with consequent lax quality control, seems to be the problem.

Gag, retch, barf -- this would put me off eating for a month.

Just say no to socialism.

The kids know what's up.

Lesbians talking with each other is intolerable.

This boss is a complete asshole.  This boss is a complete idiot.  This boss is an idiot asshole.  And this boss..... I don't think there's even a word.

Why is the pope in the hospital?

I have literally seen wingnut blogs claiming that John Fetterman has been replaced by a clone or an actor, based on these two photos.  In reality, Fetterman is doing his job.

"Woke" logic:  (a) Nazis are so evil that absolutely any attack on them is OK; and (b) everybody I don't like is a Nazi.

This person exists (found via SickoRicko).  Yes, he really did say this.  I looked it up.

Faith is arrogance.

AI doesn't just steal art and generate meaningless writing.  It also cuts off medical care for elderly people.

What is the meaning of marriage?

A lawyer bizarrely abused his own autistic client to evoke sympathy.

Arch-wingnut Nick Fuentes displays his deep knowledge of women.

Most millionaires are assholes, and most anti-maskers are assholes, so how assholesque is a millionaire anti-masker?

This was not the best timing by Cenk Uygur.

Some mourn the murderer more than the victims.  And some of the media are jumping the shark.

Why doesn't Fox just settle the Dominion lawsuit?

Here's the status of abortion across the US, and some advice.

Annie Asks You blog assesses the Trump indictment.

This judge bizarrely invoked an old law on slavery as a valid modern precedent (form commenter NickM).

Mississippi's hospitals are running out of money, but its Republican legislators refuse to help by accepting Medicaid expansion.

Some people take "identity" to the point of absurdity.

Yet another revered Catholic leader is exposed as a sexual manipulator.

Republicans had their chance to hold Trump accountable.  They chose not to.

This is racist bullying.

Another proselytizing military officer gets pwned by the MRFF.

Right-wing self-genocide via the rejection of vaccines and other covid precautions continues to take its toll, with the gap in excess deaths between the US and Europe still increasing.

Idaho will soon have a law making it a crime to help a minor girl get an abortion.  State law already allows the man who impregnated a woman to sue the doctor if she gets an abortion, and an amendment is moving forward to allow even rapists to do this.  What a dystopian nightmare.

Trump's own ex-employees celebrated his indictment.

Yet another train derails, this time in Minnesota, causing a large fire and the evacuation of the area within a half-mile radius.

PolitiFact reviews Chris Murphy's statement that 60% of US counties have policies against enforcing state and federal gun restrictions (found via Annie).  The 60% figure is correct, but PolitiFact rates the overall statement only "half true" because "a county cannot refuse to enforce laws, and the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution requires that federal law take precedence over state and local law", and the sanctuary policies are unevenly applied in practice.  But such policies are not laws; they're acts of defiance against unjust laws.  At least a third of US households own guns, and in vast areas of the country, gun culture is mainstream culture.  Most county sheriffs are elected, and could not stay in office if they failed to reject laws that seriously violate the values of most of the people in their counties.  The bottom line is that the left's knee-jerk hatred of gun culture locks the Democratic party out of much of rural America where it should otherwise have a chance.

Police smashed down this rapper's door and raided his house, and are now suing him for invasion of privacy for using security-camera footage of the raid in a music video.

The Republican party isn't what it used to be.

You've heard about the filthy and barbaric Chinese "wet market" that spawned covid -- but this is in the US.

Growing numbers of Americans are rejecting trans ideology.  They're also getting sick of the pronoun nonsense.

It's all-out war between bosses and workers over the former's efforts to drag the latter back to the misery of offices and commuting.

He considers it "admirable" to kill people who don't agree with him.

Millions of gallons of toxic wastewater from East Palestine are being shipped all over the country for "disposal", including being injected into the ground in a Houston suburb.  CDC officials who visited East Palestine after the derailment became sick from exposure to chemicals during their brief stay there.  Claims by the government and the railway that the people living there are safe can only be called absurd.

Two weeks after Biden's approval of the disastrous Willow project, a vast area of the Gulf of Mexico is being opened up for fossil-fuel drilling -- an even bigger setback to the fight against global warming.  Here's a proposed agenda for Biden to actually do some good if he can spare a few minutes from helping oil companies wreck the climate.

This girl died trying to sound the alarm on the Nashville shooting.

DeSantis's latest attack on freedom of the press may backfire against the wingnut fake media.

This is looking more like a terrorist movement than like a civil-rights movement.  This guy advocates throwing acid on women who get out of line, as happens in some Islamic countries.  It's been that way for years.

Republicans continue trying to make voting more difficult.

Of the police departments of the twenty largest US cities, not even one meets international human-rights standards for the use of force.

This prominent conservative judge views the Republican party as a continuing threat to democracy.

Stopping school shootings will require thinking beyond the same old ideas.

Nikki Haley's family had to deal with racism -- which makes her embrace of Republican revisionist history all the more inexcusable.

Nancy Pelosi was a real leader who did much to protect the country against Trump.

A Canadian weightlifter finds a way to protest injustice.

Healthcare in the UK is being ruined by privatization.

A mother criticized Jeffrey Marsh and is now being terrorized by his fans.  If you don't know who Jeffrey Marsh is, there's a video of him about one-third of the way down that page.  Would you want him anywhere near your kids?

More details here on the vicious mob attack on Kellie-Jay Keen in New Zealand; video here (disturbing) and what it really means.  The absurd lie that "words are violence" leads to real violence.  One of the thugs also punched a 70-year-old woman and apparently fractured her skull.

One man who attacked Keen is being sought by police and has fled New Zealand.  Another man involved in inciting the mob violence has been given an award; not everyone's happy.

Since the riot, Tourism New Zealand's official Twitter account has been swamped with negative comments and calls to boycott the country.  Also, a sign of solidarity from San Francisco.

In France, a woman is facing a huge fine for calling president Macron "filth".  So much for free speech.  Just imagine how many Americans would have to be fined if insulting the president were illegal here.  Oh, and Macron is filth.

France's far-right party is gaining support due to its opposition to Macron's pension "reform".  More voters now rate it as "trustworthy" on pensions than any other party.

Verified charities here for helping Ukraine.

The Putin regime's heavy-handed crushing of dissent shocks small-town Russians.

The UK prime minister's advice to Israel is a tad hypocritical.

Uyghurs testify to Congress about the Chinese regime's atrocities.

More links at Fair and Unbalanced and WAHF.

My posts this week:  why I don't celebrate Russian deaths in Ukraine, a new list of revised word definitions, and an image round-up.

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I can remember when we thought that machinery would take over all the mindless drudge work and leave humans free to be creative.  Now AI is stealing art and writing from us while humans are still stuck doing mindless drudge work.

[Image at top created by JohnnyProfane1, who could use some help if you can spare a few bucks.]