Link round-up for 30 July 2023

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

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This man can teach you how to handle electrical tools.

Here's a response to those guys who send unsolicited dick pics.

He ordered an Uber ride to go out and get strawberries.

Life was tough in the stone age.

Build your house here, and you'll never get any sleep.

Blowing bubbles in zero gravity can get messy.

Guess he just wanted a simple, no-frills car.

Everyone has fallen for this deception.

Signs of the times here.

Catchy tune, whatever the heck it means.

This jump went really wrong.

We all need a refuge from the toxic zombies of life.

Being killed and eaten is just part of life.

Crows are smart.

Everyone's going on strike these days.

This must be what Hell is like.

By Oregon standards, this is apparently a "desert".

She has the rare patience to respond to a fool.

This is Bangladesh.  I won't be going there.

This is Russia.  I won't be flying there.

Writing is a solitary pursuit, but some writers find networking useful.

Interesting observation here on Verne's 20,000 Leagues.

It was obvious from the beginning that ChatGPT and its ilk were going to be junk.

Streaming is a failure for both customers and creatives.

Is Barbie appropriate for kids?

Oppenheimer leaves out a crucial part of the story.

Sound of Freedom has grossed $127 million in the US alone.  As to those people claiming that right-wing groups are mass-buying tickets purely to inflate the numbers -- for this to account for a significant part of $127 million, those groups would need to be blowing a hell of a lot of cash on such a rather trivial campaign.  Barbie grossed more than half a billion (globally) in less than a week and will probably be the biggest hit of the year, a genuine cultural phenomenon.

Small and independent film producers can work within SAG-AFTRA's terms.  So why do the big studios refuse?

The first livestream took place in 1881.

These are fireflies in rural Pennsylvania.

Fear the awesome toughness of flamingos.

Moose (mooses? meece? mooselini? we need a real plural for that) are very fast.

Here's what happens when a whale dies (gruesome).

Even a fallen tree makes the grass greener.

Besides protecting against the disease itself, covid vaccines also reduce the risk of "long covid" effects.

One of the world's greatest biologists explains why biology matters.

NASA has begun an effort to develop nuclear-powered spacecraft.  It sounds impractical to me, but I suppose NASA knows what it's doing.

Anti-vax drivel extends beyond covid, with predictable results.

Here's a site where you can post a review of your landlord.

This jackass will think twice before trying to break into any more houses.

This guy won't be committing any more rapes.

Even some non-white-collar jobs can now be done from home.

The Wall Street Journal is hosting a much-needed debate about endocrinology.

Useful info about phone scams here.

If you buy ammunition over the internet, beware of deals that sound too good to be true.

Congratulations to UPS workers and the Teamsters, whose strike threat brought a big win from UPS management.

WhatsApp shares its users' personal data with Meta -- here are some alternatives (link from Raziel Rufus).

Maybe this is the answer to the issue of men claiming to be women.

This bill is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment.  Any senator or congressman who supports it needs to be hounded out office and his career destroyed.  More details here.

Here's how the Twitter "X" re-branding is going so far.  They even bungled changing the sign at headquarters, while the new giant metal X is a dangerous eyesore.  Oh, and they're still flagrantly censoring stuff.  Any true free-speech defender would go to the mat for this man.

The majority of Chinese-Americans don't like the Beijing regime; they view Taiwan and even historic enemy Japan more favorably.

This nutcase should not be in charge of a lot of powerful weapons.

Houston is closing several school libraries and converting them into "discipline centers".

This "pro-lifer" had ulterior motives, apparently.

John Fetterman has a plan help striking workers cover food costs.  This is the kind of thing the Democrats should be focusing on.

It's just a typical conspiracy theory.

We can achieve many social improvements by fighting back against the special status given to religious beliefs.

Wingnuts have concocted a plan for a future Republican president to completely take the US out of the global warming fight (though this is not party policy, as some reports have implied).  My state's senator Merkley has called out Biden's own disastrous record on the issue.

A judge has blocked an Arkansas law which would allow criminal prosecution of librarians and booksellers who make certain books available to minors.  These laws are insane.  We can stamp out stuff like indoctrinating third-graders with gender weirdness in school without turning the whole society into a police state.

Some Christian nationalists want to replace the Constitutional system with Biblical rule, including stoning adulterers to death.

Some swing-state Republican parties are imploding as the nutcases take over.

Never buy a Tesla -- their customer service celebrates not helping people.

"Transitioning" has never actually been possible.

These Christians don't want religious freedom for anybody except themselves.

DeSantis's ghastly views on teaching the history of slavery in the US have gotten him into a feud with black Republicans.

The TSA claimed the right to sexually assault airline passengers with impunity.  Fortunately the courts disagreed.

This senator seems not to realize that there exist 200 foreign countries, where US laws don't apply, and that Americans can see websites based in those countries.

This is not "activism".  It sounds more like terrorism.

Musk is trying to bully other companies into buying ads on Twitter.

Sorry, evangelicals, you did this to yourselves.  And there's no way back.

We can't get rid of the Electoral College because that would require a Constitutional amendment, but there's a way Congress alone could reduce its unfairness.  This would still take more chutzpah that the current Democrats have, though.

Mormonism is a horrible, hateful, cultish religion.

Giuliani may be the most honest guy on Trump's team since he at least openly admits he's a liar.

Yes, they are doing "penile inversion" surgeries on boys as young as fifteen.  Read the stomach-turning details if you dare.

Ohio is holding a referendum on August 8 on a Republican initiative to make it harder to amend the state constitution.  The purpose of this is to make it harder to pass an amendment in November which would guarantee abortion rights in the state.  Early turnout for the special referendum is massive, suggesting that forced-birthers' hopes to sneak this through under the radar are being dashed.  The proposed abortion-rights amendment itself is supported by 58% of Ohioans, including a third of Republican voters.

The UN is openly an enemy of free expression.  It's long past time that the US and other democracies abandoned this poisonous and useless organization.

Sometimes death is the best option.

New Zealand will investigate police failure to curb mob violence at the Let Women Speak event in March.  In Scotland, a week ago, once again a thug attacked a woman in public and suffered no consequences.  People are not happy.

Putin's attack on Odesa was one more step into barbarism.

Caste discrimination is still a big problem in India, openly defended by some politicians.

Some parents in China are paying their adult children to stay children.

More links at WAHF.  Burr Deming is still recovering from covid.

My own posts this week:  rock from Wales, truths and inspirations, and a review of Barbie.

To suggest an item for inclusion in the next link round-up, you can use the e-mail address on the left in my profile, or if you don't want to use e-mail, leave it in a comment to the previous link round-up.

o o o o o

If you've noticed these round-ups getting shorter, it's because a lot of the internet is kind of dead these days.  Several of my favorite blogs have stopped posting.  Twitter is still a useless mess (as of Saturday, non-account-havers can see Twitter "timelines" again, but individual tweets are all jumbled up in random order, not chronological -- and on individual tweets, you still can't see replies).  And I'm sick of politics.

Whose work is truly important?  If every corporate executive in the country went on strike for a month, and every garbage collector in the country went on strike for a month, which absence would cause more actual problems?

Every belief which we define as "religion" when a million people hold it, would be described as "insanity" if only one person held it.

Apparently Congress has solved all the country's real problems and has no more actual work to do, because this week it spent several hours of taxpayer-funded time holding hearings on flying saucers.  Next up, I presume, will be special hearings on unicorns, and a Select Committee on Haunted Houses.  The evidence for those things is exactly as good as the evidence for alien visitations or "biologics", after all.