Link round-up for 27 August 2023

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

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Assisting a surveyor can have certain hazards.

He's bad at bowling, or maybe not.

"Is this your handwriting?" (NSFW).

Check out these boating fools.

He doesn't know he can't fly.

Some fun here with obscure words.

You probably won't want to have lunch here.

Some cats sit in things other than boxes.

They built a tower up to the heavens.

Watch an overly-dramatic pest control ad.

Often cooperation is best, if it can be sustained.

Fear the return of the one-ton bears.  And I don't think rabbits are supposed to be this big.

Eating in space is..... different.

See modern pruning in action (aim that thing very carefully, though).  The more traditional saw also requires caution.

A father and son study bugs together.

This is San Francisco in 1906 (colorized), four days before the great earthquake.

How many of these movies can you identify?  I got only eight.

In the SAG-AFTRA-WGA strike, studios seem to be boxed in.

When I saw Barbie, one of the trailers before it was for Blue Beetle, which looked like a textbook case of a generic, cookie-cutter superhero movie.  In later days that impression was reinforced by the marketing, full of identity politics and insulting the fans.  Now it's finally come out and is yet another massive flop (and no, a hurricane in Los Angeles doesn't explain a dismal global turnout).  Can we finally acknowledge that audiences are done with the superhero thing and move on?

See for yourself -- printer ink cartridges are a scam.

In terms of global warming, not all toilet paper is created equal.

There's a chance this lawsuit could bring ChatGPT down.

Solar power has massively expanded in the US in just the last year.

See the desert, hear the winds.

Here's a good basic cartoon intro to how vaccines work.

How did mosquitoes evolve into such a menace?

Semaglutide looks like a powerful weapon against obesity and heart disease.

Here's why landing at the Moon's south pole is significant.

See the Sun in detail and in motion.

"AI" is even producing fake books now, and these can be deadly.

Don't let people manipulate you out of setting boundaries.

There is no word of God.

One down, many more to go (found via Hackwhackers).

Our asinine leadership's "plans" to revive Portland's crime-infested, rotted-out downtown include a request that businesses commit to dragging work-from-home employees back to downtown offices, as if it were workers' responsibility to put themselves in harm's way to fix the results of years of policy-makers' incompetence and stupidity.  Even some major employers are balking at this, citing the risk that too many workers would quit.  Evil politicians in other cities are trying the same backstabbing tactics, but unions are standing firm.

A developer wants to build 728 units of affordable housing downtown, which would help revitalize the area, but he's running into a lot of bureaucratic obstacles.

This man exists.

Japan apparently has more respect for privacy than the US does.

This website claims it can help if somebody is posting nude pictures of you (real or fake) on the internet.  I haven't verified it.

Cults hate it when you're nice to their members.

Reddit is a misogynistic cesspool.

Using self-checkout creates a risk of false arrest for shoplifting.

I can hardly believe such assholery exists.

We have indeed lived to see man-made horrors beyond our comprehension.

More women than men now have college degrees, and the gap is growing.

My city's police will soon start wearing body cams.  The program sounds solid, as long as it's strictly adhered to.

In Massachusetts, a new tax on millionaires is paying for free school lunches for all students.

Don't dismiss the "Rich Men North of Richmond" song.  If you look at the actual lyrics, most people would agree with most of it, regardless of their ideology.  Oliver Anthony has rebuked conservatives who try to co-opt him.  The song's huge popularity should be an opportunity to explore commonalities and overcome polarization, not one more thing to pick fights over.

Refusing to play along with someone's delusions is not threatening his existence.

Even some corporate executives are starting to recognize that dragging home workers back to offices isn't such a good idea.  Work-from-home saves companies money and reduces quitting.

Cowards stand silent when others are persecuted.

The Catholic diocese of San Francisco is declaring bankruptcy to dodge hundreds of lawsuits for priestly sexual abuse of children -- the third Catholic diocese to do so in the Bay Area alone.

Stop hiding the truth about puberty blockers.  There's no evidence of benefits and abundant evidence of irreversible harm.

Boston's Caribbean Carnival seems prone to outbreaks of violence.

It's hard to imagine anything more bizarre than members of the media calling for less freedom of speech.

Many workers are willing to do as much job-hopping as necessary to secure work-from-home.  The advantages are so huge that it's worth the risk.

Three school districts have stopped in-person school attendance due to local surges in covid.  The districts are in Kentucky and Texas, which suggests to me that vaccine rejection may be a factor.

Win!  A North Carolina company has been fined $50,000 for harassing and firing atheist and agnostic employees.

Keep a close eye on the AAP.

If you're concerned about indigenous peoples, how about doing something that concretely helps them instead of empty, smug virtue-signalling?  (Oh, but that might cost money.)

The US is currently seeing a wave of anti-Semitic threats and attacks.

Republican candidates at the debate rejected science.

Dragging workers back to offices means a return to mass commuting, thus a huge increase in pollution and greenhouse gases.

Strong majorities in New Jersey support requiring schools to notify parents of any gender-identity weirdness going on with their children.  New Jersey is a pretty blue state, so the majorities for the country as a whole are probably even higher.

When a violent mob took over a Connecticut community in May, police were ordered not to intervene, leaving residents at the mob's mercy.  In a sane world, the politicians who did this would be tried and executed.

Disney World firefighters supported DeSantis's vendetta against the company, but that didn't save them from getting their benefits cut by his toadies.

Green Eagle has another round-up of wingnut lunacy around the internet.

The American Bar Association is pushing back against the wave of thuggery in law schools.

Some Republicans want to go to any extreme to get Trump off the hook.

Americans may find it difficult to adjust to healthcare in foreign countries.

Women's soccer players in Scotland were bullied and threatened for talking about the dangers posed by adding male players to their teams.

Two doctors warned hospital managers about baby-murdering nurse Lucy Letby.  The managers ignored and rebuked them.

There is no possible legitimate reason for exposing small children to this kind of stuff.  None.

In Montenegro, a woman was fined for fighting back too hard against a would-be rapist.

Dreams of de-dollarization suffer a blow as the main gangster-state currencies -- the yuan and the ruble -- plummet in value against the dollar.  The US currency's share of international payments recently hit an all-time high.  A top Argentine economist advocates that his country abandon its own currency and adopt the dollar.

Sometimes, at least, the corrupt wealthy get held accountable.

It's happening in Mexico too -- a woman prison inmate was sexually assaulted by a male sex criminal who had been placed in her cell.

Having killed Prigozhin, Putin may now have to crush the Wagner group to prevent another rebellion motivated by revenge.

The rising Russian stock market masks a crumbling economy.

Drone attacks in Moscow are becoming more frequent and disruptive.  The war comes home to the aggressor.

Russia's neighbors know that unless Putin is decisively defeated in Ukraine, there will be more and more war.  And defeating Russia will make it easier to handle China.

Xi plans to double down on cultural genocide in Xinjiang.

China's economy is being strangled by the regime's incompetence and authoritarianism, and investors are staying away due to the country's refusal to apply stimulus spending, but the US will not suffer much harm from a Chinese collapse.

More links at Fair and Unbalanced, WAHF, and Elder of Ziyon.

My own posts this week:  viruses of the mind, truths and inspirations, India's successful Moon landing, and a dying nation.

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.

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