Link round-up for 29 October 2023

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

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Define these words.

Who ya gonna call?

Some rather mixed messages here.

Circumstances were not ideal for this request (NSFW).

Always be ready in case your kid falls in the pool.

This man's roommate helped him to wake himself up (found via Hackwhackers).

Blogger Bluzdude tries his hand at Spanish translation.

Join the dance, in your own style.

Let's modernize the Bible a bit.

Those aren't bugs, though.

"A rhino appeared and charged our vehicle."

Put another hot dog on the grill.

This video suddenly becomes far less attractive (NSFW).

Make your house even more haunted.

The only possible value of this silly building is the jokes.

Halloween cartoons here.

Would you vote for this candidate?

How sad, that penguins are happy.

This restaurant offers a perk to its customers.

Let your Halloween decorations serve a practical purpose.

Some dogs are born to run.

Leave my baby alone.

Watch the waves from the comfort of your train seat.

How can we find serenity in a world full of turbulence and pain?

For Halloween, lots of decorations at Dark Thoughts blog, plus a couple of haunting songs from the Harp Twins, and some energetic dancing witches.

This cat shows striking intelligence in opening a jammed door.

See France's TGV set a world speed record.

The science of sleep is complex and incomplete, but it's clear most Americans don't get enough.

It's a long-range software update.

YouTube's anti-ad-block campaign will merely cost it viewers.  Here's another possible work-around.

For a mere $135, Gwyneth Paltrow will help you squirt coffee up your ass.

Is travel still worth the hassle?

Monopolies turn everything to shit, and social media are no exception.

Google is bullying its users (this ass-kissing article calls it "gentle pressure") to replace passwords with "passkeys" linked to a specific device, which would seem to make your accounts accessible to anyone who steals your computer or smartphone.

You can use a "Pi-Hole" (no, I have no idea what that is) to block not only ads but other undesirable activity.

Phantom braking is a frighteningly common problem with Teslas, causing injuries and at least one death so far.

The Rowling-haters are about to repeat their abjectly-failed boycott of the Hogwarts Legacy game.

Things may seem bad these days, but today's problems are nothing compared to those of the twentieth century.

Burr Deming of Fair and Unbalanced blog has been attacked and injured by a thug in a parking lot.

Frank J Peter posts a formal statement of beliefs.  (I did something somewhat similar here.)

"Gee, I hope the man's fist is OK."

Fairly sure this is a violation of copyright.  Also fairly sure mailing pornography to people who haven't requested it is illegal.

A student group at one German university has called for "glory holes" to be installed around the campus to make "queer" students feel at home there.  This seems to imply they think "queer" people are more comfortable with cold, promiscuous, meaningless sex than with real relationships -- quite an insult, surely.

"Feedback from angry subscribers" -- yeah, I bet.

Both users and advertisers are abandoning Twitter.

The New York Times grudgingly admits that believing Hamas's lies about the al-Ahli hospital incident probably wasn't a good idea.  Why anybody still pays attention to this scurrilous "newspaper" is beyond me.

"Karen" is a sex-specific slur intended to silence women.

The UAW scores a major win with its new deal with Ford.

Men have invaded and taken over the women's category in a major wrestling tournament; the women, seeing their protests ignored, are abandoning it.  Update (Monday morning): In response to this very report, the governing body has changed its policy, now making the women's category women-only.

Allies are dumping BLM after its endorsement of Hamas's atrocities.

Lubbock county TX has passed a law banning women from traveling to get abortions.  Even Brett Kavanaugh doesn't think such laws are constitutional.

The West is full of useful idiots empowering Islamist misogyny and anti-Semitism.

"Don't let stupid things have power over you.  Because they're stupid."

He knows which people are women.

Universities need to do far more about the eruption of pro-genocide, anti-Semitic rallies and menacing on campus.  This former governor is helping to hold Harvard accountable.

Americans are leaving religion younger than ever (note: article is from a pro-religion viewpoint).

This is perfectly sane behavior and nothing to worry about.

The campaign to drag workers back to the office is rooted in bosses' ignorance of how to manage remote workers.

The enemy is already carrying out organized attacks on civilians in American cities.

The purveyors of modern Orwellian Newspeak aren't even bothering to hide their misogyny any more.

Erosion of parental rights is facilitating horrific child abuse.

What if the Israel-haters reacted the same in other cases?

The US is now the strongest economy in the world, while Russia and China sink under the weight of massive corruption and incompetence.

He thinks burning children alive is "exhilarating".  And no, I don't believe his apology for an instant.  If he didn't mean it, he wouldn't have said it.

The bronze ghost of one of America's worst traitors has finally been exorcised.

Republican divisions over abortion rights are likely to keep the House paralyzed, even with a new speaker.

"Pelvic pain, surgical scar pain, vaginal atrophy, infertility, inability to orgasm, inability to breastfeed, urinary tract infections, metabolic and endocrine disruption, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disorders and early dementia."

Alex Jones can't use bankruptcy to weasel out of compensating his victims.

Americans overwhelmingly want a color-blind society, not identity politics or CRT.

In the face of a massive outbreak of street mobs, university groups, and politicians glorifying the mass murder of Jews, Jewish Americans are flocking to buy guns and get trained in their use.

It's time to end the madness of large-scale, indiscriminate immigration from Islamic cultures.

RFK Jr quickly backs down from his support of racist "reparations" after a massive backlash.

There's no sign of large-scale right-wing unrest over the justice system going after Trump, and probably won't be in the future.

The new House speaker Mike Johnson is a weirdo forced-birther and an anti-Ukraine-aid religio-wingnut who rejects separation of church and state.

House Democrats will need to fight hard to pass aid for Ukraine.

Nazi-like hate rhetoric from far-left mobs and splinter groups risks driving Jewish voters away from the Democrats, even though the party mainstream and leadership are firmly pro-Israel.  The White House has denounced the pro-genocide, anti-Semitic rhetoric of some members of "the squad".  Tlaib and Omar, at least, need to be expelled from the Democratic party.

Some Republicans are pushing to expel George Santos from the House.

Oregon high-school students will no longer need to show mastery of reading, writing and math in order to graduate -- apparently the state board of education believes that "students of color" can't meet the same standards as white students.  Isn't that racist?

Liz Cheney shows moral clarity on Hamas and the corruption of the Republican party.

Identity-based thinking is very dangerous.

The new Nazis launched their campaign of evil before the blood was even dry.

Trump tells his supporters not to bother with voting.  The sheer idiocy of this man is mind-boggling.

The "residence hall leaders" behind this outrageous display of Jew-hatred need to be expelled and blacklisted, not just reprimanded.

Victims describe the horrors of transitioning, some of which take years to manifest themselves.  There's no way that minors can meaningfully consent to this.

Most Americans weren't paying attention to the mess in the House.

In the UK, freedom of speech is being seriously eroded (link from commenter NickM).

The man who assaulted Kellie-Jay Keen with tomato juice will stand trial (note: "Aotearoa" is woketardian for "New Zealand").

French Jews now fear the pro-pogrom hard left more than the far right -- creating a political opportunity for the latter.

France's president Macron calls for an international coalition against Hamas, like that which defeated Dâ'ish (ISIL).

The explosion of anti-Semitism in Europe is leading Jews to question whether they have a future there -- but most of the hatred seems to be coming from the Muslim minority, not from indigenous Europeans.

In Poland, the proportion of the population identifying as Catholic has fallen from 88% a decade ago to 71% now.  All other religions are tiny in numbers.

ATACMS in Ukraine are proving more effective than first thought.  Russian video propagandists supposedly showing them failing had misinterpreted what they were seeing.

Russia's latest offensive in Ukraine used trucks almost a century old.  The invaders haven't learned anything from their earlier defeats.

Abortion is still legal in Russia, but it is under concerted attack from forced-birthers as the regime becomes more explicitly Christianist.

A number of international crises are coming to a head all at once.

Israelis are buying guns in unprecedented numbers, and the Israeli government has loosened gun permit rules to facilitate this.  Certainly if most of the residents of southern Israel had had guns ready to hand on October 7, hundreds of lives could have been saved.

Israel must stop the disastrous practice of yielding to Western pressure to limit retaliation against jihadists.  To understand why restraint or negotiation is pointless and suicidal, see Hamas's founding documents.

Hamas continues cozying up to Putin.  But they're also starting to wail for help.

Thirty-two Americans were killed in the October 7 attack (found via Hackwhackers).

The Israeli government has shown journalists and experts unedited video of Hamas's atrocities, imagery deemed too horrific to be released publicly.  Really, though, this whole approach is a mistake.  All of the evidence, no matter how ghastly, should be released publicly and spread around as widely as possible.  The world needs to see the full reality of what happened, and the faces of the vermin in the West who are both-sidesing and yes-butting this conflict need to be rammed into the massive pile of shit they're de facto defending.  And as with the Holocaust, the evidence needs to be out there to refute the inevitable filthy liars who will claim it didn't happen.

Israel has killed one of the Hamas leaders who planned the October 7 mass murder.

Here's one of the hostages being held by Hamas.

Is the Gaza Strip running out of fuel?  The Western media will never hold Hamas accountable.

Not all civilians are innocent.

The worst enemy of the Palestinians is -- Hamas.

Islamist "scholars" are openly calling for the world-wide annihilation of Jews.

The West must not allow outsiders to resupply Hamas terrorists.

Saudi Arabia apparently intercepted a missile aimed at Israel, and is open to continuing normalization of relations with Israel after the Gaza war is over.

Many of India's Muslims are siding with Hamas, straining their relations with the rest of India, which has also suffered extensively from Islamist terror attacks over the years.

Women in Kenya join together to fight female genital mutilation.

More links at Elder of Ziyon and WAHF.

My own posts this week:  Halloween draws near, and improving words.

If any links in this round-up are paywalled or require a log-in to view, please let me know so I can avoid linking to that site in the future.

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The military draft was legal.  Slavery was legal.  The Holocaust was legal.  Unjust laws, such as prohibitions on guns or abortion, are not sacrosanct.

I'm repulsed by wimpy, mealy-mouthed euphemisms.  If somebody dies, I always say that the person died, not "passed away".  Even ickier are "take out" or "take down" referring to killing people or destroying things in wartime.  No.  Say they were killed or destroyed, if that's what happened.  Say what you mean.

From its earliest beginnings down to today, the Arab-Israeli conflict has killed about 60,000 people.  Saddam's al-Anfâl campaign against Iraq's Kurdish minority killed about 180,000, three times as many.  The Iran-Iraq war killed at least 400,000 and possibly over a million.  In the overall picture of war and violence in the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict is a sideshow.  But those who so eagerly denounce Israel never march about those other conflicts, because they don't offer any opportunities to condemn Jews.

Part of the reason I insist on talking about things the Democrats are doing wrong is concern about their potential electoral consequences.  Things like "reparations", putting male sex criminals in women's prisons, and teaching grade-school kids bizarre sexual weirdness are not only morally wrong, they are likely to be substantial vote-losers, to the extent that the public becomes aware of them.  Anybody who wants Democrats to keep winning elections (which I still do, in most cases) needs to confront this problem head-on.  It won't go away just because activists and bloggers refuse to talk about it.  The Republicans will keep torpedoing themselves with the abortion issue for a while yet, but it's unwise to assume that they'll never wake up to how much damage that stance is doing to them and figure out how to disengage from it.

Publish Epstein's client list!
Publish the Nashville shooter's manifesto!
Televise the Trump trials!
Turn over all the rocks and let us see the hideous things beneath.


The Israel-bashers don't know anything.  They don't need to know.  They don't want to know.  It's about hating Jews, and that's all it is.