26 November 2023

Link round-up for 26 November 2023

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

o o o o o

He partied hard while she was away.

Australians harbor a robust disdain for AWOL politicians.

The dogs come spiraling down.....

Pope fight!  Pope fight!

A cat goes to the vet.

Bicycle thieves get taught a lesson.

"AI" "art" still has plenty of glitches.

Cats don't mix well with kids.  And maybe not with adults.

Watch a Portland driver have an epic meltdown over the fact that a street is blocked off for a public event.

Get some "news" from the Gaza Strip.  Here's why Hamas wants a ceasefire.

Remember the culture of the eighties (note:  this blogger specifically does not want political comments -- please respect that).

Some of these costumes are pretty cool (found via Miss Cellania).

Here's a report on a walk around Prague, with some impressive photos.

"What tunnels?"

Blogger Carol Seidl remembers a friend.

The seemingly impossible becomes possible via topology.

Finally, a hostage-exchange proposal sane people can support.

How heartless, to refuse a ceasefire.

It's good to specialize in what you know.

Katalin Karikó founded a new technology which has saved millions of lives.

Neanderthals were capable of creating art.

Autistic people have advantages in certain forms of learning.

"Spirituality" somehow manages to be meaningless and annoying at the same time.

Degrading misogynistic language is becoming pervasive in a wide range of contexts.

Religion is just a form of superstition.

If you can be judged by the enemies you make, the New York Post has good reason to be proud.

What a nutcase.

Don't let employers get away with this.

A wave of totalitarian gibberish is spreading out from academia to threaten our country's basic freedoms and, in the long term, even its leadership in science.

Elon Musk's control over critical technology has become a national security threat.

Beware of the "prestige paradox" when evaluating ideas, especially if you're well-educated.

Public intimidation is not a right.

Workers are pushing back harder against being dragged back to offices, even being willing to take serious pay cuts to continue working from home.

Elon Musk is a bumbling jackass who throws his money around to convince gullible people he's a genius.

Election offices in three states have received threatening mailings, some of them laced with fentanyl.

When The Party says 2+2=5, you will be punished for disagreeing.

A recent book offers new details on how the Trump administration bungled the early response to covid.

"He was very religious, he could quote the Bible."

The Nazi rally that blocked the Bay Bridge earlier this month delayed several couriers who were trying to deliver organs for transplantation, potentially damaging them.

The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange has been fined four billion dollars and will be kicked out of the US.

An Illinois man who threatened to commit a school mass shooting has been arrested and indicted.

In 2004 a Jewish family fled their hometown in Louisiana because of Christian harassment and bullying.  Mike Johnson, then an attorney, made some disturbing comments at the time.

Here's why some young people think Trump is cool.

A judge has permanently blocked Oregon's voter-approved Measure 114, which places various restrictions on gun ownership, saying that the law diminishes public safety and violates the state constitution.

"Hate women.  Same shit.  Different package."

Election coverage at the New York Times and the Washington Post is still mostly useless horse-race stories with little policy analysis.

John Fetterman stands strong for Israel in defiance of "progressive" hate.

Interesting observations here about how sexual predators -- and their enablers -- operate.

The union movement scores yet another victory, this time for casino workers in Detroit.

A Jewish journalist is being barraged with obscene death threats after expressing her pro-Israel views on TV.

Trump's toddler-name-calling brand of politics is getting even worse.  And he's still praising Xi Jinping.

A women's spa in Washington state has lost its legal case to exclude men from areas where customers are naked.  The problem seems to have been incompetent lawyers who based their case on religious exceptionalism; a future effort based on better arguments might well succeed.

"I've even heard others call rape a valid tool that can be used on the path to freedom."  These people are monsters.

The courts have been too deferential to Trump's threats and tantrums.  He should be treated just like any other asshole who commits contempt of court.

Elon Musk's lawsuit against Media Matters seems likely to backfire.

Where were the shallow woke celebrities when Palestinians were being killed and displaced?

A mob of thugs brutally attacked women at a library here in Portland, with several victims needing to go to the hospital.  Police did nothing.  There can be no excuse, justification, or "yes but" about this.  And I need to get the hell out of this dying and rotting city.

Nikki Haley's attack on internet anonymity has drawn almost universal scorn.

Abortion-rights activists are working to put a referendum on the ballot in Nebraska next year.

"Journalists at elite media outlets are focused on threats to people at their own level, such as current and former government officials. If we want swing voters to be afraid of a second Trump term, we need to identify threats they can relate to."

A West Virginia prison tried to force an atheist inmate to participate in Christian rituals as a condition of parole.

Yes, the "pro-Palestinian" rallies on campuses really are full of Nazi shit.

Besides abortion, Biden should go bold on Social Security.

Health insurance companies have been breaking state laws and denying coverage to boost profits.  I wonder how many people have died because of this.

The recent burst of anti-Jewish, pro-jihadist agitation in the US, like the rise of pro-Russia attitudes on the right a few years ago, is being driven by foreign propaganda on social media.

Senate Republicans want to wait until Christmas before they finally break Tuberville's hold on military promotions.  This situation has already dragged on for months -- why wait another month to take any action?  Tuberville's tantrum should have been squelched the same day he started it.

DeSantis is too cowardly to condemn Musk's flagrant anti-Semitism.

The continuation of aid to Ukraine may depend on Mitch McConnell.

Support for abortion rights in the US is now at near-record levels.  The Republicans are increasingly divided over the issue.

Here's why people complain about the economy even when it's actually booming.

In sport after sport, women are fighting back against the intrusion of men.

The BBC and the New York Times keep on bullshitting about Israel, following centuries-old anti-Semitic practices.

Forced-birthers are looking to non-democratic means to defeat voters' support for abortion rights.

In Canada, many "pro-Palestinian" groups explicitly celebrate Hamas's atrocities on October 7.

Women soccer players in Sheffield UK are refusing to play after a male player on one team allegedly inflicted a serious injury on a female player.  The man is calling it discrimination.

"Ireland, we are at war."

New Zealand Maori perform the traditional Haka dance in support of Israel.

Across Italy, major rallies protest violence against women.

Don't forget the children.

A new film tells the story of the Russian attack on Mariupol.

Ukraine needs to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  If it had kept its nuclear weapons in 1991, this horrific invasion would never have happened.

Ukraine is now mass-producing drones, tens of thousands of them per month.

Argentina's new president-elect wants to adopt the US dollar as the national currency, and align more closely with the US.  The Chinese regime is throwing the usual tantrums.

Hamas is releasing hostages, but what does the future hold?

A new wave of disease is sweeping China.  It's not clear whether it's an entirely new disease or a form of pneumonia, but it seems to attack almost exclusively children.

My own posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, and why you shouldn't worry about the polls yet.

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.

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

7 Comments:

Blogger Mary Kirkland said...

People who block streets/ bridges ect.. are awful. The fact that it happens as much as it does is criminal.

That cat going to the vet was too funny.

I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.

26 November, 2023 00:59  
Blogger Rajani Rehana said...

Great blog

26 November, 2023 01:45  
Blogger NickM said...

Excellent as usual especially on trans-ideology and anti-semitism and support for Hamas. Are the rise in these things linked? They have happened at much the same time and both are very much of the "regressive" left. And of course both involve deep sexism and a total suspension of disbelief. It's almost as if the October 7th attack never happened.

What exactly is the link from, "Suck My Trans Cock You TERF Bitch!", "Quuers for Palestine" and Hamas going on their depraved orgy of atavistic sexuual violence?

I can't quite see it. Maybe all that maths and physics and stuff I indulged in at university makes it difficult to understand that many impossible things before breakfast time.

26 November, 2023 05:39  
Anonymous Annie said...

--The cat and the carrier led to a sad reminiscence about our late and still lamented guy. But unlike the star in this episode, our boy was so terrified of the carrier that the vet advised us to sedate him first--lest he have a heart attack.

--The piece about Neanderthal art was fascinating.

--The Tumbler item about employers required signing on.

--The AP story about efforts to get abortion on the ballot in Nebraska, which ends with all the other states planning such campaigns, is very good news for democracy.

--I don't know how you make the time to find all this diverse stuff from so many sources!

26 November, 2023 15:10  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Mary K: People are getting infuriated with street-blockers. There's a whole genre now of videos on YouTube of drivers taking matters into their own hands and dragging the assholes out of the way, often pretty violently. I just wish the police would get on the ball and clear them away quickly when this happens.

I bet that's how cats actually think.

Rajani: Thanks.

NickM: Thanks. I don't think Hamas itself has much connection to the other stuff. Hamas is a relic of the Dark Ages -- a lot of the Middle East is about four hundred years behind us, still struggling to emerge from its equivalent of the mentality of the Inquisition and the Thirty Years War. There was plenty of atavistic sexual violence in those days too, and a lot of the tortures the Inquisition used on women were obviously rooted in distorted sexuality. Absurdities like "Queers for Palestine" and trans ideology are the product of a very modern form of warped intellectualism, where ideology and dogma become more real to some people than reality itself is, and they immerse themselves in an abstract sea of words that refer to words that refer to words, and so on, with only the most tenuous connection to the concrete physical world any more. Look at all the gobbledygook they use -- intersectionality and identity and post-modernism and social constructs and critical theory and "words are violence" and all the rest of it. It's all just a kaleidoscope jumble of abstractions that exists inside their own heads. There's nothing tangible or concrete. Any actual behavior generated by that mess is going to be crazy and probably dangerous.

Annie: Sorry to hear about your cat. It's too bad animals can't have it explained to them that there's nothing to fear in those situations.

We still have a lot to learn about the Neanderthals. I wonder if we'll ever really know just how human they really were.

Thanks for mentioning the employers link. A few Tumblr blogs do require a sign-on, but since I have a Tumblr account, I don't see them. Usually that only happens with sexually-explicit blogs, but Tumblr is brain-dead about identifying those. I'll try to remember not to link to that one again.

Very glad to see the abortion-rights initiative gearing up. Not only will they protect rights (if they win), but they'll help to boost turnout in those states.

Unfortunately my internetting time will decrease a lot when I go back to work. I'll just have to deal with it as best I can.

27 November, 2023 01:05  
Blogger SickoRicko said...

The topology video was hugely fascinating!

27 November, 2023 16:10  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

I still couldn't see how some of that stuff worked.

28 November, 2023 00:29  

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