Link round-up for 17 December 2023

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

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When driving, stay focused.

I've previously linked to videos of cats that were surprisingly smart.  Then there's this cat.

This is allegedly Bible stories as learned by kids.

Maybe she'd prefer to be doing something else.

When you gaze into the snow, the snow also gazes into you.

Australia used to have the best road signs.

Ah, cats..... poetry in motion.

See a very small road rage incident.

Enough with inflation and boring leadership -- vote for the real shake-things-up outsider candidate (found via Hackwhackers).

There must be catnip on the other side.

Education only helps you if you allow it to.

Idiot.

Sorry, I don't have time to wait here..... oops.

Worst cat placement ever.

He has no patience with trickery.  Nor does she.

Two thieves work together.

Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men.

I don't recommend bothering this woman, though.

Everybody had enough, until you all started fighting over it.

The Lone Animator explains how he made the stop-motion puppets for his Snail Wizard video (which I posted here).

You could ride the elevator of thwarted emotions.  Or you could simply say something.

I'm in awe of people who can do things like this.

Here's how to get rid of a buried tree stump.

This house isn't very practical, but at least it's different and interesting.

Go out dressed like this and you'll give people heart attacks.

Australian satirists pwned APEC in 2007.

Beware of Scandinavian ghosts.

This is the gravestone of the great HR Giger.

Launching a ship makes quite a splash.

If this video is authentic, 1921 had better prosthetic-limb technology than I thought.

We have much to learn from sleepy penguins and jellyfish.

Anti-vaxers are going completely nuts, claiming that covid vaccines have killed eight hundred thousand people in New Zealand alone.

Is your cat driving you crazy?

If you can spare some cash, Johnny Profane at AutisticAF blog could use some help toward a car-maintenance bill.

The Doctor Who show is self-destructing.

The manipulative nature of DRM now verges on outright fraud.

PayPal users, be aware of this scam.

Etsy is going down the tubes.  Here's why.

YouTube apparently manipulates its recommendations to push you toward content that brings them more money or which they support ideologically.

The clothing company "Anthropologie" appears to be budlighting itself.

Blogger Silverapplequeen explains why she's burned out on politics.

Amazon sells spy cameras obviously designed for invasions of privacy.

Twitter is now just outright ripping people off.

It's not clear how, or even whether, you can open the doors of a Tesla from the inside when the power is off.

At last!  Rents are starting to fall a little due to high levels of apartment construction.

A new book chronicles Eisenhower's determination to document the Nazi Holocaust so as to thwart the denialists he knew would arise in the future -- a concern newly relevant given the atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel and Russia in Ukraine.

Despite its problems, Israel is a vibrant and vigorous society, with a birth rate well above replacement level (perhaps the only advanced country that can claim this) and a life expectancy among the world's longest.

Watch out for fake pictures trying to sway your emotions.

Could you be a shitty person without realizing it?

Due to the influence of porn, many young people now associate sex with brutality and dangerous, degrading behavior.  I posted about this problem here.

The Christian mentality is a big part of why the Dark Ages were so dark compared to Roman times.  There are ominous parallel trends today.

A Daily Kos writer explains why he's quit Amazon.  I haven't bought anything from Amazon for years.

Darwinfish 2 assesses the cultural and political influence of Taylor Swift.

Richard Dawkins responds to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's apparent embrace of Christianity.

A far-rightist Polish legislator used a fire extinguisher to put out a menorah, denouncing Hanukkah as "Satanic".  Then there was this.  Some Christians can't tolerate any manifestation of any religion other than their own.

Due to the explosion of crime in major cities, millions of liberals are now buying guns -- a shift which could defuse a major part of the culture war.

How and when you die must be your decision alone.

"We will kill you all!" they shouted at the Jews -- in Washington DC.

Kate Cox isn't the only woman who has recently had to flee Texas to terminate a dangerous and non-viable pregnancy.

Must-read of the week:  The US no longer feels like a safe place for Jewish people.  This is a disaster.

Over 40% of Americans under 29 deny or minimize the Holocaust.

Biden is worth voting for -- not many politicians would have had the guts to say this.

Yes, US democracy has enemies, but it also has strong and capable defenders.

Heather Cox Richardson has a new book out on the roots of right-wing hostility to democracy.

A fifty-year-old man competed with teenage girls at a swim event -- and shared their locker room.  Furious parents will no doubt remember this next time they vote.

A fundamentalist officer used wounded Marines as props for a slimy display of religious theatrics.

Today's older people are the adaptable generation.

A Republican explains why he supports aid to Ukraine.  The war there is a test of the West's moral vitality.

Parenting is about exclusion and boundaries -- and that's the way it should be.

Texas is becoming a totalitarian nightmare.

The US is now committed to replacing all its lead water pipes within the next ten years.

31% of Republicans say they won't vote for Trump if he's convicted of a felony.  Whether or not a conviction can be won before the election may prove decisive.

Corporations exist to transfer wealth from those who produce it to those who don't.  The way the laws are written makes this pretty much unavoidable.

The majority of Americans want tougher border security -- and this creates an opportunity for Biden.

Most of the Teslas in the US are now being recalled due to "autopilot" problems which can cause dangerous collisions.

Public support for impeaching Biden is sharply declining outside the hard-core wingnut base.

The left needs to talk honestly about "progressive" anti-Semitism.

Fetterman is emerging as the conscience of the Democratic party.  He's the real deal.

Some Republicans want to restrict access to birth control, and don't even realize how unpopular that would be.  Since Dobbs, permanent contraceptive measures such as vasectomy have risen in popularity, partly driven by fear that the wingnuts will try to do this very thing.

The right wing is escalating the war on women.  Remember how recent some progress toward equality has been.

The SPLC has gone over to the radical nutcase fringe.  Discussion here.

Florida activists are trying to get an abortion-rights measure on next year's ballot.  At least 150,000 Republicans have signed in support.

How widespread is the new Nazism among young Americans?  Not as widespread as it looks, but enough to be a serious problem.

A rapist pedophile has been transferred to a women's prison in Texas (warning: very disturbing descriptions of photos this guy was sharing with a like-minded friend).

Our country's slow-motion Kristallnacht comes to Los Angeles.

Defeating Trump in 2024 will be a re-invigoration of US democracy.

We've come up with a new way of destroying gay and mentally-ill kids.

Here are the states where abortion rights will, or may, be on the ballot next year.  The issue has unmatched power to mobilize voters.

Nikki Haley wants to raise the retirement age for Social Security, a stance very unpopular with voters.  Make sure this is widely known.

Congress has acted to prevent Trump from pulling the US out of NATO even if he becomes president again.

Having viewed more of the evidence than has been widely released, Antony Blinken describes Hamas's October 7 atrocities as "beyond anything I've seen".

In a divided world, there's one thing we should all be able to agree on.

Our enemies are working together.  The democracies, too, must cooperate closely to oppose them.

One major British hospital group now allows women patients to request women-only care.

Kemi Badenoch's recent speech brought common sense on gender ideology out of the closet in the UK.

JK Rowling's new women-only center for rape victims has already helped thousands of women.

France is firmly supporting Israel where it counts.

Teachers in France go on strike due to safety concerns after the latest round of threats from endlessly-outraged Muslims.

Can the working class save France from its arrogant, sclerotic elites?

Poland's new government will be a stronger ally for Ukraine.

On the Ukraine war, the West has swung from excessive optimism to excessive pessimism, but abandoning Ukraine would still be just as dangerous as ever.  No, Russia is not winning -- Putin's only hope is his Republican collaborators in Washington.

Russian troops have been using Ukrainian POWs as human shields.

Some Russians are signing up to fight for Ukraine.

Brazil has criminalized "AI"-generated nude pictures.

Brazil and Colombia have started destroying illegal gold mines that are polluting the Amazon.

An Israeli Arab responds to claims of "stolen Palestinian land".

Israel is beating Hamas, but it's a hard fight.

The massive evidence of Hamas's gruesome sexual violence will make it more difficult for the Nazi apologists and denialists in the Western blogosphere to obfuscate what happened.

JK Rowling helped rescue hundreds of Afghani people who were on Taliban "kill lists".

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

My posts this week:  an image round-up, an otherworldly landscape, and the Republicans' abortion dilemma.

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

Appeasers talk about "ending" a war.  Realists talk about winning it.

At this time of year, people say "happy holidays" to be "inclusive" -- but there are no holidays meaningful to me in December at all.

If a man wants to pretend he's a woman, that isn't a big problem.  If he wants everybody else to pretend he's a woman, that is a big problem.

It's strange that people are horrified at the idea of eating small bugs (roaches, spiders, flies, etc), but perfectly OK with eating large ones (shrimp, lobsters, crabs).  Personally I'd never eat either.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if Taylor Swift is president 25 years from now.  Reagan got started in show biz too, and he certainly showed that celebrity can translate into political success.  Swift could get some experience first by being a governor or a senator.  And she couldn't do any worse than some of the bozos we've already had occupying the White House.

It is sometimes argued that raising the Social Security eligibility age for future retirees does not harm those who are already receiving benefits.  The reason this is wrong, and the real reason Republicans keep trying to do it, is that reducing the value of the program to younger voters will eventually erode the solid public opposition to cutting current benefits or ending the program entirely.  Also, it is absurd to claim that raising the retirement age is justified by increasing life expectancy, since life expectancy in the US is currently declining.

Straight talk, uncompromising truth: