Link round-up for 14 July 2024

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

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This chameleon must be American, the way he overeats.

Posing for a picture comes with something extra.

Dogs work hard, retire, and goof off.

Not only does it clean the room, it will get the cat out of the way.

Blogger Ami repudiates internet clichés, fundies, and ducks.

Hey, leave me alone, you turkeys!

She's very disappointed with this pizza she ordered.

Who let the dogs out?

Time to get bugged.

This is not as difficult as it looks.

It has escaped!

Be glad you're not a kid any more.

Men can handle home decorating.  But this woman blogger does it better.

If you have to get old, it helps to have attitude.

What is this odd-looking creature?

Some jobs give you a better view than others.

What would an ancient Roman think of a modern American town?

Cool-looking castles here (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

That guy learned something about Van Gogh.

Taxonomic terminology is more interesting than you think.

Welcome to Hell, American style.

Sometimes assholes get the life they deserve.

He gave his blind girlfriend a surprise.

If you ever go to China, don't eat anything.

This is Granada, a former center of Arab culture and power in what is now Spain.

Apparently this is what the marriage market in China is like.  Both sexes seem utterly materialistic and shallow.  It's no wonder nobody wants to marry anybody.

Those fancy libraries in China that you hear about?  They're literally fake.

Internal security forces destroy an invader.

HD189733b is a huge, hot, smelly planet which is of great interest to astronomers.

This post is long, but worth the read.  It argues that the internet is inevitably being overwhelmed with garbage because bots, "AI", spam, ads and suchlike mean that the cost of generating garbage is close to zero, while producing real content still takes effort.  I myself have not noticed such a problem.  The main examples he cites are Amazon, social media, and the Google search engine, none of which I use; as for ads, I have a free and effective ad-blocker, and such tools are available to anybody.  To deal with the proliferation of fake news sites full of propaganda or "AI"-generated rubbish, he suggests a verifiably human-curated list of news sites known to be reliable, but rightly balks at the concentration of power in the hands of whoever was in charge of the list.  To me a better solution would be several such lists, each curated by people of different views and beliefs.  But I'd be interested in what readers who read his post think of his thesis.  Is the internet doomed to be flooded with junk?

China's military technology is complete crap, as countries in South America have been discovering.

Get your favorite stuff on DVD while you can -- if they're allowed to die out, you could be stuck with depending on unreliable streaming and downloading services.

Those who know the most about "AI" never use it.

Don't get your morals from the Bible (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

I've always thought that the Kennedys were a bunch of sleazebags and crooks, but I never imagined that they were this bad.  An absolutely disgusting read.

A blogger checks out several religions, but finds only one of them to be worthy of serious consideration.

Airbnb has had at least thirty-five thousand complaints from people who found hidden cameras in its properties.  The company seems to be actively trying to hide the extent of the problem.

If God existed, he wouldn't need to "test" people.

No well-run bookstore will employ a person who threatens to destroy books.

Kids mistaking ChatGPT for a search engine means a whole new source of dumbassery in the schools.

These days the so-called "liberal media" mostly just spout right-wing propaganda.  Ignore them.

Car buyers face a wide range of scams and crooked practices.  If that article is too long for you, here's a summary.

Judge for yourself -- which one of these two men sounds like a real president, and which one sounds like he has mental problems?

Women on probation or parole are subject to travel restrictions which present a serious danger in states with abortion bans.

Certain areas of the campus were made Judenrein.

Project 2025 would make deep cuts to veterans' benefits.

Must-read of the week:  Research shows that political polarization in the US is not as bad as is generally believed.  Most rank-and-file voters on the left and right agree with each other on a surprising range of issues, do not hate each other, and do not spend a lot of time talking or thinking about politics.  The elites and activists on each side "deeply hate the other side" and "are extraordinarily loud" -- but they are not typical of most Americans.

Here's a quick look at the push for Puerto Rican statehood.  (At last, a newsreader who pronounces "Puerto" correctly.  Why do people keep saying "Porto"?  There's no "o" there.)

This Christian nationalist pastor is outraged that Jews, Hindus, and Muslims can live in this country (found via Fair and Unbalanced).  I assume he's also not happy about non-religious people existing either, since we're the vast majority of non-Christians in the US.

Since October the IRS, with its new funding, has recovered more than a billion dollars from wealthy tax cheats.

Atheist Revolution blog has concerns about Project 2025's implications for non-religious people, leading to a debate in the comments.

Hey, student protesters, how about focusing on the world's biggest real injustice?

Elon Musk seems to want criminal prosecution for advertisers who are boycotting Twitter.

The Teamsters need a new president.

Don't be fooled by Republican play-acting of moderation on abortion rights.  It's what they've actually done in states where they're in power, not what they say, that tells the real story.  The religio-wingnuts are already rising in revolt against the "weakening" of the party platform.

It's being claimed that Jeffrey Epstein made video tapes of notables such as Donald Trump and Bill Clinton having sex with underage girls.  It's not clear whether these tapes still exist or, if so, who has them.

The anti-Jewish rallies and mob violence infesting our campuses since October 7 were largely funded and fomented by the Iranian theocracy, according to the US director of national intelligence.

The popularity of tubal ligations and vasectomies has hugely increased since the Dobbs ruling.

The "Democratic Socialists of America" have un-endorsed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for not being anti-Jewish enough.

Bitcoin "mines" continue to ruin the health of nearby residents.  Red-state governments are enacting laws to protect not the people, but the "mines".

Ten million gun owners are not registered to vote, but getting them engaged in the political process won't be easy.

The case for expanding the Supreme Court has been made obvious by the Court's own actions.  Congress has changed the size of the Court several times in the past -- at least twice for the specific reason that it was going to ideological extremes.

The dump-Biden meme is just a media-driven phenomenon.  Call them out for it and for downplaying Trump's lies and despotic plans, as this blogger did.  In the case of subscription media like the NYT, cancel, cancel, cancel.  If enough people do those things, they'll start to take notice -- and the NYT long ago passed the point where the country would be better off if it went out of business and disappeared.  And while you're at it, get the hell off Twitter.  There are no longer any viable excuses for contributing to these jackasses' revenue streams.

A woman prison inmate in New Jersey speaks out about the dangers posed by putting male criminals in women's prisons.  Protest can work -- a grassroots effort spearheaded by WoLF has achieved the rejection of a federal judicial nominee who supports this vile practice.

Even though the proposed abortion-rights amendment in Arkansas got enough signatures to get on the ballot, the Republican secretary of state rejected it on a technicality.  This will become Exhibit A to show that winning referenda isn't enough to protect freedom -- it's also necessary to vote Republicans out of office.

Here's the Biden campaign's new page on Project 2025, with a link to the document itself.  The more the voters know about Project 2025, the less they like it.

Russian troll websites are already pushing thousands of phony news stories designed to influence the US election.  Be aware.

Biden's press-conference performance was so strong that the media, desperate to keep the cognitive-decline bullshit going, had to harp on a couple of name mix-ups of the kind that everybody does now and then.

Reaganite Independent blog reports from a Trump rally in Florida.

For anyone who is still clinging to the dump-Biden thing, please read Stephanie Jones, this Daily Kos post, Annie Asks You, and Stonekettle Station.  Don't fall for the same old crap as in every previous election.  Here is what really happened and how the media made a mountain out of a molehill that didn't even exist.

See the per-capita abortion rate in different countries.  I suspect this mostly reflects the fact that abortion rates tend to be lower where birth control is most easily available; that would explain why highly-religious Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa have far more abortions than highly-secular Europe and Japan.

A twelve-year-old boy said he was gay, so school officials reported him as a potential terrorist.

The UK's outgoing Conservative government put a temporary ban on puberty blockers for minors.  The new Labour government will likely make it permanent.

A British blogger explains why he dreads the return of the Labour party to power.

Germany enjoys the benefits of diversity.

After recent Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian hospitals, Ukraine retaliates against Russia's oil industry.

This is one fireworks display I'd actually like.

More links at Fair and Unbalanced and WAHF.

My posts this week:  an image round-up, why I have confidence about the election, and some eighties music that has issues.

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Concerning the Trump assassination attempt:  for reasons I'll assume to be obvious, do not leave comments here saying that you wish it had succeeded or suchlike.  I'll delete them.

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Addendum:  It's astonishing how many posts and comments I'm seeing all over the left-wing internet suggesting that the assassination attempt was faked, staged, a "false flag", etc.  They sound just like the nutballs you see all over the right-wing blogosphere constantly making similar claims about everything that happens.

A shooting at that range, intended to just graze Trump, would have carried far too much risk of actually killing him.  Using some kind of fake or non-lethal ammunition would have been detected when the bullet(s) were recovered at the scene and examined by the authorities.  Trump was examined by local doctors who would have been able to tell if his ear injury was faked, or if it had been caused by something other than a bullet or flying glass. To successfully fake the attack despite these factors would have required an absurdly large number of people to be in on the conspiracy.  It's not plausible.