Link round-up for 6 October 2024

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

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You have been warned.

Cats are hair-trigger critters.

Better hygienic standards would have made The Fly a much shorter movie.

Most effective pool shot ever.

It's time for pigs.

I think he drank them all before attempting this trick.

Best brand name for matches ever.

These people have an unashamed obsession (NSFW).

Say it the Victorian way.

Hold my beer.

I Am Mental blog has an image round-up.

Shape fruits and vegetables to order with special molds.  Yes, I know what you're thinking and they've thought of that, too.

'Tis the season..... the most beautiful time of year.

Everyone's losing their heads over Halloween.

It's a ghost's life.

This house has almost enough pumpkins.

There is such a thing as a Halloween tree.  We outdo Christmas on everything!

Yes..... even the bathroom.

The Halloween yard truck wreaks mayhem among skeletons.

One of the spookiest images in folklore is the Grim Reaper.

Craft your own tombstones for your yard display.

Read of an encounter with a horrifying monster.

Ride a Japanese sightseeing train.

Found:  one ersatz golden owl, entitling the finder to the real thing.

Floodwaters drive two barges into a bridge in Vietnam.

See the Falkirk wheel in action.

Mechanical door locks work well -- I can imagine some of these designs being used thousands of years ago.

Get a new sense of anatomy from casts of vaginas (probably NSFW).

Here's what we know about the giant squid -- which has an even larger and more elusive relative.

NASA now has a streaming service.

Whooping cough is making a comeback due to anti-vax idiocy.

The more advanced "AI" becomes, the more likely it is to give false answers to questions.

Back up your files -- never entrust anything to just one device.

John Stuart Mill's education led him to true understanding, but not in the way his father intended.

Imagine if Boeing had built the Death Star.

Time is different for autistic people.

The SF magazine Clarkesworld has had to shut down submissions because it's getting so much "AI" junk.

The Biblical concept of Hell is just as evil and immoral as you think.

Here's an ode to the "protector of women".

This is just a hobby.

Stupid people are stupid.

Some "smart" TVs have cameras.  Take precautions.

If you use PayPal, read this and act accordingly.

"These are all transactional terms that slice the female body into markets..... The woman herself disappears."

Chinese people buy junk in order to appear patriotic.  The mentality reminds me of the Americans who buy Trump's sneakers, NFTs, Truth Social stock, etc.

Learn why a California volleyball team is winning so many games by forfeit.

If you use a Linux system, read this.

Amazon drivers sound off.

Wikipedia has been extensively spammed with "AI" rubbish and is now trying to clean it up.

If the churches want this fight, let's have it.

The more boring the person, the more ridiculous the exhibitionism.

What is Melania Trump up to?

I found this and this posted on a right-wing blog as examples of being "honest".  To be fair, some commenters did object.  This one was on a different right-wing blog, presumably as an example of "humor".

Here is how rich the ultra-wealthy are (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

The Handmaid's Tale was inspired by horrors from recent real history.

It's time for some straight talk about the "words are violence" bullshit.

Read how students stood up to a propagandist professor.

See blogger reactions to the VP debate at Annie Asks You, The Psy of Life, and Angry Bear.

Due to its unregulated nature, cryptocurrency is a swamp of scams and incompetence.

A voter-assistance hotline volunteer reports that callers are fired-up and determined to vote.  Interestingly, almost all his callers are women -- perhaps another sign that Dobbs has awakened a sleeping giant.

Yes, indictments and trials are needed here.

Scammers are targeting Truth Social users, to great effect.  This is no surprise.  Scammers go to places that have plenty of easy targets, and people who believe the stolen-election, anti-vaxism, Haïtians eating pets, etc stuff have already shown they're as gullible as can be.

Half of all users of Portland's public transit system feel unsafe, mostly because of the behavior of other people riding the trains and buses.  For public transit to be a real alternative to cars, the authorities will need to seriously crack down on the assholes, which they seem utterly disinclined to do.

Project 2025 would bring back blue laws enforcing the "sabbath".

California is idiotically destroying clean-energy generation capacity.  The gloating tone of this post is surreal.

No, Trump as president would not veto a national abortion ban.

Cultural relativism is evil and promotes oppression (Tumblr login required).  It embodies arrogant ignorance. 

An investigation confirms that under Trump, the EPA pressured scientists to downplay the dangers posed by chemicals they were vetting.

These people are profoundly sick.

Time to pull the plug on The Washington Post.  It's sunk to the level of the New York Times.

Here's how Trump, if elected, would use presidential power to attack his personal enemies.

There's a plausible reason why Harris is polling behind state-level Democratic candidates.

Appalachia has been devastated by hurricane Helene.

Trump's planned tariffs would not only be a massive tax burden on US consumers, but would further enrich the already wealthy.

CEOs' resistance to work-from-home raises some questions -- about the value of CEOs.

A judge in Georgia upholds freedom -- for now.

Haïtian immigrants and Haïtian-Americans stand up to the lies.

I can't imagine that such a flagrantly, openly racist policy by a state government could be found constitutional.

Monstrous things happen when medicine is treated as a business.

The Republican governors of  Virginia, Georgia, and South Carolina praise Biden's help after hurricane Helene.  Trump's grandstanding in the disaster area just got in the way of real relief efforts.

The recent take-over of The Baltimore Sun provides examples of mainstream media bias.

Legislatures matter, not just executives.

Here's another reason why winning certain House seats is critical.

For the first time ever, more Americans now lean Republican than Democratic.

The pope can go fuck himself.

Little by little, sanity returns in Canada.

It's no wonder this guy didn't want women to have access to women-only rape crisis centers.

Claudia Sheinbaum has now been sworn in as Mexico's first woman president, promising "no return to the irresponsible drug war".

Looking back at early "expert" reactions to Putin's invasion of Ukraine, most of them got it completely wrong, far over-estimating the corrupt and rotted-out Russian military.  It's something to remember, when assessing their views of the Chinese threat to Taiwan.

The BBC has a history of bias in its reporting on the Israel-jihadist conflict, always in an anti-Israel direction.

See Syrians dance and cheer to celebrate the killing of arch-jihadist Nasrallah.

The Taliban are now imposing onerous Islamic rules on Afghan men, leading some to wish that they had been more supportive of women's protests.

More links at WAHF and Perfect Number.

My posts this week:  Blasphemy Day, and how Israel is winning.

[Image at top made by Pliny.]

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Only 25 days until Halloween!