Link round-up for 10 November 2024

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

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It's not always a good idea to offer a lady a drink.

This defendant's court appearance got off to a bad start.

Here's why people normally do yoga indoors.

Time for some pole-vaulting..... oops.

The magician's trick is enlivened by his assistant.

How dare these bloggers question this unique love (NSFW).

When in Glasgow, check out one of the city's star attractions.

Don't get distracted by trivia.

It's a puppy IQ test.

Can you open a bottle like this?

This is a toilet worthy of Satan himself.

She may not look like a typical truck driver, but she knows what she's doing.

Here it is, the little engine that could.

There is actually a village in Austria called "Fucking", and the residents are making the best of it.

Interesting design for a pest trap.

Install an art hallway in your home.

Cas d'intérêt has several lists of outstanding posts.

This is Victoria Falls, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

Taking fluoride out of our drinking water would be a health disaster.

Here is what it's like to have only one eye.

The Catholic archbishop of Toulouse, France, completely freaked out over what was essentially a display of giant Halloween puppets (see video here -- these things look awesome) and decided to perform some occult mumbo-jumbo ritual to "consecrate" the city, whatever the hell that means.  These people are so easily spooked.

This memorial honors a marriage that wasn't expected to happen.

Learn to stop doomscrolling.

Reaganite Independent has a round-up of images from our nation's defeat.

Alien invaders might find humanity too depressing to conquer.

Some good social advice here.

Here's a creepy story much too real (and too creepy) for Halloween.

The Hackwhackers bloggers are stepping away from blogging for a while.

Some American women are considering a campaign to drive liberal men over to the right wing.

Here's how to interpret the news.

"Peanut-free" foods can't have peanuts in them.

Beware of "natural" abortifacients.

This guy shouldn't be a cop.

My district has re-elected its Democratic Congresswoman.  However, statewide voters also strongly rejected Measure 118, the basic-income initiative.  Sadly, I'm not surprised.  The powers that be went all-out to kill this thing -- I saw more propaganda against it than on almost any other single issue.

Woke-ism continues to punish people for acknowledging reality.

Always remember that Trumpism is not gaining any new support.  It remains the voice of the past, not of the future.

Johnny Knapp is re-launching his weekly online newsletter on abuses against autistic people.

See assessments of the election at Red State Blues,  Annie Asks You, and Angry Bear.

The Boeing strike has ended with a resounding win.

The Democrats don't understand Hispanic voters.

Blogger Nick reaps the benefits of fifty years of vegetarianism.

The nationwide group Indivisible is organizing resistance, and is recruiting people all over the country (found via Annie).

California and other blue states are already taking steps to minimize the harm Trump will be able to do to them.  He's predictably throwing his usual tantrum.  Hakeem Jeffries will lead the resistance within the federal government.  Elizabeth Warren has some ideas for the period before Trump takes office.

A right-wing Christian nationalist leader has gotten caught doing what those people so often seem to get caught doing.

There are no "trans kids".

Some thoughts here on why more men are becoming right-wing.

The plot by the Iranian theocracy to assassinate Trump also targeted Iranian feminist Masih Alinejad, whose writings I've sometimes linked here, as well as two un-named Jewish businessmen.

Legitimizing and coddling jihadism means embracing homophobia.

Some of them really are horrible people.

The FBI has thwarted a planned terrorist attack in Nashville.

Guys like this are a big part of why Trump won.

New York Times tech workers have gone on strike -- here's how to support them.  Donate to the strike fund here.

The prices people see with their own eyes at the grocery store every week will always outweigh what the talking heads on the news are saying about the economy.

In New York City, the post-October-7 surge in hate crimes seems to be abating somewhat -- but Jews remain the group most targeted by hate crimes.

Trump's victory does not mean the end of democracy.  Things will get bad, but not as bad as you think.

Remember Imane Khelif, the male boxer who drove Angela Carini to forfeit an Olympic match due to fear of serious injury?  (Lots of links here -- scroll down to near the end).  As if there had been any doubt, medical records have confirmed that he is indeed a man. The IOC is guilty of serious negligence.

In Puerto Rico, support for statehood is now around 57%.

"The Democrats lost this election, and lost badly, because they are out of touch.  Lost to a total basket case that many who voted for him readily acknowledged was a nut case.  That is how toxic the Democratic brand is for a majority of Americans."  Look, we have a deadly-serious problem and we damn well better get to work fixing it, if we don't want to keep on and on seeing election results like this.

You can identify Nazis by their behavior.

According to preliminary data, Trump won 40% of Hispanic voters and 44% of voters younger than thirty.  But since Trump's vote total was no larger than in 2020, these gains must have been offset by losses among white and older voters.  One Hispanic Trump voter may already be regretting his choice.  Many more will do so.

High-schoolers in Virginia staged a walkout to protest against policies allowing boys to use girl's restrooms and locker rooms.  It illustrates how views of the issue are changing.

It wasn't just the abortion initiatives -- voters in several red states also approved worker-friendly ballot measures, including a $15 minimum wage in Alaska and Missouri.

The evangelical theocratic movement is going to become even more of a threat now.

Some of Trump's campaign promises will run into substantial problems and opposition if he tries to implement them.

Trump's proposed tariffs on laptops and gadgets imported from China would cause the prices of those things to skyrocket; the price of laptops would nearly double.  Retailers are already working to mitigate the damage high tariffs would cause.

The Democratic party needs to stop making clowns like these part of its image.

Trump seems to be backing down on appointing RFK Jr head of Health and Human Services.  Maybe now he'll try to appoint Hannibal Lecter instead.

Woketardia is a multifaceted and totalitarian threat to our freedom of thought and to a rational society.

The new head of the British Conservative party is solid on Israel and opposes trans ideology (the party is not currently in power).

Must-read of the week:  This week a full-blown pogrom was carried out in Amsterdam.  More news links here.  It was organized in advance; the Dutch police were warned, and did nothing.  At least one major businessman is pulling his companies out of the city.

The AfD party in Germany, branded "far right" by the MSM, is actually expelling members found to be neo-Nazis.

Germany's insane self-ID law has provoked world-wide protests.

Trump is already exploring plans to backstab Ukraine.  Biden is doing what he can to limit the damage Trump will inflict on foreign policy in general.  Here are some suggestions from Ukraine.  The country has options for how to cope.

Reports of Russian troops murdering Ukrainian prisoners of war have increased over the last year.

This "senior Trump advisor" wants to reward Putin's aggression by giving him Crimea and other Ukrainian territory -- a surefire way to guarantee more wars of aggression in the future.  Like the appeaser he is, this Trumpist speaks of "ending" the war rather than winning it.

North Korean troops shipped to Russia as cannon fodder have found something appealing in their situation.

Trump's election should have one positive effect -- the end of the US pushing outrageous and impossible "two-state solution" nonsense on Israel.

Hindu supremacists in India are harassing religious minorities by disrupting funerals.

More links at Red State Blues and WAHF.

My posts this week:  election day links and images, initial post-election reactions, further observations on the election, and a last few notes.

[Image at top found via Reaganite Independent]

o o o o o

"But don't people remember how terrible Trump was the first time?"  Actually, a lot of people probably don't, and that's part of the problem.  Thinking back, I can't remember a single thing Trump did in office that harmed or even inconvenienced me personally.  Of course, I read the news and I knew that millions of other people were being harmed badly, and I understood the dangers inherent in Trump's cozying up to dictators, picking fights with fellow democracies, and grossly ignorant isolationism and trade wars.  And I knew that he would have done far worse if Democrats, and his own incompetence, hadn't reined him in.  But a lot of people pay only very limited attention to the news.  Unless something affects them personally, they have no sense that anything is amiss -- and probably the majority of people weren't affected much by anything Trump did.  So, no, a large fraction of Americans probably don't have any grasp of how bad it was.

The sheer length and intensity of this year's campaign season may have contributed to the debacle.  As far back as May, 62% of Americans said they were worn out by the interminable barrage of election news and ads, and most of those were not following the news closely, meaning they were pretty much tuning out anything election-related.  From then to November their disgust and avoidance probably deepened as the bombardment of ads and speeches and political news relentlessly bored on and intensified.  Hardly anybody would have been able to stomach listening to the details of some convoluted plan for tax credits or healthcare reform.  We'd probably benefit from a shorter campaign period, and fewer but punchier ads.

I'm a bit less worried now about a really major disaster like a repeal of Obamacare or gutting of Social Security.  Even if Republicans keep the House majority, it will be a very narrow one; they'll need almost every Republican on board to pass anything.  They want to get re-elected, and plenty of them know such steps would be hugely unpopular, even with much of their own base.  Trump won't invest much effort in pressure to enact such things -- his real passion is for tariffs, hating on immigrants, and above all his petty personal vendettas and feuds.  Even a national abortion ban probably won't pass, for the same reason, though I'm less certain about that one -- it's so important to the Bible-thumper faction of Republicans that they'd be willing to commit political suicide to get it.  But at least some other Republicans won't be.

Please can it with the "this is who we are" (meaning "Americans are terrible people") and "the country chose fascism" shit.  First, 73 million out of 340 million is not "the country".  Second, you have no idea why Republicans vote the way they do because you live in an echo chamber and never listen to anybody outside it, just as they don't understand us because they don't listen to us.  Most people who voted for Trump did not "choose fascism"; they don't agree with you that he's a fascist.  Some very noisy people have been yelling "fascist" at everybody to the right of Bernie Sanders for as long as I can remember.  It's come to sound comical.  It no longer convinces anybody or even registers much.

"Explanations" for the defeat that blame the voters being evil or stupid, or that put most of the blame on the media, the details of how Harris replaced Biden, the details of how campaigns were run, or voters being too fixated on the price of eggs, are not really explanations -- they're efforts by the far-left fringe to reassure each other that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with their actual pet policies that they've foisted on the broader left, and that the left does not need to get rid of those fringe policies in order to win.  Ignore them.  We need to face reality.  Because we can't afford more defeats like this.

We need to focus on voters in the sensible center, many of whom are winnable (and have voted Democratic before) rather than on trying to placate the radicals.  The kind of people who (a) want Hamas to survive so it can kill more Jews in the future, and (b) believe that the way to achieve that was to withhold votes from Harris so that Trump would be the one setting Middle East policy, are beyond being reasoned with -- and it would be immoral to try to appease them.

"We need to look at how we build a movement that can actually weather the worst Republicans can throw at us.  And honestly?  That starts with us listening to those we disagree with, with open hearts and curiosity.  And then we need to hear what they don't tell us, what's really driving them.  And yes, some of them are hopeless racists and misogynists, and nothing we do would change that.  We're not talking about their 30% fringe. But the other 20%? They aren't lost." -- Kos