Link round-up for 14 December 2024

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

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This communication produced some confusion.

These Christmas decorations needed a bit more thought.

Blogger Ami is reading some interesting books.

Motorcyclists show off their riding skills.

This cat is an escape artist.  This one, not so much.

It is rude to spit on somebody's car.

He's really bad at eating.

The tree got its revenge.

This will be a clever short-cut..... oops.

She just can't take her eyes off the phone.

Please get out of my truck.

Maybe he's the real Santa.

Howard, stop that!

I didn't know salmon got this large.

More Krampus marches from Europe here.

A successful harvest requires dedicated, well-paid workers whose right to strike is respected.

Since you can't have a flying car, how about a flying tractor?

Perhaps communism and capitalism can work together.

Whatever they're paying him for carrying things, it isn't enough.

Lady M decorates for Creepmas.

See an overhead monorail driver's view.

Here's a trick for unlocking a car door without the key.  Anyone know if this actually works?

Impressive Lithuanian church here.

The Australian kangaroo snake is well-named.

This boy found an odd-looking rock on a British beach -- but it was no ordinary rock.

Benevolent humans cleanse a sea-turtle of parasites.  Just imagine how most animals in the wild, who never receive such help, must suffer.

Wait, it's people over thirty who are "depressed, anxious, inattentive, or hyperactive"?  That doesn't seem to reflect experience.

Oregon is starting to build its largest solar-power facility ever.  It will cover almost ten thousand acres and produce enough electricity for eight hundred thousand houses.

H5N1 could become a human infectious disease more easily than we thought -- but our ordinary flu vaccines will probably provide some protection.

This is how "smart glass" works.

Here are some cool anti-surveillance tools regular people can afford.

It is pointless and offensive to tell lies about the history of science.

This can happen when you buy from overseas.

Androgynous celebrities prove the TERFs' point.

If you can't afford real medical treatment, going to a quack won't help.

Books have value that no digital media can match.

Stop filming people in public without asking for permission first.  Oh, and filming video in a public restroom is something only a complete weirdo would do.

Taylor Swift has paid out almost $200 million in bonuses to workers on her Eras tour.

This company plans to try to pass off "AI"-generated slop as "movies" as a vehicle for targeted advertising.

Here's how a brilliant businessman in the medical field operates.

Blogger Bilbo assesses alpha males.

Sic semper tyrannis.

Trying to make others the same as oneself is a form of selfishness.

Here is what it's like working for a billionaire.

Some bozo in the Netherlands built two crappy replicas of Noah's Ark, both of which came to embarrassing ends.

The Ashland Daily Tidings, a small-town Oregon newspaper, went out of business last year, but somebody created a fake website for it which has been pushing "AI" junk articles ever since.

Darwinfish 2 looks at the UHC CEO assassination, the DOGE attack on work-from-home, and sneaky methods of price-gouging.

For American readers -- if you had to leave the US, where would you go?  (My answer won't surprise anyone.)

These people exist.

Elon Musk gets a well-deserved award.

Portland's new mayor-elect is an enemy of workers.

Women who are considering dating a guy should apply the Joe Rogan test.

These could be quite useful.  I wonder how much they cost.

Here is a searchable database of US hospitals that perform surgical or hormonal transitioning of minors.  The total number of victims is about fourteen thousand.

If you use Booking dot com for travel, your information may not be safe.

Yet another woman who was transed as a minor, including a double mastectomy at age 14, is now suing the "medical providers" who did this to her.

Political must-read of the week:  Lucas Kunce explains why "why do they vote against their own self-interest" is a dangerously-wrong question.

Even if Luigi Mangione is indeed the gunman who shot the UHC CEO, jurors may well refuse to convict him.  The oligarch-owned mainstream media, and even Reddit, are going all out to attack the massive national tsunami of solidarity with him.  They are scared shitless of what this means.  A defense fund for him has already raised tens of thousands of dollars, while oligarch-controlled online platforms such as Amazon are banning merchandise supporting him.

Mangione's political views don't fit into a "left" or "right" pigeonhole.

I'm picking up some real dangerous-demagogue energy from this guy, especially at the end of the video.

62% of Americans agree that the government should ensure that all Americans have healthcare coverage.  62% also have a favorable view of the ACA.  At least two-thirds don't trust Trump, or the medical quacks he's appointing, on healthcare issues.

Here's how some judges in the January 6 cases now view their work in light of Trump's threat to pardon the insurrectionists.

A jury has acquitted Daniel Penny for stopping an apparently deranged man who had already attacked and seriously injured several women.

Learn about the evil of "step therapy" and one state that has banned it.

The Texas attorney general is suing a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a woman in Texas.

Biden has issued 39 pardons and 1,500 sentence commutations.  No sign yet of pre-emptive pardons for officials at risk of persecution by Trump.

Even property ownership is a scam these days.

At this California school, so many girls are wearing shirts protesting against boys on the girls' sports team that the school has now stopped punishing them for it.  The father of one girl is speaking out.  A law signed by Newsom this year bans teachers from even warning parents whose daughters will be made to compete and share locker rooms with a boy.

The oligarchy has learned nothing.

Trump now says he won't abandon Ukraine.  Who knows whether he really means it or what he means by it.

South Carolina Republicans are trying to get abortion classified as homicide, potentially allowing the death penalty for it.

Gibbering lunacy:  the perpetrators of Project 2025 want to reduce education in order to increase the US birthrate and stop the decline of religion.  They actually used the phrase "harmful over-consumption of schooling".

Judge her by her enemies.

For his ambassador to Greece, Trump has found someone uniquely unqualified.

Dr Warren Hern defends late-term abortion without apology or squid-ink.

"Transgender ideology empowers men over women.  It is just like regular 'rape culture' and misogyny except that it is woke."

One of RFK Jr's lawyers wants to eliminate several critical vaccines, including the polio vaccine.

The House has passed a bill to impose new sanctions on the corrupt, anti-Semitic ICC and on those who cooperate with it.  The bill now goes to the Senate.

The murderous greed and corruption of for-profit health insurers is a national emergency.

More wanted posters are appearing in New York.

By 2027, half of all US workers will live in states with a minimum wage of at least $15.

The US military will stop paying for the Mengele-like surgical mangling of children.

Christians in Eugene OR who are actually doing something good are getting harassed for it by local officials.

Trump is already backing off from his nutzoid campaign promises.

The bullies have gone too far.  The backlash is coming.

The Senate will soon vote on a bipartisan bill to strengthen Social Security, which has already passed the House.

The CFPB is cracking down on bank fees, potentially saving the public five billion dollars a year.  The DOGE billionaires want to abolish the CFPB.

Cutting funding for the ACA's Medicaid expansion would cost more than three million Americans their health insurance.

Some Christians are dangerously intolerant of different beliefs.

At least one House Republican openly wants to cut Social Security.  Elon Musk -- who, remember, has never been elected to anything -- is clearly eager to do so.

The second-highest court in the US has upheld the Biden-supported effort to ban the Chinese spy platform TikTok from operating in this country.

"It's tampering at best and destruction at worst."

Republican legislators in Missouri are already trying to undermine the abortion-rights law the voters passed last month.

The Democrats have become the party of an educated and prosperous minority.

Here's what RFK Jr's nonsense did in Samoa.  This stuff is serious.

"Pride" is now an engine of oppression and thought control.

It is always a good thing when jurors understand the law.

Congressional Republicans want to allow ACA premium tax credits to expire, leading to rising insurance premiums for millions.  They only like tax cuts that go to the rich.

MSM coverage of the Canada Post strike is an instructive example of media bias.  Always put the blame in such situations where it belongs.

The UK government's temporary ban on puberty blockers for minors will be made permanent.

We don't need to follow the law if we don't like your opinions.

There's nasty stuff going on in the world of British book publishing.

The Free Democratic Party in Germany doesn't want women politicians who work for women's safety.

Never forget Ukraine's biggest mistake.  Other vulnerable nations now know well that they would be foolish to give up the nuclear option for worthless security "guarantees".

France and Denmark are speeding up weapons deliveries to Ukraine, perhaps anticipating a slowdown of US help after Trump takes office.

Kharkiv decorates for Christmas.

Zelensky explains why the ceasefire Trump wants would only make things worse.

A Hamas commander who oversaw an attack on a kibbutz on October 7 has been brought to justice.

Israel is destroying Syria's air force and chemical-weapons facilities, probably a wise precaution in view of the jihadist background of some of the new leadership.  Equally wise to get this done fast before the US and Europe start being a pain in the ass about it.

Syrian refugees in Turkey line up to go home now that Asad is gone.  The Sunni revolutionaries have been releasing political prisoners, including this guy.  The new leadership has prohibited forcing women to wear the hijab, and is taking some steps to protect freedom of the press.  Life in Damascus is already starting to look normal.

The Tokyo metro government is switching to a four-day work week in an effort to improve employee work-life balance and, hopefully, raise Japan's catastrophically-low birth rate.

More links at Red State Blues and WAHF.

My posts this week:  the revolution in Syria, an image round-up, and the new American awakening.

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The recent election result seems to have cost us some good bloggers.  Hackwhackers almost immediately announced they were "stepping away from the blog for an indefinite period".  A couple of days later, Shower Cap decided to "step away for a bit" to focus on other projects, and hasn't been back.  Green Eagle's last post was actually in early September, but he usually used to post every week or so, and it's surprising that he's had nothing to say since the election.  Octoberfarm wasn't even a political blog, but put up one disgusted post right after election day and hasn't been heard from since.  Lady M did the same, but finally returned to posting yesterday (she was missed).  As for the others, I hope whatever they're doing now is something that will help them, and I hope they'll eventually come back.