Link round-up for 21 December 2024

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

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Santa must escape the Grinch to get his job done.

Always put your truck in park.

Cats celebrate Christmas.

Dogs celebrate Christmas.

Worst tow truck driver ever.

I'll just quickly overtake this slow car..... oops.

That was a bit careless.

Writer Anne Carson has some pithy advice.

Don't worry too much about this alien invader.

My truck is better than your truck!

A flasher makes a mistake (mildly NSFW).

Some last-minute Christmas shopping tips here.

We parked near the restaurant, but.....

It's like cooking with glass.

She'll keep you spellbound with bubbles.

Santa's coming to town -- oh shit!

Opulence has grown steadily uglier and less tasteful over the centuries (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

Today is International Dalek Remembrance Day, celebrating the evil mutant toilet-plunger-wielding aliens from Dr Who.  Exterminate!  Exterminate!  Quick Dalek language lesson here.

Atheist activist Penn Jillette created a noble invention, inspired by Debbie Harry.

See some cars of the future, as anticipated by the past (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

Some pretty nice photos of Oregon here.

Taylor Swift's Eras tour pretty much broke the record for number of records broken.

Honoré Daumier was a pioneering caricaturist of the nineteenth century.

Pretty impressive sleight-of-hand here.

When is a tree not a tree?  When it's two trees (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

Sometimes the aurora is pink (filmed in Norway).

This is Mars, a desert more barren than any on Earth.

There's some evidence that weight-loss drugs can help against a wide range of other medical conditions.

Precautions during the covid pandemic have apparently driven one strain of flu to extinction.

Mangione's gun was partly 3D-printed, illustrating how far 3D printing has come as a work-around for gun control laws.

The Earth is heating up faster than global-warming theory predicts.  Loss of cloud cover may be the explanation.

How hideous is nature?  This hideous.

Reminder:  keep burning objects away from Christmas trees.

The iPhone sounds like a complete pain in the ass.

This diagram shows how "the American dream" actually works (click to enlarge).

Will the police catch this murderer?

Hackwhackers blog is hinting at a possible return in January.

Vote here for blogger Bilbo's ass clown of the year.

Some Russian motorcycle troops need a bit more training.

TV's most pugnacious doctor pwns an insurance guy.

How stupid can you be and still be a senator?  This stupid.

Tips here on deleting tracking cookies from your browser.

Blogger Annie has some issues with Verizon.

Here are evaluations of some image hosting sites that don't ban NSFW content.

"The body always watches" -- poetic and angry reflections on autism and abuse.

Why is Christmastime so depressing, and can it ever be improved?

An old cartoon gets a current update.

Good discussion here debunking defenses of "AI" "art", written by an artist.

Expect a sharp increase in VPN use in Florida next year.

Someone in Seattle reprogrammed this digital roadside sign.

Lawrence Krauss gives a brief talk on religion in the modern world.

Part of the reason modern American life is so depressing is that nearly everything -- our cities, our websites, and even ourselves -- has gotten uglier.  Besides the examples given, I'd also cite tattoos and piercings, and those hideous all-right-angles "houses" that look like two or three shipping containers welded together at random with some entire walls replaced with floor-to-ceiling windows.

The enemy is using bot accounts to wage psychological class warfare.

Schools are full of hidden dangers these days.

In Wisconsin, the Catholic League celebrated Christmas by putting up a billboard announcing how shitty they are.

Time missed the obvious choice for Person of the Year.

Read what one of the most important leaders in the twentieth century thought about Christianity.

Watch what United Healthcare does, not what it says.

Tenant unions are on the rise, pushing for rent control and seeking to counter the influence of landlords and their lobbyists over politicians.

Louisiana has set out to become the disease epicenter of the US.

Anti-Jewish indoctrination and harassment of Jewish students is happening in elementary schools, not just colleges.

The Teamsters have launched a massive nationwide strike against Amazon.  For now, doing business with Amazon is not only unethical (because of how they treat their workers and you're supporting Bezos) but is also crossing a picket line.

Somebody really doesn't want you to see this video.

Michigan is seeing its highest level of pertussis in twenty years, due to increased rejection of vaccines.

Digital license plates (yes, apparently that's a thing) can be hacked to facilitate crime.

JK Rowling has been fearlessly speaking up for women's rights and safety for five years, despite an avalanche of threats and smears.  Others have had it even worse.

To the system, they matter, we don't.  More here.

Why can't the military just shoot down the mystery drones pestering the east coast?

This is American healthcare.

Bluesky has a serious problem with death threats and doxxing, which it seems totally inept at addressing.

Lat night's last-minute budget deal passed the House 366-34 and the Senate 85-11.  All the House no votes were Republicans, as were all the Senate no votes except one (Sanders).  It was a clear defeat for Musk and Trump.  Musk had been positively gleeful about a shutdown which would have left millions of government employees, including active-duty military personnel, without paychecks until it was resolved.

For years, this California women's prison was infested with such rampant sexual abuse that it became known as the "rape club".  Aside from keeping male inmates out, women's prisons really should have all-female guards and staff.

Even some establishment Democrats are abandoning the worthless, billionaire-owned mainstream media.

United Healthcare is cutting back on autistic kids' access to essential therapy -- perhaps breaking the law.

Certain people don't want you to read this book.  I've read it.  Everyone should.

Here are five suggestions for opposing the second Trump presidency.  More worthwhile thoughts here.

"I can't afford my oxygen" -- and the country can't afford to go on with this sadistic bullshit.

Last year the Miss Netherlands pageant crowned a man as winner; now it's shutting down entirely.  Discussion here.

After a bigoted act of vandalism in New Hampshire, local artists re-assert the presence of the one true religion.

This graph probably reflects the country as a whole.

The Biden administration has withdrawn a rule that would have forced all public schools in the US to allow boys in their girls' sports.

The LA Times is all in for Trumpism.

The super-rich now have so much power that it's a serious threat to democracy.

Discussion here on Nancy Mace's initiative to protect emergency shelters.

The US carried out more deportations in 2024 than in any one year of Trump's first term.

Always remember -- we don't yet know for sure that Luigi Mangione is the CEO shooter.  He's innocent until proven guilty like anyone else.

It is barbaric to subject prison inmates to this.

Here's what healthcare populism might look like.

County sheriffs across the US are divided on whether or not to help enforce Trump's mass deportations.

This is how the enemy wages war upon us.

The ACA dramatically reduced the number of Americans without health insurance, but we need to go further.

Israel-bashing and coddling of anti-Semitism are alienating many Jewish voters from the left.

Here's how Trump's billionaires plan to destroy Medicaid.

If a man can become a folk hero for assassinating a rich CEO, then the Democrats surely have nothing to fear about embracing anti-billionaire policies.

"Islamophobia" is a made-up issue, not to be compared to the genuine menace of anti-Semitism.

Trump says he may reverse Biden's decision allowing Ukraine to use US-made long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia (found via Earth-Bound Misfit).  If so, it will be up to Europe to provide such weapons without the restriction.

Billionaires evade taxes even in death.

Free speech is a fundamental liberal value.  More here.

The business elite is starting to get scared of the possible consequences of Trump's tariffs.  Should've supported Harris, dumbasses.

Greed is keeping poor people with HIV from accessing the antiviral drugs that could save their lives.  Millions have probably died already as a result.

Amanda Marcotte thinks that DOGE is far more bark than bite.  Best quote:  "MAGA is rife with gutless sadists, people who like to wage 'war' at a distance, when they don't have to look their intended victims in the eye.  That cowardice is a weakness and one that can be exploited -- if it's met with resolution and courage."

Stop trashing Fetterman -- he's trying to lead the Democrats back to sanity.  (I don't condone this writer's sniping at Pelosi.)

Americans spend a larger proportion of their lives being unhealthy than people in any other country.

Europe will build its own satellite system to replace Starlink, to avoid dependence on Elon Musk.  The US would never do this, but hopefully the Europeans will let us use theirs.

Ireland's government has gone full pro-jihadist, so Israel is closing down its embassy there.  The US should do the same.

Germany's openness to non-European asylum-seekers has been a disaster, and its next government will need to defy EU institutions to deal with the problem.

Poland and Finland have pragmatic responses to the presence of a huge expansionist gangster-state next door.

The US is handing over the management of Ukraine aid to NATO so it will be harder for Trump to bugger it up when he takes office.

Russia is facing massive crop failures, leading to sharp rises in food prices.

Workers on a major Russian government construction project haven't been paid since September.

The Russian media are struggling to come to grips with their country's massive defeat in Syria.

Good discussion here of what's happening in Russia's economy.

A recent change in Israeli policy will facilitate a surge of new housing construction in the West Bank, alleviating Israel's housing shortage and helping further squelch the "Palestinian state" nonsense.

As I've pointed out several times, all those "casualty figures" from Gaza that the MSM keep uncritically parroting come from the Gaza "health ministry", which is part of Hamas -- that is, they're jihadist propaganda and there's no reason to think they have any connection with reality.  Now an actual study has shown that those figures are indeed seriously inflated.

The Iranian theocracy is putting its new, even-more-draconian hijab law on hold, apparently fearing a new eruption of protests.

Syrian rebels burn the coffin of Hafiz Asad, founder of the recently-overthrown regime.

There are some grounds for cautious optimism about the new Syrian government.  The city of Idlib was ruled by the rebels for seven years, providing some indications of what their future rule over Syria might be like.

Syrians show their feelings about the Russians who propped up Asad.

More links at WAHF and Red State Blues.

My posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, and why Trump's second term won't be the Apocalypse.

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