Link round-up for 11 January 2025

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

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People show off their skill at doing things.

This jump was a very bad idea.

Catch the wave!

This dog is profoundly suspicious of the three other dogs.

It's time for a visit to Satan Santa.

Colossus wouldn't have voted for Trump.

Older people confront the internet.

Go for the meat, and you're a soggy moggy.

He knows how it's done.

Brush vigorously for at least 30 seconds each day.

She moved into a tiny house with her kids.

Help the baby get to sleep.

Cas d'intérêt reviews two very different movies.

Altruism exists even among arthropods.

Remember who really matters.

Some interesting trap ideas here.

You will be impressed by the engineers who built this bridge across a river.

You may be an imagistic thinker.

Are bugs cute?  Not when there are too many of them.

Time-lapse views of the Milky Way awesomely illustrate the Earth's rotation (found via Mary Kirkland).

A battle fought two thousand years ago illustrates how the side with the better technology usually wins.

This is the Sun.  The transient arch-like structures are called "coronal loops" and are caused by irregularities in the Sun's magnetic field.

GLP-1 drugs, originally developed for weight loss, are turning out to be one of the greatest medical breakthroughs ever, effective against a wide range of disorders and even addictions.

The Indian subcontinent has achieved a huge drop in infant mortality.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have a weakness we can use against them.

Climate change is the main driver of the increase in wildfires in the US, such as those in southern California.

India is starting work on the world's largest solar power plant, to be completed in five years.

France has mandated solar panel canopies for all large parking lots, making every such lot a source of clean electricity.

Germany got 14% of its total electricity from solar power last year, and almost twice as much from wind power.

Bears can give birth during hibernation.

Cleanse your air of smoke and other pollutants with an inexpensive Corsi-Rosenthal cube.

Here are the results of a survey on distinguishing "art" made by "AI" from real art made by humans.  I guessed right in the majority of cases; in the first pair of images, I immediately guessed (correctly) which was "AI" and which was real, though it's hard to say how.  Even though "AI" images with wrong numbers of fingers were excluded from the test (too easy to spot), several still get hands grotesquely wrong.  And the "AI" stuff usually has a sort of "meaningless" quality that comes through.  The analysis of the "gate" image is especially interesting.  Whatever these programs are doing, it's nothing like what an actual artist does.

The FDA says eggs are still safe to eat despite the bird flu outbreak.  For what it's worth.

Delicious -- and so healthy!

This is not reading.  It's just sad and fucked-up.

If you post videos on YouTube, read this.

If you need a VPN, avoid these.

Be an asshole, deal with a lot of shit.

Here's yet another hassle for long-suffering customer-service workers to deal with.

There's been a surge of interest in leaving Meta's social media.

Oligarch-owned media corporations are destroying the online history of culture and journalism.

Blogger Annie is acrostically hopeful for the new year.

These people exist.

Stop this insane religious mass slaughter of animals.

"Your whole thing is triggering the libs.  Now the libs hate you.  Seriously what was your expectation."

FIRE is offering pollster Ann Selzer free legal defense against Trump's ridiculous lawsuit against her.

New high-tech TVs focus on "AI", ads, and pointless gimmicks nobody asked for.  What on Earth does all this stuff have to do with watching football or Star Trek?

This is a sickness (warning:  gross description).

You do not need to worry about this person's problem.

Please, please, please, like our super-expensive garbage!

Sometimes, they remember.

Beware the common error of believing that everybody who disagrees with you is basically alike.

The movement against nuclear power has been disastrous for the environment.

These assholes were never patriots.

How very Christian.

The number of cases where men won women's sport events, displacing the female rightful winners, is now well into the thousands in the US alone.

Must-read of the week:  Tech expert Ed Zitron explains why the "AI" fad is finally almost over.  Hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured into hugely money-losing investments, with no evidence that profits will ever come or that the science-fictiony hype about the technology's potential will ever materialize.  It's all eerily like the dot-com bubble.

Here's an example of that "AI" hype.  Read the comments at the end.

Prosecutors in the Mangione case have a jury problem.

This chart purports to rate the accuracy and political leanings of mass media.

If you're considering leaving the US, this writer recommends Costa Rica (I'd want to see some verifiable hard numbers about issues like crime, though).

Before buying a Tesla, read this.

"Tell him no."

The Chrome browser is spying on you on behalf of advertisers.  Switch to Firefox.

Immigration is a rising priority for voters.

Meta has been padding its user base with "AI" bot accounts to lure real humans into fake interactions, but is removing them after a backlash.

That Ann Telnaes cartoon suppressed by Bezos has now been all over the internet, probably seen by far more people than if if Bezos had just let it be published.  Now fellow cartoonists are drawing in solidarity.

More than five thousand US minors have been surgically transed since 2019.

Here's how ending net neutrality will bugger up the internet.  Some group needs to maintain an authoritative online list of companies that paid to slow down their competitors, so everybody can boycott them.

"AI" in the workplace is damaging productivity and increasing stress on workers, who have to do extra work to fix all the errors and problems the "AI" creates.

This man is proud of himself and others like him invading and ruining lesbian spaces.

From 2001 to 2022, median rent in the US rose 22% after inflation, while renters' incomes rose only 2%.

The typical profile of domestic terrorists is pretty varied, but there are commonalities.

Don't let them humanize evil.  They are the ones who need to learn.

Religio-nutballs are trying to blame the trans nonsense on atheism.

Blogger Bilbo looks at the billionaire class.  Sample datum:  the richest 1% in the US now hold seven times as much wealth as the poorest 50%.

Landlords are using algorithm software to inflate rents, costing tenants billions and probably violating anti-trust law.

US Steel is now suing the government and its own workers' union for blocking its sale to Nippon Steel.

This survival trainer spent two years infiltrating and undermining a right-wing militia group.  It's a dramatic story.

The transition to clean energy is now mostly market-driven, so Trump won't be able to do much to slow it down.

After repeated failures of the Texas electric grid during peak weather events, Texans are turning to "microgrids" for more reliable power.

Blogger Annie argues that we should take Trump's Greenland fixation seriously.

This conversation with a former EMT doesn't make pleasant reading.

Yes, Democrats lost on the economy.  Statistics said it was booming, but people don't live and work and shop statistics.  Many millions really were worse off than four years ago.  And can we recognize in hindsight that it was a huge mistake (and hugely asinine) to keep blathering on about "joy" when so many people were hurting economically?  Way to seem completely out of touch.

South Carolina is the latest state to boost the VPN industry with a law restricting online porn access.

Guess which one is the man (scroll down a bit).

Here are some Americans who died, and deserve to be remembered.

Thousands of doctors are urging the Senate not to confirm the anti-vaccine nut RFK Jr.

Medicare Advantage plans illustrate the threat posed by privatization to real Medicare.

Republicans are threatening to cut almost every part of our already-threadbare social safety net to pay for more tax cuts for the billionaire parasite class.

I've pointed this out before:  If a society is divided into two subcultures, in one of which the norm is to have one or zero children per couple, while the other typically has two or more children per couple, which of those subcultures will be predominant a few generations later?  This post is full of creepy Stalinist-sounding language ("we have always been able to count on young voters to vote correctly", etc), but it illustrates well how this issue applies in the US.

Some Democratic leaders have learned from the election, moving back to reality on illegal immigration and sanctioning the ICC, and shifting focus to crime and economic issues instead of woketardia.

He stood up for the true victims.

This is clearly a dangerous man.

SEIU is re-joining the AFL-CIO in preparation for an expected hostile environment for labor under Trump.

Over the last fifteen years, eleven thousand people have been expelled ("disenrolled") from American Indian tribes, largely over dissenting views or shares of casino revenues.

The MSM and the punditocracy are desperately trying to de-emphasize the fact that the New Orleans mass murderer was a jihadist.

UHC must pay out a $165 million settlement for misleading customers.

"He wasn't supposed to understand what sex should feel like when he was still a minor, and now he never will."

The G20 is making progress on better taxation of the ultra-wealthy, though the US will soon be actively undermining the effort.

A Canadian school canceled an event with a survivor of jihadist slavery due to fear of offending Muslims.  Sorry, but if somebody's offended by the truth, tough shit.

An already-ridiculous political ad is made even worse by its choice of music.

Muslim rape gangs have terrorized working-class girls in the UK for years while the authorities did nothing.  Some officials actively made the problem worse (more here, and here).  They created a situation where the "far right" was telling the truth and everyone else was lying.  Voters will react accordingly.

Some people gave early warning.

Never forget the murderous jihadist attack on Charlie Hebdo.

The EU declares it will take the lead in supporting Ukraine if the US falls short under Trump.

This is Vovchansk, Ukraine, showing the extreme destruction caused by the Russian invasion.

Ukraine's attacks deep inside Russia have been effective, cutting oil production by 17% and destroying thirty thousand tons of weapons in September alone.

This oil depot at Engels, four hundred miles from the border, has been burning out of control for days.

North Korean troops are such valuable allies to the Russian people.

Huge protests in Georgia, demanding that the country align itself with Europe rather than Russia, continue in the new year.

As Jews flee Western countries due to rising anti-Semitism, Israel must prepare to absorb them.

An Arab singer is likely to represent Israel at the Eurovision contest this year.

Israel's conduct of the Gaza war is a moral exemplar to the world.

A ceasefire in Gaza before Hamas is completely defeated would lead to disastrous consequences.

No matter what the theocrats do, girls will not obey.

More links at WAHF (and more here).

My own posts this week:  a video on the internet vs real life, an image round-up, and my best postings of 2024.

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All this talk about buying Greenland is bullshit.  We don't need it and we can't afford it.  As for making Canada a state, Republicans are not going to add another giant blue state like California to the electoral system (Canadians supported Harris over Trump 60% to 21%), even if the Canadians had any interest in joining the US, which I'm sure they don't.

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It seems Green Eagle and Reaganite Independent have ceased posting; I have therefore removed them from the blog list.  They will be missed.

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"FUCK YOURSELF in the face", "F u retard" -- Elon Musk is a toddler, like Trump.  His wealth and power insulated him from the kind of pushback and consequences that force normal people to develop adult behavior.  He never grew up.  He probably chews with his mouth open and uses the upraised-middle-finger gesture too.

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I commonly see people cite this or that negative about Trump and say, basically, "this should have been a deal breaker to voters".  That's not how voting works, for most people.  They don't have "deal breakers", in the sense of some one point about one candidate which is so bad they must vote for the other candidate no matter what.  Each candidate is a compendium of features they like and features they don't, and so they choose the one with the more favorable balance.  If you were faced with a candidate who supported all the policies you like but had Trump's criminal record and vile personality, vs a candidate who supported everything you hate (banning abortion, eliminating the ACA and Social Security, banning homosexuality, abolishing vaccines, etc) but had no such criminal background, would you really vote for the second guy?  Most people choose candidates based on the policies they will enact, more than for any other factor.

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It's rare that I watch a video as long as nineteen minutes, but this one is well worth it.  This is our fundamental national issue.  Not race, not elections and political parties, not Trump, this.