Link round-up for 25 January 2025

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

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This is basketball without mercy.

You have been warned.

Watch the Pink Panther battle a telescope in this cartoon.

The world is under a curse until the injustice is rectified.

She finally found the item she'd misplaced (NSFW; video is in German, but it doesn't matter).

Ads from the old days played on male vanity.

Do not strike at those whose support you need.

This newspaper mixed up the captions on two comics, with amusing results (found via Miss Cellania).

It is important to not confuse these two languages.

I'm concerned that this cat might be the reincarnation of somebody.

A British YouTuber gets a geography surprise.

A Chinese learner discovers a frustrating inconsistency in the English language.

This man in Bangladesh has an important job.

Go away, little kitty cat, before you get hurt.

I'll just step outside and take a shower.

Thank you for saving me.

Same-sex marriage became legal in Thailand on Thursday, and gays celebrated with a colorful mass wedding.  Thailand is the third Asian nation to legalize same-sex marriage, after Taiwan and Nepal.

Here's a vivid and sometimes lurid account of the lives of child ballet dancers in the nineteenth century; it shows us how much things have changed, that what seems today to be shocking abuse was more or less normative at the time.

There are elephants underground.

Learn about the history of rats.

Watch water in slow motion (NSFW blog, Blogspot login required).

Be grateful for the Earth's magnetic field.

See an interesting, if slightly rushed, view of the scale of everything.

What you eat can affect how you sleep, and it turns out that the best foods for sleep are the same as what's best in general.

MDMA may be able to rehabilitate political extremists, under certain conditions.

What eventually happened to the Soviet Venera space probes that landed on Venus half a century ago?

You can have a grape for lunch.

The invader claims to be in distress, is given entry into the homeland, asserts dominance over it, and starts preying on the young.  British readers will, I think, spot the metaphor.

Your brain has a system for flushing out waste products during sleep, but sleeping pills stop it from working.

This man poisoned himself for eight months, and the results were ugly.

Here's what it's like traveling by Amtrak.  Looks a hell of a lot more comfortable than an airplane.

You can't blog about just one topic forever.  If you're getting burned out, try some different topics and see if it re-kindles your interest.

It's OK to say nothing.

Nike claims to support social justice.  Maybe it should start really doing so.

An "AI" program intended to replace software engineers is failing at almost every task assigned to it.

Far Corner Café blog has an official portrait for the new administration.

Wrapped in a cloak of gobbledygook, medieval ignorance is returning.

Jesus just wanted to see a band perform.

This post says that Duolingo has fallen prey to the "AI"/ad-clog plague that afflicts more and more of the internet.

The Oscars have nominated a man for best actress, but maybe it's best if he wins.

This patriotic dog has little respect for Trump (NSFW).

You're not being paid to fix the boss's mistakes.

The world can't go on like this forever.

If you use an Apple device or operating system, read this.

Wait, you need a subscription for Microsoft Word now?  Well, if you have one, read this.

Let's hope this isn't a foretaste of how the defense department will operate.

The problem of students using "AI" to "write" papers is fueling a return to more traditional methods.

Timely tip here on dealing with credit report problems.

Look!  Up in the sky!  It's..... the remains of Elon Musk's latest fuck-up!

Blogger Annie explains why she's finally leaving Twitter.

"From climate-controlled offices, they explain with practiced patience.  Why I must learn to survive.  On fewer crumbs than they currently bestow."  Please do read this -- it's the reality millions live with in this supposedly great economy, which now will soon be pushing them even further into desperation and hopelessness.

Good hat.  Somebody should actually make these.

Consent to sex must be informed consent, or it means nothing.

Here's how to get rid of Microsoft's intrusive "CoPilot" "AI" program.

One person who has the guts to speak out can inspire others.

If you are disabled and cannot use stairs, here's what to do in a fire (read the firefighter's response at the end).

Americans have fought oligarchs before.

This took a lot of courage, especially for a fourteen-year-old.

California is the economic powerhouse of the US.

After less than a week in office, Trump's approval rating has soared to its highest level ever.

This company is pushing an "AI"-generated simulacrum of Anne Frank which muddles the issue of blame for the Holocaust (found via Miss Cellania).

Renaming geographical features is part of an old and silly tradition of macho posturing between countries.

Privacy is the foundation of all other rights.

"It's so infuriating that [Trump] was allowed to be the voice of reason."  Stop lecturing, start listening.

Don't be too quick to believe what you read just because it aligns with your own beliefs.  In this case, commenters quickly pointed out that a posted meme was false. Everyone needs to be similarly diligent.

Tesla cybertrucks are not legal in Europe -- they're too dangerous.

Sorry, but this is what happens when you don't pay attention before voting.

Some ICE immigration sweeps in Arizona are detaining Navajos.  Where the hell are they planning to deport them back to?

In a major victory for privacy, a federal court has ruled that warrantless searches of individuals' online communications are unconstitutional.

The bullying behavior of trans ideologists illustrates why this ideology needs to be defeated.

It is nonsense to say that "there is no hope for the future".

Trump has frozen most federal health agency communications -- any announcements now need to be pre-approved by a political commissar, at least through the end of January.  So these agencies won't be able to inform the public about any dangerous spread of disease in real time.

Musk is facing more fallout from his inauguration-day Nazi salute, with some sites now banning Twitter links.  Note:  I don't believe Musk is a true Nazi, in the sense of thoroughly understanding Nazi ideology and endorsing it.  He's too flaky for that.  But he is seriously immature, and immature people love to shock adults, and he comes from a country (South Africa) where elements of the white population fetishize Nazi imagery in a way we hardly see in the US.  That's what I think the Nazi salute -- which it definitely was -- was about.

Gosh, this is all so weird -- it's almost as if something were going fundamentally wrong with the climate.

Good assessment here of Trump's executive order on gender ideology.  Apparently the best that opponents can come up with is this pitiful word-game.

The bullshit about taking over Greenland apparently traces back to a fake letter produced by Russian operatives in 2019.

"Both are the symbols of religious belief systems attempting to turn the commons into a totalizing, state-enforced, intellectual and political monoculture."

The voters really are moving to the right on crime and immigration.  Democrats need to adapt, as Ruben Gallego explains.

The majority of Democrats believe their party needs serious reforms.  Both Democrats and Republicans are frustrated and disappointed with politics.

"The epitaph of your movement will, in the end, be that you were your own worst enemy..... We know what living with your demands looks like."

Some Americans are abandoning costly, unsatisfactory coventional health insurance for religious "health cost-sharing ministries".  But these, too, often let their customers down when it's time to pay claims.

US public opinion is rapidly shifting against the goals of trans ideology.

Yes, office jobs stink, but don't forget that service and manual workers have it much worse.

Forced-birth fanatics in Texas are encouraging men to rat out wives or girlfriends who might have had abortions.

Oregon's governor will stand by the state's illegal-alien sanctuary law, despite it clashing with federal law.

The best path forward is a close economic alliance between the US and Europe against China and Russia.  There's even some hope Trump could be brought on board.

Name-calling will not make the truth go away (click on "see more").

"It's like we're living in a stupider version of 1984.  Even Orwell couldn't have dreamed this up."

Here's what Putin fears most.

See Russian military stuff blowing up here.

A ceasefire is not the same thing as peace.

Facts on the ground:  The Jewish population of the West Bank has risen to about 530,000, not counting 350,000 in eastern Jerusalem.

More links at Red State Blues and WAHF.

My own posts this week:  an image round-up, some observations on the start of Trump's second term, and a quick note on the comment form.

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Sooner or later, everyone finds a reason to abandon you.

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And -- how many of those new armed guards were themselves once screwed over (or had a family member screwed over) by one of these scumbags?  How much safety will this really bring?


I posted this video once before, but it's newly relevant with Elon Musk's recent increased prominence.  It's also an excellent source of facts and common sense about the "colonizing Mars" nonsense.  1:45 to 3:00 is an ad.