Link round-up for 24 May 2025

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

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He was careful to hide his crime, but a witness betrayed him.

Smoking is bad for you.

It's a dog's life.

The usurper refuses to yield the throne.

Two intrepid explorers brave the wild rapids of an untamed river.

This is how I picture a certain fellow blogger starting his day.

Customer Service Wolf lives out the fantasies of many who suffer in that line of work.

This car accident just keeps getting worse.  So does this one.

Imagine Alien as a comedy.

The world would be a poorer place without inept writers.

Bluebird of Bitterness blog recognizes World Turtle Day.

A prisoner being shipped to a death camp makes a daring escape.

Stop in for some food at the diner of horror.

You don't want to know what's hiding in their ceiling (this may be disturbing to some).

This is relieving the internal gas pressure of a cow (it's gross).

Two crab fishermen compete for prey.

I'd wear this jacket.

How rich was Smaug, really? (link from Carol Seidl).

Kilroy was here!

This is the Bridge House in Scotland.

This is Olympic National Park in Washington state.

Al Bean is a painter who has been to an unusual place.

Did you know there is such a thing as wine forgery?  Rudy Kurniawan made a good living at it.

We finally know why ancient Roman concrete was better than modern concrete -- the Romans used a formula which could "heal" cracks.

This is what science does -- what only science does.

MIT is withdrawing a paper which claimed "AI" helps scientists make discoveries.

More than 90% of new energy capacity built in 2024 was clean energy.

CRISPR gene-editing technology has saved a baby with a rare genetic disorder.  The blithering ignoramus who has just been placed in charge of the FDA branch that regulates biotechnology opposes the rapid development of such therapies, suggesting that future progress in the area will happen in other countries, not here.

We're forgetting what life was like before vaccines became ubiquitous.

Eating fiber-rich foods brings some of the same benefits as Ozempic.

Sustainable coffee farming is proving a big success in Ethiopia.

Sleep deprivation is dangerous.  Don't treat it as a thing to be proud of.

Non-autistic people, even experts, cannot genuinely understand the experience of being autistic (I certainly don't claim to).

You can't "smash norms" by conforming to them.

For basic drawing, start simple and work up.

Disney is experimenting with using "AI" to create special effects for Star Wars, and the results look utterly pathetic.

Don't have enough friends?  Meta can give you some fake ones.  Read the whole post -- social media have become a sterile wasteland where a few billionaires fight over which one of them gets to shove ads in front of your face.  The commenters get it.  FFS stop "consuming content" and go read a book or walk the dog or look at some trees or something.

At first, this guy seems creepy.  Then you scroll down and..... he's really creepy.

Stupid "AI"-using jackasses can't even steal properly.

It is perfectly OK to use the word "wendigo" (scroll down).

Yes, office culture is really like this.  I spent all of my working life in offices and can attest to most of this stuff from experience.

Here is what happens when a newspaper uses "AI".  Real journalists are rightly outraged.

Round-up of images here.

If you rely on the news, you'll think the world is full of hate and anger, but out in reality, many people are still kind.

Religion is pretty silly, really.

Apparently the government needs a new department (link from Chief Squirrel).

"But there is no algorithm in ChatGPT to check which parts are true.  The output is literally bullshit....."

Toilets, toilets, toilets!

Don't run yourself ragged for a job.  The bosses don't care about you, and the more they think you can do the impossible, the more work they'll give you.  It's their responsibility to organize things so that the work can get done without making unreasonable demands on people.

The error rate in "AI" chatbot answers runs as high as 73%, and they're getting worse over time, not better.

Daily Kos apparently does a lot of tracking which is hard to turn off or even detect unless you're in Europe.

Lawyers at two law firms used "AI" to write a legal brief, so of course it came out full of inaccurate and nonexistent citations.  A judge imposed a fine on the firms; those lawyers need to be fired and blacklisted.

YouTube is planning to make the viewing experience even shittier by sticking ads into the most-viewed (that is, most interesting) parts of videos.  YouTube is already unwatchable without an ad blocker -- it's really time for a new platform to come along and supersede it.

The buggering up of covid vaccination policy will do long-term damage.

A new report alleges that Medicare Advantage plans are tainted by illegal discrimination and kickback payments.

"AI" data centers shit on their neighbors.  These government needs to fine these companies' asses off.  And don't forget the ecological impact.

A work-from-home employee gives his boss the unfiltered truth about return-to-office mandates.

The Guardian alleges that UnitedHealth pays secret bonuses to elder care facilities in return for not hospitalizing residents in crises and other unethical practices.

Local governments across the US are struggling to minimize the toxic effects of political polarization.

Researchers created a simulated company staffed with "AI" agents instead of people.  The result was an utter fiasco, with the best agent completing fewer than one-quarter of its assigned tasks.  And this real-world tech company used "AI" to automate its marketing and customer service departments, with results so bad it's junking the idea and going back to hiring humans (more here).

The new law on revenge porn sounds like a good idea, but there are legitimate questions.

Do not go outside the country right now even if you're a US citizen.

Some hikers rely on chatbots for information, putting themselves in danger.

Investors are getting impatient with "AI" companies' continuing failure to make any money.  Some are trying to get their investments back.

Defend language by using banned words.

On Memorial Day (and always), buy union-made goods.

"Censorship is never about protecting people.  Censorship is always about control."

The US is the only country seeing a decline in foreign tourism.  The biggest drops are in visits from Canada and Mexico, our main sources of foreign tourists.

The Jew-haters believe they're the majority.  They're wrong.

Here's what the actual numbers would look like if Walmart were to "eat the tariffs".

Homelessness in the Portland area has more than doubled since 2023 despite increased services.  A rise in evictions suggests the cause.  If Multnomah county has fifteen thousand homeless people, that's close to two percent of the whole county population.

"AI" is rapidly destroying American education.  At this rate, in a few years we'll need to start importing millions of college graduates from other countries to actually do things, as American degrees become meaningless.

Must-read of the week:  Learn about the problem of suicidal empathy.

Bosses claim to respect work-life balance.  They're lying.

Tesla's plan to unleash "robotaxis" on Austin next month is doomed to failure.  Self-driving cars have far too high an error rate to be safe.

Good explanation of tariffs here (scroll down a bit).

This man in Ohio checked out a hundred books from the local public library and burned them because they were about Jewish, black, or gay subject matter.  There are already plans to replace the books, but it's hard to see what will stop somebody from doing the same thing again, unless this miscreant gets a severe enough punishment for destroying library property to be a real deterrent.

".....and see our pain dismissed, our history denied, and our people dehumanized."

ICE is getting unhappy about its shredded reputation.  More here.

Missouri and Kentucky, hit by devastating tornadoes, are getting no federal help.

It's about time adults started treating toddlers like toddlers.

The Chinese gangster-regime is an enemy of this country, period.  We need to stop using anything Chinese-made in vital areas like electric power.

This shit just never ends.  It's the inevitable outcome of bigoted lies.  Read this too.  And you just know this was inevitable -- it's who these people are.

Oregon is now preparing "guidance" for local courts in case ICE raids them.

Jihadist terror organizations find a congenial home on Twitter.

The Democrats have made some progress in repudiating woke policies that repel voters, but need to do far more.

"Choices come with a price."

Another CEO was killed last month.

The Catholic Church is as hypocritical about migration as it is about everything else.

This is what jihadism is about.  This is what the "pro-Palestinian" filth in this country are celebrating.

Much of DOGE's buggering up of Social Security is already being fixed, though some things, such as mass layoffs, will be harder.

A former sex worker responds to an effort to ban prostitution (scroll down).

Rape threats are acceptable in the UK if you choose the right target.

Over-tourism has finally come to Belfast.  This is a growing problem in many parts of the world.

No one cares about a "genocide" which is purely imaginary.

Israeli singer Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the October 7 atrocity, took second place at the Eurovision song contest (and won the popular vote) despite the growing atmosphere of hatred in contemporary Europe.

The foreign minister of Poland explains what Europe must do to have a secure future.

The pope is calling for a ceasefire in Gaza so that Hamas can survive and kill more Jews in the future.  Don't expect the Vatican to stop blaming Israel for Hamas's aggression.

France is aiming for a repeat of its 1938 betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich.

This week Russia canceled a test ICBM launch due to some unspecified problem -- while the US staged a successful one.

Relatives of Russian soldiers report on the abuses within the Russian army.

North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia are not exactly establishing a track record of glory.

A Russian ammo depot goes kaboom.

Here's an analysis of a lie.  Keep this in mind when you next hear some outlandish claim about Gaza.

A Turkish citizen has been arrested and will be put on trial for visiting Israel.  Islamists fear having people go there and see for themselves that Israelis are just people and not the monsters of propaganda.

As in Pakistan, the Baloch minority in Iran (spelled Baluch here, but it's the same word) are brutally oppressed.

Facing a common jihadist threat, democracies India and Israel are cooperating more closely and becoming de facto allies.

When a cartoonist gets "investigated" for drawing a derogatory cartoon about the leader of the country, your democracy is in trouble.

The North Korean regime is forced to admit to an embarrassing and expensive blunder.

More links at Red State Blues, WAHF, and Chop Wood Carry Water.

My posts this week:  what Old English sounded like, an image round-up, and the reality of South Africa.

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Brexit-bashers should learn from the recent clash over Trump's idiotic talk about annexing Canada.  Canada has long been an ally, friend, and major trading partner of the US, without having any need or desire to become part of the US.  In the same way, there's no reason why the UK can't have good relations with the huge polyglot quasi-empire across the channel, without needing to be a member of it.

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The worst misuser of English is not the person who misspells a hard word like "proselytize" or mispronounces "patina" as "pa-TEE-na".  He can, at least, almost always be understood despite his errors. The worst misuser of English is the "show-off" who deliberately laces his writing with "fancy" words which he knows full well most of his readers will not understand, in the hope that they will think "Wow, look how smart and educated this person is, using these fancy words I don't know".  Unlike the former writer who gets things wrong but can still be understood, the latter has failed to make himself understandable at all.

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These days some people seem unable to see the world except through Donald-Trump-colored glasses.  Recently there was a story in the news about the Episcopal Church, which has a history of helping refugees, refusing to help Afrikaner refugees.  This relates to an ongoing issue in South Africa which I have been following on-and-off since the end of apartheid in 1994.  It's something I figure most Americans don't know very much about, so I wrote a post about it this week to provide some basic background.  The post was not about Donald Trump.  It did not mention Donald Trump.  It did not have anything to do with Donald Trump.  The first comment on the post:  "Donald Trump!!!"  Another person sent me an e-mail in response to that post, the sole contents of which was a video of an absurdly-enraged man delivering a profanity-laced rant about Donald Trump.

What do I have to do to get people to stop doing this?  Not everything in the world relates to Donald Trump.

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Take a two-minute flight over the planet Pluto, made from data from the New Horizons probe (found via SickoRicko):


In the clashes earlier this month, Pakistan's mostly Chinese-supplied arsenal failed utterly against India's mix of French and Indian-made weaponry.  No wonder share prices for Indian armaments companies rose in the aftermath, while their Chinese counterparts dropped.