Link round-up for 21 June 2025
Here's how you can tell your dog is gay.
Keep going, it's just a puddle.
Keep going, it's just a puddle.
This is an unusual ball game -- you're the ball.
Do not drive while smartphoning.
Some signs of the times here.
Beware the shart of death.
Cats are sometimes not very good parents (link from SickoRicko).
It's unwise to take a running jump on a slippery floor.
Buy shark food by remote control.
Keep your tarantulas clean.
Gemstones come in every color.
Some novels here from the Maghrib and Sub-Saharan Africa.
If you see smoke coming out of the ground, run away.
Be grateful that bugs are not actually this big (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).
Imagine a person in primitive times seeing ball lightning. It's easy to understand how superstitions got started.
NASA confirms that the Trumpazoids have ordered it to give up on science and pivot to silly fantasies of sending humans to Mars, firing a lot of people in the process.
The cognitive decline from a serious case of covid is comparable to twenty years of aging.
The FDA has approved a new anti-HIV drug which only needs to be administered twice a year rather than every day.
Even low-quality masks can provide substantial protection against spreading covid.
Vaccines are the most important invention in all of history.
Some people are using chatbots in place of therapists, with disastrous results.
This person apparently believes clouds are fake.
If you start getting generic negative comments on stuff you write, it may be this.
Tune out the assholes.
This house has been destroyed.
An original print of Star Wars has been discovered and shown (found via Miss Cellania). Ignore all the gaslighting in the article about how it looks bad without Lucas's later vandalism -- somebody needs to get this authentic version out on DVD so that fans can see it as it really was.
Stay out of abandoned mines.
According to this, the Post Office can open first-class mail without a warrant if it's undeliverable and unreturnable. Be careful what you put in letters.
More tips here on deleting tracking junk from links you share.
This is a good metaphor for what "AI" does.
Don't be the empath.
"It's Pride Month... And I'm exhausted."
WhatsApp (whatever the hell that is) is going to start showing targeted ads to its users.
Here's a quiz to test your knowledge of Judaism.
People have been using "AI" to "restore" a two-century-old photo. The results are -- well, see for yourself.
Some doctors over-pathologize autism. The "cure" is often worse than the condition.
I often re-read books multiple times. Apparently it's a common habit; there's a hypothesis that people with anxiety find it reassuring to read stories where they know the ending. Many of the books I re-read are about science or history, though -- I just find it pleasant to revisit such material and re-familiarize myself with the details.
Google paid a naturalist information site to use "AI" it doesn't need. Site members have been quitting in disgust.
Many young people are anti-science because they're clueless about what science even is.
Elon Musk's latest exploding rocket has blown up before it was even launched. At the same time, Honda successfully tested a re-usable rocket, though this test was considerably less ambitious.
Here's what else Musk has been up to -- unconvincing drug tests, unsold Teslas, failed "AI", and a hallucinating monkey.
I'm more and more feeling this way myself. So many sites now are just endless Trump, Trump, Trump. It's not only depressing, it's repetitive and predictable and just fucking dull.
Even "AI" researchers believe the current direction of the technology is a dead end.
Sex-selective abortion is decreasing across Asia as the preference for boy children fades.
Far fewer people are being deported under Trump than under Obama.
Many Marines and National Guard troops deployed to Los Angeles are seriously unhappy and demoralized about the assignment.
Blogger Annie has a post for those who aren't able to participate in public demonstrations.
A new archive is collecting older internet material guaranteed free of "AI" contamination. See the comments too.
The bathroom trophy guy is in trouble -- one of his victims has filed charges.
A Jewish congressman reported that a car displaying a Palestinian flag ran him off the road. I've seen insinuations that he was making it up. Now the suspect has been arrested.
Elon Musk's squabble with Trump may cost him some serious money.
"Intent matters, not just outcome."
Claims that the EPA is reversing the ban on asbestos are seriously misleading.
A Portland toy store is closing because it can't afford the cost of tariffs -- one of many to suffer that fate.
Workers are feeling overwhelmed by the infinite workday.
They let their child die because of religious idiocy. Unlike in most such cases, they'll face some justice.
Texas is abandoning its desultory state border wall project.
A lesbian explains how Pride Month was ruined.
Using "AI" rots your brain.
Here's a detailed assessment of total turnout for the No Kings rallies (link from Annie).
The resistance has more plans for the next couple of months, including escalating attacks on Elon Musk's wealth.
It's more than exploding rockets -- Elon Musk is making a huge mess in southern Texas.
"Even people in woke industries like the arts are likely growing weary of dealing with the drama that comes with hiring a gender-special."
Facial recognition systems easily make mistakes, sometimes with serious consequences.
A Guardian article claiming that the VA is planning to deny care to Democrats and unmarried veterans has gone viral. It's not true and the Guardian has partially retracted its claims.
The West needs to support Middle Eastern feminists.
Even Trump didn't like that dud parade -- it wasn't scary enough.
There are anti-Semites on the right as well as on the left.
Doctors are leaving their jobs because they can't tolerate what private insurance forces them to do.
Let's wait and see how the media report this.
A US Marine veteran speaks out on Trump's deployment of the military in Los Angeles.
It's those people that go to church every Sunday. Figures.
Companies are abandoning plans to replace customer service people with "AI" as they realize it can't do the job.
Bigotry is bigotry no matter who it comes from.
Overall public support for solar and wind energy is decreasing, mostly due to steep declines among Republicans, but it is still favored by the majority. Support for nuclear power is rising among members of both parties.
Would you want this guy driving the school bus your kid rides on?
Airline passenger personal information is being secretly sold to the government.
"Other people are just wallpaper in his drama."
When this Cybertruck crashed, it burned so fiercely that the driver's bones disintegrated. Its notorious doors which stop working when the power fails prevented him from escaping.
Here's a huge collection of signs from the No Kings rallies.
ICE spends your tax dollars on hookers.
No politician who supports this should ever get anyone's vote again. It doesn't matter what else they've done.
The FDA is using an error-riddled "AI" program to do food and drug approvals.
The VOA is recalling foreign-language news people it laid off in March, now that events in the Middle East have made their value clear. (Why do people call the Persian language "Farsi" when speaking English? We don't call German or French "Deutsch" or "Français" in English.)
Don't threaten people.
For women, the Metaverse is a misogynistic nightmare.
Irish authorities have begun excavating a mass grave at a "home" (de facto prison camp) for unmarried pregnant women run by Catholic nuns until 1961.
Eastern Europeans know Russia's nature.
The Iranian theocracy is cutting off military aid to Russia, evidently deciding it needs its weapons at home for the conflict with Israel.
The Israeli strikes on Iran were truly extraordinary in the history of warfare, and may eventually change the face of the Middle East.
As of Wednesday, the internet all across Iran was almost completely shut down. ISW attributes this to the theocracy's extreme fear of unrest among its own people; the internet could be use to organize resistance.
Israeli airstrikes hit Iranian missile launchers -- kaboom!
China and Russia step up their support for the Iranian theocracy. However, its proxies in the Middle East are lying low, some weakened by earlier Israeli action, some apparently just not wanting to become targets.
No, it is not true that Pakistan has threatened to retaliate if Iran is hit with a nuclear weapon.
Taliban law forces ordinary men to help impose medieval taboos on their female relatives.
Almost an entire county in China is now flooded.
More links at Red State Blues, WAHF, and Chop Wood Carry Water.
My posts this week: the No Kings rallies, the global conflict, and an image round-up.
So many posts about the Israel-Iran battle focus almost exclusively on how it relates to American politics, on whether it makes this or that American politician look good or bad, on whether Trump should have "allowed" Israel (a sovereign and well-armed country fighting for its survival) to act, on "whether there will be a war" as if a war which is already happening isn't real unless the US gets involved. The classic American narcissism is off the charts. Not everything is about us.
7 Comments:
Good collection of links and reads for a (New England) sweltering first Summer morning of the season.
In all honesty, I have never seen a video of ball lightning, and frankly, I would NOT have know WTF I was looking at! Watched too damn many Sci-Fi alien invasion movies! I would have been like "GET ME THE F**K OUT OF HERE!!!"
Loved the "Metaphor for AI". You also have done a good job of hitting the links of just how bad AI has been at integrating in society. A lot of good reads!
But frankly..."When this Cybertruck crashed, it burned so fiercely that the driver's bones disintegrated. Its notorious doors which stop working when the power fails prevented him from escaping." Who in the GOOD HELL designed that mess? I own a Rivian. Every doorlock is electronic, but the doors have emergency manual levers just in case.
Thanks for the shout-out!
Rade
I've heard about the humidity wave in the eastern two-thirds of the country. Sounds awful -- I'm very glad for our moderate west coast weather.
That ball lightning was weird. I wouldn't have known what it was either. Looks dangerous.
On "AI", it's just amazing to me that all these companies and venture capitalists have spent tens or hundreds of billions on something that has never worked properly and shows no sign that it ever will, and that will probably never generate any substantial revenue, let alone paying back the investment.
The Cybertruck is a nightmare. I think it does actually have a manual door release, but it's extremely hard to find or get at -- it's under the floor mat or something like that. Not what you want to be grappling with when your car is suddenly engulfed in fire.
The little movies are always entertaining. A couple of them will reappear elsewhere someday. Thanks for the shout-outs!
Thank you for including one of my posts, I appreciate it.
I would not be happy if bugs were really big. They still terrorize me and they're so small.
I heard about ball lightning for the first time last year. It's so insane that it's real.
My late husband and brother found some mines here in Nevada. They were way out in the desert and they went down in them as far as they could 'safely' walk. They found some weird items down there but didn't take anything.
Ricko: Thanks for the posts.
Mary: Bugs really look like monsters from outer space when you enlarge them like that.
They were lucky to come back from the mines OK. Those places are really dangerous.
I thought I would really ace that Jewish quiz as a was the director of a Jewish preschool for a few years. But I only got 17 right.
Getting 17 right isn't bad, actually. Some of those questions were pretty specialized.
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