Link round-up for 23 August 2025

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

o o o o o

This skateboarder is so expert he'll never fall or crash.

See the faces.

It's customer service life.

A couple discusses how many children they want.

There are cats on the subway.

Hey, you kids quit playing with your food.

Send him back to guard dog school.

This is not the correct way to do that.

She foiled a robbery without even knowing (beware of this trick).

This truck is not going backwards.

Behold the dong of Wrocław.

It may be a couple of months yet, but Halloween is coming.

See the stegosaurusless temple of Ta Prohm (found via Miss Cellania).

Chile is growing vegetables and trees in the world's driest desert by using fog harvesting.

These prehistoric critters weren't dinosaurs, but they're still just as interesting.

Why did people in the 1960s and 1970s look older than people the same age do today?  This is surprisingly interesting.

Government spending on science far more than pays for itself in higher economic growth, but the Trumpazoids are cutting it anyway.

Stone-age people weren't nice.

There will soon be an attempt to cure paralysis by splicing in a section of spinal cord lab-grown from the patient's own cells.

The World Mosquito Program takes an unusual approach to fighting the spread of mosquito-transmitted diseases.

Globally, more people are feeling optimistic about the future than ever before, and with good reason (see this too).  The moan-groan-doom-gloom crowd is very noisy in the US, but our country is only 4% of the world.

Eliezer Ben Yehudah achieved something astonishing -- the revival of a dead language to become the everyday speech of a modern nation.  It's startling how much opposition he encountered from religious fanatics.

Some photos here from a trip to Vatican City.

"I don't forgive you.  I outgrew you."

This is an amazing achievement.

The AutisticAF book reading has been re-scheduled for tomorrow (Sunday) at 12:45 PM eastern time.

Now that DeviantArt seems to be dying, a good alternative art site is Cara, which excludes "AI" fake art and helps artists protect their work against "scraping" (theft) by "AI".

Some tips here on preserving documents long-term.

This is the future of toilets.

"I quit."

Eclectic image round-up here.

So, what's the deal with male cheerleaders?

If civilization collapses, we have plans for the parasite class.

You can donate here to erase medical debt for others.  I did some checking and it seems legitimate.

Help fight against the centralization of the internet.

Do not surrender the integrity of your language.

EU citizens can help resist this huge attack on internet privacy.

We need to prepare for a global struggle against censorship in which almost every government and political party will be the enemy.

Zionism is like green kryptonite to evil.

YouTube is swamped with "AI"-generated garbage, and for once (giving credit where it's due), the platform is actually trying to do something about it.

We all know what we hope to see here.

Volkswagen wants to start charging a monthly fee to use your car's engine at full power -- a car you paid for and already own.

Not only are these people vile and repulsive, their use of language is amazingly unimaginative.

Microsoft is adding "AI" capability to Excel, while actually literally warning people not to use it for anything important because it's likely to get things wrong.

Don't idolize extremists -- they usually get worse, not better, if they get into power.

"AI" is failing at 95% of companies trying to use it.  As for the other 5%, here's the story.

The West's professional outraged people will ignore this.  They can't use it to make the Jews look bad.

With RFK Jr buggering up federal vaccination standards, blue state governments are acting to protect access.  Red states are more resistant to such measures, which will likely result in them falling even further behind blue states in life expectancy and general health outcomes.

Meals on Wheels is closing its downtown Portland location because it can't keep its staff safe amid all the violent crime.

The left is an increasingly hostile place for Jewish people.

Employees are increasingly expected to work outside of work hours, as work hours are increasingly wasted on pointless meetings.  I am so glad to be fully retired now.

"I'm going to stick my dick in your pussy."

In the House, there's a bipartisan push to work around Johnson and force the release of the Epstein evidence.

Trump voters are not happy that an Israeli official arrested in the US for child sexual predation was allowed to flee the country.  The case has triggered predictable anti-Semitic conspiratardia, but especially in view of the ongoing Epstein cover-up, any apparent coddling of suspected pedos is disturbing.

Most mailed abortion pills go to women in states with forced-birth laws.  This is no surprise.  As I pointed out two and a half years ago, people will develop work-arounds for repressive laws.  Nevertheless, those laws are still doing harm.

"AI" company stocks dropped this week, wiping out more than a trillion dollars in value.  Perhaps a sign that the big crash is not far off?

Age verification laws are a labor rights issue too.

Hatred follows Jews even beyond the grave.

"Quiet cracking" -- demoralization and eroding mental health -- is spreading among US workers as work environments turn shitty and bosses threaten to replace them with "AI".  But hang in there -- even they are starting to realize that "AI" doesn't work.

Air safety standards have reduced fatal accidents by 90% since the nineties, but the rules are now increasingly ignored as enforcement falters.

A Maine legislator jumps on the "be an asshole to Canada" bandwagon.

After this prison assault, the authorities reprimanded the victim.

This health insurance company turned over coverage decisions to "AI", whose error rate was so bad that 90% of its denials were overturned on appeal.

Jewish workers at Microsoft are being intimidated, while management does nothing.

Part of the reason Trump is trying to betray Ukraine is that he believes it might get him a Nobel peace prize.

Oregon is refusing to hand over private information on voters that was demanded by the Trump administration.

To win back voters, Democrats need to stop talking like Martians.

Hiring is anemic, signaling a possible oncoming recession.

"Stop discovering facts that don't fit our narrative!"

Schumer gets the job done for the Democrats, recruiting candidates who can actually help them win back the Senate.

Campus censorship is just looking silly these days.

Harassment and threats aren't free speech.

One-third of British young people increasingly favor authoritarianism as "democracy isn't delivering" and they suffer a wave of petty crime that the government pretends isn't happening.  Sounds familiar.

The surge of Western leaders threatening to recognize "Palestine" is just part of the resurgence of the centuries-old tradition of European Jew-hatred, but Israel bears some responsibility.

Ukrainian attacks have done so much damage to Russia's oil-refining capacity that gasoline shortages and kilometer-long gas lines are now becoming common.

Russians grumble amid the graves of war casualties ("khokhol" is a derogatory term for a Ukrainian).

Nice job on this gunpowder factory, though at the moment it's not clear whether it was hit by Ukrainian action or on-site incompetence.

Here are a couple more battlefield kabooms.

The Russian police state is running out of police.

Jihadists tried to wipe out the Druze minority in southern Syria -- and there's just one reason why they failed.

This is not an "apartheid state".

India has successfully tested a ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to any target in China.

More links at WAHF, Red State Blues, and Comedy Plus.

My posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, my blogiversary, and why I am now politically homeless.

o o o o o

o o o o o

India's backstabbing of Ukraine by continuing to import Russian oil shows a failure to embrace the crucial principle of solidarity between democracies.  Modi, like Trump and Bolsonaro, is an authoritarian operating within a democratic system and probably has a soft spot for Putin.  But Trump is the worst possible person to handle this problem, which requires diplomatic finesse, not crude pressure via tariffs.  India is becoming a superpower whether the US treats it as one or not.  The damage being done here will likely still be vexing us when Trump and Modi have passed from the scene.