Link round-up for 20 September 2025

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

o o o o o

Your coffee has moods.

A cat will not help you sleep peacefully.

Fetch!

It's hard to keep the place tidy when you have kids around.

Looks like Mexico is cracking down on badly-parked cars.

Please confirm that you're not a robot.

Here kitty kitty.....

Don't block the street, assholes.

Have some dozing dogs.

At the airport, make sure your kid doesn't wander off.

Heed these warnings.

Not now, Schrödinger!

I wonder whether car insurance covers this.

She wanted to be treated like a princess, so.....

The Countdown to Halloween blog has been activated.  It includes a blogroll of "2025 crypt keepers" to keep you provided with Halloween-related content.  Here's a home that's already fully prepared.  Oh, and have a creepy skeleton.

Halloween hounds and humans mix at Pawtober Fest in Colorado.

This Oregon town goes all out for Halloween.

Villa Kujoyama encourages encounters between French and Japanese culture.

He allowed the spider to build its web.

Here's how traditional Chinese paper-making worked.

Consider eating more watercress.

Scientific reality is worth being a bit assertive about.

Enraging -- the Trump administration is shutting down cancer research that could have saved millions of lives, shutting down scientific projects on which billions of dollars and years of work have already been spent.

The decentralized character of the internet makes it impossible for any entity or group of entities to control access to information.

Here is yet another example of how startlingly modern-like the Roman Empire was.

Libraries are good for your mental health.

This is "AI" company logic.

Here's a reminder useful to the far left and far right.

The British gave Trump an appropriate welcome.

Er, that's not how food poisoning works.

Even if you could understand the Christian concept of the Trinity, it might be best if you didn't.

Here is the "AI" overview feature Google spent billions on.

This is what grocery shopping was like in the USSR.

Some interesting info here on differences between the US and Japanese navies during World War II.

Here are some sources for movies on DVD.

Kagi is a search engine you can customize to suit your own preferences.

You've heard of using "burner phones" for security and privacy.  Here's how to obtain and use one.  It's a lot of work.

On Android devices, "Gemini" will soon be active even when they are turned off.  Here's how to get rid of it and other unwanted "AI" and spyware.

Here's a new scam that's going around on Bluesky.

Samsung plans to display ads on the screens of "smart refrigerators".

Tesla's death-trap door handles are now under federal investigation, though apparently only in one model.

Humanoid robots are like "AI" -- vast hype and almost no substance.  Even if they worked -- and there's nothing to suggest they ever will -- I can't think of anything I'd use a humanoid robot for.  Can you?

Women are not a public service.

Can we do this with all the pro-gerrymandering politicians?

The Chrome browser will soon start forcing more and more "AI" on its users.  Time to switch to Firefox if you haven't already (Firefox also has some "AI" features, but they're easy to disable).  The comments are also interesting.

Here's the latest in absurd high-tech gadgetry -- a "smart toaster" that costs $400 and is more complicated to operate than a computer.

Don't let your boss get away with this kind of shit.

A group of editors is working tirelessly to get rid of the "AI"-generated garbage that keeps infiltrating Wikipedia.

Two groups of blue states have formed public health coalitions as an alternative to the anti-vaccine quackery now in charge at the federal level.

This stupid hick seems to think that Lovecraft is reality (and that the word "millennia" is singular).

"You are literally prioritizing the feelings of the sexual predator, over the dignity of those affected by his predation."

After ABC dumped Jimmy Kimmel's show, so many people rushed to cancel their subscriptions at Disney (ABC's parent company) that the cancellation page repeatedly crashed.

Ignore all the claims that "AI" will someday plot against or overthrow humanity.  It's just more hype designed to make you think "AI" actually works.

Yes, these people are terrorists (keep scrolling, it gets worse).

A judge imposed a "humiliating" punishment for lawyers caught using "AI" to produce a legal document full of fake citations.  They should be banned from ever working in the legal profession again.

Internet charity scams are on the rise.  Don't be fooled.

How did our society degenerate into this morass of mental illness?

PepsiCo has broken its promise to leave Russia, and it is still doing business there and paying taxes that support the invasion of Ukraine.  Time to boycott the company's products, which include Doritos and Lays.  And spread the word -- 68% of Americans would join the boycott if they knew.

Zuckerberg was humiliated this week as Meta's new $799 "AI" glasses flopped during a demonstration in front of a live audience.

This man was a coward and still remains one.

Much of the Republican budget's damage to healthcare will hit voters before next year's election.

This is some flat-out ghoulish shit.  It's not bringing back the dead, it's a crummy parody to make money.

"The private sphere is still run like a dictatorship, by thousands of petty tyrants."

This post about Charlie Kirk by Andrew Anglin, an avowed Nazi and admirer of Hitler, is full of rhetoric about Israel and about Kirk himself that sounds remarkably like what circulates on the activist-fringe left these days.

Here's an alleged text exchange between Kirk's alleged shooter and his alleged trans roommate (click on each page for full size).  Many of the commenters there think it's fake; Newsweek says there's "no evidence that the texts have been fabricated".  Judge for yourself.

Darwinfish 2 blog looks at the aftermath of the Kirk assassination.

With so many tech companies using "AI" to write program code, real programmers are in high demand to fix the junk the "AI" churns out.

Here's how to set up a program to monitor ICE activity in your area.  It's typical these days that an article like this appears in something like Teen Vogue rather than in the billionaire-owned and almost useless mainstream media.

Those billionaire-owned mainstream media are now firing people for telling the truth.

This economist believes the collapse of the "AI" bubble could actually benefit the economy -- if the Fed responds properly.

"Even Tucker Carlson knows that's wrong."

Dumbest lawsuit ever.

Millions of Americans are now using chatbots for "spiritual guidance" in place of priests or pastors, and something analogous seems to be happening in China.  Further evidence that most modern people don't really take religion seriously.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court has temporarily banned the school system from lying to children.

These are JK Rowling's critics.  Just look at what she really says and it's easy to get the truth.

A slight majority of Americans believe "AI" will have mostly harmful effects.  The exact number is less important than the fact that it's growing rapidly.

The Missouri legislature has passed the super-gerrymandering bill that the state's voters oppose.  A group of voters is now suing to overturn the new map.

"AI"-generated fake data is now being used in some medical research.  This is going to get people killed.

In 2025 so far, state legislators have introduced 148 bills trying to limit citizens' right to enact laws directly by referendum.

Who is Patricia Trimble?

Charlie Kirk understood the First Amendment.  Pam Bondi doesn't -- a rather serious shortcoming in an attorney general.  Even the right-wing National Review is disgusted.

The Hyundai plant raid in Georgia is looking like a huge mistake.

Healthcare is different in other countries.

At least a hundred and fifty thousand people attended the "Unite the Kingdom" anti-mass-immigration resistance rally in London a week ago.  The rally also opposed anti-Semitism and demanded restoration of free speech.

Don't worry, it says it's not anti-Semitism.  Update:  The police made him take the sign down.

Here's yet another lie about Gaza that's making the rounds.

Now is the right time for Israel to annex the West Bank.

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

My own posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, a video on the probability that there is no life in the universe beyond Earth, and my consistent philosophy.

o o o o o

o o o o o