Link round-up for 11 October 2025

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

If you like a blog post I link to here, remember to leave a supportive comment on that post as well as (or instead of) here.  That way you can be sure the blogger will see it.

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Protect your Halloween candy.

He taunts those who would hunt him down.

These are signs of the times dogs.

If you need to write something in a language you don't know, have it checked by someone who does know.

Have some ass fish, shit wine, and more.

He's watching, but I don't think he wants to (slightly NSFW).

This new copying machine is impressive.

Let the dog cause a little mayhem.

Drive faster, please!

Every bird should hire a guard cat.

This lion messed with the wrong crowd.

This job requires teamwork.

Here is one minute of a train ride in Kyoto, Japan.

Watch a little snowfall before dawn.

It's time for the "Scaredy Cat" Halloween kitten comic again.

Even Disney does Halloween these days.

This is dark cottage core style.

Here are some early windows from the Skeleton Craze in Manitou Springs CO.

More Halloween displays here.

Here's how the French decide which new words to recognize as part of the language.

Solar and wind power combined have overtaken coal as the world's leading energy source.

Besides not producing greenhouse gases, solar and wind energy have another advantage over fossil fuels -- their decentralized nature makes them much less vulnerable to sabotage or military attack.  This is the one real problem with nuclear power -- while clean, it is inherently centralized, with huge amounts of power generation dependent on individual reactors.

NASA is not saving money nor gaining efficiency by farming out work to private companies.  Well, no -- compare the skilled minds behind the Apollo program, the Voyager probes, the Mars rovers, and the New Horizons mission to Pluto, with Elon Musk's exploding-rocket clown show and its chaos and personality drama.  There is no comparison.

US researchers are working on an mRNA vaccine against allergies.  Unfortunately RFK Jr and his nest of quacks are especially hostile to mRNA vaccines, so this is just the kind of thing that they might try to squash, forcing the work to move to Europe or Canada.

On the other hand, RFK Jr et al have failed to limit access to the covid vaccine -- you'll be able to get it this year on the same basis as before.  So one can hope they'll be ineffectual at causing other damage as well.

Climate scientists have started a new website to keep actual climate information available on the internet, now that it's likely to disappear from government sites.

Within two years, the revolutionary HIV drug I posted a link about earlier will be widely available, and at just $40 per year in the low-income countries where HIV is most widespread.

Opposition to combination vaccines comes from ignorance and politics, not from science.

If you're on a jury, don't do your own fact-checking -- do this instead.

Some Firefox users are seeing power and computing capacity drains caused by a recently-added "AI" feature.  The link includes instructions for turning it off.

I can hardly believe this works, but this person claims you can use an art program to access blocked websites.  Linking in case somebody wants to try it.

You can make the internet non-toxic, but it takes effort.

If you get a small check in the mail from a "charity", it may be a scam.

Photos record the deterioration of this blogger's neighborhood.

What if the parasite class actually had souls?

Here's a large language model that's actually useful.

Portlanders protest ICE with inflatable twerking.

Consumer Reports has a guide to turning off the "AI" features that have infiltrated many gadgets.

Some good tips here on dealing with tough times.

For those who fear going to in-person immigration hearings in case ICE shows up and abducts them, there is now a hotline to help with moving such hearings online.

Sorry, but if you're in a foreign country and you use "AI" to guide you, you're being stupid and it's your own damn fault when you end up in a dangerous situation.

Most people are reducing their use of social media.  Americans are the main exception.

Lauren Boebert has a hot new election issue:  flying saucers.

Here's how privatization of government services works.

Robin Williams's daughter has a message about "AI".

What was Palestine like before Israel became independent?

Some promotional videos for the new Taylor Swift album appear to be "AI"-generated.  Fans are not happy.

Here is the truth behind an old story about a World War I German submarine being sunk by a sea monster.  Pretty much every "weird" or "mysterious" story has a prosaic explanation like this if you dig up the actual facts.

This is what the area around the ICE building here in Portland was like before Trump sent the National Guard.  Some tension, but hardly a war zone.

RFK Jr is now claiming a link between autism and circumcision (link from Rade).  That brain worm must have done even more damage than we thought.

This video may be "AI"-generated (I'm not sure but it kind of has that "look"), but it's a vivid vision of the future that the rule of wealth is leading us toward -- with or without Trump.

Here's what was going on in the Islamic world in the 1930s and 1940s.

We're not scared of their name-calling any more.

Graham Linehan rebukes Bill Maher.

Artists describe how "AI" is destroying their business -- the "art" it produces (which is made from plagiarized real art) is inferior, but is judged "good enough" by corporate ad departments and porn hounds.

Some people make the world a better place, some don't.

Those huge "AI" data centers will never be remotely profitable and will wear out in just a few years.

Vivek Ramaswamy urges the right to be less belligerent and hostile to the left and to use more dialogue and persuasion.  He doesn't call the shots on the right, of course, but any voice seeking to tone down the polarization and viciousness of modern politics is a good sign.  Some have condemned his view of leftists as "our fellow citizens who have lost their way and must be shown the light" as being condescending, but most activist leftists probably view conservatives the same way (at best).

Marjorie Taylor Greene is full of surprises these days.

The Bank of England sounds the alarm about the "AI" bubble. The weird cash-flow patterns in the industry suggest a lot of smoke and mirrors.

This is why you don't give religious fanatics control over the study of history.

This lawyer's experience is disturbing.

Trump is using the shutdown to terminate thousands upon thousands of federal employees, while our oblivious congresscritters and senators, whose own paychecks and healthcare are secure, continue to bloviate pompously about standing fast and not backing down in their stupid dick-measuring contest, instead of working to solve the problem.

Robert Reich predicts the shutdown will end when enough unpaid, stressed-out air traffic controllers refuse to come to work and reduce air travel to chaos, putting pressure on the politicians who otherwise could go on posturing and blathering forever.  Some have already begun calling in "sick".  If this works, it will be a clear case of worker power solving a problem that the useless politicians created and refuse to solve.

Greta Thunberg and her crew of cranks posted a photo of an emaciated Israeli hostage held by Hamas and claimed that he was a Palestinian prisoner in Israel.

Chicago politicians respond to Trump's invasion.

The number of paid subscribers who canceled Disney over the Kimmel suspension exceeded 1.7 million.  Americans really fought back against government censorship here.

Activists make excuses for rapists.

Republicans tried to justify sending the National Guard to Portland by posting a fake picture made up of images from South America.

This is an international gay declaration of independence.

Open your eyes and see the evil right before you.

But this never happens!

The house of a South Carolina judge who had ruled against Trump burned to the ground on October 4.  Authorities are still investigating.

This poll claims that ten percent of Americans have a favorable view of Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization which runs one of the most repressive, misogynistic, and anti-gay regimes in the world.  Other numbers cited at that link mostly reflect the grossly distorted picture the media present of events in Gaza, but the sheer ignorance suggested by so many Americans supporting Hamas is staggering.

Here is why the "AI" we have now can never lead to real intelligence.

This violent male sex offender, now in a women's prison, has had quite a career.

Trump's Quantico speech shows that he doesn't understand what the military is for -- or how dictatorships work.

The Australian government hired a consulting firm to write a report on the country's welfare system.  The firm used "AI" in the creation of the report and it came out riddled with citations of non-existent sources.  The firm was forced to pay back part of the money the government had paid it; really, it should be charged with fraud.

"Anti-Zionism" always means anti-Semitism in practice.

This posting argues that state authorities can and should arrest and prosecute members of ICE who commit violent crimes and violate the Constitution.

One of these things is not like the other.

Employees are fleeing Elon Musk's companies due to the chaotic and politicized workplace he creates.

So far "AI" has had no statistically detectable impact on the US job market.  Well, duuh, that's because it doesn't work.

Well, "AI" seems useful for one thing -- facilitating sexual harassment.

Kamala Harris may be coming to her senses on the trans issue -- far too late.

OpenAI wants to be using 250 gigawatts of electricity by 2033 -- a fifth of the entire current power capacity of the US.

Appeasing anti-Semites/anti-Zionists has never worked and never will.

It's time to start thinking about what president Vance would be like.

Today's ICE abuses echo the "red scare" of the early twentieth century.

Trump is getting played in the Middle East.

When asked to condemn Hamas, Mamdani responded with evasive gobbledygook.  He previously refused to repudiate the slogan "globalize the intifada", an explicit call for worldwide killings of Jews, merely grudgingly saying he would "not use" it after being called out.  This man is deadly dangerous.  There is almost no higher priority in US politics than stopping him.

While police in Europe arrest people for expressing politically-incorrect truths on social media, they ignore open incitement of violence against Jews.

The Manchester synagogue terrorist had several previous criminal convictions and was out on bail for rape.  Why does the justice system let people who have proven themselves a serious danger to the public run around loose?

Ireland, too -- this man is now walking free there.

German police have stopped a planned wave of terrorist attacks on Jews in that country by Hamas operatives.

Ukraine's attacks on Russia's oil industry are getting more systematic and sophisticated.  There are signs that oil output is seriously declining.

Aid workers in Gaza are extorting sex from women or even outright raping them.

Even if you believe "international law" is a thing, Israel's blockade of Gaza is legal.

See another side of the October 7 attack.

"The only thing such explanations achieve is to dignify the lie."

It sounds like this week's "deal" between Israel and Hamas, if it holds (far from a sure thing), will have the same effect as all previous such maneuvers in this decades-long conflict.  Israel was pressured into backing off before Hamas was completely destroyed, leaving Hamas to recover and rebuild and slaughter more innocents in future attacks.  In exchange for the remaining hostages, hundred of terrorists have been turned loose to commit more mayhem, affirming to the jihadists that hostage-taking is an effective way to get what they want and thus guaranteeing more hostage-taking in the future.  If the idiots who support this kind of deal-making had been running the show in 1945, the German Nazi regime would probably still exist today.

Syria is too diverse to be functional as a single country.  It should be partitioned into smaller states for its various groups.

In Zambia, a toxic-waste spill of perhaps as much as one and a half million gallons at a Chinese copper mine in February poisoned a river and huge areas of farmland.  Farmers are still suffering the effects.

More links at WAHF.

My posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, and the horror of the October 7 attack.

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I have been pointing out for years that downtown Portland is dying because of crime.  This does not change the fact that Trump is full of shit when he describes our city as a war zone.  The type of crime that is driving businesses out of the downtown is things like vandalism and burglary and assault, which make it impossible for business to function profitably and discourage people from spending time there.  There is no large-scale, organized, ideologically-motivated violence and killing of the kind that would remotely justify Trump's rhetoric.

I've also explained that official statistics showing low crime in Portland are meaningless because they're compiled from cases reported to the authorities, and many victims no longer bother with reporting crimes against them because they know nothing will be done.  Obviously this would not apply to the kind of massive quasi-warlike violence Trump claims is going on, since such activities are highly visible and don't depend on statistics to be reported.  If it were happening, we'd know about it.  He's talking nonsense as usual.

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For Halloween, perhaps?  In case you can't read it, the sign at lower left says "Political canvassers will be fed to the monster".

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[Made by Pliny]

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Video sent by Liam Ryan: