Link round-up for 4 October 2025
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He thinks the trees are doing it wrong.
What is this strange thing rolling toward me?
Look before you leap.
I'll take my tractor across the lake by boat..... oops.
The three wise men came bearing gifts.
This office has a strict no-smoking policy.
Every car should have one of these as a standard feature.
The Manitou Springs CO Halloween Skeleton Craze is beginning, and blogger Lady M is doing her own window this time.
Have a few seconds of Telluride CO in the autumn.
Here are some photos from a trip to Paris.
An experienced roboticist explains why you shouldn't go near a humanoid robot.
As more children go without the flu vaccine, serious complications from the disease are becoming more common.
Why bother trying to save the environment? Here's why.
Jane Goodall has died. She was 91.
I guess this is the future if we can get rid of all the billionaires and miscellaneous assholes.
Don't be afraid of this big bad wolf.
Morning Coffee blog observes Blasphemy Day, and reminds us of a religious atrocity from ten years ago.
The trailer for Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein is out.
This is Powell's Books, the pride of Portland. I've been there so many times.
Take a trip to Mad at You Island.
What does God need humans for?
Austism isn't a superpower.
Watch out for deceptive debt collection letters.
When you're impressed by a video, always consider the context.
When you feel visceral dislike of something, you should think rationally about why.
The decline of reading among young people will transform society.
This is dehumanization. I don't believe people will accept it.
Lionsgate is trying to make movies using "AI". Predictably, it's a fiasco.
Massachusetts is using "AI" to grade student essays. Predictably, it's a fiasco.
At least one public toilet in China forces people to pay money or watch an ad to get toilet paper.
Threats of sexual violence are a classic tactic of the worst kind of men to intimidate women.
A conservative blogger gives his views about good and evil in modern times (see my comment too).
Increasingly, the far left and far right agree -- and are both wrong.
Boys at an Anaheim school speak up for the rights of girls.
Must-read of the week: some straight talk on the magnitude of the economic crash that will follow the collapse of the "AI" investment bubble.
79% of Americans believe the country restricts free speech too much, and 82% support mandatory child vaccinations -- so it's fair to say there's a national consensus on those issues. A far narrower majority of 52% support National Guard deployments in cities to reduce crime. There's a disturbing increase in the belief that political violence may be necessary, especially among Democrats, with overall support for the idea now at 30%.
Blogger Bilbo has some ideas about what's wrong with Congress.
"America has a secret weapon."
This is a mental illness, period.
Watch ICE bungle an abduction in Chicago.
JK Rowling responds to Emma Watson. Pwned, I think.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas gives a seriously misleading impression of history.
Someone who attacks what you said without addressing the specific details of it can simply be dismissed.
The only acceptable feminism is feminism that makes no demands.
Accenture and Peloton are the latest companies to announce ruthless mass layoffs and pivot to "AI" that other companies' experience has already shown doesn't work.
In a poll just before the government shutdown, 65% of voters opposed the Democrats precipitating a shutdown if their healthcare demands were not met, while only 27% supported doing so.
"AI" data centers pose a growing problem for firefighters -- in cases where they've gotten exemptions from local property taxes, they're not even helping to pay for the service. Cities and towns across the US are fighting back against plans to build centers near them. Indianapolis has won its fight, at least for now.
Emma Watson isn't a kid any more.
Retired general Barry McCaffrey is unimpressed by Trump's weird, incoherent speech at Quantico. Serving generals are not free to speak their minds, but one must assume they recognized the implications.
Don't be swayed by media spin.
A dark and ancient evil is rising up again in New York City.
Using a VPN is not always safe, especially for people who live under dictatorships. It matters which VPN you choose.
"None of them considered the issue to come to their position, they were simply told to believe it and they did."
Trump is making it harder to import H-1B workers from India -- so some US companies are moving their activities to India.
Federal workers describe the impact of DOGE -- utter incompetence and chaos, offices running out of toilet paper, armed thugs menacing workers, and more. The government is still re-hiring hundreds of the people DOGE got rid of.
The Democratic party tried to stop Elizabeth Warren from running on an economic-populist platform. Trump ran on it and won, even though he did the opposite when he got into power.
There is likely to be more of this violence in the future.
Trump is losing his agricultural trade war with China, and losing badly.
From Europe, yet another dumbshit business executive who believes that "AI" works and revels in being an asshole.
The spirit of DEI lives on in the UK.
The British police refuse to do their job.
This person is allowed to work as a doctor in the UK.
At this company in Scotland, women employees use secret toilets to get away from men who have started using the regular women's restroom.
Sweden is seriously considering building its own nuclear weapons.
"The 1930s are back" in Germany.
The French have released the Russia-linked "shadow fleet" tanker they seized a week ago.
Don't fly on a Russian passenger plane. Or anywhere near Russia.
Ukrainian ingenuity and technological innovation are transforming the war.
See drones hunt Russian troops.
Ukraine's strong focus on attacking the Russian oil industry is bearing fruit, reducing Russia's export income and causing fuel shortages. Indirectly it's even affecting food production.
This Russian military blogger seems frustrated at how the war is going.
Putin is purging top military, political, and business figures. When a dictator launches a purge, it usually means either he fears disloyalty, or things are going badly and he needs to shift the blame.
How can soldiers fight under these conditions?
50% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza support the October 7 atrocities, 57% oppose a two-state solution, and a Hamas candidate for president of a Palestinian state there would win with 73% of the vote. European leaders who believe such a state would be anything other than a jihadist terror base are utterly delusional. Full annexation is the only viable response.
At the UN, Netanyahu stood up to the abject hypocrisy of the "world community".
The Gaza campaign is not even remotely a genocide, and those who keep using that word have malignant motives.
Israel has intercepted Greta Thunberg's latest publicity-stunt flotilla to Gaza (this is the same project where the Muslim participants recently voiced outrage about the presence of gay people). Other countries had offered to deliver the aid they were carrying via normal channels, but the flotilla refused since their real aim was to create confrontation, not help anyone.
The Chinese regime is ratcheting up its efforts to force the Mandarin language on non-Chinese lands under its rule, such as Outer Mongolia.
More links at Red State Blues and Comedy Plus.
My posts this week: some videos on the Rapture, Blasphemy Day, and the Rapture re-scheduled.
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The fact that most members of Congress vote in lockstep with their political party is a sign of the decay of US representative government. If each congresscritter truly sought to represent his or her constituents, then we would expect that each representative of a given district would vote pretty much the same way -- reflecting the views of the majority of the district's voters -- whether that representative was a Democrat or a Republican. The fact that they mostly don't do so suggests that loyalty to party has grown stronger than loyalty to voters -- an alarming shift from democracy toward oligarchy.
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The right wing needs to renounce authoritarianism and the left wing needs to renounce being crazy:
posted by Infidel753 at 1:07 AM
7 Comments:
Sadly, Infidel, we will never see that "future without billionaires or assholes" in our lifetimes. Nor will we see Congress being fixed as Bilbo outlined. Both are... aspirational, but looking at the remaining links posted, I just do not see anything positive or affirming in (my) remaining future. There is just way, way too much anger on the planet that will never be quelled with one election or movement or with new laws, and I see no sign of positivity.
We live on a planet of worsening stoked outrage that has been going on since the 1980's. There will not be a next "World War" of good over evil; the downfall is coming from the ignorance and stupidity that has become mankind's inability to critically think.
I am NOT anti-humanity, I am just becoming very pro-asteroid.
Don't forget that most people are more optimistic than ever before in history, and with good reason. Most people have seen huge improvements in just their own lifetimes. The US is only a very small fraction of "the planet", and Ukraine and Israel (despite how they dominate the news) are even smaller. Most people don't live in war zones. Even the US has faced and overcome far worse challenges to its democracy and its very survival than anything we see today.
You absolutely have to look before you leap. My late husband found that out when he went to jump over a block wall fence as a short cut home and fell 8 feet over the other side. He broke a couple of ribs. he was lucky.
I heard about Jane Goodall, that is sad.
Bill Maher hit the nail on the head.
Mary: I would always be careful jumping over something when I couldn't see the other side. It seems like just common sense. Where there's a wall, there's usually a good reason why it's there.
Ricko: I wish more people would listen to Maher. He says a lot of sensible things that not many people dare to say.
Once again, very much appreciate the "Sunday brunch" of facts and articles here.
--Love that clip from the animated HEAVY METAL film...and thankfully, both the HEAVY METAL magazine and its progenitor, METAL HURLANT, are back and better than ever.
--The Hogg/Fuentes spew about AIPAC is...disgusting, of course. But then again, people on social media have been using AIPAC as a cudgel to bash Black Democrats such as Senator Raphael Warnock and Senator Cory Booker and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, claiming that they are taking "foreign money" with AIPAC. Not only are they wrong, but the attacks are clearly racist and I'm sick and tired of them, especially since the people posting them have said nothing about the Middle Eastern countries making deals with Trump and his family. The toxic blend of racism and antisemitism is never a good thing.
--The rise of antisemitism, especially in New York City, makes me want to weep. It does not help that candidate Mamdani has not addressed this and may be fueling the flames, along with his supporters. As horrific as October 7, 2023 was, perhaps its true legacy will be the skyrocketing increase of antisemitism around the world, especially in Europe.
--The coming AI bubble burst will lead to many saying, "I didn't see this coming!" when in fact there were those warning about it. So no surprise there.
--The article on Brooks and his concerns about humanoid robots was quite good--but it also made me wonder how many of the people building these robots know who about the Three Laws Of Robotics, much less who Isaac Asimov was.
Apologies for the long post!
Marc: I still have a stack of old Heavy Metal magazines. They had some really good stuff back in the day. I didn't know it was still published.
I myself was a little surprised to find out that AIPAC is a 100% US organization. The extremists always seem to take for granted that it's Israeli. I wasn't aware of the usage of it to smear back Democrats, but it doesn't surprise me.
It's important to remember that the explosion of anti-Semitism began immediately after the October 7 attack, before Israel had responded at all, in Gaza or elsewhere. It has nothing to do with responding to the damage in Gaza. This is the ancient, monstrous demon of murderous Jew-hatred that has existed for centuries, rising again now that the Holocaust is passing out of living memory.
The current Three Laws of Robotics:
1: A robot must not do anything to harm the profitability of the company that manufactured it, nor, through inaction, allow that profitability to come to harm.
2: A robot must obey any order given to it by a human being's AI agent, except when this would conflict with the First Law.
3: A robot must protect its own income stream, except where this would conflict with the First or Second Law.
I always welcome your comments and it's fine with me that they're sometimes long, since you're actually commenting on the post and not hectoring me about something (as some people try to do).
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