Link round-up for 1 November 2025

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

Only 364 days until Halloween!  Better start getting ready!

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Leave the porcupine alone.

Mice have their day.

Sometimes things just don't go well.

Thud!

Pervs beware, this gal is prepared.

If you guys can't take a hint.....

These Halloween displays come with a little extra oomph.

A customer goes home from a restaurant in Alaska.

Why did the dog suddenly do that..... oh.

Pick up after yourself, and clean the shark.

These cats scare away more than just mice.

Here's a fun overview of how bicycles developed.

Japanese scientists have developed an enhanced form of vitamin K that has the potential to reverse the effects of Alzheimer's.  It sounds like it will take a while to turn it into an actual therapy, though.

The US obesity rate has dropped slightly, probably due to widespread use of semaglutide.

Autistic blogger Johnny Profane argues that RFK Jr's nonsense about autism, Tylenol, vaccines, etc is a smokescreen for eugenics.  The post also contains numerous links on related topics.

Björn Andrésen has died.  Yes, him.

The best kind of studying is when you don't realize you're studying.

We need more statues honoring the truly great, and fewer statues of politicians.

Listen to Tolkien, not to "Tolkien professors".

Treat yourself like the animal you are.

She's an astronaut, and she plays one on TV.

Trump will not get into Valhalla.

Don't dream of returning to the past.  It was terrible.  Especially for women.

"Not a single person in that room understands how the scientific method actually works."

Here's why you need to learn skills you won't use.

Windows 11 pushes ads on users.  Here's what you can do about it.  And here's how to completely disable Copilot, which is being pushed hard in current Windows 11 updates.

Microsoft is trying to force Copilot on Office 365 users.  Here's how to stop it (in Australia there are other options).

If you use Google Drive (I don't even know what that is), here's a tip to make it work faster.

Yes, flight attendants are talking about you -- they even have a special code for it.

The great Guillermo del Toro makes it clear that his films will never be sullied by "AI".

This man destroyed his health by trying to treat joint pain with quack herbal medicines.

"How does it affect you?"

An effort to use "AI" to generate sample video-game imagery failed ludicrously.  At one point a whole train pops into existence out of nowhere, not even on train tracks but on the platform.

Here's how the great Louvre jewel robbery was carried out.  Basically, security at the Louvre was an absolute joke.  People will, or should, get fired over this.

In tests of the ability of "AI" agents to replace freelance workers, the best agent was able to complete only 2.5% of its assigned tasks to a satisfactory level.

Anybody who sides with this guy is an asshole.

Satirical billboards in San Francisco warn the public about "AI".

She saw her name on a movie poster.

Watch a teacher-student interaction in which the student learns a valuable lesson.

"CEOs are literally scrambling to re-hire, or pay people like me to come in and fix some truly horrific situations."

If there's one thing pretty much all Americans agree on, it's that we all hate putting the clocks back and forward an hour every six months.  Several states have passed legislation, but are waiting for our useless Congress to act.

If the left keeps denouncing everyone who thinks for themselves as "far right", eventually it will have no one left except ideological cranks.

The co-CEO of Waymo recently suggested that society is ready to put up with its driverless cars killing people.  As a sort of appetizer, one of them just ran over a cat in San Francisco.

A Jewish -- not Israeli, Jewish -- newspaper was blocked from a press conference in which far-left Portland city councilors slandered Israel.

Some "AI" data centers will soon be subjecting their neighbors to jet engine noise.

The gerrymandering attack on democracy launched by Republicans in Texas has now spread to Virginia, where it's the Democrats who are threatening to redraw districts to empower their own party rather than reflecting the will of the voters, while Republicans sue to stop them.  Next door in North Carolina, voters are fighting to defend democracy against Republican gerrymandering.  In Utah, as in California, the attack on democracy will take the form of a ballot initiative.  Voters in both states will have a chance to say no to the gerrymanderers.

Don't believe everything you read, even if there's a photo.

Amazon's tormenting of its drivers just keeps getting worse.

Now the bigots want a TV show to be boycotted because it's being shown in Israel.  This obsessive hatred would be almost comical if it weren't so disgusting.

"The idea that a woman's existence is only as valid as her outer appearance is a foundational concept of misogyny."

Don't be fooled by gaslighting in support of Mamdani.  He's even more dangerous than I originally thought.

Political must-read of the week:  Today the Democratic party's popularity is at its lowest level in thirty-five years.  To recover, it needs to ditch the social issues that alienate voters, and focus on economic populism.

Elon Musk's robots still can't do anything, but he wants to be paid a trillion dollars to build more of them.

Hatred against Jews is going mainstream on both right and left.

A new homeless shelter here in Portland has been a disaster for the surrounding neighborhood, with 911 calls from the area tripling (though many of these calls apparently come from workers within the shelter).  This kind of thing is part of why I've always preferred to rent -- homeowners in the area are saying they will move out, but who will buy their houses now?  As a renter, if something like this happened in my own area, I could move out, and finding a new tenant would be the landlord's problem.

At protests, dress for public interpretation, not for self-expression.

Governments are plotting to balance their budgets by looting your inheritance instead of by taxing billionaires properly.

The largest federal workers' union is demanding an immediate end to the shutdown.

Allowing SNAP benefits to lapse will harm the overall economy.  If the stoppage lasts long enough, many grocery stores in rural areas will go out of business.

This Daily Kos posting exemplifies what's wrong with the left-activist base.  The poster quotes a Democratic senator as saying "the costs of continuing the shutdown are going to be felt by people who are going to food banks and federal employees" and that it may be time to end it.  The poster responds with rhetoric about "Dems ready to cave" and a picture of a white flag, and demands that legislators like this senator be primaried.  He doesn't deign to mention those "people who are going to food banks and federal employees" or their ongoing sufferings.  Not a word.  Not an atom of compassion.  To him all those people are merely expendable poker chips in a sick game where all that matters is which politicians win and which party gets the blame.  He's no better than -- no different than -- the MAGA types who gloat and jeer at the suffering of people losing their SNAP benefits or being abused by ICE thugs.  These filth are so possessed by ideology that flesh-and-blood humans don't exist for them.  They are a disease in politics.

Elon Musk's political antics have cost Tesla more than one million car sales in the US, a loss of tens of billions of dollars in revenue.

Here are the companies and individuals funding Trump's wrecking of the White House.

Chatbots are promoting Russian propaganda.

Jewish support for Mamdani is plummeting, down from 29% in early October to 16% now, narrowing his lead over Cuomo.  At this point, though, there's not much hope that he can be stopped.

Chicagoans are using whistles to mobilize against ICE.

"Truth sounds like hate to those who hate truth."

Voters now trust Democrats more than Republicans on the economy.  The biggest issue is that the Republicans have failed to get prices down, with Trump's tariffs threatening to re-ignite inflation.

How does US aid to Israel work?

Nick Fuentes has turned against Trump, citing his erratic policies and the incompetence of his toadies.  Despite all the damage he's done, Trump's attacks on democracy are failing.

Democratic leaders are leading efforts to document ICE abuses so that agents can eventually be held accountable.

The wingnuts' plans to use the shutdown to further wreck the federal government are coming to naught.

Forget about Graham Platner -- if he's nominated, Susan Collins will cruise to re-election.  "White people aren't as racist or stupid as Trump thinks" -- "living in white rural America, I'm afraid to tell you they actually are" -- as a Senate candidate he'd be running in mostly white, rural Maine.  That one quote alone would be enough to sink him, and Collins would be harping on it 24/7.

As resistance grows in the West, "AI" companies are pushing to build their ecologically-disastrous data centers in poorer countries.

A grassroots resistance campaign squelched the EU's efforts to destroy online privacy.

"After weeks of pressure", king Charles has stripped prince Andrew of many of his titles and privileges because of his association with Epstein and the accusations of Virginia Giuffre.  It took pressure to make him do that???  Weeks of it???

Ukraine continues its devastating attacks on Russia's oil industry.

A Russian soldier explains why the death rate among his comrades is so high.

Russian army dugouts are infested with mice which eat everything in sight.  I can see that Russians would hate mice, but this is disgusting.

When Russian troops were captured by Ukrainians in the battle of Torske, Russia launched a drone strike on its own soldiers who had surrendered.

Iranian women continue to resist the theocracy in whatever ways they can.

Western racists don't care about human rights in the Middle East.

Israel needs to start executing convicted terrorists.  Locking them up just creates an incentive for other terrorists to take hostages to force their release.

The Palestinians already had their chance at a state and peace.

Sanae Takaichi, Japan's new prime minister and the first woman leader in the country's modern history, starts off in office with a stunning 74% approval rating.  She's a strong nationalist -- anti-immigration, tough on China, and supportive of a more powerful military.

Taiwan looks upon Israel as a model for its national defense.  The two democracies have close links, while the Chinese gangster-regime is supporting the jihadists.

China's economy isn't looking so good these days.  And its giant coastal cities are especially vulnerable to rising sea levels.

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

My only post this week was for Halloween.

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The government shutdown has now gone on for a month.  Most federal employees are furloughed or working unpaid, and even the military will soon start missing paychecks.  SNAP benefits are about to lapse, at a time when other sources of relief such as food banks are already under great strain.  Politicians keep posturing, finger-pointing, and trying to out-stubborn each other instead of working on solving the problem.

If I had the power to unilaterally enact a Constitutional amendment, it would be this:  Whenever the government shuts down because funding has not been passed, on each day that the shutdown continues, every member of the House and Senate must have their backs bared and receive ten lashes of the whip in public.  One flogging per day for each of them until they get the government re-opened.  I think that would put a stop to this kind of nonsense.