Link round-up for 20 December 2025

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

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Today was the deadline for the release of the Epstein files, all of them, subject only to redactions necessary to protect the privacy of the victims.  The Justice Department's pitiful partial release unambiguously violated the law (details here).  Most importantly, the names of Epstein's clients -- the men who actually committed acts of child sexual abuse under his auspices -- have not been made public.  This is a cover-up.  The administration is continuing to shield filthy, criminal perverts, even in defiance of a law passed almost unanimously by Congress.  The fight for justice continues.

The names of the clients.  Every last one of them.  Nothing less will do.  Anything else is just squid ink.

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There is such a thing as being too clean.

Find out whether you belong in a nuthouse.

Snow and ice are difficult to cope with.

See some Christmas ads from the old days.

Little-known fact:  if you make a cat seasick, it will convert to Judaism.

Please do not park illegally.

See electronics in the wild.

With this cat, every night brings a new surprise.

Keep your eyes on the road, dumbass.

Catch the lightning.

Calvin says goodbye.

Bystander apathy is a myth.  Humans are highly social and more typically intervene to protect each other.

After a decade-long drop, antibiotic use in meat animals is on the rise again, fostering the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria dangerous to humans.  Once at large in the environment, these bacteria can infect anyone, meaning that even innocent (non-meat-consuming) people are at risk.

Until a couple of centuries ago, humans typically got two periods of sleep in every twenty-four hours.  The sleep pattern we're now told is optimum just reflects what's most convenient for turning people into an industrial workforce, not biological reality.

Here are some interesting reconstructions of the appearance of ancient humans and proto-humans.

LG brand "smart" TV sets are now getting "AI" installed on them via updates, and you can't get rid of it.

Here's a guide to non-"smart" TV sets, for those who want to just watch TV without being tracked and hassled.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is creating a resource hub to help people fight back against online age-verification laws.  One such law in Louisiana has just been ruled unconstitutional.

Microsoft's "AI"-centric shittyization of Windows 11 generated a serious backlash.

Here's a website that can help you switch over your Windows computer to Linux.

Several apparently innocuous browser extensions on Google Chrome are harvesting users' chatbot conversations and sharing the data with various companies.  There's no way to turn off the process -- the only way to stop it is to uninstall the extensions.

Automattic plans to force "AI" onto WordPress.  Developers and hosting companies are already pushing back, but if your blog is on WordPress, be aware that you may soon need to deal with this.

Mozilla's new CEO, likewise, wants to incorporate various "AI" junk into Firefox, though he claims it will remain "a choice -- something people can easily turn off".  I'm sure tech-savvy types will soon be posting instructions for how to get rid of it, and I'll link them here.

Some good advice for aging here, though not all of it is universally true.

The government is considering a proposal for hugely intrusive collecting of personal data from all visitors to the US, which would devastate the tourism industry.  The proposal is available for public comment until February 9 (there's a link to do so in the post).

"Slop Evader" is a new browser tool that limits your searches to material posted before "AI"-generated crap began flooding the internet.  So long as you're not looking specifically for recent information, you can have the "AI"-free web back.

Here's what to do if you think your employer is trying to force you out.

Don't fall for "AI"-generated fake political images.  Fact-check, fact-check, fact-check.

Yummy!

No matter what they call it, this is an ad.

"AI" photo editing will turn your pictures into generic junk.

"They say the consumer is to blame."

This healthy-eating ad from France, which I linked last week, has achieved global popularity.  It's not hard to see why -- it's a gentle, humane story with excellent art (no "AI") and no politics, no hate, no screechy denunciation of anyone or anything.  People must feel starved for that.

Online crypto casinos are fleecing the gullible.

The Starbucks strike continues, and is expanding.  Don't cross the picket lines; don't go to, or buy from, Starbucks until after the strike ends.

".....because it's pretty obvious."

There are advantages to old-fashioned technology.

The word of the year is "slop".

Microsoft released an ad showing its Copilot "AI" in use.  This writer tried to actually use Copilot for all the tasks it's shown doing in the ad.  It couldn't do any of them.

This boy needs to face criminal charges for assault and, if he really is too brain-damaged to control his own behavior, be permanently removed from society so he can't hurt people.

UnitedHealthcare is facing wrongful-death claims for obstructing hospitalizations for elderly nursing-home residents.

Amazon is posting "AI"-generated recaps of its popular Prime Video shows, which get everything so wrong that it has taken down several of them in embarrassment.

Yet another Republican wants to teach ancient mythology in school science classes in Arizona.

The spirit of Epstein lives on in this app.

Like "AI", humanoid robots are all hype and no substance.

Bigotry against Jews (not against Zionists or Israelis, against Jews) is on the rise among younger Americans, regardless of political orientation.

This Kenyan worker claims that many chatbots are fake, with the supposed machine intelligence you're talking with actually being a human in a low-wage country.  So much of today's much-hyped "AI" and robotics have been exposed as fakery done with hidden human operators, one wonders if most of it is.

Annie Asks You blog chronicles the successes of the anti-Trump resistance this year.

Congressional candidate Earle Ford, known as "the billionaire buster", sounds like a man to watch.  And he's running for what's said to be the most flippable seat in Florida.

The media are pushing claims that the US is having a religious revival, but there's no evidence for it.

It's not just his rockets -- now one of Elon Musk's satellites has exploded.

More and more Republican officeholders are turning against Trumpism.

The Washington Post has launched a series of "AI"-generated podcasts, and of course they're riddled with errors of fact, fake quotes, and all the rest of the usual "AI" junk.

This isn't comedy, it's evil.

Opposition to data centers proved to be a winning issue in this Virginia election.

Rochester NY's year-long experiment with guaranteed basic income was a big success.

The pesticide paraquat is banned in more than seventy countries, but not in the US.

Despite forced-birth laws, the national monthly abortion rate in 2025 is actually up slightly compared to 2024.  Telehealth has emerged as a critical resource for women and girls in forced-birth states.

Those $1,776 bonuses to military personnel which Trump just announced are actually housing assistance funds which Congress already approved months ago.

Texas is suing "smart" TV makers for spying on people.

Ordinary Americans are rebelling against "AI" surveillance cameras.

ICE is heavily harassing Somali-Americans in Minneapolis.

Tesla's sales are still plummeting -- its two new models are still overpriced crap.

Misinformation about birth control is proliferating online, potentially undermining women's personal autonomy.

Focus groups of Trump voters in New Jersey and Virginia who switched to Sherrill and Spanberger this year show that the candidates won their votes by focusing on the cost of living and avoiding partisan attacks and social issues.

Many of the errors made by "AI" spring from generalizing without understanding, a problem that can never be fixed since "AI" is not conscious and cannot understand things.

Trump's reclassification of marijuana will have extensive effects.

Don't tolerate this kind of sick abuse.  File complaints, fight for legislation.

"AI" (not "generative AI") is being used to help diagnose cancer.  Not only does it not work very well, it's eroding doctors' own skills.

Fed chair Jerome Powell says that the government may be badly misstating job creation numbers, and that the country is probably actually losing jobs every month.

Waymo robotaxis drive dangerously around school buses -- and a patch meant to solve the problem doesn't work.

The Democratic party's return to power faces an obstacle -- its own primary process.

Utah has repealed a ban on collective bargaining for government employees.

The 2015 Paris climate agreement has had a huge impact.  While the US under Trump fiddle-faddled around and tried to pretend the problem isn't real, the rest of the world continued to work on solving it.

Won't be matched again?  Why wasn't this asshole fired and blacklisted?

Absolutely disgusting.  The British justice system has gone mad.

The leader of the UK Conservative party talks sense on crime and abuse of women.  I suspect this is being provoked by fear of losing voters to the Reform party.

Mixed-sex bathrooms and changing rooms are "a magnet for sexual predators", with a wave of assaults happening in such places across the UK.  Women-only facilities, from which men (regardless of how they identify) are excluded, are a necessity for safety.

An abuse victim wins some justice against an abuser empowered by religion.

Germans are gearing up to resist draft registration.

Mexico is raising its minimum wage 13% next year.

See dramatic video of a Russian military plane crash -- the plane broke in half in midair well before crashing.  There's no sign of an explosion, so this was probably just typical gangster-state crap engineering.

A Ukrainian underwater drone knocked out this Russian missile-launching submarine -- the first-ever use of such a drone in actual combat.  (Note:  a comment below contains a rapid flashing light that may affect some readers, but you won't see that unless you scroll down.)

Watch Ukrainians destroy an advancing Russian column near Pokrovsk.  Here's a drone's-eye view of the aftermath.

Precision drones destroy two Russian mobile missile launchers.

A Russian propagandist faces reality.

Whatever was in this building is extremely not there any more.

Israel is one of the world's best-performing economies, despite all the boycotts and attacks from the world's various bigots and haters.

Another top planner of the October 7 attack has been sent to Hell.

India's coddling of Russia will cause it problems in the future.

Chinese city dwellers employ millions of useless unarmed "security guards" as a mark of class status.

The US has announced a sale of more than ten billion dollars worth of weapons to the democratic nation of Taiwan for self-defense.  The tinpot dictatorship in Beijing is throwing the usual tantrums.

More links at Red State Blues and Comedy Plus.

My posts this week:  a video on Europe's military power, an image round-up, and the Bondi beach jihadist attack.

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The worst right-wingers are reacting to Rob Reiner's murder the same way the worst left-wingers reacted to Charlie Kirk's murder.  It's disgusting.  Normal decent people can't stop this kind of thing, but we need to repudiate it.

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