Link round-up for 24 January 2026

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

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More snow and ice problems here.

It's the latest innovation in non-chemical weed killer.

Watch out for the camo cats.

This daring escape attempt didn't quite make it.

Jump onto the snow.

Your food is laughing at you -- or mad at you.

Here are some dogs with sticks.

The way to have fun with ice and snow is to get rid of it.

Hey kids, quit playing with your food.

I have caught a fish..... yikes!

What year is next year?  Ask "AI".

This is the Open Book fountain in Budapest.

See some interesting pictures from Pompeii here (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

Zero gravity causes people's brains to physically shift position inside their skulls, with unknown but probably bad effects.  Who knows what long periods in the abnormally low (for humans) gravity of the Moon or Mars would do.

We have an improved map of Antarctica below the ice, which suggests that the risk of melting ice raising ocean levels is less than previously thought.

South Korean researchers claim to have developed a spray that can close up wounds almost instantly.

A new mRNA cancer vaccine appears startlingly effective.

Gene therapy is successfully treating Huntington's disease in the UK.

India is planning to use miniature nuclear reactors to speed up its transition away from fossil-fuel energy.

The Artemis 2 rocket, soon to inaugurate an utterly pointless new series of manned missions to the Moon, may not be able to re-enter Earth's atmosphere safely.

Diet Coke isn't any unhealthier than water, at least for diabetics.

What kind of man obsesses about penis size?

Turn off the music, please.

If you're using "AI" summaries to follow the news, what you're getting is mostly rubbish.

If you eat canned tuna, read this.  There's some out there that's contaminated with an undetectable and deadly toxin.

If you have any of these seventeen browser extensions installed, get rid of them -- they're spyware.  I think "AdBlocker" refers to a specific program of that name, not to any and all ad blockers such as uBlock Origin.

Starlink has started stealing customers' data for "AI" training.

Your Ring camera is an ICE agent.

Congress just voted in favor of remote kill switches for cars.  I'm keeping my old car.

This classic movie scene is an important reminder for us all.

The Marsh family chews out Trump for bullying Denmark.

There is now an "AI"-equipped sex doll.  Just imagine all the interesting data about you that that could record and sell.

How on Earth are people dumb enough to buy things like door locks and flashlights that need an internet connection to work?  Far inferior to the old simple non-"smart" devices.

Tesla has taken the "safety monitors" (human emergency drivers) out of its robotaxis -- and put them in a second car following each robotaxi, to boost the illusion that the taxis are driverless.

The Ten Commandments are worthless bullshit.

San Diego Comic-Con says no to "AI" fake art.

Both political parties have embraced lunacy, and the voters are getting fed up with it.

Social Media idiots using "AI" have mis-identified the ICE agent who shot Renee Good.

The House has voted to sustain arts funding in defiance of Trump.

Lawsuits claim SpaceX managers ordered workers to not report serious injuries.

This was a perfectly fitting protest against "AI" fake art.

This month marks the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attack.  All decent people must firmly condemn jihadism with no "but, however, on the other hand".

Young tech-bro types are giving up on sexuality, relationships, and fun in general to focus on glowing screens and dreams of money.  They're the next generation of shriveled souls.

We know what Martin Luther King Jr would be doing if he were alive today.

The resistance in Minneapolis is enormous in scale and not at all intimidated.  People are protecting vulnerable neighbors (which reminded me of a similar situation in another country years ago).

Here's how Minnesota is fighting back against the ICE invasion and federal overreach.  And here's video of yesterday's anti-ICE rally in Minneapolis.

The White House used "AI" to fake a photograph of an arrested protester in order to distort what actually happened.

There's an "AI"-generated fake image out there of the Renee Good shooting, designed to make it look like she was trying to run down the agent who shot her.  Expect more of this kind of thing.

As public opinion turns against ICE, Trump and Vance are starting to walk back their support for it a little.

This post claims that pro-ICE elements in Minneapolis are using decoys to distract the resistance from actual ICE operations.  Has anyone else heard of that happening?

Twitter has become a battleground for internal conflicts on the right.

Several critical House Democrats are standing up to the party leadership by voting to hold Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt for ignoring a subpoena to testify against Epstein.  I thought that ignoring a subpoena was illegal?  Why have the Clintons not been arrested?

Elon Musk's xAI/Twitter/Grok/whatever is making it as hard as possible for victims of its "AI" fake nude image scandal (who may number in the millions) to get the images taken down.

Stop stressing about Trump "canceling the elections".  That's not how things work.  And stop obsessing about things that can't happen.

The CEO of Microsoft is preparing to shift the blame when the "AI" bubble collapses.

A sociologist explains the psychology of ICE violence and tactics for de-escalation.

Trump threw yet another silly tantrum because he didn't like the results of a poll.  JFC this senile idiot is such an embarrassment.

New York city's pension fund many defy Mamdani's bigotry and continue to invest in Israeli bonds.

A serious-looking bruise on Trump's left hand raises renewed questions about his health status.  It's no longer really debatable that he has dementia, along with the other mental issues he's probably always had.

Democratic legislators in Michigan are trying to rein in predatory "AI".

Four hundred millionaires have signed a letter demanding higher taxes on the wealthy.  However, there are estimated to be fifty-six million millionaires in the world (and almost three thousand billionaires), so four hundred is not a very large proportion of these.

Elon Musk and Trumpist Republicans work together to enhance each other's power.

The time will come when ICE agents are held legally accountable for their actions.

2025 was a mass-extinction year for cryptocurrencies.

Will tiny cars sell in the US?  I'd think reasonable prices alone would be a big draw.  I'd consider one, if it came without all the spyware and stupid electronic crap all current cars seem to have.

This is the future the enemy wants -- intellectual life destroyed, billionaires ruling over society like feudal lords, and everyone else reduced to menial labor doing what the billionaires require.

Stop doing business with companies that pander to predatory perverts.

"AI" in the workplace still isn't raising productivity and can't do anything reliably, but the hypesters just keep doggedly making dramatic predictions for how it will transform everything in the future.

The Supreme Court may be the last hope to stop election-rigging in California.

The courts keep slapping Trump down in his campaign against wind farms.

Requiring a man to get a pregnancy test is utter gibbering lunacy.  No amount of doubletalk and word-games will ever convince voters otherwise.

"AI" in schools is stunting children's development.  The future will belong to the countries that do the best job of keeping this shit out of their schools.

Canada is studying guerilla insurgency tactics to be used in case of a US invasion.

These nutcases need to stop making ridiculous comparisons.  A man being told he isn't a woman is not the Holocaust.

Dutch students were forced to live alongside migrant refugees to help them integrate.  The result was a wave of rapes and assaults.

Polish citizens have donated over $700,000 to help Ukrainians through the winter, as Russian attacks cut off electricity.

These people are nasty.

People in Latin America are abandoning Catholicism in droves.  Incredibly, only 46% of Brazilian adults now say they are Catholic.

A UN representative says the number of protesters massacred by the Iranian regime may be even more than the twenty thousand estimated earlier.

Many Iranians are pinning their hopes on a US military strike against the regime.  Unfortunately it increasingly looks like Trump will do nothing, breaking his promise to the Iranian people as he has broken so many others.  Nevertheless, David Petraeus believes the regime is dying.

Takaichi's popularity in Japan remains around 70%, reflecting the nationalist and populist shift of the Japanese public in the face of the Chinese threat.

China's already-disastrous birth rate is still dropping despite the regime's increasingly frantic efforts to increase it.  In the long run the country's superpower aspirations are doomed.

More links at Red State Blues and Comedy Plus.

My own posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, a Lone Animator video on Lunar livestock, and the Greenland crisis.

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When Trump backed down on Greenland, he claimed that there was a "framework of a future deal", implying that his antics would still bear some fruit someday.  It's highly unlikely that any such framework exists.  Someone managed to explain to him that an all-out economic war with Europe would mean the US getting its ass kicked, and he had to come up with something to save face when he backed down.

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Americans' struggle against bullying, thuggish Christian extremism (often supported by the government) is mirrored by Europeans' struggle against bullying, thuggish Islamic extremism (often supported or at least coddled by governments).  As is increasingly the case these days, the "left" and "right" labels are irrelevancies which only block understanding of reality.  Our fight and theirs are much the same.

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I have said for years that the left should stop claiming (indeed, gloating) the US is going to become majority non-white in a few decades.  First, that's not going to happen.  Second, a lot of voters heard the claim and believed it (right-wingers call it "the great replacement"), and consequently millions voted for Trump who would not otherwise have done so.  I doubt he would have won, even in 2016, without that factor.

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How enshittification works: