Link round-up for 14 March 2026

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

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You pretty much know what's going to happen here.

This special effects photo didn't quite turn out as intended.

I'd like to come up with some kind of comment on this video, but I honestly can't think of anything.

He's not a fan of old-fashioned women.

This cat chose the wrong place to hang out.

They found a way to hear the cries of the damned in Hell.

It's the Chinese in space! (mildly NSFW dialogue).

Nothing can match the joy of a man who has found his snake.

The snow is no match for these trains and machines.

When there's scenery worth seeing, slow is the way to go.  I'll pass on the lard and pickled cucumbers, though.

Lady M has some British Halloween decorations.

This poem hungers for you.

Akron OH has produced several famous musicians and bands.

This is Edinburgh.

This is Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire.

Here's a juicy tale of bad luck on Friday the thirteenth.

Some older people improve mentally and even physically as they age, rather than declining as most do.

The measles outbreak in New Mexico has led to a huge jump in vaccinations, stopping the outbreak in its tracks.  Neighbors in Texas were not so smart, and thus not so lucky.

Our Sun, and possibly several other stars like it, probably formed near the core of the galaxy and then migrated outward to its current location.  The structure of the galaxy prevents most stars formed near the core from doing this.  If the Sun had remained near the core and our solar system had formed there, the higher radiation level of the core environment might have prevented the evolution of life as we know it on Earth.

Yes, it is possible to scientifically test astrology (and yes, every time this has been done it shows it's a load of crap).

Using "AI" at your job is bad for your brain.

Some handy knots here.

You can't judge people when you've only seen them at their worst.

Here's an easy-to-use website safety checker -- though it doesn't claim to be perfect, it should spot most dangers.

YouTube is pushing meaningless, surreal "AI" garbage on kids.

Standing desks can be beneficial for some, but come with a few warnings too.

I don't know anything about housing as an investment (don't care either), but if you're thinking of investing in a house, take this for whatever it's worth.

Here's a directory of sites with "AI"-free collections of images, mostly geared for artists needing reference material.

When you're in an online chat with an OnlyFans model, that's not really her, it's a grossed-out girl in some Third World country who makes two buck an hour.

Imagine the sufferings of a self-aware, emotionally-sophisticated creature being forced to spend its whole life in this thing.

Maybe evil doesn't change even in the next life.

Person who doesn't exist makes music video that shouldn't.

"AI" companies want to go back to the days of paying workers with company scrip instead of money, except this is probably even more useless.

An exhaustive investigation reveals that age verification laws and systems are the cutting edge of an enormous corporate conspiracy against privacy (link from commenter NickM).  Discussion here.  I used the archive link for the post because it went into "awaiting moderation" status shortly after I first looked at it, and there's a risk of it being deleted or watered down -- Reddit is notorious for censorship.

Whose pain matters, and whose does not?

Facts are not right-wing or left-wing, they're just facts.  Reality is what it is, whether it accords with somebody's ideology or not.

Non-heterosexual self-identification among young people has declined sharply since 2023.  But if you scroll down to the second graph, the number of gays and lesbians is actually holding pretty steady at around 4% of men and women respectively.  It's mostly bisexuality which is declining -- suggesting that the previous high levels of that "identity" may have been more a matter of cultural fashion than reality.

Erin Friday is a heroine who deserves recognition.

The "AI"-infested Windows 11 is a malfunctioning disaster of bloatware and spyware -- and there's a report that Microslop plans to do even more of the same in Windows 12.

Diversity is our strength!

Emergency first responders in San Francisco are wasting their time dealing with stuck Waymos that are clogging up the streets.  Waymos generally are a huge drain on public resources.  It's time to admit driverless cars are a failure and scrap them.

Did Proton help the FBI unmask a protester?  The truth is much less disturbing.

The nonsensical practice of putting clocks backward and forward every six months causes sleep deprivation and wastes electricity.  Yet it continues because Congress can't even manage the simple act of getting rid of something stupid that pretty much everybody hates.

Elon Musk's random-blundering management style is disrupting and demoralizing xAI.

Don't think, just believe.

If the words are so inappropriate and out-of-place, the actual thing is even more so.

The Artemis lander that's supposed to take humans to the Moon in 2028 has technical problems and may not be safe.  We were able to do this in 1969, but back then we didn't have these private-sector megalomaniac billionaire dumbasses getting involved.

Amazon's operations are increasingly being disrupted by its use of "AI", but it plans to double down.

This is a dangerous and evil man and any sane person can see that.

For International Women's Day, Israel's UN mission paid tribute to Iranian women who have stood up to the theocracy.

BuzzFeed bet big on "AI".  BuzzFeed is going down.

Deportation of all illegal aliens, not just the violent criminals, is supported by either 66% or 58% (the wording is confusing) of likely voters.  Even Democratic voters are split roughly half-and-half.

"I am here to be rude, because this is a rude technology, and it deserves a rude response."

I'll give the Iranian theocracy credit for one good deed -- they're bombing data centers.

Every parent knows the answer to this question.

People hate "AI" even more than they hate ICE.  In fact, the only things in this survey even more hated than "AI" are Iran (they probably mean the Iranian regime) and the Democratic party.

There are different phases of mental illness.

"Fuck the Jews!" the mob yelled as they beat up two Jewish men, leaving one knocked unconscious.  Yeah, sounds like that might be a hate crime.

Republicans try to rein in the anti-vaccine nutballs a bit, after realizing that most voters don't want to see the country turned into a plague-infested medieval shithole.

Don't believe everything you read about the Iran war.  Some stories continue to circulate after being debunked, because they're what people want to believe.

Backward attitudes among younger men make it harder for younger women to find worthy relationships.  And yes, these attitudes are backward.  We can't solve problems unless we can talk about them in plain English instead of cowardly, wimpy language that's terrified of offending idiots and human garbage.

Mamdani is more and more openly normalizing violent bigotry.  I compared him to David Duke before, but in fact he's even more dangerous, because he has a broad base of activist support that Duke never had.

Lazy corporate executives are using "AI" to help make business decisions.  This is not much different from making such decisions with the aid of a Ouija board or a horoscope.  We should expect an increase in random blunders in the near future.

Ted Cruz denounces right-wing anti-Semitism.  I know everybody hates him, but I have to respect someone who will call out this shit on his own "side".

Pervasive sexual abuse was grotesquely mishandled at this Illinois prison.

The Senate probably can't pass the SAVE Act, and even if it does, it's likely to backfire.

According to current OECD predictions, by 2060 the US will be the world's second-largest economy -- behind India.  China will have fallen to third by then.

After Trump disrespectfully wore a golf hat at the ceremonial return of fallen US soldiers, Fox News used old footage from an earlier ceremony, apparently to hide the fact that he had done so.

Somebody used "AI" to create a computer operating system.  The results are about what you'd expect.

The US fringe left are just making idiots of themselves now.

This is the face of Islam.

Trump disgustingly refuses to condemn Russia for helping the Iranian theocracy target US forces.  It's looking more and more plausible that Putin has some kind of Epstein-related kompromat on him.

This is disqualifying.  Divorce her or resign.

Anti-Jewish violence in Europe is out of control.  Europe needs to stop treating "anti-Zionism" as a legitimate political viewpoint -- and needs to recognize that this problem is coming mostly from Muslims.

A Canadian man who has spent the majority of his life behind bars for sexual assaults on women and girls seeks to be moved to a women's prison.

The UK has an "AI action plan", but there's no substance to it.

Australia is offering asylum to the Iranian women soccer players who refused to sing the theocracy's anthem.

This seventy-year-old Ukrainian woman evacuated her husband from the war zone in a wheelchair.  Eventually they reached soldiers who helped them.

See a huge stockpile of Russian drones burn after a Ukrainian attack.

Ukraine continues its slow but steady advance, as Russian troops feel paralyzed by Ukrainian drone warfare.

Israel's recognition of Somaliland hints at closer Israel-Taiwan ties in the future.

British newspaper The Sun reports that the Iranian theocracy's admiral Dönitz figure, Mojtabā Khāmenei, has been seriously wounded in an airstrike and is in a coma.  The report is based on just one anonymous source, and The Sun isn't exactly the most serious paper out there, but it's notable that Mojtabā has made no public or TV appearances since being appointed supreme leader, and a statement this week attributed to him was read out by a TV news anchor -- Mojtabā was not shown delivering it.  Iranians are responding to the situation with dark humor on social media.

The Bānk-e Sepah, via which the theocracy pays its soldiers and Revolutionary Guards, has been hit by an airstrike.  The military is already suffering from rising desertions and severe shortages of basic supplies, and the regime fears it may not be able to pay its employees due to disruption caused by air attacks.

Crown prince Rezā Pahlavi says the moment for Iranians to rise up in revolt is not quite yet, but will come very soon.  Ukrainian president Zelensky met with Pahlavi on Friday and declared his support for the liberation of Iran from the theocracy, while Pahlavi indicated that a future democratic Iran will support Ukraine's freedom as well.

The theocracy's missile and drone strikes on nearby countries have decreased dramatically as Israel and the US have destroyed most of its offensive capabilities.

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

My own posts this week:  a video report from the commander of CENTCOM, a couple of news updates, an image round-up, and Democrats on the right track at last.

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From the Kaiser, to the Nazis, to imperial Japan, to the various jihadist states and gangs attacking Israel, to Argentina in the Falklands, to the USSR, to Saddam Hussein -- again and again, gangster regimes have believed that democracies were weak and indecisive and would not fight, only to end up getting their asses kicked to Hell by those democracies.  Authoritarians are corrupt and incompetent -- it's democracies that are strong.  The Iranian theocracy is just the latest addition to the list.

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Since I started posting about the Iran war, page views on this blog are up about 30% (yes, I have a reasonably good way of correcting for the fake bot views "from" implausible foreign countries and just counting the real ones).  Interesting.

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We are usually told that in every disagreement there is at least some good and some evil on both sides, but the present one really is an exception -- to oppose overthrowing the Iranian theocracy is entirely evil.

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"Iran rises from its knees"