Link round-up for 6 June 2026

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

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Time for some confusing dogs.

But here's a dog who's quite clear.

Obviously this cat is against exercise.

There are places where you should not fart.

What a grotesque beast..... oh.

Now this is cosplay.

View the long horse of Jackson MI.

Here's a statue of Alice.

See photos of the Central Bridge in Carleton Place, Ontario, illuminated for Pride Month.

Learn the story of Parowan Gap, a huge erosion feature in Utah with ancient cultural significance.

This is an animal which would not fear the guillotine.

There are cases where slime is better than trees.  But not many.

Scientists are using mRNA technology to develop personalized melanoma vaccines.

Excessively hot weather muddles animals' thought processes and makes them more irritable and aggressive.  It would be surprising if the same effects didn't occur in humans to some extent.

The James Webb telescope has detected signs of chemicals that could indicate life, on a planet 124 light-years away.

New technology can extract clean drinking water from air.

Helicopter fish ravioli protect the central US from rabies.

"AI" is on the verge of super-intelligence, far surpassing the mere human mind.

Take a look at this map.

Always look things up.  It will save you from sounding like an idiot.

For artists who use LinkTree, here's a warning.

This is what happens when you let a machine tell you what to do, dumbass.

ChatGPT output may contain phishing links or other malicious content.

Apparently since March, Meta's "AI" support feature would let anyone take control of anyone else's Instagram account.  Meta claims to have fixed the problem, but if your bank has such "AI" support, there may be reason for concern.

Nasdaq index funds will endanger your retirement savings to further enrich Elon Musk and his cronies.  I linked to an article about this before, but this is a clearer explanation.  The S&P 500, by contrast, is refusing to bend its rules to accommodate SpaceX, so your money should be safer there.

Natural selection is still hard at work.

The weirdness of quantum physics does not justify ignoramuses talking nonsense about what reality is.

English is very difficult for speakers of other languages to learn to pronounce correctly.  This teacher uses some tricks to help.

The "AI" bubble, unlike the dot-com bubble, won't even leave us any useful infrastructure when it collapses.  As he explains, if "AI" actually worked, it would already be transforming the economy, instead of us just getting year after year of tech bros blathering about the amazing things it will do some time in the future.  This is a scam.

Americans are learning some lessons from the victory of Péter Magyar in Hungary.  Plus, some good news about plants.

The people boycotting this company seem a bit confused.

One graduation speaker got cheers instead of boos -- by calling on graduates to "destroy AI".

Two prominent men have been referred for prosecution after they were accused of sexually assaulting a woman employed by Jeffrey Epstein.  Investigations continue, including into Epstein's ranch in New Mexico.  This will not be over until every last client is definitively exposed.

Bitcoin has lost almost half its value since October.

North Carolina Republicans are pushing a bill which would allow women to be sentenced to death -- or even murdered -- for using routine forms of birth control.

If Trump is serious about keeping this hideous pile of crap in front of the White House, the next president's first job should be to have it torn down.

Public opinion is very rapidly turning against "AI" and against the arrogant oligarchs who are trying to ram it down our throats.

Several red states are threatening to redraw their Congressional districts specifically to reduce non-white voting power.  Here is an action you can take to encourage corporate CEOs to oppose this (Republican politicians are more likely to listen to CEOs than to most people).  I believe that taking race into account in any way when drawing Congressional districts -- as these state legislatures are clearly threatening to do -- should be strictly forbidden.

Small-town Wisconsin activists who defeated a planned data center in their area have posted this online toolkit to help the resistance elsewhere.

A Christian "prophet" ordered a teenager "swallow it!" -- well, it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds.

This company rented an Airbnb to test a household robot.  The owner says it wrecked the place.

"Idaho health officials are investigating how nearly 60 people got sick after drinking raw milk."  What's to "investigate" here?  The dumbasses got sick because they drank raw milk.  Duh.

Mass resistance is just getting started against the colossal data center planned for northern Utah.

"As far as I know there was no 'one brave soul' moment that emboldened others -- I think people are just collectively done with this."

One of Waymo's self-driving taxis has finally had an incident so undeniably dangerous that the company is pulling them off of freeways in several cities while it tries to address the problem.

A German software developer came up with an ingenious way to strike back against coders who use "AI".  They're outraged.  He's a hero.

"When a minority group requires an army just to walk down a public avenue, they are no longer equal citizens; they are targets living on borrowed time."

On the eve of its IPO, analysts say SpaceX is hugely over-valued, meaning investors are likely to lose big.

After ten years, Ken Ham's fatuous "Ark Encounter" (a tourist attraction consisting of a replica of Noah's Ark) is a huge flop, drawing far fewer visitors than projected.

The American Federation of Teachers fears that "we will lose a generation of kids" if the plague of "AI" in the classroom can't be stopped.

"We keep waiting for a hero loud enough to drown out the other side.  That is not what this moment needs.  It needs the unglamorous courage of the complicated sentence."

Here's the story of how the Trumpist DoJ tried to force Daily Kos to hand over identifying data about a contributor, and Daily Kos successfully resisted.  I'm no fan of Daily Kos, which is infested with ideological cranks and Israel-bashers, but all government attempts to intimidate the independent media must be resisted no matter who is the target.

My state has stopped issuing undercover license plates to ICE, citing its "illegitimate" and "damaging" activities.

Even though Mamdani refused to attend New York's Israel Day on Fifth parade, many other high officials did, including Schumer and Hochul.  A Muslim group also participated for the first time, along with a delegation of Druze from the Middle East (Israel has recently protected Druze populations against jihadist attacks).

As vaccinations decrease due to people being stupid, hospitals are seeing a rise in childhood diseases.

"Then, one day, ordinary people look around and realize they are being asked to deny things they can see with their own eyes."

71% of Americans would oppose having a data center near them, up from 42% in September.  Public opinion is rapidly solidifying on this issue.  The politicians better fall into line, fast.

These cats and monkeys would vote anti-data-center if they could.

This asshole exists.  I suspect he won't be mayor much longer.

A bipartisan amendment under consideration in the House would help protect privacy by drastically limiting the use of automated license plate readers.

Democrats are worrying that the scandal-plagued Nazi tattoo guy is going to hurt them with the voters, and not just in Maine.  But many are doubling down.  New stuff just keeps coming out.  The primary is this coming Tuesday -- voters still have a chance to choose someone else.

"But the fault doesn't just lie with Platner and the people who urged him to run.  It lies with us.  Democrats who continue to back him.  Who defend him.  Who rationalize his actions and behaviors.  Who attack those of us who even raised any of these issues."

The human mind is not capable of devising a punishment harsh enough for the people who did this to a child.

When legislators behave like this, it's time to vote them out.

The British working class is turning strongly nativist.  And the old establishment politicos and union leaders are utterly clueless.

It turns out that the murderer of Henry Nowak (the man who was fatally stabbed and then handcuffed by police because the stabber accused him of saying something racist) was a Sikh, not a Muslim -- and the response of local Sikh religious leaders makes a striking contrast.

I noted last week that in Belgium you can now be convicted of "hate speech" for telling the truth.  But actual crimes go effectively unpunished in that country.

"There are no Jews allowed in our hotel."  Not "no Israelis" or "no Zionists", no Jews.  If you can't see that what we're dealing with is flagrant anti-Semitism, there's no hope for you.

Hungary's new government has rescinded Orbán's ban on gay pride parades.

See Ukrainian drones destroy two Russian bombers and a missile launcher.  Then watch this major attack on military camps and training sites.

Ukrainian drones are spreading terror through Russian supply lines far behind the front.  Truck drivers are refusing to drive fuel trucks into the occupied territories, knowing it to be deadly dangerous.

Ukraine rolled out a welcome for attendees at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.  I wish they'd waited and droned the forum itself.  A few Western economists and business types getting burned alive might teach the rest to stay the hell away from Putin.

While Ukrainian military tactics lead the way into the twenty-first century, Russia reverts to the Dark Ages.

This American pastor had an epiphany after visiting Ukraine.  He is a "spiritual advisor" to Trump, whatever the hell that means, so maybe it will make a difference.

Trump is backstabbing Israel and basically going nuts.  This man clearly no longer has the mental capacity to handle the job.

Netanyahu, who certainly understands the Middle East far better than most Americans, seems confident that the Iranian regime will collapse eventually.

Ghana has passed a sweeping anti-gay law.  You can now get ten years in prison just for supporting or donating to a gay cause, and citizens are required to report anyone they suspect of being gay to the authorities.

More links at Red State Blues and Comedy Plus.

My posts this week:  a walk through a town in Angola, an image round-up, and why Trump will be the forgotten man.

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Republicans who claim Biden stole the 2020 election must believe Democrats could steal an election while Trump was president, but couldn't steal the 2024 one while Biden was president.

Democrats who claim Trump stole the 2024 election must believe Republicans could steal an election while Biden was president, but couldn't steal the 2020 one while Trump was president.

Conspiratardia is incoherent.

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Predictably, American political-activist types are trying to re-write events in Iran to fit their own biases.  To those whose world-view is dominated by hating Trump, the reality on the ground must be retconned to fit into the Procrustean narrative of "It's Trump who did X, therefore X cannot bring any positive results and no one can possibly be supporting it".  Ignore these people.  They know nothing about Iran -- all they know is petty point-scoring within the cramped, narrow world of US domestic political infighting, so that's what they're doing.  It's irrelevant to what is actually going on in Iran.

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Recently I was watching a video posted by an account called "British Patriots", something I would normally strongly support.  The video contained a passing reference to "flight 1488", as if this were just a random number.  However, "1488" is a known neo-Nazi dog whistle -- "14" refers to "the fourteen words", a white-supremacist slogan, while "88" refers to the eighth letter of the alphabet doubled, or HH, standing for "Heil Hitler".  I wrote a comment asking how self-described British patriots could post a coded reference celebrating Hitler, a man who tried to destroy Britain and who was allied with Muslims in Palestine due to shared hatred against Jews (the British Patriots account is anti-Muslim).  My comment was deleted almost immediately.  Some people, it seems, don't have the guts to be explicit about what they believe in.

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Politicians need to grow a spine while they can still do something:


Maybe people are finally through with this bullshit:

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