Link round-up for 25 July 2026

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

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The aggressor suffers the effects of the aggression.

Have a few jokes and cartoons.

He likes this skateboard.

When crossing the road, watch out for approaching traffic.

If you fail, try again.  If you fail again, give up.  No use making a fool of yourself.

This is why you don't play football indoors.

Well, he did go across the stream without getting his feet wet.

How does such a stupid species survive?

The use of "AI" is inaugurating a new era of dumbassery.

A man ordered some rice from a shop.  Then things got crazy.

Dave Barry discusses explosive diarrhea and pillows.

Hmph.  I think this octopus is just a shark molester.

Celebrate returning to the one real happy place.

With certain lighting, clouds look almost otherworldly.

Most statues are of persons -- here's a statue of agriculture.

These are the round gardens of Copenhagen.

Be aware of how wheelchair users move.

"AI" enables anyone who gets hold of your Android phone to send messages from it, even if it's locked.

If you're still using Windows, Microslop can track who and where you are even if you use a VPN.

Now even monitors -- at least of one brand -- bring ads with them.  It seems to work only with Windows computers, though.

Here's a declaration of independence from printers.

As a technology, "AI" is trivial.  It's the investment bubble that matters.

The Trumpified EPA, ignoring scientific research, tells us not to worry about toxic sewage sludge.

No, you cannot be an asshole to the neighbors just because you believe your imaginary friend is a big shot.

Spotify has launched a new "AI"-powered "about the song" feature which doesn't work.

The serpent was the good guy.

Quintus Sextius decided to avoid politics.

How do they know that?

Why are these blogs being terminated?  It's a mystery (read to the end).

"He's not a servant or a slave."

Amazon uses "AI" for billing, hilarity ensures.

This is a weird and disturbing theater marquee.  Lake Oswego (that's a suburb, though they've got an actual lake too) is very close to where I live.  It has an upper-middle-class feel to it.  This is not some trailer park.  They should know better.

YouTube is trying to put restrictions on the "AI"-generated crap now flooding it, but is still trying to nuance things instead of just banning the stuff.

"I really, genuinely think the techbros currently ruining everything have never even considered that possibility.  Their projections and pie charts and market share research and whatever simply do not take into account a scenario where people lose interest in being online."

A quarter of US workers are staying at jobs they hate for the sake of the health insurance.

".....it didn't work."

You can't judge a man purely on personality -- culture and values are also important.

It's a film production scene with a twist.

This person exists.

Down in Hell, Jeffrey Epstein must be really mad that he missed out on Flock cameras.

The anti-data-center resistance group Humans First held its first national day of action a week ago, with 142 rallies in 42 states.

When people openly say they want to participate in mass murder, believe them.

Radical writer Jim Goad, author of The Redneck Manifesto, has died.  His work, controversial and sometimes shocking, was an early harbinger of the rebellion against elitism and stultifying political correctness which is increasingly shaping politics today.

"Jane" were the heroes we needed once, and may soon need again.

One group is making money from SpaceX stock -- short sellers.

At least fifty-three jurisdictions have ended their contracts with Flock amid the massive public anti-surveillance backlash.  Not surprisingly, Flock's CEO is an asshole.  But we must not let our guard down -- other companies that provide similar "services" are also out there.  And in some areas politicians are camouflaging the cameras in hopes that people won't notice them.

One small company is taking a stand against "AI", and the tech bros are outraged.

After a series of union-friendly ballot initiatives in Missouri, Republican legislators are trying to make it harder to get such initiatives on the ballot at all.

Former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor, and journalist and lawyer Katie Phang, are working on different fronts to keep the Epstein cover-up in the public eye and to force release of information the administration is keeping hidden in violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.  We must not let this issue drop until every last client is exposed.

"Treat the anti-Israel mobs like the bullies they are.  Standing up to them is the only thing that works."  Even the greatest haters will eventually be denounced for not hating enough.

The mass diarrhea outbreak is just a textbook case of the typical consequences of the libertarian deregulation mentality promoted by ignorant idiots like Elon Musk.

$1.65 trillion in hidden debt.

This is not a "non-violent" movement.

"Naumann's one defense, if he has one, is that nothing and no one ever told him.  There was no notification.  There was no single morning when the evidence appeared in a form he could not talk his way around.  He had to work it out himself.  He got it wrong, and by the time he knew, the Gestapo was at the door.  The 33% do not get that defense."

Must-read of the week:  "What do QAnon, the Woke, and the Red-pilled all have in common?"

To younger voters, housing costs are the top issue of concern.  Meanwhile Democratic political types obsess about impeachment and Gaza while Republican ones want to talk about "communism" and fake stolen-election claims.  They're completely out of touch.

SpaceX has been a disaster for southern Texas.

A journalist was tracked and subjected to a scary police encounter because his license plate was wrongly listed in the Flock camera system as stolen.

The Todd Blanche confirmation hearings are a reminder that the wingnuts have not given up on their goal of forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.  And Josh Hawley is trying to get the DoJ to investigate a website that provides information for women in forced-birth states seeking abortion -- but that link has some good news too.

Four states will vote on abortion rights this November.  One of them is Idaho, one of the reddest states in the country, where voters will have a chance to repeal the current ban.

"Ideas hostile to the classical liberal principles upon which Western societies were founded have gained commanding influence across many of the institutions that produce and transmit culture.  Schools, universities, publishers, arts organizations, media outlets and professional associations increasingly interpret society through categories of power, identity, oppression and liberation, while individual responsibility, equality before the law and freedom of conscience are treated with suspicion."

With ideologists, no matter how much you kowtow to them, it will never be good enough.

Trump promised he would cut electricity prices in half by now.  Instead, they've risen, largely due to data centers and his attacks on clean-energy projects.

SpaceX is a junk investment, but Wall Street is ignoring the data.

The billionaire parasite class is going all out to defeat California's union-backed billionaire tax initiative.  If you are a California voter, get ready to be bombarded with every lie, every scare story, every dishonest gimmick that money can buy, to trick you into voting against this.

Google reports enormous profits -- but take a closer look.

Trump is rolling out a new wave of tariffs -- that is, inflationary taxes on US consumers.

Most voters in both parties agree -- there's too much money in politics and billionaires have too much influence.

It's not just SpaceX -- Tesla stock is going down the toilet too.

Hundreds of home-owners in Georgia are being forced out to make way for a data center.

"That's where Trump comes in.  The price of doing business with Trump is, effectively, infinity.  If you buck Trump, he doubles down and demands twice as much.  If you capitulate to Trump, he interprets it as weakness and comes back for three times as much."

They asked the British government for one single number.  The government is going to court to avoid releasing it.

The Scott Herbert case illustrates another reason why freedom of speech is valuable -- it helps the worst people to reveal themselves for what they are.

Amnesty International UK's scurrilous attempt to blacklist gay and feminist groups seems to be backfiring big time.

Here's why Beira's Place is necessary.

This person exists.

Germany's rising nativist party, the AfD, calls for the country to reverse its disastrous policy of shutting down nuclear power.  The retreat from nuclear has led to a rise in coal use in Germany, an absurdity at a time of global warming.

Apparently another reason to vote for the AfD is curbing this kind of garbage.  I support equal rights, but public displays of fetishism are an entirely different matter.

A wave of absurd prosecutions in Germany illustrates how laws limiting free speech, no matter how well-intentioned, always end up being abused.

Everybody hates "AI" in France too.

This is a waste of money, and worse.

Brazil now gets 85% of its electricity from non-fossil-fuel sources.

Russians visit a grocery store in Poland and are shocked at the variety and low prices on offer.

Ukraine attacked a site of Russia's FSB (today's version of the KGB) in occupied Kherson.

A Russian rocket launcher, hit by a drone, spectacularly goes kaboom.

You can see this drone fly to its target, literally just a few feet above the ground.

A warehouse near Moscow belonging to Wildberries (the Russian equivalent of Amazon) burned down after a Ukrainian drone attack.  Here's what was left.  Small businesses that operated through Wildberries have been hit hard.

Ukraine followed up with attacks on several other Wildberries warehouses, including in Krasnodar and St Petersburg.

Fuel shortages are crippling the Russian military.  It hardly seems possible that they can fight effectively under such conditions.

Religio-nutballs in Israel want to gender-segregate some streets in an ultra-Orthodox town.  The national government needs to crack down on this.  Israel is a modern advanced society because it's a basically secular society.  When these damn religions start taking over, they all look the same -- ignorant bigoted old bearded men in charge, women being restricted according to ancient, primitive taboo systems.

The Iranian regime has sentenced two men to death for helping injured protesters during the January uprising.

Trump still doesn't understand what he's dealing with in Iran.  The US needs to strike at the center, not the periphery.

Trump wants to supply sensitive advanced technology to the UAE -- a close ally of the Chinese regime.

India's first private-sector rocket test launch was a total success, reaching its planned orbit and deploying satellites.  It makes quite a contrast with SpaceX's constant explosions and glitches.

However, I don't know how much of a technological future India will have if the religio-nationalist Modi government keeps on buggering up the educational system.

The case of Xinjiang exposes Islamic hypocrisy.

More links at Comedy Plus.  Burr Deming at Red State Blues is still suffering substantial health issues.

My posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, and a video of a dreamlike flight.

[Image at top:  the warehouse at Elektrostal near Moscow]

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Didn't feel well for much of the week, and the unusual (for this area) heat wave, reaching close to 100°F on two days, didn't help.  Hence the lack of posts since Tuesday.

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I'm seeing support for the anti-surveillance-camera resistance on both left-wing and right-wing blogs.  I don't think I've ever seen a single post, from people on either "side", supporting the cameras.  Like data centers, this seems to be an issue uniting Americans across the political spectrum.

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