Link round-up for 17 October 2026

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

Two weeks to Halloween!

o o o o o

He sees..... a rival!

Cats wreak havoc.

Behold the works of teh stoopid.

This is not the correct way to ride an escalator.

A simple fight can become a work of art.

What a stupid place to put a swing.

What a stupid place to park a bicycle.

He tried to sneak under the barrier.

Don't eat it if you're not sure what it is.

She misread the sign.

Why did the salmon cross the road?

I have seen the future, and it looks silly (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

This baby armadillo wants his apple.

Was it just a nightmare?

Dogs get ready for Halloween.

Perceptive people prefer Polish pottery pumpkins.

New Witch blog is fully in tune with the season.

Few can match Scary Mary's house for elaborate Halloween displays.

The Manitou Springs CO Skeleton Craze is getting started again.  More pictures here.

Flashy colors aren't so desirable when it comes to clothes.  Also, a new and better word for "goose".

Some nice sunset photos here.

Morning Coffee blog has some entertaining memes.

If we ever end up in some nightmare dystopia where people get euthanized when they're too old to be useful any more, this is how I want to go out.

Cas d'intérêt blog is back with an entertaining story of a stressful arrival in Paris.

A century ago, these people made a motor home out of a single log (found via SickoRicko).

Find out what ants and onions have in common.

Here's video of the planet Pluto from the New Horizons probe.  Before that probe, we knew Pluto only as an indistinct reddish dot.

Spinal-cord implants made from the patient's own tissue show promise in restoring movement in paralyzed people.

This is how vaccines work (just one minute long, funny, and it's accurate).

Shigella, a bacterium which causes severe diarrhea, is spreading and becoming antibiotic resistant.  However, I would dispute the description "sexually transmitted" since no remotely sane person considers "contact between the mouth and the anus" (barf) to be anything to do with sex.

Libraries are holding workshops on how to get rid of "AI" from your devices, and demand is enthusiastic.

Here is what those Flock cameras are actually doing.

There will be No Kings rallies nationwide today, with an emphasis on getting out the vote.

Never trust "AI" for information -- on this question, it got every single detail wrong.

The FDA is considering a rule change that would increase the amounts of toxic chemicals allowed in food.

Walmart has spent billions to replace warehouse workers with robots, but the robots can't get the job done.  All throughout the economy, billionaires and their corporations are single-mindedly determined to destroy as many jobs as possible, replacing humans with tech gimmicks that can't really do what the humans did.

Using "AI" to "teach" small children teaches them wrong.

You can tell dogs are stupid by how easily Pavlov conditioned them.

A lot of Mac users are purging all the "AI" from their computers, using the program I linked to last week.  Meanwhile, Microslop is unveiling upcoming changes to Windows 11 -- that article is full of acronyms and gobbledygook, but it sounds like it will be even more "AI"-infested than it already is.

Two young men in Germany have been arrested for using a robot to indirectly grope women.  Video at the link shows exactly what they were doing.

"This one boy is causing stress for the entire team, coaches, and administration.  What a narcissist."

Flock is cutting jobs as the backlash against surveillance cameras grows.

"AI" users dehumanize themselves.

Learn about Navi Pillay, winner of the Nobel peace Prize.

There's one demographic group that loves "AI".

Here's a look at the fight for abortion rights around the country.

Reminder:  The US Civil War was about the South's desire to preserve slavery, and nothing else -- the Confederate states' own declarations of secession make it clear.

The people of Hazle Township PA are mobilizing to stop an Amazon data center even though Amazon is offering $10,000 to every resident if it's built.  They realize the payment wouldn't cover the loss to property values once the noisy, polluting data center is operating in their midst.  Note also that governor Josh Shapiro has issued an executive order to "fast track" data centers.  You cannot trust these fucking politicians, any of them -- the people themselves have to take the lead.

Americans all across the political spectrum support populist policies most of which are far removed from what the out-of-touch political parties focus on.

Bill Hill seems a bit like an Alaskan version of Dan Osborn -- a working fisherman running for the state's sole House seat as an independent, on an anti-billionaire platform.  He's trailing the Republican incumbent in the polls, but they're worried enough to send both Vance and Trump to Alaska to campaign.

The Character.AI bankruptcy is a microcosm of where the whole "AI" industry is headed -- customers simply won't pay for "AI" at the prices needed to cover the costs of providing it.

Jewish voters in New York have shifted strongly toward the Republicans since Mamdani was elected.

Trump's $90 payments to people on Medicare don't seem to be impressing voters.

Republicans' perceived support for data centers is alienating the rural voters they depend on.

A Tesla factory in a residential area in California is applying to massively increase the amount of toxic chemical pollution that it discharges (I used to live near that area and the city is called "Fremont" -- the article misspells it).

Republicans are now facing a backlash from workers who lost their jobs due to Trump's stupid tariffs.

One of the last chestnut tree groves in the US could be destroyed to make way for a data center.  That data center will be decaying junk in a year or two, after the "AI" bubble collapses, but the grove will be lost forever.

Jews aren't the only demographic group in Michigan who are suspicious of El-Sayed.

The ten richest men in the world (all of them Americans) got three hundred billion dollars richer in just the month of September.

Like Abbott in Texas, Oregon's governor Kotek -- formerly an advocate for data centers -- has suddenly turned against them as she realizes she could actually lose re-election over this.  And as with Texas, I hope voters won't be fooled.  This is just a pause in issuing permits until July, so Kotek could easily allow construction of the damn things to resume once the election is safely past.

It sounds like Troy Jackson wiped the floor with Susan Collins in their debate this week.

This seems like a textbook case of a citizen using a gun in self-defense against violent crime.

Hold everybody to the same standard.

Don't be afraid to hold political parties accountable for the vile positions they take.

The UK's prime minister has ruled out any coalition with the Green party after its "Zionism is racism" declaration.

The British commander who led the liberation of the Falkland Islands after the Argentine invasion of 1982 speaks out about another invasion.

In France, you can get a prison sentence for telling the truth.

Poland and Slovakia suffer far less than western Europe from street violence and sex crimes -- and the reason isn't difficult to see.

Here's an oil terminal at Rostov after a Ukrainian attack last weekend.

A Ukrainian robot tricked two Russian units into shooting at each other for half a day.

Russia's ultra-centralized digital economy makes it vulnerable to Ukraine's data center attacks.  Ukraine is more decentralized and thus more robust.

Drone attacks have massively disrupted air travel in Russia -- and the Ukrainians are only getting started.

NATO estimates that Russia suffered 50,000 casualties in Ukraine last month, including 28,000 killed.  For comparison, 28,000 is half the total number of deaths suffered by US forces in the entire Vietnam war.

One of the Putin regime's biggest fears is a pro-Western Iranian government.

This is claimed to be Iranian surveillance video of an oil tanker hitting an Iranian mine in the Strait of Hormuz.  The strait is not "open" or safe.

The Iranian regime is trying to rally support by glorifying Iran's pre-Islamic history, which it had previously disparaged.  This reminds me of how Stalin, in World War II, rallied the Russian people by emphasizing that the fight was for the Russian nation and homeland rather than for communism.  National and ethnic identity is far more important to most people than ideology.

The US is apparently considering renewed military attacks on Iran's energy infrastructure and nuclear sites (that is, not aimed at regime change), potentially including the use of MOABs, the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal.  This seems like exactly the kind of action that would result in the retaliatory destruction of the Saudi oil industry, sending gasoline and diesel prices sky-high forever.  At this point almost anything the US does will be counterproductive as long as the Iranian regime remains in power.

I definitely don't give a shit about these people.

Houthi missiles have struck the headquarters of Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company.

Anti-immigrant protests in South Africa are turning violent, with foreign-owned cars and shops being attacked.  Again, since the woketards assure us that anti-immigration sentiment is always rooted in racism, I wonder how that works here, where both the protesters and the immigrants are black.

More links at Red State Blues, Legal Mama Reviews, and Comedy Plus.

My own posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, the wars in Europe and the Middle East, and a warning about the election.

o o o o o

o o o o o