Link round-up for 3 October 2026

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

Four weeks to Halloween!

o o o o o

Fire the watermelon artillery!

Let me "help" you climb down.

Birds deal with the modern world.

He makes a dignified entrance.

It's time to weigh the kittens.

What if there were a giant banana orbiting the Earth?

Find your Halloween bumper stickers here.

It's one Halloween decoration within another.

Learn how Carrie Fisher tried to rescue Napoleon's penis.

Blogger Mr Shife and his dogs welcome October.

You're never too young to appreciate good music.

Pictures here from the Haunted Happenings Grand Parade in Salem MA.  This year was especially festive as it's the city's four hundredth anniversary.

It's not only orcas now -- a pod of sperm whales has joined the war on yachts.

See the dramatic rescue of a baby elephant swept away by a flood in West Bengal, India.  At first I wasn't sure whether this was real, but there have been multiple news stories about the incident -- it's real.

On FZ1073, ordinary people rose to heroism and prevented disaster.

A nation of lions.

Here's an interesting visualization of how gravity makes the solar system work.

The Crypt of Civilization is a message aimed at people more than six thousand years in the future.

There's now a pill that can prevent covid if taken soon enough after exposure.

A test of facial recognition technology to catch criminals showed it to be a huge waste of time and money.

India is rapidly shifting from coal to solar power, with emissions flat since 2024 despite surging use of electricity.

"Energy drinks" don't actually give you much energy -- they just block the chemical signals that tell your brain how tired you are.

Anything you obtain overseas that the authorities in your own country might disapprove of, you should send home by first-class mail, not take in your luggage.  It's expensive but well worth it to avoid hassles.

All those prompts you enter into "AI" programs to create images -- yes, including the porny ones -- are being read by contractors at the "AI" companies.

A group of medical organizations run by real doctors have now released their seasonal vaccine recommendations.  Rely on this and ignore the Trump / RFK Jr quackistocracy.

Walmart insists it isn't introducing "personalized pricing" despite increasingly using digital labels.  Watch these fuckers like a hawk and hold them to it.

These people have found vibrators useful for some surprising purposes.

Virginia voters:  here's why you need to vote for that same-sex marriage amendment to the state constitution, even though the right is federally protected.

The Supreme Court is going as far as it dares in helping Trump to undermine voting rights -- it's up to citizens and the institutions of civil society to protect them.

Meta's new Muse "AI" agent is already being seriously creepy.  But the biggest problem with these "agents" is that most people simply don't want them.

If you have been imprisoned in Connecticut, the state can seize your assets to cover the cost of your incarceration, even years later.

"If you can't hold it, you don't own it" -- plus, physical media allow you to avoid algorithms.

Here's an example of how "AI" is ruining things for artists.

She had car insurance and could prove it, but still got two tickets, because the police trusted Flock's fucked-up system.

Christianity must destroy human happiness to succeed.

These ding-dongs insist they've found the actual Noah's Ark.  It's a bit like announcing you've discovered the actual spaceship that Superman flew to Earth in as a baby.

Twenty years after the publication of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins looks back at the book -- and the delusion.

The woketardazoids are now claiming that fingernails not being garishly painted is a form of racism.

Urine-drinking weirdos find they can easily get "AI" chatbots to "vindicate" their practice.

Not many people deserve to end up in an Omani jail.  But these assholes do.

"'You will not be tolerated' is not an argument.  It is a threat to make women too afraid to speak."

The Kathleen Stock quote on sexuality in last week's "truths and inspirations" post got some positive feedback from commenters, so here's the full article it came from.

Must-read of the week:  You have no obligation to be sexually attracted or available to anyone (incredible that this even needs to be said), having boundaries is not bigotry, and pressuring someone to have sex by accusing them of bigotry if they don't is downright rapey.

California has just enacted several good laws, sponsored by the California Federation of Labor Unions, to protect workers from "AI" in the workplace.  Newsom has vetoed laws like these in the past, and the tech-bro corporate lobby spent millions trying to stop them, but the unions fought hard, and prevailed.

Americans' trust in the Supreme Court is at an all-time low.

What a horrible mess Trump has made of Washington DC.  It's going to take years to undo all this crap and put it back how it was.

This is the face of anti-Zionism.

Substack fights for freedom of the press.

An Iranian-American student asked the Tucker-Carlson-endorsed Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to condemn the mass-murdering Iranian regime (which he evidently wouldn't do); now the student is facing a wave of threats and harassment.

We demand that you respect our privacy!

This woman at Cornell is still trying to get justice after two years.  It's going to be a hard fight.  Instagram apparently tried to hide an essay on the scandal.  I'd say let this woman handle it.

"AI" programs cannot "go rogue" and act volitionally any more than your car is willfully "going rogue" when it rolls away and hits somebody after you forgot to set the parking brake.  Stop talking voodoo nonsense and prosecute the damn companies and executives.

Relish senator Eric Schmitt's epic self-pwnage during the Jack Smith hearings.

"AI" companies will need to make six trillion dollars in revenue by 2031 to justify their investment in data centers.  Needless to say, there is no possibility of that happening.

Why are heterosexuals in a few liberal cities masquerading as "queer"?

Amazon's efforts at pro-data-center propaganda are off to a rocky start.

All these Republicans knew who and what Trump was, right from the beginning.  They still do.

A lot of falsehoods are circulating about the Lindsay Clancy case.

The number of teenagers identifying as LGB is declining, driven mostly by a drop in the number of girls identifying as bisexual -- a number which spiked in the last few years probably due more to fashion than reality.

Tesla's California factory sounds like something out of the Jim Crow era (link from Rade).

SpaceX's rocket test on Monday wasn't such a great success as the media said at first.

Politicians from both of the billionaire-dominated parties have been corrupted by "AI" companies.  The nineteenth century offers a lesson in what to do about it.

"What you are feeling is a rush over having exerted control over a person."

Trump's policies are devastating Iowa's farming economy, with consequences likely to be felt in the election.

In politics, accusing your opponent of being pro-data-center is so damaging that in this case it's being treated as defamatory.

Just as Trump is now so toxic that some Republican candidates are "running away from" him, some Democrats in swing states are asking AOC to stay away from their campaigns.

Interesting discussion here about "AI" regulation and the "it's going to kill us all" scam.  This article is really long, but worth reading if you want a solid insight into the topic.  Read it when you can set aside some time.

I've always said that impeaching Trump is a waste of time since there aren't 67 votes in the Senate to actually remove him.  If the votes were there to remove him, it would be not only worth doing but obligatory.  Here's an argument that it could happen in the first half of 2027.

The Trump administration is using "AI" to make some Medicare coverage decisions, with disastrous results.

Who exactly was it that walked out on Netanyahu's UN speech?

Canada is far more popular with Americans than Trump is.

Most Americans and Canadians agree on at least one thing -- they hate Trump's tariffs.

Sorry, you guys are total nutters.  And lunatics.

Anti-Jewish bigotry is on the rise again in the land where Hitler was born.

This experiment has failed.  Send them back.  You don't need this.

And of course, it comes with that flag.

The head of the company that operates the Eiffel Tower will step down after a scandal in which the female staff at the tower were excluded from working during the visit of a bigoted Hindu group.

Sweden warns that, if Russia attacks, its retaliation will reach deep into Russian territory.

Little by little, Ukraine is liberating its land from Russia.

See Ukrainian precision strikes on a Russian military center in Belgorod.

More precision strikes here, on military cargo vehicles.

This attack on a rocket launcher had spectacular effects.

Here are attacks on various military targets as seen by drone operators.

View the damage caused on this Russian cargo ship by a drone attack.

A petrochemical plant goes kaboom.

These leaked Russian military documents reveal casualties and desertions on a staggering scale, as well as some other serious problems.

There's one less murderous piece of human garbage in the world.

The Saudi regime put its faith (and bribes) in Trump -- and now it's in deep shit.

More links at Red State Blues, Abortion Every Day, and Comedy Plus.

My posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, some links for Blasphemy Day, and an essay on division on the right and unity for the nation.

o o o o o

He is recovering well enough to speak with India's prime minister.