Link round-up for 17 January 2026

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

Please don't try to add links to the round-up via the comments.  These link round-ups are my project and I get to decide what to include or leave out.

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This post reports that resistance, much of it in the form of guerilla warfare, is continuing across Iran despite the crackdown.  I have not been able to verify it from other sources, and I consider this site a bit suspect (it's MEK-aligned), but of course getting accurate information out of Iran continues to be difficult given the ongoing internet and communications blackout.  Guerilla warfare against the regime's enforcers, rather than mass rallies (which would just get machine-gunned again), seems like a logical course of action in the current situation.

Eyewitnesses describe the protests earlier this week.  The turnout in Tehran alone was apparently one and a half million, almost a tenth of the whole metro area population.

The theocracy's sadistic repression includes forcing the families of murdered protesters to pay for the very bullets that killed them, and refusing to release corpses for funerals unless their families promise silence.

The US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and its battle group are en route to Iran.

Added:  The best US option would be to attack the Revolutionary Guards.

Here's a good overview from ISW on the current situation.  The current level of mobilization of the security forces cannot be sustained for long.  Leaders of the regime are moving US dollar holdings to accounts outside Iran, suggesting continued lack of confidence about their ability to cling to power.

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Karma moves fast sometimes.

Go for a drive around the skating rink.

It's a daring robbery with a twist.

Have fun chopping wood.

Here comes a rock.

The cactus strikes back (this is a true story -- I checked).

It's the invincible dog.

I don't think this guy actually reads much.

This impoverished Frenchman found an unusual way to pay for his wedding suit.

This Czech artist built a miniature forest fire.

Here is an astonishing literary achievement from fourth-century China.

Here's how camera lenses stay dry while filming in rain or snow.

Mouse studies suggest that Alzheimer's can be reversed, fully restoring normal mental function.

The claims of large amounts of microplastics being found inside human bodies are probably false.

California is drought-free for the first time in a quarter-century.

If you get the flu, consider Xofluza.

Here's one blogger's experience with upgrading from Windows 11 to Linux.

If you can't afford medical care, you can use this website to search for a free clinic in your zip code.

Take this quiz to find out how many South American countries you can locate (I got all of them right in 27 seconds).

If you're on Medicare, watch out for this scam.

No, Dell has not stopped trying to push "AI" on an uninterested and annoyed public.

This man went insane and ruined his life via lengthy interaction with a chatbot.

The demand for home care workers for the elderly far exceeds supply, partly because it's unstable and low-paid work.  But now worker-owned cooperatives are solving the problem.

The "Poison Fountain" project aims to sabotage "AI", inflicting real large-scale damage on its systems.

Software should be unobtrusive.  "Just fix the bugs and get out of my face."

Vietnam just showed the whole world how it's done.  (It's true -- I checked.)

After weeks of global uproar, Twitter claims that it has stopped its Grok "AI" from creating fake nude images of women and children.

Uruguay now gets almost 99% of its electricity from renewable sources, resulting in cheaper electricity and more jobs.

It's time to unleash one of the world's most creative cultures.

Paul Keating was better than Trump at Trump's favorite activity.

The Bandcamp music site is being praised by fans for banning "AI"-generated fake music.

"It is only our patience, restraint, and deep commitment to a peaceful society that provides this vile crustacean the freedom to parade his twisted perversions openly in society."

This is the reality of working for ICE.  So is this.

Celebrate a cheater.

"I am the con, I am the hoax....."

The Marsh family repurposes some traditional American songs for current events.

The Trump administration has quietly restored the funding for Planned Parenthood.  The forced-birth nutjobs are predictably in a snit about it.

Left-leaning Americans are buying guns, citing concern about personal safety in the current political environment.  As of 2022, 29% of Democratic-leaning Americans had a gun at home, up from 22% in 2010.  It's probably gone even higher now.

This is the behavior of a criminal gang, plain and simple.

It's now almost a month past Congress's mandatory deadline for the release of all the Epstein files.  Some of Epstein's victims are demanding an investigation of Bondi's refusal to comply.

The Trump administration is demanding a list of Jews and Jewish organizations at the University of Pennsylvania.

Tish Hyman, a fierce advocate of women's rights, plans to run for mayor of Los Angeles.

Here is why ICE has been fielding so many grossly-unqualified agents.

Senate Republicans claim they will stop Trump from attacking Greenland.

No, billionaires will not be able to escape into space (or to Mars) if Earth becomes less habitable.  It's not a grey area.  Such fantasies are flat-out impossible.

We have leaders who can't distinguish between a TV show and reality.

"The pattern is now unmistakable.  The White House escalates, but the public and the opposition do not back down."  A good discussion of why Trump's efforts to assert unconstitutional powers are backfiring.

Here's a report from an anti-ICE rally in New Jersey last Sunday.

A lot is being done to stop Trump.

Sometimes it just takes one courageous person to stand up to the thugs.

A plot to gerrymander Kentucky has probably been stopped.

"AI" still can't get anything right.

One auto worker expressed the blunt truth that the mush-talking politicians refuse to say.

This kind of crap keeps on happening and we need to have zero tolerance for it.  The perpetrator is, well, pretty much what you'd expect.

This Democratic congresswoman is trying to get the party back in touch with what voters really want (long, but worth the read).

Here's video of an anti-ICE march in Minneapolis last weekend.  Minnesotans are really mad at ICE.

There are some signs that Trump may have had a stroke several months ago.

Stop trying to make everything about the US.  Americans need to stop being so narcissistic.  Not everything is about us.

Things are getting weird when Marjorie Taylor Greene makes more sense than most mainstream politicians (yes, I'm aware of all the insane things she's said in the past, but that just makes this even more striking).

Sometimes the CEO's mask slips.  Update:  He's bogus, according to this link from blogger Pinku-Sensei.

A New York hate rally openly cheered for torture, rape, and mass murder.

71% of Americans, including 60% of Republicans, oppose taking over Greenland by force.  Only 4% support the idea.

Here's a close look at the Minneapolis community patrols working to protect the city from ICE.

The American Federation of teachers is leaving Twitter, disgusted by its facilitation of kiddie porn.

Steve Bannon will not be president, but if he runs, it will make a difference.  Actually, "no more forever wars, economic populism, and opposition to Big Tech" sound pretty good to me.  Too bad he's just another Mamdani where Israel is concerned.

The Bondi Beach attack was the inevitable result of normalizing anti-Semitism.

In Minneapolis, the people are fighting to affirm reality itself.

Here's what Elon Musk and a few other parasite oligarchs have been up to lately.

"Lived experience" does not trump reality.

Senate Democrats have some power to block ICE funding.

Even the way polls of the issue are conducted shows how anti-Semitism has become normalized.

Canada can fight back against Trump's economic warfare by helping Americans defeat the US oligarchy.

Should an entire country be relying on a fantasy novelist to protect its children?

Kara Dansky celebrates the artist Birdy Rose.

British police denied for weeks that they use "AI", then finally admitted that a decision to ban Israeli soccer fans from the UK was based on bogus information generated by "AI".

France has replaced the US as the largest provider of intelligence assistance to Ukraine.

Russia was probably behind a major cyberattack on Poland's power grid in December.  I hope that the West is considering retaliation in kind.

This Russian ground drone blew up real good.  See more Russian military stuff blowing up.

Chinese TikTok viewers are flocking to a testosterone-soaked video calling for Chinese seizure of Russian territory as Russia is weakened by the Ukraine war.  Remember, China is a totalitarian state -- if this video stays up, that means the regime wants it to stay up.  Well, it might be interesting to see a clash between two of the world's most corrupt and bumbling militaries.

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

My posts this week:  a video by The Synthetic Dream Foundation, an image round-up, and the rebellion in Iran.

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No political party or leader that supports gerrymandering in any state, for any reason, can claim to be pro-democracy.

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It's obvious now that the DoJ is not going to release the important parts of the Epstein files -- the parts that name and confirm the child-abusing clients -- but will just keep stalling and making excuses indefinitely.  Time to escalate.  Massie should make good on his threat to read out client names aloud in the House.

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If a man truly believes he is a giraffe, most people would agree that this is a serious enough level of delusion to qualify as a mental illness.  The case of a man who truly believes he is a woman is exactly the same.

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I'm not saying that everybody who still has a Twitter account is into kiddie porn, but clearly it's not a deal breaker for them.

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The Iranian theocracy's murderous rampage against the Iranian resistance should, at least, remind Americans what real fascism looks like.  Just imagine if Trump had responded to the No Kings rallies by machine-gunning twenty thousand protesters to death.  Yes, the repression in the US is very bad, but comparing it to the repression in Iran is absolute absurdity.

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Even if you go to China, you need to learn Chinese to understand the country:

The rebellion in Iran (with updates)

The uprising now taking place across Iran is probably the most serious challenge to the theocracy in its near-half-century of rule.  It started on December 28, the immediate triggers being water shortages and a collapse of the value of the currency.  The public's years-long pent-up frustration over the regime's repressive and corrupt rule quickly burst forth front and center, and within a few days mass rallies against the regime spread to hundreds of cities across all of Iran's thirty-one provinces, with millions of people participating.  There is no evidence of any leadership or organization, though the exiled crown prince Rezā Pahlavi has emerged as a figurehead, with popular slogans calling for his return to Iran.

At first the theocracy's response appeared confused and desultory, but on January 8 it cut off internet across the country and almost all communications with the outside world, and by all accounts since then it has escalated its repression to the level of mass murder, including firing into crowds with machine guns.  The news site Iran International, by analysis of what reports are available, estimates that at least twelve thousand people have been massacred, while CBS is reporting a claim that the number may be as high as twenty thousand.  What reports are getting out make it clear that there is mass violence on a huge scale, with hospitals being overwhelmed.  It is clear that these cold-blooded, religious old men will stop at nothing to cling to power.

A common theme in early reports has been the hopelessness and despair of the masses, a sense that life under the theocracy is not worth living anyway, so there is little to lose in fighting even though challenging the regime is obviously dangerous.  Now that the die is cast, the people's attitude seems to be one of desperate but determined defiance.  Women have been burning hijabs, a hated symbol of the theocracy's religious repression.

It is difficult to predict what direction the revolt will take now.  With most information cut off, it is hard to tell to what extent the resistance is continuing now that the regime has escalated to mass murder.  Like most tyrannical regimes, the theocracy has strict gun laws to keep its subjects unarmed and unable to defend themselves against the government's armed thugs, and it would take great courage indeed for unarmed civilians to press home the attack in the face of machine guns.  The massacres have been carried out by the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia, which are highly-ideological forces specialized for internal repression -- not by the regular army.  How the army would respond if called upon is unclear.  Trump keeps threatening to attack the regime if it kills protesters, but now that thousands have indeed been killed, no action has been forthcoming, and it's not clear whether the US could inflict really substantial damage on the apparatus of repression without causing substantial civilian casualties.  Iran has seen huge mass uprisings every few years for the last couple of decades, but the regime has succeeded in regaining control each time.  Reports on the ground say that this time it "feels different".  Only time will tell whether the outcome will be better.

If the rebellion succeeds in toppling the theocracy and installing a system more reflective of the popular will, it would vastly change the entire situation in the Middle East.  As I've pointed out before, Iran is no longer really a Muslim country -- as of 2020, only 37% of the population self-identified as Muslim and 34% identified as atheist, humanist, or "none".  A democratic Iran would cease to support jihadist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and might well even become an ally of Israel and the West against jihadist fanaticism in the region generally.

If the theocracy succeeds in crushing the revolt, there will be mass executions and a new wave of aggressive repression, but after that, nothing but more stagnation.  The regime has no solutions for Iran's problems, and will continue its extremist policies that keep the country isolated and poor.  The popular reaction might involve a protracted general strike or increased efforts by anyone who can to escape from Iran.  Most likely there would be yet another mass uprising a few years down the road.

I will continue to watch, hoping for the best for a nation which embodies one of the world's great historic civilizations, and which deserved better than the tragic mess in which religious barbarity has kept it mired for half a century.

Updates (Wednesday evening):

The US is evacuating troops from some bases near Iran, a possible precursor to a military strike against the theocracy.  This kind of thing is only likely to fan the flames.

Regime leaders are wiring huge amounts of cryptocurrency to accounts outside of Iran, a predictable precaution if they are worrying about needing to flee.

Russia would lose a major ally if the regime falls, but it has little power to influence events.  The theocracy has sold Russia more than four billion dollars worth of military equipment since the start of the Ukraine invasion.

Rezā Pahlavi declares that a liberated Iran will immediately stop support for jihadist gangs, recognize Israel, and generally adopt modern democratic norms and standards.  One can't predict how much actual power he would have if the regime fell, but he clearly has a considerable base of support among the resistance.

Image round-up for 13 January 2026

More pictures from my collection -- click any image for full size.

[For the link round-up, click here.  For the Synthetic Dream Foundation video, click here.]

IBM 1620 computer (1959), control panel

Cochem, Germany

River Avonmore, Ireland

Io, a moon of Jupiter

Primošten, Croatia

Tehran, Iran

Rural church, Norway

Italy

Riga, Latvia

Edinburgh

Arizona

Video of the day -- dark otherworld

I find this video mesmerizing, even though such dark imagery is not what I usually go for.  It's by The Synthetic Dream Foundation, and the musical piece is called (for reasons not obvious to me) "The One-Eyed Maiden".  Use fullscreen.  The section from 2:33 to 3:02 depicts an execution by hanging, so if that kind of imagery bothers you, be aware.

Link round-up for 10 January 2026

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

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Exercise your cat.

Some people are not good at cooking.

The three wise men meet the modern world.

These cats are drama queens.

Not everyone does well at the gym.

Don't be rude to the bus driver.

Have some lighthearted advice.

Every house needs a cat tube.

View the hideous fate of a rubber duck.

Alligators argue about fishing, and things escalate.

These men get very unhappy when their sports teams lose.

Is it wise to cultivate loyalty, or is rule by raw power enough?  (I can see why this guy wanted absolute power -- to stop people from laughing at his hat.)

This is a large wave.

Check out the creepy photography of Karen Jerzyk.

The Belleville neighborhood of Paris displays a wide range of street art.

Airships in the old days were flimsy, dangerous, and must have been scary as hell to board (NSFW blog, requires Blogspot login).

How can we create warning symbols that will still be understood thousands of years from now?  It may be impossible.

GLP-1 drugs do work for weight loss, but then it can be dangerous to stop taking them.

A treatment under study at Stanford restores damaged knee cartilage and prevents osteoarthritis from developing, based on tests in mice.

Congress has ridden to NASA's rescue, saving its budget from the cuts Trump's flunkies would have imposed.  So, credit where credit is due, they did their job well in this case.

The current flu season looks to be the worst in thirty years, with at least five thousand Americans dead of the disease so far.

Google search's "AI" summaries get basic medical information wrong, in ways that could endanger people who believe them rather than relying on real medical sites.

Modern cars collect staggering amounts of information, some even monitoring conversations and facial expressions of people inside the car.

Here are some tips on spotting "AI" fakery.

Here's a listing of various kinds of sites to avoid and sites to use, based on their "AI" policies.

If you post a picture of yourself on Twitter, here's what will happen (applies mostly to women).  Just yesterday Twitter implemented its idea of a "solution" -- limit this capability to paying users only -- and it doesn't work anyway.

If you use Gmail, it's about to start shitting up your in-box with "AI".  I recommend Proton Mail as an alternative.

Chatbots are susceptible to "prompt injection" attacks to steal sensitive data, and the nature of the technology makes the problem practically impossible to fix.

Here's some of the shittiest new "AI" gadgetry.

This New York supermarket is collecting biometric data on every person who enters.

Google TV wants you to use "AI" to generate fake videos from your own photos.

How much do demons know?  As you read this, remember that there are millions of people in the US who take this kind of stuff completely seriously -- and they vote.

Ignorant people are easier to fool.

This is a lame attempt at honor among thieves.

Ford is going to start putting "AI" in its cars.  Just another step in the trend of loading up cars with endless electronic crap nobody asked for, to justify insane prices.  Read the comments too.

Enshittification is real.

People worldwide are starting to turn away from the fake world of social media, chatbots, video games, and chronic online-ness.  There seems to be a hunger for reality and authenticity.

A citizens group in Washington state has turned in almost half a million signatures for a ballot initiative to keep boys out of girls' sports in the state.

Microsoft's arrogant fucktard CEO begs us to stop calling slop slop.

Even for rich people, a healthy society is pleasanter.

"What's the best place to meet a man in 2026?"

This journalist debunked a fake exposé on food delivery services which has been circulating widely on Reddit and Tumblr.  The supporting evidence seemed convincing, but had been faked with "AI".

Rural Trump voters are noticing that he hasn't gotten grocery prices down.

Alaska is about to deploy an "AI" system to "help" people use the court system, even though testing shows it gets even the simplest questions hopelessly wrong.

There's one simple action foreign governments could take to lower prices for their consumers and ruin US tech CEOs -- especially Elon Musk.  What's not to like?

Venezuela claims the US attack targeted a scientific research institute and a medical warehouse -- acts of barbarism, if true.

Reminder:  The Epstein files include a vast amount of video footage which could reveal and confirm the identities of many of his child-abusing clients.  We're now almost a month past Congress's deadline for releasing all the files and not a single client has yet been publicly unmasked.  Release the damn information, all of it -- with proper provision to protect the victims, but it needs to come out.

2025 was the year giant corporations went all out on forcing "AI" into every possible gadget.  No surprise that it was also the year when the mass backlash against "AI" really got going.  The article gamely tries to put a positive spin on public rejection, but the best it can do is speculate that "people don't yet know what they want out of AI", while all the actual cases it cites show that people just don't want "AI".  Read the comments on the article too.

Blogger Annie makes the case that the Venezuela intervention especially demands public pressure on Congress to rein Trump in.  I have not written about this issue since I have no special knowledge of Latin America (if it were happening in the Middle East I'd have plenty to say about it), but I'm not sure this is really the hill to die on, given the generally positive response of the Venezuelan diaspora to Maduro's removal.  If Trump were to try to carry out his threat to have the US "run" Venezuela, that would be a different matter.  But go see what Annie has to say about it.

Yann LeCun knows that large language models are not a path to true artificial intelligence.  But his own approach won't work either.

This guy is fully entitled to masturbate in front of your daughter.  The video can be seen here and is completely unambiguous.

We don't need a five-day work week or an eight-hour work day.  We haven't needed them for eighty years.

To let the Republicans win every election for ever and ever, all the left needs to do is claim that this is acceptable.

Wyoming's supreme court has struck down the state's forced-birth laws.

Politicians are noticing that the voters hate "AI".  Keep up the pressure.

What's the latest on the Trump phone?

Several resistance groups are calling for nationwide protests this weekend in response to the Renee Good murder.  Here's a retired police sergeant's assessment of the shooting.

To win elections, there's one word Democratic candidates should avoid using.

A California legislator is introducing a bill to ban "AI" toys for kids for four years.

The MSM use the spin preferred by their billionaire owners.

A man is suing Tesla, alleging that its so-called driving-assistance technology killed half his family.

Trans thugs have now started threatening powerful men, not just powerless women.

The majority of US venture capital is now invested in the "AI" bubble, piling up vast amounts of imaginary assets which will vanish when the bubble pops.

California has enacted a tough data privacy law.  Let's hope other states follow suit.

Trump's Department of Veterans' Affairs will no longer provide abortions or abortion counseling even in cases of rape or the other usual exceptions.

"AI" companies are pushing their failed, dangerous technology on our school system.

Two non-Jewish feminists explain the need to fight against anti-Semitism.

What is Greta Thunberg doing?

It's dangerous to confront a perverted freak.

With Tesla's car sales going down the tubes, Elon Musk looks to humanoid robots as the future of the company.  Unfortunately they're even crappier than the cars.

Events in Venezuela remind us of an important fact about how reality works.

The fatuous Christian "Ark Encounter" theme park may have created a measles super-spreader event.  Meanwhile, the measles outbreak in low-vaccination areas of South Carolina continues to expand, with a hundred new cases identified in just three days.

The ACLU is trying to get even more male criminals moved to women's prisons where they can terrorize the women inmates.

Mark Kelly refuses to be intimidated by Hegseth.

The US justice system coddles violent criminals and abjectly fails to protect innocent people.

The trajectory of the Trump administration does not resemble the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany at all (found via Red State Blues).

The National Weather Service hasn't been able to hire back all the employees DOGE got rid of, so it's started using "AI" to fill in the gaps, with predictable results.

Oligarch Watch blog looks back on the activities of super-rich assholes in 2025.

If Trump attacks Greenland, the EU and UK have the power to wreck the US economy in retaliation by dumping their huge holdings of US Treasury bonds.  (The post cites this option in the context of Ukraine, but a frontal attack on Greenland would be an even greater direct threat to Europe.)  I hope that somebody can explain this to Trump so he will actually understand the potential consequences.

Globally, investors are in rare full agreement on the biggest threat to the world economy in 2026.

The Scottish government is determined to continue putting male criminals in women's prisons, even though doing so is now unconstitutional in the UK.

Woketardia has now reached the point of defending female genital mutilation.

The UK's present leadership seems utterly incapable of dealing with the current threats facing the country.  But it's pressing ahead with plans for spying on law-abiding citizens via digital ID.

December saw a record number of Ukrainian attacks on Russia's oil infrastructure.

Russian-built air defenses in Venezuela completely failed during the US attack.

Faced with an increasingly belligerent China, Japan is rapidly building up its military -- and, yes, the nuclear option is starting to enter serious discussion.

Here's a good discussion on the history of Somaliland and why Israel recently recognized it.

These are the top five African countries by quality of life.  South Africa, for all its deepening problems, ranks first, while three of the other four are Arab countries on the Mediterranean coast.

More links at Comedy Plus.

My own posts this week:  some truths and inspirations, and my best posts of 2025.

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Found via Morning Coffee:


I set this one to start at 3:55 because it's the part from there to the end that is really important: