Social Media Linkdump July-Aug 2025

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FACEBOOK CLASS ACTION SUIT: FYI, the privacy class action suit has concluded and payments for people who signed up for one will start going out in August 2025. https://facebookuserprivacysettlement.com/

In this 8 minute comedy sketch, an Australian comedy writer asks two comedians to read aloud sight unseen from an absurd cop drama script. Lots of hilarity and surprises. Perpetrated by Australian comedy writer Rob Hunter. (YT) Hunter is selling vids of some of his Late O’Clock comedy shows on Gumroad . But there are generous clips from the shows on YT. (YT) Rob Hunter was on the writing team of Rosehaven for Season 5, making an already great sitcom to be greater. Here’s a YT playlist of episodes from Season 4 and Season 5. (YT) I note with horror that the series is impossible to stream in the US. I was able to watch Season 1-3 on the rare times they were on streaming. Comedian Celia Pacquola is the star of the show, but the characters are all great. The two main people select their favorite show moments. (YT)

QUOTE: “If this is how they treat someone with a title and a national platform, imagine how undocumented members of our communities — without cameras or microphones — are being treated when no one is watching. This is not just an abuse of power; it is a reflection of an administration increasingly comfortable with authoritarian tactics.” (Congresswoman Nanette Barragán from California about the handcuffing of Senator Padilla).

Sri Kulkarni about the “threat” of undocumented workers:

It would be reasonable to assume, based on how many stories about cartels and gangs we see, that murders by undocumented people are a huge problem, right? Well, according to DHS, the total number of homicides (including manslaughter) by undocumented people last year was 29. (Not 29,000 murders. 29 total homicides in all of America.) To put that into perspective, there were more murders (31) in Kristi Noem’s home state of South Dakota (pop. 924,000) than there were by illegal immigrants in a country of 340 million people. Dakotans are more dangerous than undocumented people. Overall, illegal immigrants commit FEWER crimes than US citizens, so you are probably safer around them than they are around you. (Sri Kulkarni Facebook post).

Wait — what? Did Trump just declare war against Iran? Did he just indicate that he was thinking of assisting in the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader? Trump’s ill-considered tweets reveal the sheer depth of incompetence of our public diplomacy and the sort of kingly powers that Trump likes to believe that he has.

I, a private U.S. citizen, call for the unconditional surrender of the Israeli government until it discloses 100% of its hidden nuclear weapony and agrees to be subject to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to IAEA monitoring.

PBS SCIENCE VID ON HOUSTON WEATHER. (YT) Wow, I am blown away that PBS is producing top-quality education vids on earth science and global warming. Well-spent tax dollars! This one is about Houston’s 2017 and how the urban topologies of megacities like Houston amplify weather events. I can’t wait to watch the other vids from the PBS Terra series.

QUOTE: “Things aren’t just getting worse. They’re getting worse faster… We’re actively moving in the wrong direction in a critical period of time that we would need to meet our most ambitious climate goals. Some reports, there’s a silver lining. I don’t think there really is one in this one.” (AP Report on 2025 IGCC report). Here are key messages from the 2024 data and an outstanding infographic poster (PDF) from the 2024 report

That same group produces a great dashboard of Global Climate change indicators. (I just added it to my current climate change cheatsheet.

EPISTEMIC CLOSURE. 1)Trump has been duped many many times before becoming president and after he became president, i.e., “Obama is a Muslim,” “Climate Change is a Hoax,” “Election was stolen,” etc. 2)Trump values absolute loyalty over expertise or science. He simply refuses to believe experts whenever they contradict his naive notions of reality. In fact, in the face of criticism, Trump makes it a point to double down on his mistaken beliefs and denigrate the views of experts so that he (and his flock) can feel superior to those experts. Then he surrounds himself with YES MEN who reinforce his biases and ignorance. 4)The modus operandi of Trump has been to create crises out of his paranoid beliefs, and then to “solve” them by trying some simplistic “brute force” solution. During these times, it is vital not to rely on Trump’s version of reality and instead use news sources that are completely independent of Trump’s corrosive ambit.

RIP Bill Moyers. Besides his politics and his early work organizing the Peace Corps, Texan Bill Moyers was always one of the best interviewers ever. (I’ve been collecting books of his interview transcripts). He always had provocative questions and unusual guests. Here’s an interview he did in the 1980s with philosopher Martha Nussbaum (who gave a lecture at Trinity at about the same time).(YT) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWfK1E4L–c

LOCKING THE INNOCENT: Out of the 59,000 people detained by ICE this year, 47% lack a criminal record and fewer than 30% have ever been convicted of crimes. (source)

Israel’s secret nuclear weapon program has been common knowledge among people who follow foreign policy, and yet no U.S. president — famously, not even Obama in a press conference when asked by Helen Thomas — had ever brought it up publicly. Yet politicians and critics on all sides have raised the issue of Iran’s nuclear proliferation repeatedly. But Iran has generally cooperated with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and for a while has been allowing IAEA monitoring. Why the double standard? During this week’s discussion on CNN/MSNBC, I almost never heard experts or commentators even mention Israel’s nuclear program, and barely in online media (except here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/world/middleeast/israel-nuclear-weapons.html ) .

If Israel says it has the pre-emptive right to attack Iran to degrade its nuclear weapons program (and the U.S. Government explicitly reaffirms this rationale), isn’t Israel basically conceding that other states have the pre-emptive right to attack Israel to degrade its own secret nuclear weapon program?

Israel’s secret nuclear weapon program has been common knowledge among people who follow foreign policy, and yet no U.S. president — famously, not even Obama in a press conference when asked by Helen Thomas — had ever brought it up publicly. Yet politicians and critics on all sides have raised the issue of Iran’s nuclear proliferation repeatedly. But Iran has generally cooperated with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and for a while has been allowing IAEA monitoring. Israel has done none of these things.

Here’s my list of top 10 movies (in alphabetical order) for the 21st century which I submitted to the New York Times. Below these ten are some OTHER MOVIES which I also found to be remarkable and noteworthy:

• AI — Stephen Spielberg (2001)
• Big Short — Adam McKay (2015)
• Downfall — Oliver Hirschbiegel (2004)
• Europa Report – Sebastián Cordero (2013)
• Fourteen — Dan Sallitt (2019)
• Frances Ha — Noah Baumbach (2012)
• Happy-Go-Lucky – Mike Leigh (2008)
• Monsters — Gareth Edwards(2010)
• Primer — Shane Carruth (2004)
• Travelers and Magicians — Khyentse Norbu (2003)

************OTHER MOVIES****************

• Avé — Konstantin Bojanov (2011)
• Brooklyn — John Crowley (2015)
• Flatland — Ladd Ehlinger Jr (2007)
• Founder — John Lee Hancock (2016)
• I’m Still Here — Walter Salles (2024)
• It Follows — David Robert Mitchell (2014)
• Junebug – Phil Morrison (2005)
• Man From Earth — Richard Schenkman (2007)
• Napoleon Dynamite — Jared Hess (2004)
• Problemista – Julio Torres (2023)
• Tetris — Jon Baird (2023)

I actually have about 20 other titles to mention. Here is some commentary. Europa Report is the most pro-science movie I have ever seen; it’s about the drive and sacrifices people will do for the sake of science. It makes me emotional whenever I think of it. Monsters is a beautiful masterpiece about alienation (and alien nations). Downfall is an engrossing story about true believers of a failed ideology. Travelers and Magicians has a wonderful surreal and fairy tale quality. It is totally unexpected and very beautiful and Buddhist. Frances Ha is utterly whimsical and silly and about the futility of artistic pursuits. Big Short is a great study in irony, outrage and satire. Fourteen is a quiet tragedy about losing people to addictions. Happy-go-lucky is a story about hope and resiliency and not being dragged down by the world’s problems. Primer is a great allegory about the follies and paradoxes of technological innovation. Founder is an all-American story about the ugly side of American business.

MCDONALD’S IN KIEV. Delighted to read this article about how the fast food joint is taking over Ukraine (& maybe horrified?!) I remember visiting the first McD in Kiev in January 6, 1998 — a few months after it had opened. It was located in probably the busiest place in Kiev across from the main train station. Even though I barely spoke Russian/Ukraine, I confidently said my order to the cashier, “Big Mac Menu — Тут!” — it was one of the busiest most remarkable McD’s I’d ever seen..

I assume that many have already seen this amazing music vid with Saoirse Ronan, but it’s absolutely great (with the Talking Heads note that “We LOVE what this video is NOT—it’s not literal, creepy, bloody, physically violent or obvious.” (YT)

I have been asking AI engines a lot of hard questions. Here’s one asking it to estimate the increased mortality from fossil fuels. If 100% of fossil fuels were replaced by renewable energy, here’s the estimate of how it affect global mortality? Contrast that with what would happen if tomorrow, people stopped smoking cigarettes and cigars.

Spoof of How I met Your Mother (YT) The kids are sick of being strung along with this story.

if you took a dementia test and thought it was an IQ test you failed both the dementia test and the IQ test. (BSKY by Sal Gentile) (Referring to Trump’s ludicrous statement, “”AOC — look. I think she’s very nice. But she’s very low IQ, and we really don’t need low IQ. Between her and Crockett, we’re gonna give ’em both an IQ test to see who comes out best. I took a real test at Walter Reed medical center and I aced it. Now it’s time for them to take a test.”)

US GOVERNMENT HATES TOURISTS. Here’s a case of an Irish citizen visiting his girlfriend on a 90 day tourist visa and staying 3 extra days because of a serious medical issue. After being mixed up in a police action, ICE took custody of the tourist and imprisoned him for 100 days. Says his American-born girlfriend, ” “It’s not an option for him to come here and I don’t want to be in America anymore.”

Even more shocking, there are cases of U.S. citizens being wrongly captured by ICE. This one was wrongly incarcerated for 3 days.

In response to Trump’s posting of a stupid/offensive AI-generated video of Obama getting arrested, satirist Andy Borowitz writes an appropriate fake response.

Trump’s accusations against Obama, but let’s not forget that Trump was one of the earliest ones who hyped the “Obama is not American” conspiracy theory. For more than 5 years (2011-2016), Trump repeated the untrue charge that Obama wasn’t a U.S. citizen; doing so only increased Trump’s popularity among conservatives. Now that Trump is democratically elected and his administration has enormous financial resources to investigate/hype whatever stupid things he wants to, Trump has potential to sow distrust in the US justice system that has already found him guilty or liable of tax fraud, falsifying business records and sexual assault.

Right-wing propaganda is the result of decline of commercial journalism, Karl Bode writes.

Kids in the Hall sketch: Citizen Kane or not?

Netflix Recommendation: PERNILLE is a wonderful Norwegian-language family dramedy about an overworked divorced social worker who has to manage both her child welfare cases and the ordinary dramas of her complicated family (BTW, her two daughters are hilarious). You the viewer are thrown into all this chaos and have the opportunity to share the grief, surprise, laughter and love. Gosh, it almost makes me want to move to Norway tomorrow.

Among the many wonderful things about the show is the killer soundtrack — a mixture of Europop and occasionally American songs. Here’s the 60s hit You’ll Never walk alone by Gerry and the Pacemakers (YT)  Also, the intro briefly samples a famous cover version of You Don’t Own Me by Australian Saygrace( YT)

DOGS ENJOYING HAUTE CUISINE. The next time your favorite Italian restaurant is already booked up, here’s the reason why. (YT) At first glance the Chocodogger vids seemed to be AI, but no, it’s just elaborately staged nonsense. Here’s a lobster dinner (YT).

New research on whether machines can translate brain waves to “inner speech” for patients who lost the ability to speak.

REACTIONS TO TRUMP-ZELENSKY PRESS CONFERENCE: 1. Trump surrounds himself with a lot of “YES MEN” journalists who parrot his talking points. 2. Trump never loses an opportunity to insult Biden or people who disagree with him. 3. Trump can get distracted by all sorts of irrelevant issues. He totally lacks focus. 4. Trump has an exaggerated sense of his power and his presidential record. Trump’s ludicrous statements raise the question of whether he is afflicted by “confabulation” (something at least Biden never seemed to have done).

***

“I decided this morning about the difference between movies and documentaries. A movie is where a woman gets attacked by a monster and men come and save her. A documentary is where a woman gets attacked by a monster and then makes that monster pay $83 million.” (E. Jean Carroll on agreeing to have a documentary made about her life).

Susan Kaye Quinn has a long post about the practicalities of installing solar on your roof. She’s a sci fi writer and engineer who’s all over social media.

Journalist report about how power providers are expanding their capacity to meet demand of AI companies — and passing on these expansion costs to consumers. (YT)