Tuesday Links - 13 February

Adaptive Curmudgeon starts us off with Project Daily Driver: Low Urgency Tractor Awesomeness

I tried to write a post earlier. Sadly, it veered into politics. Regardless of good intentions, my post went off the rails. It’s not my fault. Nor is it your fault. Current politics is a black hole of mental ruin and we didn’t do it.

Wombat-socho - FMJRA 2.0: The Giant Wombats of Gor

Alas, the title is a lie; I thought I had a pic of said wombats from the epic Gorean parody Numismatist of Gor, but you’ll have to make do with Dante Rossetti’s appreciation of Oz’s favorite burrowing marsupial, and this link to another Gor parody, “Houseplants of Gor”.

The Other McCain - Joe Biden’s Punch Line Presidency

As several commentators have noted, this finding — and the fact that Hur recommended no criminal charges, despite the clear evidence of Biden’s guilt — raises questions about the federal effort to prosecute former President Donald Trump for very similar offenses. When you consider the extent to which “get Trump” has been the organizing principle of the Biden administration since Day One, this is a significant setback to that aspect of their agenda. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Meep at Stump - Tales of Fiscal Accountability (or not)

Three tales of accountability… or lack thereof. I start with a “heartwarming” tale of a supposed Excel error - $92 million error - that becomes an opportunity to strengthen the corporate team… yay! (That’s not exactly what happened, FWIW.)

Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 11 February 2024: Always Two There Are Edition

California is looking to ban plastic shopping bags. (SF Standard)

Didn't they already do that, you ask?

Well, not quite. A decade ago, the state banned those flimsy single-use shopping bags stores gave away for free, permitting only heavier, more expensive, reusable shopping bags.

This quite predictably increased the amount of waste, so they're going to do it again.

Again from Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 12 February 2024: Pippalodon Edition. How bad handwriting can have an impact. [The artist meant 2002VE 68]

How Venus got its Zoozve back. (Sky and Telescope)

Back in the dim, dusty reaches of two weeks ago, a cute and amusing story appeared on Twitter about how a children's poster of the Solar System came out with a moon of Venus mistakenly labelled Zoozve. [SNIP]

So they did, and now the poster is retroactively correct.