Tag: taliban

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I have a rough three-day work-stretch ahead of me, but the weekday Pook-Emu Bee links streak must continue (I will however compromise on feature images today).

1. Brainless TikTok trend causes $2,000 in damage to SoCal home (Daniel Farr for the New York Post. August 26, 2026.)
States and localities should consider sentence enhancement provisions for crimes committed for social media consumption.

2. EXCLUSIVE: US Investigators Have Proof That UNRWA ‘Social Worker’ Caught on Tape Dragging an Israeli Body Into an SUV on Oct 7 Was an Active Hamas Operative (Adam Kredo for The Washington Free Beacon. August 25, 2026.)
It’s always who you least expect… except for those times when it’s the most obvious suspect.

3. $3 Specialty Coffee Is Back In Brooklyn (Ainsley Martinez for Patch Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill, NY. August 25, 2026.)
I seldom buy coffee when I’m out (firmly in the DIY coffee camp) but $3 for a cup of any size is cheap around these parts. Maybe I’ll find a reason when out with a friend to give it a try.

4. I switched from Android’s default keyboard to an open source alternative to eliminate my constant typos (Oluwaniyi Raji for Android Police. August 25, 2026.)
I also use Heliboard. It’s good. I turn autocorrect off because autocorrect is a war crime. The predictive suggestions are solid but I tend to forget about them. I need to make myself remember because typing on touchscreens is not a strong area for me.

5. Roblox applies restrictions to games featuring “reward-driven media feeds” available in Roblox Kids and Select (Sophie McEvoy for Games Industry.biz. August 26, 2026.)
The fundamental problem with Roblox is that its ostensible target demographic should not be playing social online games, period.

6. NYC’s borough-based jail boondoggle is nearly $8B over budget and years behind schedule (Matthew Fischetti for the New York Post. August 24, 2026.)
It’s already casting a long shadow.

7. NYers say Citi Bike has gotten too expensive, can a new advocate-led campaign make it cheaper? (Ethan Stark-Miller for amNY. August 18, 2026.)
Hear me out. Instead of stealing my tax money to subsidize City Bike rides for my betters who will then violate traffic laws and threaten to run me over, what if we at least banned the electric City Bikes and made everything more expensive?

8. Smithsonian affiliate AANM gets federal funds, criticized 9/11 response (Robert Schmad for Fox News. August 25, 2026.)
Score another one for team taxation is theft.

9. Taliban facing constant challenge to authority in provinces bordering Central Asian states (Eurasianet. August 25, 2026.)
Economic ties aside, I’ll note that Uzbek and Tajik police don’t take kindly to men having beards, so the Taliban would probably be well-advised (granting I don’t think they’re much into taking advice) to keep their various militants from causing cross-border problems.

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I have some pressing work-work to attend to today, but I will not let that stop me from publishing my daily Pook-Emu Bee links last week. If you enjoy the (almost) daily links and commentary, you can also follow via feed.

Links from around the web

1. Pakistan air strike kills at least 100 at Kabul drug rehab centre (Yama Bariz and Simon Fraser for BBC. March 17, 2026.)

I see that BBC is trying to turn Pakistan into the “Israel” of the Muslim world but I don’t think the usual pro-Hamas suspects in the West are going to work themselves up for the Taliban. Of course, the Pakistani military’s problem is more whether the Taliban’s Hamas-PR strategy works with Pakistanis in Pakistan.

2. Horrific stomach bug that wipes out cruise ships rips across California (James Gant for the New York Post. March 16, 2026.)

You will never find me on a cruise.

3. Favorite bakeries in our neighborhoods in Brooklyn (Brooklyn Bridge Parents. February 26, 2026.)

Based on the neighborhoods I am thoroughly familiar with in this article… I think they more or less covered every bakery.

4. Revisiting The Barkley Rockets: Was He Worth It? (Harlan Schreiber for Hoops Analyst. September 8, 2023.)

The Rockets came two games short of the NBA Finals in the first of four Barkley seasons. Because it is less than clear that not trading for Mr. Barkley would have allowed the Rockets to make one final championship run in the Olajuwon era, we cannot be too hard on the trade.

5. “The Single Best Game Concept Ever” – Pokémon-Inspired Devs Talk The Series That Started It All (Jim Norman for Nintendo Life. March 2, 2026.)

Poké-clones would be more interested if they focused on what the original Pokémon games tried to capture than the specific mechanics.

6. LibreOffice blasts ‘fake open source’ OnlyOffice for working with Microsoft to lock users in (David Uzondu for Neowin. February 20, 2026.)

I like and use LibreOffice, but I do not like this line of attack. It runs afoul of the principles I articulated in my 2022 essay about gaming on Linux. While I too prefer “open formats,” some people looking for Word alternatives may want, for fair reasons, an alternative that prefers .docx. There is room for more than one option out there.

Clicking “Random Article” on NLJ

7. Zero Gravity Foreshadowing in Super Mario Sunshine (Nicholas A. Ferrell at The New Leaf Journal. September 19, 2022.)

I read a contemporaneous interview with Shigeru Miyamoto about Super Mario Sunshine. His use of the phrase (translated as, of course) “zero-gravity platformer” made me wonder whether he was already thinking about/working on the concept for the future Super Mario Galaxy.