It was the Related Posts plugin by Zemanta. Resolved by deactivating and removing the plugin.
It was calling a site http://d.related-posts.com and returning an unusual graphic.
I will advise the plugin owner of the issue
Oh, one more thing: it took me a LOT of effort to figure out that this little snippet of joy had completely opened up the content of my site to external editing. It changed the wp-content folder read-write permissions to EVERYONE WRITES. Bad bad bad bad bad.
To overcome this (for folks like me who do not use UNIX scripts), go to your share host folder and make sure the wp-content folder has the permissions:
Owner READ WRITE EXECUTE
Group READ EXECUTE
All READ EXECUTE
That way you haven’t opened yourself to getting hacked.
You have been warned, folks, avoid this one like the plague.
