Welcome to the Wednesday Walk Around the Web, where we weave & wind through weblinks weekly. Hopefully you will find the links on offer amusing, interesting, or, occasionally, profound. Views expressed in the Wednesday Walk do not necessarily reflect those of anyone but the writer. Do you have a link you want to see featured in next week’s Walk? Comment on the Walk post at the Place to Be Nation Facebook page, or find Glenn on the social media platform of your choice!
- Take a look at the aurora over Norway.
- This Week in New Year’s Resolutions: If you’re stuck for some good resolutions, Woody Guthrie’s might prove helpful. Take Bath. Love Everybody. Change Socks. Beat fascism.
- Sometimes you start trying to protect your cat feeder and wind up surrounding it with plate steel armor.
- Leia Organa: A Critical Obituary examines the materialist analysis that guided the late general’s long revolutionary career.
- This Week in Music: Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week” with all of the instruments replaced by “It’s Been.” The internet has wonders to satiate desires both subtle and gross…but it’s not for the timid.
- The Walk reported a few weeks ago that artist Anish Kapoor, after securing exclusive rights to the blackest pigment on the face of the Earth, was barred from using the pinkest of pigments in an act of mutual pettiness. Kapoor then somehow got hold of a container of this pink and posted a photo of his middle finger dunked in it. Things are still heating up in the art world, as Kapoor is now also officially banned from using the most glittery glitter. Watch this space for further developments.
- This exploration of the morality of Passengers, Sony’s latest space-flop, makes it sound like a far, far more interesting movie than I gather it is. (Spoilers, but, as discussed in the article, spoilers for a movie that’s decried for the content of its spoilers inhabit a somewhat unique mindspace.)
- You can find a lot of unintended shapes in satellite imagery, including the English alphabet.
- Ukranian traffic lights seem like a great idea, not just for when you have a big truck in front of you, but also for when you’re driving a car you’re just a little too tall for, forcing you to lean way down to see lights. Ahem.
- Typesetting issues on the internet may be contributing to the decline of the curly quote, and good riddance.
- This Week in Crowdsourcing: If you want to have a hand in historical research, your efforts transcribing and decoding US Civil War-era telegrams would be greatly appreciated.
- This Week in Good Ideas: A new law in France aims to protect workers from having their off-time intruded upon by employers. Imagine: your work day ends, and you’re not expected to keep checking work email.
- The drawing-down of the holiday season always brings with it brawls at malls and stores across the land, including a troubling number of times someone made a loud sound and someone else interpreted it as a gunshot.
- This Week in Parenting Top Tips: Getting your kid something you don’t quite understand yourself can change the course of their life.
- Also in parenting, if at all possible, try to raise your kid(s) in a library. This will most likely not be possible, but you can come close. I bet you have room for more bookshelves.
- Also in libraries, there are some concrete things you can do to help and support your local libraries.
- Russia is establishing a national registry of people who are HIV-positive. I’m sure that’ll turn out great.
- I am so, so jealous of 2016’s best gaming systems.
- This Week in Fun Animal Photos: One good good dog wore a camera triggered by heartrate, set to take photos when the dog got excited.
