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? Email Glenn!
- RIP David Bowie, who despite anything else in life was a voice in favor of the weird, and we need more of those. He also all but entirely concealed his illness and let his art speak for him at the end, which is certainly one way for a showman to go.
- In Switzerland, decommissioned military bunkers have been turned into restaurants, hotels, mushroom farms, cheese warehouses, data centers, and more. There is no better fate for a military installation.
- Here’s an idea for any parents within the reach of my keyboard: have your wee small one compile a list of naughty language they know, and keep that list on your office wall forever.
- This Week in Occam’s Razor: one animation brilliantly sums up heliocentric and geocentric models of planetary motion. I love the planets under the geocentric model that have to go inside the sun’s orbit.
- This Week in Calming Techniques: practice breathing, watch some soap bubbles freeze, and you should be okay. It’ll be okay. I believe in you.
- One four-part Venn diagram can contain all of Shakespeare.
- The toy piano virtuoso is one more piece of proof that any toy instrument can be used as a “real” instrument, just like all the shool instruments in those Jimmy Fallon videos. Well, almost anything — you still can’t get a whole lot out of the vuvuzela, despite valiant efforts.
- Sometimes you do something just because you can, like light ten thousand sparklers simultaneously. Thanks, Russia!
- It has long been known that the most 90s thing that’s ever been made is the Windows 95 video guide, on VHS, starring the cast of Friends. Now you too can experience the magic through splendiferous 21st-century technology.
- This Week in Petty Revenge: JK Rowling included one phrase in five of her books specifically to poke at Stephen Fry.
- This Week in AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA: one person caught cancer from a tapeworm. Great. Fantastic. How nice that this is the world we live in.
