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!
- This Week in Situations I’m Happy I’m Not In: Haunted Life Raft Edition!
- This Week in Star Wars: catch Harrison Ford’s audition tape, featuring an early, long draft of the scene they’re using. (Also catch my new podcast about the new movie! Ahhh, a good plug just makes me feel cleaned out.)
- You know the Great Pyramid. It’s the one that’s so nifty people think aliens built it — except the father of the king who commissioned the Great Pyramid had already had a bunch of other crappier pyramids built, failing in various kooky ways. Also, fun fact: medieval Cairo was in large part built out of what used to be the outer bricks of the pyramids of Giza. That’s the sort of thing I never knew but seems obvious with a couple seconds of thought, considering what happened to much of Hadrian’s Wall and various other ancient infrastructure projects before they became ancient.
- Martin Luther King Day was this week, which seems an appropriate time to observe that the shit white supremacists were hurling at him before one of them murdered him isn’t a far cry from the shit white supremacists hurl around today.
- Alan Rickman seems to have been one of those people who, after dying, spawn numerous personal remembrances about what a great human being they were. That seems like a pretty good testament.
- In Ireland, it is now legal to criticize Henry VIII’s second marriage. Have at it, Irish! Remind the ghost of Catherine of Aragon that she could really have done better.
- Friend of the Walk JT Rozzero sends word of a day care teacher who, in the course of extended periods of child abuse, created a baby fight club, which I assume means that between bouts of physical abuse she was spouting melodramatic pablum about how they shouldn’t get jobs they hate so they can buy shit they don’t need.
- In New Orleans, a contractor hired to help remove some of the city’s monuments to white supremacist traitors has removed itself from the job amid death threats against its workers, because that’s the kind of country the US is.
- RIP Gynnya McMillen, found dead in police custody. Never fear, though, the police are investigating the police.
- This Week in Tabletop Gaming: it is apparently possible to lose Pandemic on the first draw. I’ve been part of some sad failures in Pandemic (before we eventually started to win with moderate regularity), but damn.
- The machines are taking over! My goodness, they can even write episodes of Friends now.
- Dressing Alex Trebek is more of a challenge than it seems.
- In Japan, a small-town train station is still operating so one child can get to school.
