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 past weekend saw THE event everyone in the northeastern US was trying to get to — that’s right, the second annual FrancesaCon, the foremost gathering to celebrate the contributions of Mike Francesa.
- There’s still time for a couple more best-of-2014 lists, and it’s worth stretching the year-end season out a little more for the sake of dinosaurs.
- On Monday, Denver cops murdered Jesse Hernandez, a 16-year-old girl, because they still get to arbitrarily murder children…and native people as well. In Europe, Romani women subjected to forced sterilization are still trying to get some measure of justice. In Ireland, Christians held women and girls as slaves as recently as 1996, and the government has just started investigating and making restitution in the last couple of years. In New Jersey, video of Jerame Reid’s murder has been released. In Kinlock, Missouri, local cops were called to report a burglary; not only did they show up and assault the woman who’d called them in the first place, she also turned out to be the acting mayor of the town. In Florida, cops use pictures of African-American men for target practice; some clergy have responded by offering their photos instead.
- A small breath of optimism: Imam Daayiee Abdullah is trying to set right a lot of wrong.
- And another: in Oklahoma, two girls caught a child predator with the help of their lemonade stand.
- There are wonderful things hiding out in the code for Mario games, amazing things you can do when you completely break the game’s will & spirit and build it up again from the ashes, including a version of Pong you play with Mario’s face.
- I’ll just leave this here: American Sniper Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize.
- Since we in the northeastern US are reeling from the revelation that snow still falls sometimes (and really sucks for people who still have to go out and work, or homeless people, or people who lose power), be sure to text a dad and get some advice.
- This Week in Infographics: temperatures, ranging from absolute zero to “absolute hot.”
- This just in: people from the US can’t pronounce a damned thing. To be fair, we have worcesters here; that one’s just on that dude.
- Lars Andersen uses a lot of amazing techniques forgotten by people who focus on European methods, and he started doing it for the sake of LARPing. (The video has a few issues, but it’s still pretty cool.)
- Life always finds a way, even where you don’t expect it to.
- They say Michelangelo used to stare at a block of marble and see the statue waiting to be released from within. Finally, his vision is realized.
- Google’s going to be launching a new YouTube music streaming service soon, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be good for artists.
- An everyday hassle the common workaday person can empathize with: trying to get your Nobel Prize through airport security.
- Statues and paintings are arranged so we can look at them; they often don’t get very inspiring views themselves.
