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!
- From Steve Wille comes a meditation on the sourness and addictive quality of up-to-the-second news and social media. It’s a real quandary to stay informed and learn about events while maintaining emotional well-being.
- Save us, goth chicken. You’re our only hope.
- Imam Hassan Guillet’s eulogy for the victims of the Quebec mosque shooting included the white supremacist who perpetrated it in one of those mind-bogglingly magnanimous gestures that you see every now and then.
- In Romania, officials recently sparked a new wave of protests by decriminalizing corruption. Seriously. In the face of the protests, the government blinked and slowed the proposal & implementation of the law. Basically, #Resist.
- Meanwhile in South Dakota, a state of emergency is being made up in order to repeal an anti-corruption law passed via ballot measure in November.
- This Week in Body Horror: If you want to see weightlifters and strongfolk drop weights and dislocate joints, tear muscles, or worse, check out this list.
- This Week in Electoral Horror: Last week the president of the United States made a statement in honor [sic] of Black History Month, a statement in which he feuded with television channels and seemed to speak about Frederick Douglass as if he’s an unknown figure whose prominence is actively growing. How is this even more ludicrous than we thought it’d be?
- This Week in Snitches: Your pacemaker can and will be used against you in a court of law.
- Beneath deep blankets of snow lie writhing ecosystems of living things as varied as those above the show. Of course, when there’s less snow and it falls for a shorter time, those ecosystems are threatened.
- I know PTBN’s own JT Rozzero feels, as I do, something of a special frustration at improper parking lot etiquette. Short version: take your shopping carts back you barbarians, what are you even DOING. But also, for fuck’s sake, don’t infringe on handicapped spaces.
- It’s worth taking a moment to consider the story of Sam the Space Monkey, and his space capsule’s brief battle with a US naval vessel.
- Navigate dense crowds of people by thinking of them as liquid and applying lessons from fluid dynamics.
- This Week in Maps: How many Luxembourgs could you fit in each European country? As it turns out, there’re lots of places to put any new Luxembourgs that crop up.
- If you live in the US and your senators voted for Betsy DeVos (or any major appointee for that matter), maybe inform them of the consequences of their decisions. (Thus far I count seven yea votes from CT for various appointees. Sigh.)
- The capital of the Assyrian Empire has been sacked again in modern times, irreplacable relics being smashed by militants who, when they were finally driven out, left the site open to any vandals who want to come by.
- Cartoon characters wear white gloves because of such factors as color contrast in early animation and…the history of minstrel shows. Huh.
- This Week in the World We Live In: You have to mute the gas pump’s embedded videos now. Unless you live in New Jersey or someplace else where full-service stations are the norm, I suppose.
- This Week in Animal Relaxation: Snakey the Ball Python is always there with your fix for snakes wearing hats.
- Speaking of, I’m not sure I shared the snow day at the Oregon Zoo, so here you go.
