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!
- I love musicians of YouTube, whether they’re playing favorites on radically different instruments than the originals, recording themselves twenty times to play different parts, or playing duets with household appliances.
- This Week in Crowdfunded Nostalgia: The Key Armory wants to sell you blank keys in the shape of swords from popular culture.
- Also in crowdfunding, Simon Says: Nazi Hunter is something of a comic book for our times.
- Shemika Charles is the world record holder for the lowest limbo, and her abilities are astonishing.
- This Week in Art: You know, normally I wouldn’t approve of vandalizing natural landmarks, but cutting the top inch off of England’s highest mountain and displaying it in a gallery is just too good.
- A lot of us live in cultures in which parents are reticent about sex ed (often trying to bar schools from teaching it, or teaching it well, while also failing to do an adequate job at home) and porn is just about the easiest thing to find online. So a lot of kids happen upon (or “happen upon”) hardcore porn and grow up thinking that that’s what sex is, with consequences even more unhealthy than trying to fuck in wacky unnatural poses that would only be useful to a cameraperson who isn’t there. Folks have been trying to identify and counter the downsides of that influence for a while. Recently, in an unlikely turn, PornHub has taken up the cause and started a sub-site for basic sex ed information, working with an actual factual sex therapist and other experts, because suddenly PornHub has developed a social consciousness?
- Also in campaigns, though not quite so culturally relevant, is the effort to save the pink bathrooms of the 40s-50s-60s US housing boom. I have one in my house, and haven’t made much in the way of changes other than tearing down the wallpaper and painting the walls. Hopefully that’s okay.
- I’m sure we all remember where we were a year ago when we first heard about the poop so toxic it grounded an international flight. (To my eternal shame, I’m pretty sure nobody’s answer is “reading the Wednesday Walk Around the Web at Place to Be Nation Dot Com.” I shall endeavor to bring you more of the most important stories in the years ahead.)
- If you’re going to talk about a moon landing, it’s probably the first, but people don’t often consider the last.
- It can be really hard to gather complete statistics on child marriage, which apparently is still very much a thing.
- The Dark Site Finder will help you find out how far you have to go to find someplace where you can do some quality stargazing, free of the light output of populated areas.
- If you’re renovating your house, please go ahead and put a time capsule under your floor, between your studs, behind your wallpaper, wherever you can fit it in really.
- A judge has ruled that the NYPD, one of the most notorious terrorist groups in the US, must turn over information about its surveillance of Black Lives Matter.
- This Week in Depressing Maps: What did people in each state google more frequently than any other state since the election? I really can’t be proud of ol’ Connecticut here. Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Louisiana aren’t doing too badly though.
- Davis Lynch’s esoteric classic Dune may actually be improved by removing the dialogue.
- If you’ve never played a Mario game, or otherwise just want to get caught up on their history, there is a handy primer just for you!
- In Italy, the city of Palermo will see its first new synagogue in 524 years, since the Catholic Church seized the last synagogue and expelled whichever Jews it couldn’t forcibly convert.
- If you’ve ever wondered whether a given animal farts, boy is there a database for you!
