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.The Wednesday Walk makes its triumphant return following PTBN’s month-long hiatus
- They say there’s no going home again. Once you leave, you’re a different person and it’s a different place. But sometimes it’s important to try. Sometimes you feel an ancestral urge toward your mom’s steak-umm sandwich. We’ve all been there.
- The new documentary about the Apollo 11 mission marking its fiftieth anniversary got access to some amazing footage NASA and MGM filmed 50 years ago and then stuck in a vault. Even the bits in the trailer look spectacular.
- It’s only natural to experience an existential crisis sometimes, or to induce it in friends for fun and/or revenge. Even for muppets. I mean, HAVE you ever seen a bear with a magenta nose?
- I know German is a beautiful language, but maybe I’ve been sleeping on Welsh.
- Animated football commentary really puts the game in perspective.
- All of your “smart” devices are ready to snitch on you, should you choose to commit crimes. (Neither the Wednesday Walk nor the Place to Be Nation Dot Com encourage you to commit crimes.) This time, it could be your GPS-enabled watch.
- I swear I’m not just on a crusade against all integrated devices here — it’s just that, well, someone can use your Nest camera to start shouting at you about nuclear missles flying toward your region, and you’re not really sure what access any ol’ Ring employee/contractor has to all of your camera feeds, and if you have an Iphone your friends can listen in on whatever you’re doing via Facetime even though you haven’t picked up. So y’know. Maybe the modern age was a mistake?
- Can you use a magnifying glass to make fire from moonlight? (…no, but maybe you should try)
- I realize many of us in North America are once again living in the age of the polar vortex, but we needn’t resort to extreme measures out of frustration.
- Next time your fun is being meddled with by some fuddy-duddies preaching about “believability” and “historical accuracy,” remember li’l Aaron Reynolds introducing a little anarchy in the Erin Mills Model Railroad Association.
- This Week in Prehistoric Life: The humble Eretmorhipis carrolldongi has a duckbill, stegosaurus plates, a crocodile’s long tail, and the tiniest curest head. THIS is what we need to be cloning for our prehistoric zoos, not T.rexes.
- In much the same way that spammers and spam-blockers are in a perpetual arms race to develop new ways to outsmart and outwork each other, in-browser ad-blockers and companies that generate revenue through intrusive and annoying ads are locked in a never-ending struggle. Google is planning to make a big move in that struggle by blocking the access ad blockers rely on.
- This Week in Life’s Rich Tapestry: Inge Ginsberg is a 97-year-old Holocaust survivor who’s also the frontwoman of a heavy metal group. None more metal indeed.
