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.
- Sometimes you see a formulation of an idea that you never would have considered, but must admit is absolutely, irrevocably right. Friends, open your minds to the fact that “Closer” is a disco song that’s been slowed down. The back half absolutely SLAMS now.
- I know I’m still Jewish because I see the “St. Louis” bread-sliced bagel and want to summon a golem to defend mishpocha. I recently learned on Gastropod, though, that the history of that good good bread circle is more complicated than I thought.
- Following the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, Charlotesville, and however many large and small domestic terrorist incidents you could name, the US Department of Homeland Security decided that there’s nothing to see here, just very fine people the folks in charge want to go about their business.
- Laws have to be enforced in order for them to mean anything, from domestic terrorism to robocall fines, even putting aside for the moment the fact that “punishable by fine” effectively means “permissible for rich people.”
- Anyway, robocalls are now getting through to elevators, so it’s not like we need to enforce any regulations on them or anything.
- The new sensation in adult obstacle courses is…a lifetime of depression! Off-Road Sobbing is always my best event.
- Transgender Day of Visibility was last Sunday, so it’s as good a time as ever to take a few minutes to consider the long history of trans people, in broad strokes, with different aspects of trans identities and more general gender variance going back decades and centuries.
- Speaking of which, do-it-yourself estrogen isn’t yet something you can whip up at home with a few easy ingredients, but the yearning some people have for it to be real is deeply affecting.
- Farewell, dear AAF, we hardly knew ye. It seemed to me that you ran your company like a candle in the wind. (Autoplay video)
- RIP Vonda N. McIntyre, sci-fi author.
- (Warning: suicide) RIP Jeremy Richman, the latest victim of the Sandy Hook shooting where his daughter was murdered, the latest victim of subsequent shootings that refreshed the trauma, and the latest victim of targeted harassment by conspiracy theorists who stir their nonsense at the expense of those already traumatized.
- Let’s veer away from seemingly insurmountable tragedy (though, quick reminder, gun violence is a surmountable tragedy) and into something more pleasant and weird: defaultfile.name, a site that finds YouTube videos uploaded with the default name from the camera. In a few minutes of watching I was given a fish swimming around a tank, a puppy playing with a puppy-shaped toy, ten seconds of someone’s golf practice, and long strips of blue fabric hanging on a clothesline in a summer breeze. So you know, it’s pretty good.
- They say the world is flat now, but I’m not sure that an economic crisis in Runescape precipitated by a power outage in Venezuela is quite what they had in mind.
- Christian Bale truly is amazing; you wouldn’t believe how he’s transforming himself for his newest big role!
- For 30 years, pieces of Garfield phones have been washing up on a French beach. It turns out that a cargo container fell off a ship and got lodged in a cave close to the beach. This is amazing — oh, where have the Garfield phone parts been coming from? Why, Garfield Cave, of course!
