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.
- In San Francisco, prosecutors are bringing their full power down on landlords who committed tax fraud on a mass scale by turning their properties into an unlicensed hotel chain. I mean, when you’re staging properties to make them look like they have regular tenants and recruiting your friends to fill out fake leases, you’ve got to realize that the jig will someday be up.
- This Week in Political Campaigns: Whoooooooops!
- There’s only one way to determine brand supremacy in our current commercial culture: one-on one confrontation in the squared circle.
- Bless the makers of the meme generators, such as this video game text screen generator, for they save us from having to edit our own graphics. That one also allowed me to finally get this out of the back of my head.
- This Week in Dystopia: You don’t need big dramatic scenes of the populace being marched into depots and made to enter their genetic makeup into a database for tracking and identification when enough people already do it voluntarily that most people in the US can probably be found through a distant family member’s contribution and a little sleuthing. On the one hand, obviously it’s a good thing to identify John & Jane Does and catch serial killers; meanwhile, it’s being done at the cost of making everyone else an unwitting snitch. (Further details.)
- Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who once threw his shoes at George Bush, is running for parliament. You know, sometimes things work out for the right people. (Warning: Autoplay video)
- The idea that there may be civilizations in Earth’s history too distant for identifiable traces to remain certainly is out there, but it brings an interesting perspective on what traces we might leave millions of years hence.
- This Week in Good Deeds: When the Sioux nation wasn’t able to stop the auction of a sacred artifact, an anonymous donor bought it for the express purpose of returning it to the Sioux.
- I know what scientific exploration you’re really here for, though: the biology of Baby Groot!
- For once, it turns out I was ahead of the curve–much like Kids These Days, I too could never read a damned analogue clock, at least not without staring at it and deriving its entire operation from first principles.
- This Week in Dogs: Who’s a good boy?? Border collies running around wildfire sites with bags dropping seeds are good boys (and girls).
- This Week in Cat Tips: I for one need to treat my cat better. I’ve been trying to observe these essential instructions on how to pick up and hold a cat so I can interact with my cat in a way that’s less selfish. I’m just glad I can still squish him.
