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.
- No matter what you want to name, there’s someone, somewhere, who has absolutely mastered it, like this expert stone skipper. That is the skippingest stone I have ever seen skipped.
- Man caught smuggling nearly 5,000 leeches in luggage, fined $15 thousand for smuggling what would’ve been at least $40 thousand in leeches. FINE, I’ll keep my day job after all.
- This Week in Systems That Are Working Great: Congressman Duncan Hunter recently confessed to war crimes including mass murder and desecration of the dead, in solidarity with other war criminals. He’ll sleep just fine tonight, wake up tomorrow, and go on with his life, no doubt embezzling more campaign funds along the way.
- You ever look at a tweet and know that you’re in the beginning of a horror movie?
- When we think of service animals we typically think of dogs, but cats like Walter, who recognizes his human’s hypoglycemic attacks, show a world of potential.
- In the interests of equal time, This Week in Good Dogs: Who’s a good dog? A dog who helps conservationists find and track rare turtles is a good dog. Here’s for interspecies solidarity.
- This Week in Neural Net Processors, Learning Computers: Speaking of cats, Skynet still wants to name them for us. I was going to go with ICATika for my next furball, but I must admit, Funky Moe is very good.
- Thirty years ago yesterday, both Poland and China saw iconic protest movements come to a head.
- A gryphon is traditionally a combination of an eagle and a lion, but if you take a different bird and a different cat, you can make a much cuter and much more household-appropriate mythological beast. (Though I imagine I’d have to find new ways of hiding my cat’s special food if he could fly, to be fair.)
- Two years ago, Grenfell Tower burned down in London, killing 72 people, because of lax regulatory enforcement and owners who bought cheap siding that spread the fire. Two years later, the siding that was on Grenfell, as well as other types like it, are still on way too many buildings.
- RIP Keith Birdsong, an artist who did hundreds of Star Trek paintings for book covers, collectible plates, trading cards, postage stamps, and numerous other media. This thread has just a few examples of his work. I must have dozens and dozens of books bearing his art.
- Now that we’re entering into summertime, it’s important to have our yearly reminder that grass is evil and needs to die.
- It’s important, in these miserable summer months, to be a friend to all creatures.
