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 Stupendous Steve Wille brings word of a celebration of everyday self-care, more along the lines of washing your dishes and making your bed than scheduling a spa day. It may feel a little silly to give ourselves star stickers for doing our chores, but we work with what we have and sometimes what we have to work with psychologically is the reward mechanism.
- This Week in Puns: The title of Fast & Furious 10 has been decided and no other options shall be considered.
- This Week in the Internet of Things: My heart goes out to the parents out there, but I’m not sure the newest high-tech baby cradles need to be connected to the internet so they can get taken over by a Russian botnet.
- This Week in Sports History: The one big way A League of Their Own didn’t accurately represent the baseball league at the heart of its story is that it wasn’t nearly gay enough. Happy Pride!
- The life cycle of memes is accelerating past the point where they last long enough for companies to produce T-shirts and various tchotchkes to make money off of them. Aww. I mean, BitconnEEEEEECT was funny for about ten minutes; I cannot imagine buying the commemorative hoodie and actually wearing it now, let alone keeping it and still wearing it in five years.
- Some memes do have a longer lifespan, of course. Think about the fact that we’ve had ten years of loss.jpg, now commemorated in perhaps the creepiest of ways.
- This Week in Maps: This map of the least and most likely places to get hit by lightning is a handy guide for those of us who enjoy the romance of a good lightning storm as well as those with seriously skittish pets. Take your scared doggo to Alaska, Egypt, Korea, or the southernmost tip of South America.
- It’s a well-known fact that many celebrities are in fact immortals — look up the paintings of Keanu Reeves from the 15th century if you don’t believe me — but of course different people became immortal in different eras. Someone please send records of Taika Waititi throughout history.
- AJ and Andrey from Queer Eye got married! Happy Pride!
- RIP Razan Ashraf al-Najjar, a medic who was killed while trying to help the wounded.
- The town of Asbestos, Quebec had until (alarmingly) recently one of the largest remaining asbestos mines, and now finds itself as the largest attractor of people making videos and writing thinkpieces about A Town Called Asbestos. Of course there are more and less sensitive ways of doing this.
- It’s time for the customary desperate attempt to end the Walk with something fun. I leave you this week with the bottoms of cats. You’re welcome.
