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. Do you have a link you want to see featured in next week’s Walk? Email Glenn!
- We may soon see the return of Crystal Pepsi. Because everything 90s is new again.
- In 1995, Touchstone made a pilot for a Clerks sitcom that never made it to air because it removed everything that make Clerks Clerks and is, of course, predictably terrible. We can all watch it now, of course, because we have our wide wonderful internet.
- The Dominican Republic is deporting people with Haitian ancestry.
- Via Travis Banks: Star Wars has now been shown on the big screen in China for the first time. The article specifies that the present marathon is the first time the trilogy is being shown, which means China actually got the prequels first…as if the country needed more stains on its human rights record.
- The ancient elevator that lifted lions, bears, deer, and other animals into the Roman Colosseum has been restored to working order. Coooooool.
- Liquid oxygen is magnetic.
- How a London-to-Tokyo flight works, from the pilot’s perspective, in great detail.
- What to do if you lose your phone. These suggestions are much better than my presumed “wail unceasingly and hope some sort of alchemical magick brings it back.”
- A new blood test can tell every virus you’ve ever developed antibodies for.
- Where is the cloud? Remember, whenever you talk about hosting something on the cloud, replace the phrase “the cloud” with “someone else’s computer.” It’s all well and good to leave some things on someone else’s computer, as long as you’re aware of what you’re doing.
- PornHub has launched a crowdfunding initiative to make porn in space. Yes.
- Behold the history of the hamburger.
- …and a more informal history of the water gun.
- The internet has no shortage of side-by-side comparisons of the same location decades apart. It IS pretty cool that the same lamp post is still in the same place on the Brooklyn Bridge, though.
- Along with the return of The X-Files, we’re also going to be blessed by the return of The X-Files to the fair forests of British Columbia.
- This Week in Carpentry: how to remove a hex-head bolt when you don’t have the right wrench.
- A dinosaur expert takes a look at dinosaur toys. Yes, they don’t have feathers, they don’t have the right number of toes, and they all make the same screeching noise, but hey, get your kids interested in dinosaurs and get them some books.
- The flame throwing guitar from Mad Max: Fury Road is REAL. Sort of. This real-life version is a ukelele, but of course, we haven’t had widespread nuclear war in real life (yet).
- Occasionally, rarely, a cop does a good thing. Pedro Serrano recorded superior officers directing him to stop and frisk black and Hispanic people as part of the NYPD’s ongoing terrorist campaign. One would hope the cartel he works for doesn’t come down on him as hard as a trooper who’s being punished more harshly for revealing a murder than the murderer is.
- Canned, inauthentic cheerfulness comes at a cost for retail workers.
- Remember when the ESA landed a probe on a freakin’ comet last winter? Its battery ran out and it couldn’t catch enough sunlight to charge up again…until now. It’s gotten enough solar energy to wake up and start sending data to us again!
