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 informative.
- 121 students at the University of Washington have tested positive for COVID-19, contracted while either living in a frat house or seeing friends who do. Reopening schools in just under two months is going to be great. Counterintuitively, researchers at Cornell University suggest that bringing students back to campus actually puts them at less risk of infection than leaving them wherever they’re living, because the university will provide an environment with a better testing regimen and encouragement of safe living practices than each student’s individual circumstances. While I’m sure universities may be more willing to promote wide-scale testing than many students’ local governments, the idea that school policies are going to convince college kids to wash their hands and stay away from each other remains utterly laughable.
- As people turn their kneejerk opposition to breathing masks into an important new element of their identity politics, it’s only natural that they’re joined by such luminaries as devil’s favorite demon slash Tennessee mayor Glenn Jacobs, offering a tepid stance on public health measures while reiterating the right-wing idea that the government doing literally anything is a grievous offense. (Anything, one observes, aside murder. A lot of people love them some summary executions.)
- Many of us have improvised our own masking practices over the last several months, in which case it’s worth considering that not all fabrics are created equal — while humble cotton fabric is effective (when done right), bandanas are not.
- RIP Ennio Morricone, a legend in the field of film music whose career spanned as many styles & genres as it did decades. He’s remembered for the epic and thrilling (just as epic and just as thrilling in Yo-Yo Ma’s performance) as well as he is for the achingly gorgeous.
- RIP Summer Taylor, murdered by a driver who plowed into a group of protesters. Vehicular homicide is quite the popular pastime of people who think that a highway is more important than agitating against white supremacy.
- This Week in Live-Action Adaptations: Frosty the Snowman is coming, and we may as well get used to the idea. There’ll be plenty of time to get used to it before it’s possible to mount a film production anyway.
- Carlo Acutis may soon become the Catholic Church’s patron saint of the internet, a position I’m pretty sure we already elected Rick Astley to a long time ago.
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