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.
- Ongoing environmental disasters were only exacerbated by the Amazon rainforest fires. Meanwhile, as people looked for news and updates, that precious, precious search engine optimization also offered up a sale on the Amazon Fire stick.
- Fantasies of traveling to the past are mostly for people who wouldn’t be subject to monstrous discrimination or other socioeconomic conditions when they get there, but for me another huge factor is the extent to which I’m a weenie who can’t do without modern conveniences.
- When Debra Stevens was trapped in her car during a flood, she called 911, and spent some of her last minutes being scolded and mocked by the person who answered.
- The Shakesville blog has closed. I haven’t been subscribed to it for a few years, and I was on the “skim headlines and mark read in my RSS reader” level of readership for a few years before that; regardless, about ten years ago I was absorbing huge amounts of 101-level feminism and broader social justice concepts from the contributors there instead of making women educate me in person. There are articles going around about where the community and management thereof went sideways, but that value remains.
- Teachers in Las Vegas recently threatened to strike for higher salaries and a better schedule for future raises, and thanks to successful strikes in other school districts, the mere threat of another one got management to the negotiating table.
- Artist James Nolan Gundy uses drawing machines to create wonderfully intricate line art, including works that feel like modern spirographs. The videos in particular are fascinating.
- This Week in Deepfakes: Deepfake technology is one of those information-security disasters that’s been looming over us for what feels like forever, with the occasional demonstration just to show us how bad things could be and might soon be. (It’s still in the uncanny valley phase, but that might just be because the videos are captioned something along the lines of “LOOK AT HOW GOOD DEEPFAKES ARE GETTING!”) But now it’s gone too far. Now it’s inserted Tom Cruise into the Iron Man movies, and this cannot be tolerated.
- Also in Disney, devourer of content (the deal to buy out Place to Be Nation Dot Com is coming any day now), the giant keeps threatening to drop the hammer on password sharing, which isn’t illegal and actually helps streaming services in the long term, especially the ones that embrace it. The more they tighten their grip, the more streaming customers will…wait, should I be paraphrasing DisneyTM Content(C)?
- Grace Jones has always been hashtag style goals.
- Sometimes you call in a cougar sighting, and it turns out to be just a chonky ol’ cat.
- Friend of the Walk Steve Wille has sent out the signal, alerting us all that Asuka has a video game channel, y’all.
- This Week in Language: When you see food labeled “cheez” or “cheese product” you know what you’re getting is cheese-like in some ways and not others. How does that apply to a fine vegan restaurant that has a product that looks, tastes, and feels like cheese?
- In Tampa, Florida, a “lost” African-American cemetery has been found under a housing complex built in the 50’s, a testament to historical and ongoing contempt for black people and black bodies.
- It’s been ten years since Linda Ronstadt retired from live performance to deal with Parkinson’s disease.
