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!
- What you need to cap off your summeris a recap of the summer’s best filmic offering, Mad Max: Fury Road, in the form of an ancient Egyptian painting.
- A huge explosion has rocked an industrial area in Dongying, China, again. Someone check on Chinese industrual areas. And everyone else’s industrial areas. Also residential areas?
- If you know your chemistry, enjoy a spirited round of Periodic Table Battleship! You and your friends/family members could try your hands at Periodic Table Guess Who. “Is it a noble gas?”
- Via PTBN’s very own respected and beloved Steve Wille: take a listen to ultra-slow versions of Windows logon sounds for meditative, ambient musical experiences. The gold standard of these “slow down a track X-times” experiments, IMO, is the Jurassic Park theme slowed down one thousand percent, turning the piece into an hour-long journey that stands at a remove for long stretches, then washes over you. By the time the brass comes in it almost sounds like a Vangelis soundscape. Try it out on your “I need some music to calm me the hell down” playlist. Other people have those too, right?
- RIP Oliver Sacks, all-around decent human and one of those pop-science “explainer” types who genuinely seemed to get it.
- This Week in People’s Experiences: this tale of a guy who picked up a hitchhiker and wound up crashing his own funeral is a wild, wild ride.
- Also in people’s experiences: personal stories of winning lifetime supplies of various consumer goods. The general categories seem to be getting a box of energy drinks delivered every month until the end of time, getting a big ol’ coupon book from Chipotle or whatever, or someone showing up to your house one day and plopping down a pallet of butter. Get an extra fridge and/or freezer for the last one!
- We were all twelve years old at some point. (I’m pretty sure, at any rate. If you’re under twelve and reading this, uh, welcome?) How any of us survived is something of a mystery, and how any of us avoided tripping in a museum during a field trip and punching a hole through an absurdly valuable painting is also something of a minor miracle.
- The My Brother, My Brother and Me podcast is focused on one crucial question this week: when Pee-Wee is doing his Tequila dance, is he or is he not pointing at his private parts? I’m actually leaning toward the affirmative on that one. (Audio is NSFW. Video is from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, which could only improve your workplace.)
- Condoms don’t reduce sensitivity or do any other horrible things condom-users sometimes claim they do. If you and/or your non-fluid-bonded sweetums bring up any whiny fake excuses to get out of wearing one, shut that shit down. Find some safe way to have your fun, and someone complaining about wearing a condom probably doesn’t deserve to get inside anyone else. (Unless someone involved is allergic to latex or something like that, in which case get something else. Again, find some safe way to have your fun. Live your best life. This has been a semi-hypocritical Wednesday Walk Top Tip…but just the top tip. Har, har.)
- This Week in the Truth, and How it Is Out There: I want to believe in a lot of things, but crop circles caused by wallabies who’ve eaten from opium fields is kind of amazing.
- A few days ago, some marked the 111th anniversary of one of the most ludicrous events in Olympic history. Just…just go read.
