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? Comment on the Walk post at the Place to Be Nation Facebook page, or find Glenn on the social media platform of your choice!
- Don’t you just wish sometimes that art had less gluten in it?
- This Week in Computers: a programmer recently released an updated operating system for the Apple II featuring new utilities, greater compatibility, and better performance. The amazing part is that it’s the first OS update since 1993. So get downloading, people.
- This Week in Things I Didn’t Know I Needed in Life: birds with human arms.
- So about a month ago, someone in San Francisco put up a statue of would-be Mussolini Donald Trump, depicting him with a micropenis and claiming that “the emperor has no balls.” I didn’t mention it here because, frankly, not only is his appearance not as important as any single one of the multitudinous deplorable offenses he commits in the course of a typical day, there are also plenty of non-fascists who look like that statue. One took it upon himself to make that apparent, also on the streets of San Francisco.
- RIP Terence Crutcher, murdered by cops.
- Are you using your toothpaste correctly?
- This Week in Kids These Days: wah wah people don’t make phone calls any more wah. Thank the fucking gods. “It’s a lonely business, this life without telephone calls” — I talk to more people on Facebook every day than I did in the average week in any level of schooling, and the current conversations don’t feature vast chasms of dead air while I desperately try to think of something to say. (Well, some of the ones on my podcast do, but editing is a wonderful thing.)
- Here in dear old Connecticut, the cops are just as horrifying and corrupt as they are everywhere else.
- That the Civilization tech tree (like other parts of the game) reduces messy and diverse human experiences to a tidy Westernized narrative is a standard enough observation, I suppose, even if it’s nice to have a reminder about the extent and discomfort of it from time to time. Let the game serve as a gateway to a lot of proper nouns you should look up and learn more about in more plainly educational venues. Actually using Civ in classrooms, though? I dunno, I’m not sure how that winds up being more educational than Oregon Trail.
- Apparently negative blood types are, like so many other things, fodder for conspiracy theorists. When the only tool you have is a hammer, you know.
- The US national anthem does not belong in professional sports, and not standing is among a few reasonable reactions to it. I’m not aware of a sports venue that should be playing the US national anthem aside, I guess, from an Olympic medal ceremony — and even then it mainly serves to remind us how inferior it is to most of the other national anthems you’ll hear during any given Olympics. (I mean, the song is less fascist than the pledge of allegiance and less offensive than the widespread insistence on smearing the flag all over everywhere, but still.)
- Dogs recognize both words and tone, so make sure to tell dogs they’re good dogs in so many words. And if you’re not telling dogs they’re good dogs? Maybe the trouble there lies within, friendo.
- Sea urchins reproduce by spraying clouds of sperm & eggs into the ocean, after which fertilized eggs float around and young urchins eventually pull themselves from the inside out to reach adulthood.Sea urchins: they’re just like us!
- There’s been a lot of discussion in some circles about this video about the banality of the MCU’s scores. I made my feelings clear about a lot of the Marvel scores in my Civil War podcast, but suffice to say the music doesn’t seem to be one of the artistic priorities of this film series in particular, nor generally of current blockbusters, despite the occasional good theme or score making its way through. (I’m still looking forward to Giacchino’s Doctor Strange, the one part of that movie I’m particularly anticipating.) The best reply video, of a few that have also made the rounds, highlights the MCU’s lack of basic musical continuity.