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.
- Hello Walk-friends. Kevin Spacey sexually assaulted Anthony Rapp and who knows how many other people. Which is bad enough. But let’s talk for just a second about Spacey’s bullshit statement where he pivoted from “I don’t remember” (a great thing for victims of sexual assault to hear, I’m sure) to “I was drunk” (drinking doesn’t change who you are, just how well you can stop yourself, I don’t get why this is such a hard concept for people to grasp, unless everyone else is also deathly afraid of admitting what they’ve done) followed, ultimately, by “hey guess what y’all I’m gay!” Which…look. Heteros have insisted that LGBTQIAP+ folks are child predators for decades. Time was, that was the bigoted panic du jour about bathrooms in addition to the crusade against trans people. Christian fundamentalist Anita Bryant gloriously caught a pie in the face while campaigning for the firing of gay teachers. Kevin Spacey has been in the closet all this time; he should have seen all of this. To come out at precisely this moment, just to grab headlines away from his history of abuse and assault, isn’t only craven and cynical but plays right into the stereotypes of devoted bigots and hurts every other queer person. He can’t just hide behind the rainbow flag. Basically, what they said. Sure, he’s a fine actor; maybe you really like his TV show and have fond memories of The Usual Suspects. Oh well!
- All right. Deep breaths. Breathing gif. Onward.
- RIP Fats Domino.
- I haven’t seen Battle of the Sexes yet (and maaaaaybe it’s out of theaters already? I’m not very good at getting to movies on time when I don’t go on opening night), but reflections like this on the original Billie Jean King tennis match and its larger meaning for lots of people are interesting and welcome, and a little bracing.
- PTBN’s Jason Greenhouse brings word of the best Halloween weather forecast. Honestly, that’s a good look, that dude should keep it going.
- One of the reasons I love Tumblr as I do is its potential to spawn an in-depth discussion of intelligence distinct from and influenced by human priorities and long-term intentional breeding from a funny gif of sheep running around a car.
- Ads selling you dehumanizing aspects of late capitalism are super fun!!
- This Week in Human Experimentation: How better to study the effects of living in space long-term than to send one half of a set of identical twins?
- This Week in Great Tastes That Don’t Taste Great Together: A restaurant in Canada is selling a burger stuffed with peanut butter cups. I mean, I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum, but…no.
- The translucent pumpkin pie, meanwhile, is a much more interesting food innovation.
- We are now past the ten-year mark since the fateful day that None Pizza with Left Beef entered our lives.
- This visual essay about playing in a gay volleyball league really gets to the heart of unlearning oppressive gender stereotypes.
- This Week in Disney Heroes: We see them as princesses, but they grow up into queens. (I guess it would’ve been a little cheeky to do Princess Leia/General Leia at the end. Fine.)
- A trade fair has fallen victim to the largest recorded sex-toy heist in history. Where’s the Donald P. Bellisario show about the folks investigating this?
- This Week in Neural Net Processors, Learning Computers: Computers aren’t just taking manufacturing jobs, they’re also writing our creepypasta now. “Algorithms are still not very good at generating complex narrative” says one interviewee — neither are some human writers one could name.
- No spoilers for the new season of Stranger Things (watch out for episodes on that coming coon on the Podcast Hour Spectacular as well as Geek & Sassy, both on our very own Place to Be Nation Pop podcast feed, pod-friends), but I’m pretty sure folks have figured out Dustin’s ultimate fate.
- Some cats bring their humans mice; my roommate’s cat once pulled a small bird through a hole in a window screen and ran off with it. It’s much cleaner and more convenient, though, if your cat fills that slot with tea bags.
