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!
- Go easy on cats. They’re just li’l existentialists.
- Popcorn became the official movie snack because it helped the movie industry stay afloat during the Depression.
- I’m not given to believe in miracles, but this might qualify: in one case, in one instance, a judge has understood that cops lie.
- Mr. T will soon be remodeling homes across the land on the TV box.
- Did You Know: Webster crossed over with Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1989, and the result was…well, about what you’d expect from the final season of Webster and the second season of TNG.
- On the Invisibilia podcast: a story about someone who got locked in — unable to move or speak, but still conscious — which is still incredibly terrifying despite the fact that he eventually started to find his way out.
- Speaking of podcasts, NPR is gathering a list of people’s favorite podcast episodes, so go and nominate your favorites!
- There are times when you completely forget the spelling for even simple words. This tends to happen when you stop to think about something your brain’s used to doing automatically.
- Police forces were invented as a reaction to crowds, not crime.
- There’s an idea that violent aggression, blossoming into war on a societal scale, has deep roots in human evolution. But some studies suggest that that isn’t true, and that warfare is a cultural invention. The idea that war is a self-perpetuating meme is alluring, and explains a lot on its face.
- Jews in the UK have never won a discrimination case against a goy. There’s an attitude that because anti-Semitism isn’t a problem any more (spoiler: it is), Jews filing discrimination cases are just overreacting (spoiler: they’re not). And Jews don’t fare much better in US courts either. Copy & paste for any other bullshit about “the race card.”
- This Week in Cover Songs: I’ve hardly been able to leave Nouela’s version of “Black Hole Sun” alone since I was first directed to it.
- Adobe, in an admission that individuals just aren’t going to pay for its products, is releasing the entire CS2 suite for free. Photoshop away, friends.
- PrEP has the potential to drastically lower HIV infection rates is used consistently.
- Should you go to grad school?
- This Week in Video Games: how NHL 94 came to be.
- In addition to his -ware, Earl Tupper had some other ideas too.
- PBS will be airing a six-hour documentary on the history of cancer soon.
- Via Steve Rogers: What are the longest songs in Western music? Eagle-eyed readers will remember John Cage’s “As Slow as Possible” from a January edition of the Wednesday Walk.
- Gravity was recently re-released in a “Silent Space” edition that removed the movie’s Oscar-winning score. You’ve got to think the movie would lose something there.
- It’s official: The X-Files is returning for six episodes this summer. That might actually be the best route rather than a full season — X-Files should do better in smaller doses like those big thirteen-episode prestige dramas they have these days.
- Phryne, an intrepid citizen of ancient Greece, escaped the death penalty by arguing that the true crime would be to destroy her perfect breasts. May she be an inspiration to us all. (Possibly NSFW for artistic nudity.)
- From the mindspace that brought you glitter bombs you mail to your enemies/frenemies now comes the ability to tell anyone you like to eat a bag of dicks. Gummy dicks! I’m sure they’re tasty.
