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.
- If social and commercial restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are being lightened where you are, or were never properly implemented in the first place, you should be aware of the main ways the virus spreads and how to keep yourself and your loved ones safer. Basically, don’t see people for prolonged periods of time, don’t get close to them, and if you do see them you should do it outside in an open space so any potential particles carrying the virus aren’t concentrated in the area around you.
- South Korea recently began relaxing distancing guidelines, before there’s been a new breakout of disease after one person visited a series of nightclubs, leading thus far to 86 new cases among people who were also at those clubs and others they came in contact with while unaware of their exposure. That this happened in several queer clubs, among people who likely can’t be fully out in South Korea and maybe can’t even join shared online video calls in lockdown depending on home and family situations, only adds to the tragedy.
- Many (most?) reactions to the current crisis are simply The Worst, but dear friend of the Walk Steve Wille brings word of perhaps one of the most casually grievous ones.
- Also in grievous inhumanity in the age of COVID-19, when a health center serving Native Americans in the Seattle area was supposed to receive testing kits and other crucial supplies, they instead received a box of body bags.
- Sometimes strangers on the internet engage in valuable public service, such as providing answers to all the questions you have about Judaism but are too afraid to ask. Amazingly, she answered my pressing question before I could even ask it. Someone, anyone, please trade kippot with me. My house is overflowing with kippot. Please.
- Artificial intelligences officially cannot own patents according to the US Patent & Trademark Office, adding just another brick in the wall of grievances against humanity, one more tiny insult to build and build and build.
- One of the aggravating truths about modern digital media is that when you “purchase” or “buy” something, it’s functionally the same as renting it, since even the shows or movies you “buy” permanent access to on Amazon or Itunes could disappear if the vendor’s deal with the production studio lapses, or for whatever reason. Buying something then becomes functionally the same as renting it, except those are legally different things, and someone is suing Amazon for violating those legal definitions.
- An underrated frustration of being a flat-earther must be trying to listen to Daft Punk.
- The Rijksmuseum has scanned Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in astoundingly high resolution, 44.8 gigapixels. Go to the fully-zoomable version and see not only every tiny effect of the age of the painting, but also all of the fine brushstrokes and color mixing.
