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.
- RIP Willem Van Spronsen, murdered by cops while trying to destroy buses used to transport detainees to a concentration camp in Tacoma, Washington. (Spronsen sometimes used the name Emma Durutti, leading some to believe she may have been a trans woman; this isn’t entirely clear.)
- The permafrost has been made a lot less permanent, and now we’re seeing not only old mosses but ancient bacteria and 41-thousand-year-old worms shake off the frost and rejoin our ecosystem. Anyone who’s seen The X-Files knows what happens when these sleepers are awakened.
- In Japan, car rental companies are reporting that more and more people are renting cars without driving them, treating the car more as a rented private space to eat, nap, charge phones, practice rapping, which is my next hobby, or just be alone for a while, which is my eternal hobby. Putting aside the article’s late focus on the effect on corporate profits, using cars as rented private spaces is pretty innovative, but it’s sad that it’s necessary for some people to pay for a little private time.
- I, for one, can’t wait for Thor Four the Fourth Thor.
- Chinese puzzle balls are gorgeous, but anything made out of ivory is…an issue.
- I know people like to use Mario Maker to produce the hardest levels they can, but this is truly sadistic and actively anxiety-inducing.
- Gustav Holst’s The Planets is one of the more identifiable and generally well-known classical works of the 20th century, meaning there are a lot of different recordings available. How does one sort through all of them? Thankfully, as ever on the wide wonderful internet, there’s an expert with a long list and a blog to compare and contrast recordings for us. I looked through the top entry and threw on Charles Dutoit and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal’s performance of Mars and folks, it’s as good as advertised.
- This Week in Linguistics: Creating language that’s more inclusive of nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people is important in any language, but only moreso in languages that still have strictly gendered structures. Mazel tov to the folks doing that work for Hebrew.
- There are 96 million black plastic balls sitting on top of the Los Angeles reservoir, not just to prevent evaporation but also to keep the water cleaner.
- The hunt is on. You too can hunt the most dangerous game when you don a big inflatable hamster ball to run down all of your friends.
- This Week in Celebrity Gossip: The story of how Elvis became friends with Barbara Stanwyck is an absolute classic.
- Lots of people are publishing retrospectives about the moon landing…except some of them have some tiny issues.
- Social media conglomerates and other companies get called out all the time for selling user data to all sorts of bothersome and/or nefarious parties. As it turns out, the DMV is getting in on the action too. (Autoplay video)
- My podcast is back! This time, my dear friend Alanna is on the line to talk about Stranger Things season 3.
