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.
- Today is Yom Kippur, the culmination of a time when Jews are called upon to confess, atone, and make amends. This year it’s worth including particular meditations on the abuses we commit and/or allow to be committed in our communities.
- On a thematic note, how do you motivate people to do better than they’ve done? Maybe it’s worth it to try running some video backwards to show them doing the opposite of their bad acts.
- PTBN Grand Poobah Brad Hindscrooge brings word of a woman who decided to practice what she preached.
- Steve Wille brings news of the ever-deepening cesspool that is the Michigan State/Larry Nassar sexual abuse saga, speaking of abuses committed and allowed.
- This Week in Deep Insights: “The closest you can get to knowing what it’s like to be a ghost is listening to a podcast where the hosts are trying to remember a piece of trivia that you know.” This is why I can’t listen to Star Trek podcasts where the hosts know less about Star Trek than I do. I know there’s a hefty layer of toxic gatekeeping culture at work there, and I’m not saying they shouldn’t engage in the delights of fandom. Like, I’m not saying I’m right. It’s not a competition! All positive fandom is valid and wonderful and adds to the rich tapestry of life! It just stresses me out too much.
- Every new aquatic species identified deep in ocean trenches reconfirms the fact that the ocean harbors the most gloriously weird species, including translucent, scaleless fish and gelatinous friends that’re held together by the water pressure.
- Christine Blasey Ford is more brave than I will ever be, to suffer the disbelief, condescension, retraumatization, and outright abuse she’s now subject to. It’s horrifying to watch our government and society begin to fail her as it failed Anita Hill and everyone else who’s been harassed or abused.
- Let’s think about something that’s always a pick-me-up: Jolene. This version never stops describing Jolene, revealing her to be something akin to how angels are really described in the Bible, complete with the four rotating faces and the trembling horror in all who behold her. Have mercy at the end of days, Jolene.
- This Week in Maps: Antarctica is now the best-mapped continent on Earth.
- Has this ever happened to you: you get a brand-new time machine, take it out for a spin, and the thing deposits you in some random point on the timeline and breaks down? You need to be prepared to not just survive but to thrive whenever you wind up.
- In Russia, Domino’s offered free pizza for life to people who volunteered to advertise them for life in tattoo form…until the promotion turned out to be too popular and Domino’s had to call it off.
- Harriet Tubman isn’t officially getting on the 20-dollar bill any time soon, but you can put her there yourself.
- If you’re remodeling your house, please leave something in a wall or a ceiling as a miniature time capsule. Someone will be happy to find it in a few years or decades.
- The recursive centaur is half horse, half recursive centaur.
- This Week in Animal Relaxation: I am of course growing into the cat lady I was always destined to be, but it remains true that dogs are so, so pure.
