Category: Friday Unrelated Information

1. I’ve been having fun with Local Wikipedia: “Local Wikipedia is Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you.”

2. Spook everyone and talk about Marxism this Halloween:

 

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3. Also spooky: Mercury Retrograde.

1. I don’t know how broadly appealing this is, but I love it: Etymystery, a game where you guess, “Where did this word come from, and when did English first use it?”

2. Absolutely they are my heirs; they’re even in our trusts!

3. I think we actually DO need to go full sacre bleu:

 

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1. How I feel reading the news this year:

@weberstatechoirs You gotta be sure to teach your singers the real classic songs! #choir #weberstate #funny #meme #utah ♬ original sound – WeberStateChoirs

2. This makes me long for a really targeted asteroid but is also kind of funny: “Has No Friends”: Amazon Is Keeping Amazingly Detailed Records on Its Customers and They Are Downright Insulting

3. A game to test your color memory: “Humans can’t reliably recall colors… We’ll show you five colors, then you’ll try to recreate them.” (It’s hard!)

1. Railpass is a wrapper for train ride footage from YouTube and I didn’t expect to love it so much. Choose your country, change the weather or the light, keep the sound on, and enjoy a virtual train trip.

2. Cookie Monster Tries to Meet His A.I. Mandate. I tried too, Cookie Monster!

3. What I’m going to say I do now:

1. I’ve been ceiling fan shopping and I agree: “What is going on with ceiling fans?”

2. This was cathartic to hear:

 

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3. Sure I ‘d like a steady income and to be able to retire, but then I go on a hike on a random weekday and think, “This is great!” Nick Vargas gets it.

1. This is right up there with the best McSweeney’s article of all time (Decorative Gourd Season): We Must Create The Shit Machine. It’s an allegory!

The miraculous Shit-Raining Machine, from which there will be NO HOPE OF RELIEF, promises to unlock PREVIOUSLY UNIMAGINABLE AND CURRENTLY VAGUE BENEFITS FOR HUMANKIND, such as:

• • Business things
  • Other stuff
  • WE MUST CREATE IT

2. Speaking of shittiness, I think of this every time I get an email about a mysterious price “change.”

3. This is us this morning: We thought the boys might have worms and got their 💩 tested (it’s a theme today!). Turns out they have GIARDIA, so…still a parasite, just a more surprising one. We’ll get them some meds and get them sorted out, though.

 

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1. Any Human Ever is a fun little way to remind ourselves how good some modern technology can be (the “children per woman” stat is GRIM, as is the “died before age 5” one). Get assigned “a place, a life, each taken at random from real data” and learn about how someone lived and died in the past.

2. I’m always here for a Gilbert and Sullivan parody (the fonts being shown match what’s being sung, of course):

 

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3. Presented without comment:

1. Some more Wendell Berry, from Life is a Miracle: “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.”

2. One week into unemployment and I’m not finding a job like this??

3. Here’s Ordinary Abundance, an interactive appreciation of all the (good) things modern society has given us: “All the items in this room were once out of reach; some not yet invented, others too rare or costly for the vast majority of people. Today, most of us lucky enough to live with them walk past without a second thought.”

1. Mike Monteiro had an excellent newsletter this week about making art in bad times. Read about the town of Guernica, Picasso’s Guernica, and this incredible crop art from the Minnesota State Fair (by Jennifer Nelson):

2. Speaking of art, The Last Museum lets you explore a collection of museum catalogs by any subject you want and then links you to the artifact page.

3. Feeling this lately: