Welcome back to Wednesday links! It is Wednesday right? I have no concept of time and the fact that the sun sets at 3:30pm right now is the worst.
As always, the end of the year means exciting stuff on the site, namely our Hanukkah giveaways and our Best Of lists.
Thank you for being with us for another year and of course, we hope you stick around for what we have planned in 2020.
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The ocean is a scary and wondrous place. If you don’t know what I mean, check out this interactive scrolling map!
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McSweeney’s has all the qualifications Hallmark movie heroines are expected to meet:
She must go home for Christmas and throw that high powered career in the garbage
Sure, she gets great satisfaction from maintaining her independence, achieving her goals, and surrounding herself with people who challenge and inspire her, but it’s time for her to stop working and start living the Hallmark way. It’s time for her to go home for the holidays.
It’s frighteningly accurate!
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I love jokes that take the long con, dedicated approach and this fits the bill. It took me a while to realize I was being tricked and then I was in tears with laughter. So was Sarah. Be sure to click through to the Twitter thread!
I am a music historian, and with @AdrianRMG I have researched the best-selling single of every decade all the way back to 14,000BC. Here's a thread:
2010s – Ed Sheeran, The Shape of You pic.twitter.com/Y4rrOdSGY2
— Archie Henderson (@archiehench) December 5, 2019
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As someone who is subscribed to Simone Giertz’s YouTube channel and watched her funny and also terrible robot builds, I loved this profile of her in Wired:
For a long time, building shitty robots meant Giertz never had to face failure, even if the robots themselves failed. “One of the things that I’ve been trying to figure out is: Was building shitty robots in some way a method for me to minimize myself, to make myself smaller?” Giertz says. “Because that’s what I notice—a lot of women being really scared to step up and be an expert.” Giertz’s older videos are full of congeniality and persistent self-deprecation, which doesn’t feel so charming to Giertz anymore.
I wish Giertz all the greatest success in being an expert!
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If you want a happy cry, watch this video of a young boy inviting his entire kindergarten class to his adoption hearing:
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Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
I’ve been waiting for Wednesday links to share this Twitter thread that got me through the worst case of the Mondays.
https://mobile.twitter.com/laurenncarterr/status/1203138141852438528
So many cute and derpy dogs in the replies! And cats too!
I’ll watch the first episode, I said. Just to check it out, I said. Well, now I’ve had 2 nights of less than 6 hours’ sleep because I binged my way through Virgin River s1. (S2 has already been officially announced.) Check your Netflix & get watching! Virgin River (the book series) is one of my go-to comfort reads & Robyn Carr is executive producing, so the show is a fine adaptation of her books. The cast is great & the location (British Columbia stands in for northern California) is spectacular.
I think we already know this:
https://elemental.medium.com/your-brain-tricks-you-into-loving-cheesy-christmas-movies-c0ea2d023661
In author Tawna Fenske’s recent newsletter, she shared a link to her hubs doing a romance fan’s version of The 12 Days of Christmas in which he also imitates various famous singers’ styles for each line. It’s pretty darned funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ixAKXep0fM&feature=youtu.be
(sorry if the link isn’t clickable – if it doesn’t happen automatically, I have no idea how to do it!)
Residents of the Glastonbury Court retirement home in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk usually request beach trips or afternoon tea when they make wishes on the holiday wishing tree. Joan, 89, asked for a male stripper with “a large chest and big biceps” – and her wish came true:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-50760470?ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=twitter&ns_mchannel=social&ocid=socialflow_twitter
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