Happy Friday!

From Satori: The Voynich manuscript may be in…Turkish? 

Via Jes Skolnik: Fifty songs defining the past fifty years of Pride. 

Via Darran Anderson: the amazing soundscapes of Andrew Pekler's Phantom Islands. 

Have a safe and spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

Happy Solstice, everyone. Let’s hope (and work) for better days ahead.

Here are more ways to help the situation at the US-Mexico border.

RIP, Koko.

If you’re in the legal community, or you know someone who is, and you’d like to help the current situation at the border, here’s a link – share far and wide. 

A Digg video shows where American accents originated. (My own American accent is a horrible mishmash of New England, Chicago, and edge-of-Appalachia, apparently. No wonder I have trouble with public speaking.)

The shadowy cryptic figures behind the Mysterious Package Company are creating something new called Post Mortem, and you can sign up for shadowy cryptic details. 

Meanwhile, in Belgium, you can escape for a weekend in a “secret cabin” off the grid, not knowing where you’re headed until the last minute. (This sounds really cool.)

Hello. The world is, shall we say, not in a good place right now. Let’s do what we can to change that. In the meantime, here are a few minutes of escapism.

The world’s cities might have looked very different if some architects’ planned buildings had actually been built. The Atlantic details a few of these would-be structures. 

There was a time when zeppelins soared above the cities, and here’s an older entry from Gizmodo showing what that looked like. 

Artist Marcus DeSieno has created spooky “surveillance landscapes” from surveillance cameras capturing wide open spaces. They’re beautiful, and also creepy.

Hello and happy Monday… 

Art: Check out Mark Broyer’s After Hours photography. It’s lovely.

History: Americans learn about Benedict Arnold, but what exactly did he do? 

Art/Poetry; Meet Dom Sylvester Houédard, the beatnik monk or “monknik,” as he called himself.

Happy Friday, everyone.

From Julie: Continuing on our trains of the dead theme of the week, behold the Ghost Bus Tours of London, detailing the history of the Necropolis Bus Company! (I really want a Necropolis Bus Company badge and/or uniform.)

Local news: my city has several tours of our underground tunnels, including interesting facts about our (nonexistent) subway and our (quite good) beer!

Meanwhile, in Cape Breton, a gaggle of strongmen have arrived to pay homage to “Giant” MacAskill.

And finally, Dr Martens have added to their brand, with Joy Division and New Order themed boots! I love the Technique boots, although I fear I couldn’t quite get away with them at work.

Have a safe and spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week.

Two paths today: one for sports, one for reading!

Sports:

The World Cup begins today! Google has you covered via today’s Doodle, and John Green gives a super-quick rundown of all 32 teams. (Joachim Löw is described as looking like “an aging Beatle trying to hail a cab,” which is about right.)

Reading:

Once upon a time, there was a brilliant James Joyce scholar working on the definitive version of Ulysses. Then he disappeared. What happened to him? 

Emma Garman has started a new monthly column, Feminize Your Canon, at the Paris Review, featuring overlooked and/or underappreciated women in literature. This month: Olivia Manning!