“If you met a hatchet-wielding hitchhiker in real life, would you laugh, or would you cross the street?
‘It’s important to realize how the funniness in these videos is really close to something that’s desperately unfunny,’ says Mark O’Connell, who wrote Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever.
He thinks of Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of the alleged Boston bombers, who became affectionately known as Uncle Ruslan by the collective public, and who was widely memed for calling his nephews ‘losers.’
‘This is a guy who is undergoing an incredibly traumatic experience, and then he becomes this ironic folk hero,’ O’Connell says. ‘It’s really weird.’”
Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker: Why did we love him? by Monica Hesse
You can listen to U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey read her poem “Enlightenment” for the Virginia Festival of the Book.
A retired Japanese couple has teamed up with an architecture firm to design “a house with a bookshop and a café where neighbors and visitors can stop by.” The result is a decidedly more spacious and well-lit version of Brazenhead Books – another domicile/bookstore.
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This block of text represents ~0.008% of the letters needed to spell out the English language’s longest word. You can listen to the entire thing sounded out by a real human being, too. (Disclosure: it’ll take you three hours.)
Rob Whitworth’s timelapse footage of Kuala Lumpur. You’re welcome, eyeballs.
The amount of ground covered without leaving a single room is virtual insanity! (Sorry we’re not sorry)
Get some Dubai in your system, why don’t you?
From now on, this is how we’ll get everywhere.
Go outside!
Fun Fact: Bill Gates got mad hops.
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