Greetings Webtaculators! Here’s an idea – instead of committing treason against the United States, Donald Trump should follow my lead and spend his weekends going to weddings and concerts. It’s pretty hard to destroy democracy when you’re getting down to Shut Up And Dance. On to the news.

STORY OF THE WEEK (6 min. read)
What: It’s Impeachment, Then
Why: Because Trump admitted he threatened to withhold US funds to a foreign country in a quid pro quo agreement to undermine the United States’ electoral process. Or, as Politico puts it,

“It involved misusing $250 million in aid appropriated by Congress for [Trump’s] benefit—the kind of gross misconduct that easily clears the bar of high crimes and misdemeanors set by the Constitution when impeaching a president. Which means the best way to hold Trump accountable for that misconduct isn’t a criminal trial; it’s for Congress to impeach him.”

ECONOMIC THING OF THE WEEK (long look / read)
What: Climate Strike
Why: Because young people are taking it upon themselves to fix what we’ve broken.

LAW THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: Disbar This Man
Why: Because it’s entirely clear that Giuliani has no idea what “completely legal” means.

TECH THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: 11%
Why: Because that’s the apparent amount of funding that would need to be taken away from the US military and transferred to renewable energy to completely fund wind and solar energy to all American households for a year. Maybe we need to rethink our priorities.

SPORTS THING OF THE WEEK (long read)
What: Croquet Kings
Why: Because professional football is continuing to kill itself, so let’s learn about sports that don’t require attempted murder as part of their daily routines.

MOVIE THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: So Many Ferns, So Little Time
Why: Because someone decided the world needed a Between Two Ferns movie.

TELEVISION THING OF THE WEEK ()
What: Emmys!
Why: Because the greatest success of the Emmys this year was its nomination of actually good shows for its best comedy and drama. Also, please go watch Fleabag – it’s only two seasons, and really is one of the best shows I have ever seen.

MUSIC THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: It’s Brittany, Bitch
Why: Because Brittany Howard has one of the most powerful voices in rock as part of the Alabama Shakes, so she went off and made her own album with her own sound to prove she doesn’t need a band, or a defined genre, to be ridiculously good.

PHOTOGRAPHY THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: Aminals!
Why: Because photographs of animals being derps is really the only redeeming thing about the internet.

LITERATURE THING OF THE WEEK (long read)
What: Lists! We Got Lists! Get Your Lists Here!
Why: Because The Guardian lopped off 80 years of future writing to make the internet mad at it’s best 100 books of this century; and New Yorker released the actually short-ish 2019 National Book Awards Longlist for fiction.

VIDEO GAME THING OF THE WEEK (long read)
What: Damn Birds
Why: Because Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Untitled Goose Game, two games featuring asshole birds, are out this week. Also to note, mobile gaming just got a huge upgrade thanks to Apple directly messing with the usual business model.

INTERNET THINGS OF THE WEEK (∞)
What: No Longer Between Two Ferns; Take A Walk On The Far Side; The Attack On Area 51
Why: Because Internet.

THING YOU SHOULD GET BRIAN OF THE WEEK
What: More Wedding / Concert Combos.
Why: Because Brian deserves it.

Webtacularly yours,
Brian
Managing Editor, Webtacular World
The Internet You Didn’t Know You Needed™

Greetings Webtaculators! Someone finally the Tom Clancy thing for real by using drones to attack essential global infrastructure, our federal government is run by habitual liars, and and accused rapists get to keep playing football. I am trying to pretend it’s still the 90’s, so I went to a Cake and Ben Folds concert. Those were simpler times. On to the news.

STORY OF THE WEEK (10 min. read)
What: Even Less Of The Best
Why: Because likely war criminal John Bolton is out as the US National Security Adviser in the Trump administration. Trump does not know what good leadership is.

ECONOMIC THING OF THE WEEK (long read)
What: Getting Around Is Hard To Do
Why: Because aside from the likely increase of gas over the next couple of weeks thanks to the aforementioned reason why we’re probably going to go to war with Iran, (regardless if they’re actually at fault), GM workers are going on strike, and California decided that Uber / Lyft drivers are actually employees. Additionally, Amazon’s Whole Foods is cutting worker benefits, the Sacklers hid money after killing people with heroin, and the 25 wealthiest families are worth 1.4 trillion dollars. Wonderful.

LAW THING OF THE WEEK (5 min. read)
What: This Is What Perjury Looks Like
Why: Because Brett “Boofing” Kavanaugh got accused of sexual assault yet again, this time with third party corroboration.

TECH THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: The 11th Hour For Apple
Why: Because adding a third camera to a phone is not innovative or necessary. They’ll probably still end up selling a bunch of them.

SPORTS THING OF THE WEEK (2 min. read)
What: Espana Ha Ganado
Why: Because Spain won the Basketball World Cup.

MOVIE THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: Go See Brad Pitt In Space
Why: Because I’m trying hard to think of a Brad Pitt movie that I have seen that I didn’t like, and I’m coming up short. Too bad you won’t be able to use MoviePass, because MoviePass is dead.

MUSIC THING OF THE WEEK (6 min. [ish] listen)
What: Speaking Of The 90’s
Why: Because Green Day, Weezer, and, uh… Fallout Boy, are going on tour together and released new songs. Green Day now sounds like the Raconteurs, Weezer went back to the 80’s, and Fallout Boy is bad.

ART THING OF THE WEEK (6 min. look)
What: The Art Of Burning Man
Why: Because getting to experience a bunch of large art pieces in the desert still sounds like a potentially fun thing that I will never do.

LITERATURE THING OF THE WEEK (1 hr. listen)
What: She Said
Why: Because the reporting that went into bringing down one of the biggest names in Hollywood was a lot. It’s a shame that that much work needs to go into making sure people who abuse others cannot, but I guess this is where we are now.

VIDEO GAME THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: Morederlands 3
Why: Because Borderlands 3 is essentially just more of the same, but that’s ok.

INTERNET THINGS OF THE WEEK (∞)
What: Date The Colonel; Winning Staten Island; Remembering Daniel Johnston
Why: Because Internet.

THING YOU SHOULD GET BRIAN OF THE WEEK
What: Infinite Movies For A Reasonable Price
Why: Because Brian deserves it.

Webtacularly yours,
Brian
Managing Editor, Webtacular World
The Internet You Didn’t Know You Needed™

Greetings Webtaculators! Trump is too busy lying about Hurricane Dorian being in Alabama instead of where it was actively destroying people’s lives. Also, Trump waned to invite a terrorist organization to the United States, but he messed that up too. Trump remains a terrible human being. On to the news.

STORY OF THE WEEK (5 min. read)
What: An Even Harder Brexit
Why: Because the British government under Johnson has continuously created a bigger mess of something that should have never been a problem in the first place.

ECONOMIC THING OF THE WEEK (2 min. read)
What: The Power Of Twitter
Why: Because Trump’s dumb words have power and move markets.

LAW THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: Gerrymandering, Revisited
Why: Because gerrymandering does real harm to democracies.

TECH THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: Facebook Goes Back To Its Roots
Why: Because I wouldn’t be married right now if Facebook didn’t exist, so I guess it only makes sense that they actually get into the dating game.

SPORTS THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: FYI, Nadal Was Wearing Purple
Why: Because Rafa Nadal won his 19th Grand Slam.

MOVIE THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: The Joker Takes Venice
Why: Because a superhero movie just won a prestigious international film award.

MUSIC THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: Rock Isn’t Dead!
Why: Because Tool scored their third Billboard # 1. Pitchfork, as always, doesn’t care for them.

LITERATURE THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: Watership Down For Adults
Why: Because neither Meagan nor I had read Watership Down as children, so spending some time listening to the audio book of the troubles and tribulations of rabbits who talk about murdering each other during our commute is a great way to start our day.

VIDEO GAME THING OF THE WEEK (5 min. read)
What: Gears 5
Why: Because the fifth game in the Gears Of War series is better than it probably should be. Also, a massive expansion to Monster Hunter World was released, which should provide people who like that game with hundreds of  hours of entertainment. Most importantly, the Nintendo Online service for the Switch just added a whole bunch of Super Nintendo games for free. Basically, I will be playing way too much of this for the upteenth time. My cat isn’t named Zelda for nothing.

INTERNET THINGS OF THE WEEK (∞)
What: Car Talk Retrospective; Jeremy Renner App, RIP; Small World Cup
Why: Because Internet.

THING YOU SHOULD GET BRIAN OF THE WEEK
What: Lego Devastator
Why: Because Brian deserves it.

Webtacularly yours,
Brian
Managing Editor, Webtacular World
The Internet You Didn’t Know You Needed™

Greetings Webtaculators! Hope everyone in the US spent at least some time thanking the workers in the not so distant past for their literal blood, sweat, and tears  so that a bunch of us didn’t have to go to work today. Thank your labor organizers when you get back to work tomorrow, you know, if you still work for a place with a union. We still have problems. The current administration apparently doesn’t care, since as of this writing, the Department of Labor’s page on the history of Labor Day is down.

Unrelated, thanks for reading this for 300 issues (I am just assuming you have read this – I have analytics, but since I am not trying to grow the site, make money, or do anything useful with this besides maybe entertain and inform people / create a running catalog of the things I found important during every week, I haven’t really felt compelled to think to much about how y’all interact with it). That’s 5.7 years, or 69 months, or way more of your time than I probably should have dedicated to this. In fact, this has been going on longer than my current job, which means that it essentially is the single longest thing with a regular deadline that I have done on a continuous basis. I guess that’s kinda neat. Maybe there will be 300 more. On to the news.

STORY OF THE WEEK (5 min. read)
What: Trump Of The East
Why: Because in order to limit the ability to block a “no deal Brexit,” Johnson suspended the English Parliament. I don’t know why these sad excuses for leaders are so hell bent on tearing down society, but apparently historically important people never expected modernity to take elections so frivolously. To be perfectly clear, a no deal Brexit will be very bad the UK.

ECONOMIC THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE JUST FINE
Why: Because I’m just sitting here eating my avocado toast waiting for everything to fall apart.

LAW THING OF THE WEEK (5 min. read)
What: Our Broken Court
Why: Because the NYC law not allowing people to transport weapons was changed, which means that any case stemming from the issue is moot, which means the Supreme Court has no business hearing it. Yet here we are, with the entirety of the Republican Congress still not giving a shit about gun violence. Neither does Texas.

SCIENCE THING OF THE WEEK (long look)
What: Cat. 5
Why: Because as Dorian descends on the Bahamas, Trump had no idea that a category 5 storm exists, even though he has said he didn’t know they existed multiple times in the past. At least our future understands that these events are more likely. Sorry Greta.

SPORTS THING OF THE WEEK (6 min. read)
What: Summer Of Coco
Why: Because yes, football is back, but the US Open also happened, and didn’t involve men destroying each other’s bodies, but instead consisted of young black women supporting each other as opponents (An aside – I’m still not sure why the author had to include what Osaka wore. I don’t see anyone bothering to talk about Federer’s choice of black shorts with a white shirt with black and red accents after his win). I don’t have a crystal ball, but it seems like only one of these sports has a future.

MOVIE THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: Joke’s On You
Why: Because The Joker seems well positioned to be misunderstood by people who want to misunderstand it. One Tyler Durden is enough for this world, thanks.

TELEVISION THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: The Dark Crystal Returns
Why: Because the new imagination is much better than the the original movie. Each character and group did nothing but fail to do whatever it was trying to do, with Jen somehow managing to fail the least through no fault of his own. The Seksis were appropriate nightmare fuel for a generation, and the world still is insanely gorgeous.

MUSIC THING OF THE WEEK (6 min. read)
What: Fear Not, Tool Has The Cure
Why: Because Tool’s latest album Fear Inoculum shouldn’t work in today’s musical zeitgeist, but it does. I never owned their albums, but there was always something about them that made me actually listen whenever Schism or Forty Six & 2 came on the radio, since their music was so different from whatever was on before or after it (like the definition of porn, you know a Tool song when you hear it). It still is. Also, Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell is pretty good, if you want nostalgic sadness for the future from a retro 60’s crooner rather than prog metal. Both are worth a listen, even if you don’t think you will like either.

PHOTOGRAPHY THING OF THE WEEK (8 min. look)
What: Dorian
Why: Because Hurricanes are terrifying.

LITERATURE THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: Too Little To Late
Why: Because Mattis wants to end tribalism in politics. Maybe he shouldn’t have joined (or refuse to openly critique) an administration that overtly divides the country if he really believes that.

VIDEO GAME THING OF THE WEEK (6 min. read)
What: Get In Control
Why: Because Control lets you launch heavy machinery at opponents with your mind, and is something that I am glad does not exist in reality.

INTERNET THINGS OF THE WEEK (∞)
What: Fight On And Win To 5 Cliches; 40 Years In 17 Minutes; 300 MPH
Why: Because Internet.

THING YOU SHOULD GET BRIAN OF THE WEEK
What: Epic Pass
Why: Because Brian deserves it.

Webtacularly yours,
Brian
Managing Editor, Webtacular World
The Internet You Didn’t Know You Needed™

Greetings Webtaculators! Aren’t you glad the Messiah is finally here for the second time? It took long enough. On to the news.

STORY OF THE WEEK (6 min. read)
What: Stupid Man Yells On Internet, Tanks World Economy
Why: Because I’m becoming more certain that Trump still doesn’t quite realize that he is president, or what the actual power the presidency has, because no rational actor would behave the way he did this past week.  He clearly doesn’t understand that what he says has real consequences, or else he would never open his idiot mouth. Related – stupid man tries to buy country that isn’t for sale.

ECONOMIC THING OF THE WEEK (5 min. read)
What: Business No Longer About Business, According To Best Business People
Why: Because one of the key tenets of corporations for the last 70 or so years, that corporations only responsibility is to their shareholders, is apparently not true any more, at least as far as a number of prominent CEOs are concerned. Whether or not this actually changes anything remains to be seen, but it at least sounds OK on paper. Thanks, for nothing, Milton. Also important, David Koch, one of the the worst Americans in recent memory, just passed away.

LAW THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: Space Crime
Why: Because an astronaut has been accused of committing banking fraud from the International Space Station. Way less interesting than space murder or space hijacking, but we’ll take what we can get.

SCIENCE THING OF THE WEEK (6 min. read)
What: Earth’s Lungs Are On Fire
Why: Because this is one of the likely outcomes when you elect people who don’t believe in climate change into power.

SPORTS THING OF THE WEEK (5 min. read)
What: Running Out Of Luck
Why: Because Andrew Luck should have been one of football’s historical greats. Instead, the sport destroyed him.

JOURNALISM THING OF THE WEEK (long read)
What: The Future Of News Is Doomed
Why: Because people who don’t understand that news is about more than clicks (see CEO statement, above) mean that the public does not receive the news it should. Gizmodo Media Group, which consists of the sister sites from ashes of Gawker, consistently has some of the best writing on the internet. Turning it into a click-bait site will drive it into the ground.

MOVIE THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: Too Big To Sling
Why: Because Spider Man is out of the Avengers thanks to Sony and Disney not being able to agree on how to split billions of dollars in foreseeable profits. Also, there’s going to be a new Matrix, but the payphone travel method clearly needs to be updated.

TELEVISION THING OF THE WEEK (1 min. 30 sec. watch)
What: The Mandalorian
Why: Because this is one of the many reasons most people are going to be paying $7 a month for Disney+ when it arrives in November.

MUSIC THING OF THE WEEK (6 min. read)
What: T-Swift Is Finally Growing Up
Why: Because her newest album actually talks about adult things like women empowerment and supporting LGBTQ people.

PHOTOGRAPHY THING OF THE WEEK (5 min. look)
What: The World Is On Fire
Why: Because it’s not only the Amazon.

LITERATURE THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: Some Short Things To Read
Why: Because I really have fallen off the reading wagon, but maybe some of these will help make sure you stay on.

VIDEO GAME THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: Like Dark Souls, But With Guns
Why: Because many other games try to be like FromSoftware’s genre creating title, but Remnant: From the Ashes (what an awful name) actually pulls it off.

INTERNET THINGS OF THE WEEK (∞)
What: Chicken Sandwiches Fight For Your Soul; There Are Too Many “National” Days; Crab Rangoon Is Neither Crab Nor From Rangoon.
Why: Because Internet.

THING YOU SHOULD GET BRIAN OF THE WEEK
What: A Fleet Of Yachts
Why: Because Brian deserves it.

Webtacularly yours,
Brian
Managing Editor, Webtacular World
The Internet You Didn’t Know You Needed™

Greetings Webtaculators! Well, it looks like we go a small reprieve from mass shootings, so I guess a steep selloff in stocks, a fascist white pride rally in Portland, and docking workers pay for not attending a Trump rally are marginally good things?  It’s really easy to shift the Overton Window to make degrees of awfulness seem relatively OK.  To make myself feel better about all of this, I volunteered at the Kid’s Gran Fondo, a children’s bike race that raises money for local kids with life threatening illnesses (ignore the fact that we live in a place where there needs to be fundraisers for children with health issues, but that’s another rant for another day).  Kids had fun, the weather wasn’t too hot, and I got to feel good about doing something to help make the world a little better.  All in all, a good day. On to the news.

STORY OF THE WEEK (5 min. read)
What: The Edge Of Freedom
Why: Because the Protests in Hong Kong continued this week, and are continuing to prove that it is hard to maintain democratic principles in a heavily controlled society.

ECONOMIC THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: What Is An Inverted Yield Curve And Why It Is Scary
Why: Because long term investments should generally have a greater rate of return than short term investments. That was not the case this past week.

LAW THING OF THE WEEK (3-5 min. reads)
What: Things That Make America Actually Great
Why: Because the Trump administration plans to weaken environmental protections and LGBT protections for government contractors. In regards to the latter, it looks as though Log Cabin Republicans have no idea what the hell they are talking about.

HISTORY THING OF THE WEEK (long read)
What: 400 Years Of American Slavery
Why: Because the first African slaves arrived to America 400 years ago.

SPORTS THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: More Like Jay-Why???
Why: Because there are mixed reactions after news released that Jay-Z might become a partial owner of an NFL.  This might be one of those situations where getting a seat at the table just isn’t worth it, at least morally speaking.

MOVIE THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: 6th Grade Going On 40
Why: Because raunchy coming of age stories keep on skewing younger.  Next will probably be a movie about preschoolers who swear while talking about tampons or something.

MUSIC THING OF THE WEEK (long read)
What: Sleater-Kinney In A Changing World 
Why: Because one of the preeminent women rock bands is going through some changes itself. Also, Pitchfork dove off of the deep end and decided to review a bunch of older Taylor Swift albums, probably in preparation for the new one. Pitchfork gave a Taylor Swift album a 9.0. Do what you will with that information.

COMIC BOOK THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: Marvel Doesn’t Understand Its Own History
Why: Because Art Spiegelman, creator of the wonderful graphic novel Maus, had an opening essay (read essay here) pulled from a new history of Marvel Comics for political content.

LITERATURE THING OF THE WEEK (2 min. read)
What: A Literate President Strikes Again
Why: Because Obama released his latest reading list.

INTERNET THINGS OF THE WEEK (∞)
What: Jack Gray; A Nicer Way Of Saying People Are Too Stupid For Satire, but then again, Trump Is Trying To Buy Greenland; How To Pop A Balloon
Why: Because Internet.

THING YOU SHOULD GET BRIAN OF THE WEEK
What: Greenland
Why: Because Brian deserves it.

Webtacularly yours,
Brian
Managing Editor, Webtacular World
The Internet You Didn’t Know You Needed™

Greetings Webtaculators. This all somehow keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?  On to the news.

STORY OF THE WEEK (6 min. read)
What: Epstein Dies Under Federal Imprisonment
Why: Because I’m not normally one for conspiracy theories, but ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME. The amount of failure that needed to occur for Epstein to be able to kill himself while in a jail cell after having already been under suicide watch for a previous attempt is inconceivable.  Of course, Trump decides to share his belief that this is somehow Clinton’s fault, even though he is the single person actually in charge of federal prisons.  He managed to do this in between the most horrific thumbs up photo with an orphaned child who’s parents were gunned down in the anti-Mexican attack in Texas, speaking in a mock Asian accent when talking about Korea and Japan, and going golfing again.

ECONOMIC THING OF THE WEEK (short look)
What: Stocks Are Essentially Flat
Why: Because after a bad week on Wall Street largely attributable to the stupidity of Trump’s tariff war with China, the market fell to levels just above that of a year ago.

LAW THING OF THE WEEK (long read)
What: Liberty For None
Why: Because if no one is granted asylum in the US, then I guess we aren’t the land of the free.

SPORTS THINGS OF THE WEEK (short looks)
What: So Much Spinning
Why: Because Simone Biles won her 6th all around US title with the first ever triple double on the floor and double double off of a balance beam. Also, Mitchie Brusco landed the first 1260 on a skateboard (I remember when a 900 was a big deal).

MOVIE THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: Be Like Spike
Why: Because Spike Lee published a list of 95 essential movies for aspiring directors.

MUSIC THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: Inside This Year
Why: Because even though I would have loved to see Childish Gambino, this is the first year in many that I did not attend Outside Lands. What has been one of my favorite events has slowly become for other people – in terms of cost, distance, and musical preference. At least the weed was legal this year? Also, there is new Bon Iver, but for some reason, I’m just not getting into it as much as did Justin Vernon’s previous work. Critics seem to love it, though.

PHOTOGRAPHY THING OF THE WEEK (Really, don’t even bother looking at it again. It is disgusting.)
What: This Fucking Picture
Why: If there was any doubt that Trump is a monster, this should end that discussion. But, of course it wont.

LITERATURE THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: RIP Toni Morrison
Why: Because one of the great American voices is no longer with us.

VIDEO GAME THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: Video Games Don’t Kill People
Why: Because the website IGN usually follows the ESPN mantra of entertainment – no politics. However, it’s kind of hard to not do politics when politics continuously fails to follow a basic understanding of reality.

INTERNET THINGS OF THE WEEK (∞)
What: Full Mustache; 50-30 Hogs; The First Actual Good Use Of Twitter In Years
Why: Because Internet.

THING YOU SHOULD GET BRIAN OF THE WEEK
What: Whoever took the real timeline and replaced it with this circus sideshow needs to give it back to the rest of us now.
Why: Because Brian deserves it.

Webtacularly yours,
Brian
Managing Editor, Webtacular World
The Internet You Didn’t Know You Needed™

I am sad, and I am tired. On to the news.

STORY OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: Enough
Why: Because I have no more words that will do anything to convince anyone that still thinks civilian owned weapons have any place in a free society. I mourn for the people affected by the shootings at Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton this past week, but I also have no hope that anything will be done to prevent this.

ECONOMIC THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: Cheaper Money
Why: Because I could have sworn that the only reason to lower the federal interest rate was to prop up a faltering economy. I must be wrong, since I’ve been assured America is doing great.

LAW THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: The Bar Is A Joke
Why: Because the CA bar examiners released the questions to the exam before it was given.

SCIENCE THING OF THE WEEK (2 min. read)
What: Hovering To The Future
Why: Because this is way better than those shitty two wheeled things that kept catching on fire that everyone got for Christmas two years ago.

SPORTS THING OF THE WEEK (5 min. read)
What: The Tour
Why: Because with no standout American in the race, sports journalism largely forgot to mention that this happened.

MOVIE THING OF THE WEEK (long read)
What: The Best Bads Of Bond
Why: Because the James Bond franchise has great villains.

MUSIC THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: Newport Folk Turns 60
Why: Because folk music has come a long way since it was the voice of a disenfranchised America. Maybe it needs to start speaking up again.

ART THING OF THE WEEK (short look)
What: Goofy Froot
Why: Because sometimes you need to look at a banana in a suit to feel a bit better about life.

LITERATURE THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: The Pen Vs. The Sword
Why: Because right now, it looks as thought the sword infiltrated religion and education and told people only it matters.

VIDEO GAME THING OF THE WEEK (long read)
What: The Super Bowl Of Fighting Games
Why: Because imagine that you took all of the sports derived from football (i.e. rugby, association football, american football, Aussie rules, etc.), and got all of the best teams for each of those playing at the same event over a weekend. That’s Evo.

INTERNET THINGS OF THE WEEK (∞)
What: Party Like It’s 1999; How To Sell Your Movie About Imaginary Hitler; Hot Chicken With Carla And Michael
Why: Because Internet.

THING YOU SHOULD GET BRIAN OF THE WEEK
What: Let’s Try A Week Without Mass Murder. That shouldn’t be too hard of an ask, but I don’t have much faith in humanity right now.
Why: Because Brian deserves it.

Webtacularly yours,
Brian
Managing Editor, Webtacular World
The Internet You Didn’t Know You Needed™

Greetings Webtaculators! Sometimes your weekends don’t end up being yours, but end up being about the people that make your life particularly worth living. Also, sometimes you miss a place you visited so you spend 8 hours cooking a 4 course French meal. The two could be related, but probably aren’t. Who knows.  On to the news.

BREAKING NEWS I’M PARTICULARLY MAD ABOUT OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: Gilroy Garlic Festival Massacre
Why: Because the fact that people are now murdering people with guns at a fucking garlic harvest festival means humans are too dumb, angry, and awful to have a gun. The rest of the world has proved that you don’t need a firearm to protest (Puerto Rico; Hong Kong; Moscow), so the Second Amendment (as currently misinterpreted) is a cowards way of showing dissent.

STORY OF THE WEEK (6 min. read)
What: The Failure Of Facts
Why: Because the Mueller Report was nothing without the “razzle dazzle (see dad, I do listen, I just think it’s awful),” because apparently Americans don’t understand what “Trump is not exonerated” means.

ECONOMIC THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: Cars Follow CA
Why: Because the buying power potential of an almost 40 million person state shows that things still can be done the better way.

LAW THING OF THE WEEK (8 min. read)
What: Murderers
Why: Because the current Justice Department is no better than a bunch of gang members who decides that one of their own needs to be killed. Additionally, The Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling just decided that the Constitution doesn’t matter by making the weak argument that Plaintiffs don’t have standing is one of the dumbest things that has come out of the mouths of this Conservative court.

SCIENCE THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: Yet Another Sign That Climate Change Is Real
Why: Because much of Europe broke heat records over the past week. Heat records are no longer a cute thing – they kill people.

SPORTS THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: What To Do With The Giants
Why: Because my favorite professional sports team is playing better than they have any right to at the moment.

MOVIE THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: Once Upon A Time
Why: Because Tarantino finally wrote the film about the time period he’s been aping for his entire career.

MUSIC THING OF THE WEEK (5 min. read)
What: Give Him A Chance
Why: Because Chance the Rapper just released his first album. Apparently, those Grammy award winning music compilations don’t count as albums for some reason. Also, if indie / punk rock is more your thing, listen to Drunk II by Mannequin Pussy – it does a great job representing a lot of what I felt throughout my 20s.

FOOD THING OF THE WEEK (quick look)
What: What I Made For Dinner Tonight

Why: Because I’m not great at a lot of things, but I am a damn good chef. What you’re looking at is ratatouille, French onion soup, pomme de terre Lyonnaise, and cotes courtes au vin. I missed France, had some good friends come over, and decided was super happy to spend 8 hours of my day making delicious food. Also, reading the news this late in the day has made me slightly depressed, and I am sorry for sharing it with you, so I figured I could bring some slight levity. Also, if you ever want to come over for dinner, I am more than happy to cook for you.

LITERATURE THING OF THE WEEK (5 min. read)
What: Books For Summer
Why: Because Summer is almost over, and Publishers Weekly (which is apparently still a thing?) has a decently playful list of new books you should read, even if summer break was something you last experienced in middle school.

VIDEO GAME THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: How To Learn To Love MMORPGs Again
Why: Because even though the new Wolfenstein and Fire Emblem are out (and great!), nothing is better than playing a 9 year old online game that you press the same buttons over and over so you can look like a slightly cooler cat person.

INTERNET THINGS OF THE WEEK (∞)
What: How To Advertise A Movie; Book Nerd Tattoos; Mallwave
Why: Because Internet.

THING YOU SHOULD GET BRIAN OF THE WEEK
What: An Infinite Super Market Budget
Why: Because Brian deserves it.

Webtacularly yours,
Brian
Managing Editor, Webtacular World
The Internet You Didn’t Know You Needed™

Greetings Webtaculators! One of the bad things about going on vacation is that when it ends, you realize that sitting in a cafe at 3PM eating cheese and drinking wine on a Tuesday is something you no longer get to do. The only advice I got in order to be able to do that on a more regular basis is either a) be independently wealthy with a residual income, or b) become a hobo and mooch off of my friends (thanks Lori!). Seeing that option a is not in the cards any time soon, this is an open offer for anyone to to support me and my wine and cheese lifestyle. Any takers??? No? Oh well, desk bagels it is. On to the news.

STORY OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: It Got Worse
Why: Because for some reason, the bigots have shouted loudly enough to now be a driving factor of political discourse, as though anything is balanced about saying racism is OK. Shame stopped working as a stopgap a while ago, their religious teachings have failed them, and true common decency is something that apparently 40% of the country lacks. The word “deplorable” does not go far enough to describe just how obscene Trump’s modern day white supremacist rally was. There is nothing close to resembling greatness in that crowd – only hate.

ECONOMIC THING OF THE WEEK (3 min. read)
What: The Milkshake Problem
Why: Because oil is once again the driving force behind the rapid escalation of tension in between Iran and much of the Western Hemisphere. Maybe this is another issue that is too big to pay too much attention to, since if we did, we’d all realize just how screwed we are.

LAW THING OF THE WEEK (long read)
What: The Passing Of Justice
Why: Because Justice Stevens might be the last Chief Justice to truly understand the importance and place of empathy of the human condition in the court.

TECH THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: Walled Gardens Have Failed Us
Why: Because we continuously make poor decisions in how we interact with these overly powerful devices in our pockets, and no one is going to help us protect ourselves at this point.

SPORTS THING OF THE WEEK (8 min. read)
What: Sports Are Political
Why: Because some people don’t like Kaepernick or the USWNT or what issues they have spoken out about due to them experiencing racism or sexism. Those people can go pound sand, because sports have always been political.

VISUAL ARTS THINGS OF THE WEEK (long watches)
What: All Of The Media
Why: Because Picard, Blade, Top Gun, The Witcher, and uh, Cats! are going to be the things that look like we’ll be talking about at some point in the near future. (Seriously, WTF Cats.)

MUSIC THING OF THE WEEK (4 min. read)
What: The Gift
Why: Because Lion King is such a juggernaut that it essentially gets two albums.

PAINTING THING OF THE WEEK (10 min. watch)
What: Searching For Bob
Why: Because Bob Ross is probably one of the most famous American painters, yet you can’t own his work.

PHOTOGRAPHY THING OF THE WEEK (5 min. look)
What: Audubon Photography Awards
Why: Because animals make the for the best models.

LITERATURE THING OF THE WEEK (long look)
What: Memiories
Why: Because reading about an individual’s life from their own perspective is a particularly hard job to do well – here are the best ones.

VIDEO GAME THING OF THE WEEK (8 min. read)
What: BeatEmUp Like They Used To
Why: Because they just don’t make games like Marvel Ultimate Alliance any more – they’re not trying to be great, they’re just trying to be fun.

INTERNET THINGS OF THE WEEK (∞)
What: Miss These Traps; Spider Conan; Go Back
Why: Because Internet.

THING YOU SHOULD GET BRIAN OF THE WEEK
What: Wine And Cheese Afternoon Cafe Tuesdays
Why: Because Brian deserves it.

Webtacularly yours,
Brian
Managing Editor, Webtacular World
The Internet You Didn’t Know You Needed™