internet explorers club | hidden in plain sight

I've been charmed by things that are hidden, protected, secret, or mysteries. Firstly: someone hacked a copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to make a deer just wander around the 100 square mile sandbox of the game and I can’t stop watching it. He stumbles upon the most bizarre things, and as I type, he’s currently walking on the bottom of a river, so there’s that.

The Boat is Dead / Long Live the Boat: Atlas Obscura looks into the “shady, dangerous” work of breaking apart ships when they’ve retired and it is TERRIFYING. On the other hand, you’d think people would learn to not put naming competitions online, but it’s happened again. RRS Boaty McBoatface is in the lead to name a new research vessel to Antarctica. Long live Boaty McBoatface! 🚢

I am so happy that someone put together a list of 10 Fascinating Globsters and Sea Carcasses. Also, I now know that a globster is a “an unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shoreline of an ocean or other body of water.” Spoiler alert: many of them are dead whales, but also: do not read this while eating.

A peek into maps made by women cartographers, which discusses how hard they are to find in history, because more often than not they used pseudonyms, or in the case of Native women, where there are very few maps that survive. It also touches on one of my favorite things, which is cartography embroidery (the best overview imho is Samplers—Mapped & Charted)! Part 2 is here.

Harvard has a library whose sole purpose is to protect and analyze copies of the world’s rare pigments. A neat look at naming conventions of color in Chinese and English, and how we both categorize color.

A type designer has created a new typeface for the Cherokee language, creating not only a better digital version than has existed previously, but a full range of weights, glyphs, and styles.

An unbelievable look into how workers at Paris’s most famous auction house, Hotel Drouot, managed to steal thousands of pieces and re-sell them on the open market.

Finally, the lovely Helen Oyeyemi (recommended: Boy, Snow, Bird) has included one of her new short stories in BuzzFeed’s new literary section run by the inimitable Saeed Jones: If A Book Is Locked There’s Probably A Good Reason For That Don’t You Think.

Etcetera: A Horse Wore A Suit! London’s Pigeons to Monitor the City's Air Quality (!!!)
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emilyhummel.com | @hummeline