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Happy Friday!
Here is some high-quality content to guide you through a bleak and unforgiving Internet, brought to you by Re/code:
- In 1821, a hurricane with Category 3 winds slammed into the East Coast, destroying a lot of stuff. Because it was almost 200 years ago, we don’t know much about what happened then. But thanks to reinsurance company Swiss Re, we have an idea of what such a devastating storm would look like today. And it’s bad. Like, Lower-Manhattan-submerged-under-water bad. WNYC has the story.
- There is a TV show in the works starring a group of veterans, ex-lawmen and “hardcore woodsmen” who are devoted to finding and killing an adult male Bigfoot. Titled “Killing Bigfoot,” the trailer on Boing Boing features indecipherable Deep South accents, specialized Bigfoot practice targets and utter earnestness on the part of the show’s subjects. This has the potential to be America’s next top reality show.
- GWAR is a legendary costume-clad heavy metal group that’s long set the standard for how heavy metal groups freak out parents and title songs (a sampling: “Womb With a View,” “Saddam A GoGo,” “Triumph of the Pig Children”). Earlier this year, the group’s lead singer, Oderus Urungus, died from an accidental heroin overdose, leaving GWAR with a gaping, monster suit-sized hole. Introducing GWAR’s new frontwoman: Vulvatron. According to Wondering Sound, Vulvatron is known for shooting fake blood out of her fake breasts, although her new duties will primarily be managing the whole band’s notorious stage presence and antics. We wish her the best!
- Though virtual reality devices aren’t exactly commonplace, rest assured that this next-level geekery will be arriving soon. In the meantime, enjoy this Wired story on Marriott Hotels’ new virtual reality teleporter. The teleporters, Star Trek-looking pods that use Oculus Rift VR goggles and environmental effects, are designed to give you a unique world traveler experience; you can walk on a black sand beach of Hawaii or view London from the Tower 42 skyscraper. You can visit the pods in New York at City Hall or outside the Marriott Marquis.
- Grantland’s Bill Barnwell is one of the best writers on the NFL. He’s able to make the nuts and bolts of the game interesting to the casual fan, and his meta-commentary about the State of the Game is incisive and original. His latest post, “Imagining Football in a non-NFL World,” is up there with his best work; he points out that we’re in a sports television bubble right now, successful sports leagues come and go all the time and — perhaps most importantly — the NFL will likely soon lose its tax-exempt status, perhaps crushing its stranglehold on the sport and its lucrative TV deals.
- There are weed apps, weed startups and even weed-focused venture capital firms. But that’s not all — Engadget reviewed the weed butter-maker Magical Butter and gave it high marks. Weed butter, for the uninitiated, is a key ingredient in making edible marijuana products like weed brownies or weed popcorn. Not that we’d know. Some notes on Magical Butter from the review team: It’s a lot cleaner and less smelly than the normal process, and its $175 price tag is kind of ridiculous (but then again, so is writing about a gathering of coworkers testing out a weed butter-maker).
If you see any stories you’d like to send our way (or have any questions/comments about stories we’ve recommended), feel free to shoot an email to noah@recode.net.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
