Weirdness Wednesday: Holy crap, look at that thing on his neck!

 I also posted about this on my history blog, but I thought I'd share it here too. Kim Il-Sung, the founder of North Korea, had a giant...thing on the back of his neck and man, was that sucker B I G.

Like I said, B I G. According to Wikipedia, he had a condition called calcinosis which causes calcium deposits to accumulate in the body. So you're probably wondering why he didn't just get it removed? Well, the official reason is that it was considered too dangerous to remove owing to it being so close to his spine and brain. Unofficially, it's rumored that he was too scared - paranoia made him too fearful that he would get bumped off while under the knife. I guess if you're the founder and leader of a brutal regime, you're bound to be worried about bad karma catching up with you.

You can be thankful for these links on Thanksgiving

Things that will survive nuclear war: Cockroaches, Nokia phones, and RadioShack.

Of course Norway had to flex on the world with their newly redesigned passports.

Book dust jackets have had a long, winding history.

Some dude was driving around Toronto, Canada with 30 year old expired tags.

Here's some links for you

• Who wants to live in a former library? UH, ME!
• Y'all want some free fiction to read? Find them here and here
• Here's some links from LitHub: Writing advice from Philip Roth, A tale of staying at Nora Ephron's apartment, and meeting the patron saint of typewriters
• Dick Francis: A crime reader's guide to the classics

Hyperlinks: They're like the Hyperloop, but, you know, practical

A collection of links to interesting articles.

• Because Australia has to be the Florida for the rest of the world, drivers can soon get emojis on their license plates in Queensland.
• Meanwhile in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration had to issue a warning because people (presumably the rich and stupid) are buying the blood of young people for infusions as part of some dumbass 21st century Elizabeth Bathory scheme to stay youthful. I honestly have no real comment other than what the actual fuck?
• Tor.com has a article listing six SF and fantasy book series that could have been as big on television as Game of Thrones.
• Trekcore has the names for the next five episodes of Star Trek: Discovery if you're curious about that sort of thing. Have I ever mentioned that I really, really, REALLY hate that CBS put this show on their streaming service and not on TV where I could and would watch it? I'm a tiny bit salty about it, yeah.
• This is a three-fer: Tim Knight, proprietor of the most excellent HeroPress blog and world's leading expert on spotted dick, has three posts up today that are worth a perusal: Weird Wednesday (that'll haunt my dreams tonight...), Hump Day Dreams, and Wonder Woman Wednesday.