"The film was shot back through the earth's atmosphere in buckets that parachuted over the Pacific Ocean, where C-130 Air Force planes snagged them with grappling hooks." You cannot make this stuff up. Hexagon sounds phenomenal.

Ben Benvie hiked all 2000miles+ of the Appalachian Trail, and took his camera. These are his pictures from Maine, the final state of the trail, and it just looks brilliant. I am not sure I could do this, but the appeal is enormous.

Strictly speaking, "The Best of *American* Journalism", but there's lots on here I'd like to read sometime.

"Landscaping overgrows, walls develop mildew, ceilings cave in—a building can be shut down, but that doesn’t make it go away. Brian Ulrich’s photographs of closed-down malls and big-box retail stores reveal the potential ghost towns lying inside successful shopping complexes all across America." Wonderful pictures; striking, strange, and sad all at once. And: all a little bit "Dead Center".

"For 27 months, Ian Fisher, his parents and friends, and the U.S. Army allowed Denver Post reporters and a photographer to watch and chronicle his recruitment, induction, training, deployment, and, finally, his return from combat. A selection of photos from Ian’s journey are posted below." The link to the full project page isn't working at the moment, but the pictures alone are striking.

"For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind." Bill Safire's speech for Richard Nixon, on the event Armstrong and Aldrin were marooned. A glimpse of alternate history.

"Late last year, my family found a line-a-day diary maintained by my great-aunt from 1937 to 1941. She was in her early teens, living on a small farm in rural Illinois with her two brothers, one of which was my grandfather." Now it's being syndicated, one line per day, on Twitter.

"This is the real line-a-day diary of a young farmgirl in 1937. It is maintained by @griner."

"Reputation with various factions are being rebalanced. The gradated reputation scale was erroneously being overwritten by the binary For Us/ Against Us flag." Entertaining explanation of the changes in the White House in the style of World of Warcraft patch notes. No, really.

Lovely article about the White House cinema, the first occupant of which was Eisenhower. I came upon this post-"If Gamers Ran The World" if only to find out who the first film-literate (ie: willing to have it inside the White House) president was. The article is a gem.

"Obama polled 62% across the whole Azeroth population, with McCain been favoured by Alliance whilst Obama is the pick of the Horde." Oh. That *is* interesting.

"The upcoming presidential election has seen record fund-raising by the candidates and a host of new donors. Now we want our users to be able to analyze and reuse some of the data we’ve been looking at while reporting on the campaign."

"EA has confirmed that the advert was paid for by Obama."

"Very recently an anonymous poster on /b/ claimed to have hacked Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account." 4chan members get into Sarah Palin's barely-disguised Yahoo mail accounts which she used for business.

4chan /b/ thread on the American economic deficit, which explains things quite well, and has stick-man-anon illustrations to boot.

"My name is Sean Tevis [photo]. I'm an Information Architect in Kansas running for State Representative. I’ve decided to “retire” my current State Representative. I'm going to win." Bold. He might just Howard Dean on us, but he deserves $9.

Remarkable series of images by Chris Jordan depicting rates of consumption in America through exhaustive diagrams. Staggering when you see them in close-up.

Mike Krahulik finally puts up a transcription of an interview with his grandfather about his time in the Navy during the Second World War. it's interesting, notably when Krahulik asks him how he feels about WWII videogames. Also, it's just a great story.