So I’m going to try out a thing where on Friday’s I post a link (and maybe brief summary) of some longform piece on the web that I think is awesome for anyone who finds themselves with 20-40 mins of free time over the weekend.  No worries if you aren’t interested, and if no one ever does I’ll just shut this little experiment down.

This first piece is an oldie, but a goodie.  I believe this is the first post I ever read on Wait But Why, a blog that is now at the top of my ‘Must Read’ list.  The blog uses humor and stick drawings to delve into all sorts of interesting topics, from why Generation Y folks are so unhappy, to, well, why we have yet to encounter aliens even though there’s a very rational argument to be made that we absolutely should have run into aliens at this point.  It’s sort of a How Stuff Works blog, where the ‘Stuff’ is often mind-blowingly interesting and the ‘How’ is done very nicely, with lots of pictures and easy to follow (and funny) explanations.

The post I’m linking to is a LONGFORM post with 306 thousand likes on Facebook.   This shocked me because according to the success of BuzzFeed and all other received internet wisdom, nothing longer than two sentences, preferably pasted over a picture of a cat, should ever get that much attention.

In any case, if you are in any way curious about aliens and why we absolutely should have seen some, and so why it’s a total mystery that we haven’t yet, and you enjoy laughing, you should absolutely check this out:

The Fermi Paradox

If you do read and find this piece interesting, feel free to let me know in the comments.  The Fermi Paradox post has 1,800 comments.  I’ll settle for like 1 or 2.