Chicago’s had some heavy storms in the past week. Here’s some amazing footage of lightning striking three of the tallest buildings at the same time. There’s an HD version on Vimeo.

Wikipedia has an extensive list of shibboleths (definition), a page I found after watching a West Wing episode of the same name.

• The German words Streichholzschächtelchen (small box of matches), Eichhörnchen (squirrel), Fachhochschule (University of Applied Sciences) and Strickstrumpf (knitted sock) serve as shibboleths for distinguishing native speakers from foreigners, due to their many “ch” sounds and the large number of consonants.
• Rødgrød med fløde [ˈʁøðɡʁøːˀð mɛð ˈfløːðɛ]: The definitive test of one’s mastery of the Danish language. No non-native is likely to pronounce the phrase (which means ‘mashed strawberries with cream’ in English) correctly due to the overwhelming amount of Danish phonemes.
• “Woolloomooloo” (a suburb of Sydney) was used by Australian soldiers in the Pacific Theatre during the Second World War to identify themselves when approaching a camp.

• Bicycle-enthusiast and Talking Head David Byrne describes his perfect city, combining qualities from some of his favorite places.
• Need a handy World Cup TV schedule? Here it is.
• One of the defining photographers of 1960s London, Brian Duffy, died recently. His photos are fantastic—I love that Smirnoff ad.
• Speaking of David Bowie, this interview with Playboy from 1976 is entertaining and historically interesting.

Racebox is a single serving website that shows the race question and answer options on every US Census form since 1790. It’s kind of shocking to see “slave” on the form; I’d think they would have some euphemism along the lines “the peculiar institution.”

The full forms are linked at the bottom of the page, making it easy to eye the changes in the design sensibility and typefaces.

oflate.org is an experiment in aggregating and presenting content. It combines the utility of an RSS reader and the casual browsing of a blog into one simple stream.

The site developed out of my own needs—there was no good way to get a snapshot of all the New York Times blogs without adding 60 different RSS feeds. This site does all the work for you; it updates in real-time with posts from dozens of the best NYT blogs.

You can filter by blog, by category, or by update frequency. Each entry gives a 1-3 sentence preview, but the headline links directly to the original post. With the “Save” link next to each headline, you can save posts for later reading (to access them, use the “My Saves” link on the top bar).

oflate.org is starting with a collection of blogs from the NYT, but I’m planning other aggregation topics. Please check out the site, and use it if you like it. Send an email to oflate.org@gmail.com if you have any thoughts.

• Max Brooks wrote an article for the Chicago Reader. Give that man a column!
• A neat, interactive graphic from the BBC shows what the top 500 supercomputers of the world are up to this year.
• The Times featured this cool story of architectural detective work: Christopher Gray wanted to find out who originally lived in his hundred-year-old apartment.

BP has their own coverage of the oil leak clean-up efforts. The brilliant blues and clear skies tell a very different story than images from other sources, like The Big Picture.