I was going to put up a picture of Omar Little and Robb Stark in sort of a tribute to Things That Are Coming, but there’s only so far I’m willing to stretch for a joke. We’ll just have to content ourselves with a chunk of space-time instead and look at some new things this week as it wraps up.

• Thing! Experimental evidence of the The Big Bang has been reported here and there all week long, but Jorge Cham¹ is the first person to put it in terms that I could really grasp. Yes, yes, life spent in the study of science and all that, sometimes you only really grasp things with the addition of a good picture².
• Thing! The very sexy R Stevens always has a half-dozen things on his plate at any given time, the result of a genetic makeup that incapable of either boredom or standing still for more than 37 seconds at a time. He took on another one starting today, and it seems such a perfect match I’m surprised it took thing long. Starting today, Stevens launches Multitouch Theater at Macworld; each week will see Stevens opining on “Macs, iOS, and everything in between”, which is sort of like getting paid to just be him.
• Thing! Today, The AV Club launched what they’re calling an “illustrated column”, but which is clearly a webcomic³. Arriving monthly, Iconography will look at artifacts from pop culture, starting off with the golden idol from Raiders.
• No Thing! Despite being de-bejabbered at the prospect of owing her supporters and not being able to make good, Ursula Vernon (obligatory note that I loves me some Digger) has decided to dip her toes into the Patreon pool. I tagged this item as No Thing because that’s what Vernon is promising her supporters, and as such in limiting them to only two tiers of support:
  

  Pledge $1.00 or more per month
  Nothing much!

  Pledge $2.00 or more per month
  Still nothing, but twice as much of it!

  The Patreon campaign is best described as a Keep Ursula Weird slush fund, noting that one and two dollars are enough to purchase (respectively) a cup of coffee and a roll of antacids⁴. Honestly, it’s no different than John Allison’s subscription drive experiment, or any other tip jar or donation link on any number of webcomics homepages and Vernon should feel no guilt or obligation.

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¹ With a technical assist from Jon Kaufman, a member of the BICEP2 team that found the confirming evidence. Sometimes you have to go straight to the source.

² Case in point: I mastered semiconductor physics back in college largely because Dr Art Western (who, among other things, amused himself by sitting on a bed of nails outside his office on Parents Weekend and briefly held the world record for a high-temparature superconductor, back when double digits in Kelvin was a big deal) managed to explain charge migration via a diagram involving crazed squirrels avoiding traps.

Also, shamed by his grade-school daughter for not being a good enough teacher, if you got an A on one of Dr Western’s exams, you got a gold star (two gold stars for a perfect 100!), and collecting three or more by the end of term meant you could trade them in for a Batman sticker. Two exams in the 90s and one in the high 80s meant I came just short of the sticker, but I got an A for the class.

³ Structurally, it’s a series of frameless images with captions, which makes it feel like the work of Erika Moen, or Wendy McNaughton, or Molly Crabapple.

⁴ Necessitated by her I’ma eat weird prepackaged foods with my husband so you don’t have to podcast, Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap. It’s a riot.