Killings brings you our weekly selection of posts that have amused, enlightened and generally distracted us.

The city of Detroit is offering free houses for writers.

map

Science is hard, but Alan Alda is challenging scientists to explain tricky concepts so that children (and the rest of us) can understand them.

Although, maybe there are some things we shouldn’t try to explain to kids… like Donnie Darko.

These maps of imaginary places collected by Umberto Eco are beautiful.

The strangely fascinating creative liberties of a professional closed caption transcriber.

Not content with being everyone’s new favourite show, True Detective is taking the art of obscure literary references to new heights.

Try not to cringe as you watch a frustrated artist walk into a gallery and smash a million dollar Ai Weiwei vase.

Happy Friday!