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This Week in Culture: December 6, 2013

What to See, Read and Hear

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Kenny Gould

By Kenny Gould

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Artists Collecting Art How four artists of note take their art.

This Week in Cinema This lucky journalist got to spend some time with Spike Jonze, and in completely unrelated cinema news The Amazing Spiderman 2 trailer is here. Electro kind of looks like Dr. Manhattan, right?

Beneath San Fran Seems like everyone and his brother is going into underground tunnels and taking sweet pictures these days. These ones, from under San Francisco, will slake your thirst for a Goonies style adventure without the risk of contracting tetanus.

Put the City on your Back So a judge ruled that Detroit could, in fact, declare bankruptcy. Since when can a city even do that?

For the Dictators Among Us Lovers of wanton corruption, Transparency International wants to help you find your new home with their recently released 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index. Hint: don’t go to Denmark, New Zealand or Finland, which ranked as the least corrupt.

Spaceship, Meet Ice Cream Just in case there was any question as to whether or not Pharrell Williams was a cool dude. Speaking of Pharrell, did you know that the most played song in a 24 hour period in 2013 was Get Lucky, which had 1.5 million streams? Fact courtesy of Spotify, which explores the year in music.

Tough On Tough Mudder Want to test your mettle with a Tough Mudder competition? This piece in Outside magazine calls the famed obstacle course’s safety into question.

Texas Versus the Ants Ever heard of crazy ants? They sound like the ants from Carl Stephenson’s awesome short story, “Leiningen Versus the Ants“. Except they’re real. And no one knows how to stop them.

Tough Draw Thought this was the United States’s year for a deep world cup push? Check out the draw and think again. Yikes.

Slow Down In case you live in a city, or are really stoned, here’s six hours and twenty one minutes of “anti” time-lapse video from a rural Nevada night sky. For a more traditional time lapse, look here. It’s from space.