Well, it’s a snowy snowy day in Toronto. Schools are closed and flights are delayed – so here are some links that’ll hopefully keep you entertained in the meanwhile. We return to our regular schedule of verbose wanking soon…

Why is new bookmarking service Instapaper so great? Well, it’s del.icio.us minus all the useless crap. You save something and there it is. No tagging, no socialising – that’s it. Every other startup please take note. [via Tony's Twitter] (As it turns out, I can’t remember where I saw this first – but Rex makes a neat point about it here).

Think there’s nothing interesting mainstream media can do with things like 2 girls 1 cup? This oblique approach from Slate that gauges people’s reactions without showing the dreaded images gets pretty close. (btw, if you have no idea what this is, leave it that way. It’s for the best, trust me.)

Speaking of Slate… This essay argues that the sudden rash of beautiful Russian women tennis players isn’t some cosmic accident. It is, rather, about the relationship between success, beauty and capitalism: if there’s no market for you to sell your beauty, you don’t get famous because of it. Smart eh?

Yes, yes, advertising is evil… But man-oh-man is this collection of ads ever great.

Dear Bill Cosby: the only way your exhortations to black youth could be any more useless would be if you put them on your own rap album. Well, shit.

Thought Ellen Page couldn’t get any cuter? If this video of her and Michael Cera singing about Diablo Cody doesn’t make you fall for her, you have no soul. [via]

And finally, remember that whole Fox News Mass Effect nonsense? This is by far the funniest response I’ve seen. Choice bit: “We recommend instead the game Intelligent Design Wars, which is just like Geometry Wars, except that the credits read, “We don’t know who made this. (But it was probably God.)”