A month or so ago, I was walking through Capitol Hill with a friend. We walked by a former telephone pole that is now sawed off about ten feet up; what remains is thickly covered with several kinds of vine. As we walked by, I reached out and let my palm skip across its surface.

“Ok,” he said. “Hold on. I need you to explain what just happened.”

“I touched the plants?” I said.

“I was walking with a coworker the other day, and she did that too. And I see people just, just do that – reaching out and, like, caressing plants. What is that? Why?”

“Sometimes they look soft,” I said. “Or like they have a varied texture. And I want to know what they feel like. I wonder if they’ll be pokey, or soft like moss, or something else altogether. I just do it. I’d do the same thing with sweaters if we were walking through a department store.” This seemed to satisfy him. Somewhat.

This is all just background to tell you one thing: if I visited one of these exhibits, I would need a couple hours just to go around petting everything, just to see what it felt like.

The best slash I never knew I wanted: did you know that Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde totally hooked up once? I didn’t, and I never knew how badly I wanted it to be so. Reading this caused one of the more peculiar kinds of happiness I’ve experienced.

The internet – and io9 in particular – is serving up a lot of lost places lately. Here’s a picture-ful roundup of cities that have sunk beneath the ocean.

The surprisingly fascinating and nuanced history of camouflage.

All the magic is in long exposures.

At Hyperallergenic, a roundup of first photographs – the first one full stop, the first photo of a person, the first photo of the moon, and (above) the first selfie. Meanwhile, I’ll just leave this here.

Yes, I am a sucker for this kind of thing. At Dangerous Minds, old New York crime photos are artfully stitched into the current-day locations.

Black and white photos of famous people on skateboards. Yes, that is a single serving I am going to have to have. The John Lennon one, I can’t even.

And, finally: it was PARK(ing) Day on Friday. I couldn’t make it because I was at work and needed a sandwich and some quiet more than I needed a walk. (Sad but true.) Here are highlights from around the city. This year’s theme: astroturf.