The Internet is full of interesting things to read outside of The A.V. Club—no, really! In our periodic Read This posts, we point you toward interesting or noteworthy pieces that caught our eye.


Sometimes it’s easy to forget that when they’re not created out of thin air with CGI, the places in films are real sets that have to be built and then dismantled—or, in the case of the original Tatooine sets for Star Wars, left to rot in the desert. Sammy Medina at Co. Design details the recent discovery of those neglected sets, which include the Skywalker ranch and Mos Espa by New York photographer Rä Di Martino, who found the sets in Tunisia by accident on Google Earth and eventually tracked them down with the help of locals.

Di Martino has now immortalized the crumbling remains of Tatooine in two series of photographs: “No More Stars,” which focuses on Luke Skywalker’s homestead, and “Every World’s A Stage,” which uses the rest of the sets, including Mos Espa. The sets really do appear to come from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away—they've become visibly run down and decrepit in the 35-plus years since the release of the original film. Some of the photos are up at Co. Design, ready to remind you of the slow, unavoidable passage of time and inevitable decay of all good things. In case the prequels didn’t already do that.