One of my favorite parts of the end of the year is the “best-of-the-year” and “year in review” articles. It’s just a fun way of looking back at the year, taking stock, and wondering what the hell is wrong with other people.
Of news summaries I most like the image-heavy ones like the CNN Year in Photos or the AP Year in Photos. There are the really short ones, like the Dictionary.com Word of the Year (“toxic“), or the all-Japan Kanji of the Year (“disaster“).
And of course there are the top-ten or top-hundred lists, the recommendations like the Times best books, or Globe best cookbooks/children’s books and Slate’s Best Audiobooks, and so on. That’s sort of expected.
But have you seen the list of the year’s best book covers, selected by book design professionals?
Where there’s a list or a review or a recap, there’s bound to be a controversy, and Spotify has stepped in it with one of theirs. They give you a personalized list of what you listened to most this year in the form of “wrapped,” but the anger is directed at their all male list of the most popular streaming artists, which of course was influenced heavily by their recommended playlists all year long. (For balance, check out NPR’s top recommended artists, all female).
I love the niche recaps, like Strong Towns reposting its ten best zoning and housing articles, including “Most Public Engagement is Worthless” and “Why Developers Are Only Building Luxury Housing.”
And I love giant data-driven retrospectives. The Google Year in Search is the king of them all (in the food category, people were looking for recipes for low-carb cheesecake and CBD gummies), but the social media notes from Twitter (K-pop music factory BTS is the hottest band in the world, duh) and Instagram (major trend: ASMR and other calming videos) are fascinating.
And when you get to the end of the internet, there’s Pornhub.
Pornhub’s review is at pornhub.com and is obviously not safe for work, but it’s also very (ahem) revealing. They have a rather impressive set of infographics covering all sorts of notable details: They moved over 4,000 petabytes of filth, more data than the entire internet transmitted in just 2002. The top searched categories didn’t change much, but most-trending searches included “Fortnite” and “Bowsette,” so … that’s… I’m sorry I know that now, but once I learned it, I had to subject you to that horrible knowledge as well. Anyway, there’s a ton of kind of neat global and regional data there, illustrating the pantsfeelings of the world.
Virtue signaling
Right-wingers love to accuse “SJWs” (social justice warriors) of “virtue signaling.” By this they mean saying things, or doing things, primarily to show off how virtuous you are, especially when those statements or actions don’t actually accomplish anything or solve anything.
So what do you call it when the president says we should deport refugees from the Vietnam war?
Longreads
This article, titled “Life in the Psych Ward,” is haunting. I do not recommend reading it in public, and I do not recommend reading it when you will be alone for a long period of time afterwards, but I recommend reading it.
Twitter Curation
You’re only allowed to call it a Monster Energy Drink if it comes from the Monster Energy region of France
Jamesgle Bells (@cashbonez) December 11, 2018
Doomsaying
“Goodbye, Miami. Goodbye, Boston.” The Thwaites Glacier is melting faster every day.
Cultivating Joy
The rusty spotted cat is the world’s smallest wild cat. Here’s a YouTube video featuring the world’s most adorable apex predator.
Secretly Ironic 