So, how was it for you? As you peeled the crusted lids from each other at the alarm’s insistence this morning, gingerly ran the cracked, dried sponge of your dessicated tongue over the crenellated horrors that your lips seemed to have become, tentatively explored your nostrils to dislodge the lignocaine rocks obstructing the airflow, and took the first, sweet sup of the foul soup that was your morning breath, was it with a sense of fear and regret? WHAT DID YOU DO? WHO WITH? WHO SAW?
Yes, that’s right, it is OFFICE PARTY SEASON! Last night was, as far as I can tell, the BIG ONE when it came to friends and acquaintances of mine having their annual ethanol celebration, so how was it for you? What tales, what gossip, what larks?
I don’t tend to go to office parties (this will no doubt shock you – “surely”, I imagine you thinking, “surely someone with Matt’s sunny demeanour and effervescent outlook on life is simply FIGHTING off the invites of a December?” well, readers, let me disabuse you of that notion) which is probably for the best; the first one I ever attended, in my second ever week of proper, full-time employment, ended with me drunkenly telling the MD of the company I’d joined that the whole industry was utterly vile and disgusting, potentially even morally wrong, and I didn’t think I could keep doing it (I lasted three years).
Anyway, I hope YOURS was fun, whatever you got up to. As we bask happily in the glory of a Brexit deal achieved (you know that Churchillian “This is not the end; this is not even the beginning of the end…” spiel? Yes, well, exactly), let me apply the following stinking poultice of words and links and images to your sweating brow – or, alternatively, maybe just head to the pub for lunch and DON’T COME BACK.
THIS, AS EVER, IS WEB CURIOS!
SHALL WE START WITH THE LATEST IMPERICA MIX? YES WE SHALL!
THE SECTION WHICH FIRMLY BELIEVES THAT THE ONLY POSSIBLE MOTIVATION FOR THE LAUNCH OF FACEBOOK KIDS IS TO FACILITATE BETTER INTERGENERATIONAL COMMUNICATION, HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST SOME SORT OF FILTHY PECUNIARY MOTIVE YOU DREADFUL CYNIC:
- Facebook (Well, Messenger) Kids: In a year characterised by bad news, or at the very least news which has us peering round the corner of the future rather nervously, uncertain of what this presages, this feels like a fitting addition – AND LO, IT CAME TO PASS THAT ZUCKERBERG REALISED THAT ONBOARDING WAS GOING TO HAVE TO START EARLIER IF THE ASSIMILATION PROJECT WAS TO SUCCEED! Look, this actually seems reasonably benign, ostensibly; it’s a Messenger app, kids can only chat with parentally approved contacts, there won’t be any ads…considering, though, that Facebook’s raison d’etre as a business is to collect as much data as possible about its users to be able to then serve them adverts based on those perceived interests, it’s hardly a stretch to see exactly the sort of competitive advantage the company could develop if, say, it was able to start building a picture of people’s likes, dislikes and general personality from the age of, say, 6 by, for example,building profiles on them based on conversations they have on a messaging platform. Hypothetically, of course.
- You Can Now Livestream or Video Chat From Within Messenger Games: This is a VERY niche interest post, being as it will mean something only to those of you involved in developing games for Messenger; still, interesting to see whether there’s any Twitch-style breakout streaming community which develops from this.
- Facebook Year in Review!: I’m sure you’ve already been served dozens of these bastard things already this week, but if for some reason it’s not quite yet hit normie-land then ENJOY the oppotunity to have a selection of entirely unconnected things you might have done on The Network presented back to you with some animation, music and an unjustified air of coherence. Given the fact that I post almost nothing on Facebook other than a link to this each week (my ‘friends’ are so lucky), my version of this was basically just a succession of slightly *odd* artworks; it’s reminded me to apologise for including that painting of the tongue with all the nails through it a few weeks’ back, as it just gave me a right scare. Sorry!
- Insta Adds Highlights & Archives To Stories: Instagram’s now letting users compile their stories into ‘Highlights’ packages: “Stories Highlights appear in a new section on your profile below your bio. To create a highlight, tap the “New” circle at the far left. From there, you can choose any stories from your archive, select a cover for your highlight and give it a name. Once you’re done, your highlight will appear as a circle on your profile that plays as a stand-alone story when someone taps it. Highlights stay on your profile until you remove them, and you can have as many highlights as you’d like. To edit or remove a highlight, just tap and hold that highlight on your profile.” Effectively this is being positioned as a personal ‘trailer’ for users – the blurb talks about it letting you show off ‘all sides of your personality’, so basically this is your SIZZLE REEL FOR LIFE. Jesus. Oh, and you can now save your Stories FOREVER. Which is nice.
- Instagram Testing Standalone New Messenger Platform: STOP IT! STOP CREATING NEW, UNNECESSARY PLATFORMS FOR PEOPLE TO COMMUNICATE ON! Fine, they’re only testing it, but if you want to imagine how incredibly annoying this is going to get take a moment to imagine communicating with someone when each message bounces between a different platform – SMS to Messenger to Snap to Email to Slack to Skype to FB post to Whatsapp to Insta Messenger to OH MY GOD MAKE IT STOP. Although as a trolling tactic that’s a superb one, might start doing it on reflection.
- Insta Launches Animal Protection Warnings: This is interesting, though. As of the now(ish), when users search Insta for particular terms or hashtags which the platform thinks might be associated with animal welfare issues or illegal trade, it’ll flash up a warning telling them that there may be exploitative content under that search. Generally a good thing, I think, although it’ll be interesting to see whether this presages a swathe of these things for various different types of, er, problematic content.
- Imgur Adds New Features: Apologies for the Mashable article here; although, on the upside it did teach me that Imgur is pronounced Image-ur which momentarily stunned me. Anyway, the image sharing platform has rolled out a host of updates, including a newsfeed for users and the ability to post videos – what it terms ‘snacks’, which rather than just being looping gifs are instead pausable, rewindable and all that jazz. No followers on Imgur, interestingly, just an algorithm to punt stuff at you and the ability to direct said algorithm through tags, etc. If you’re a brand with decent photo assets and the time to bother, might be worth considering chucking some stuff on there and having a play imho.
- Google Adds Celebrity Selfie Answers: A question – when you are after a nugget of information about your favourite famous, would you like to a) have that information delivered to you quickly and efficiently, in a medium which allows for the fastest assimilation of the desired knowledge; or b) instead have that information delivered to you in a slightly self-indulgent piece to camera by said famous? None of you said the latter, did you? No, you didn’t, and yet here we are. Only in the US so far, but doubtless will be rolled out all over the place; if you’re a brand, this is the time to think about updating any contracts with famouses to ensure they are wearing YOUR logos when they shoot their version of these. God, that was literally the first thing that sprang to mind – BRAND EQUITY. I disgust myself, I am sorry.
- YouTube Rewind 2017: The year in YouTube. If you’re <25, you might be able to make more sense of this than I did. See how many utterly generic floppy-haired smilers YOU can recognise!
- YouTube Ad of the Year: Do you care about this year’s adverts so much that you want to spend an hour sitting through all these to pick your favourites? No, I didn’t imagine that you did. Still, there’s a selection of what YouTube’s deemed ‘the best creative’ in here, sorted into variou bafflingly-named categories – what the everliving fcuk does ‘Puts Stars In Your Eyes’ mean as a category? What might an ad that ‘Knows Know Limits’ look like? Interestingly it’s only the final category that collects ADS FOR JUSTICE AND A BETTER WORLD, which is odd considering that’s apparently the only thing does any more.
- The Pantone Colour of the Year: Purple. It’s purple. For the LOLs, can any of you who work in design please insist on using ONLY Pantone 18-3838 in your work today, regardless of brief or brand? Oh, come on, LIVE A LITTLE.
By Iggy Smalls
NEXT, TRY THIS FUTURE SOUNDS MIX BY DOBBY WHICH IS VERY GOOD INDEED!
- 2017, Wrapped: You’ve probably all done this by now, but in case you’ve somehow missed the procession of preening narcissists wanging on about all the music THEY have been listening to all year and all the cool bands THEY like or how, oh, gosh, just how completely embarassing THEIR taste is, you must think I’m *awful*!, then this is your chance to join them! Spotify’s annual datacruncher tells you what music you listened to most this year, which tracks, genres and artists, and creates a nice little image for social sharing purposes. Which is nice, great, fine, but there’s something really quite horridly bleak about their dead-eyed insistence on referring to music as ‘content’ throughout. “OH I LOVE THIS CONTENT!” shout the excitable teens, holding aloft their devices to Shazam the CONTENT in exchange for ADDITIONAL BRANDED CONTENT from the MILLENNIAL-FRIENDLY BRAND PARTNER. I don’t understand the future at all, it makes me sad.
- Access Mars With Google: You want to drive the Mars Rover around, exploring the Red Planet and learning about all the cool and exciting stuff it saw up there and seeing whether or not you can be the one to spot the signs of alien civilisation which MUST be up there? OF COURSE YOU DO! This is honestly amazing, seriously – you can sit on a bus to Norwood Junction and explore the surface of another planet on a small piece of glass and plastic. I don’t undestand the future at all, it’s amazing.
- Whamageddon: This is basically The Game (HA!), festive edition – the challenge of Whamageddon is to go as long as possible through the festive season without knowingly hearing ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham! I think this gets properly hard around a week out, but give it a go. Sadly the fact that I go to Italy in a couple of weeks makes it impossible for me to win at this – Italian TV around Christmas is even worse than normal, and one of its idiosyncracies is that seemingly every single ad and tv show uses Last Christmas as a festive soundtrack, often, for added pleasure, a version which is being ‘sung’ by an Italian whose grasp of English is largely based on perceived phonetics and so whose warbling can be pretty faithfully transcribed as being along the lines of “Lass kriesmas, you gayv mi yo art, thee verry necks day, yu giveet ayway” (try it, seriously, it’s surprisingly fun).
- Cool Box Art: A Twitter account sharing examples of, er, cool videogame box art. Aside from the art, some of the titles on display are amazing – I am fairly certain that a game with the working title: “Gunthro and the Epic Blunder” would be unlikely to get greenlit in 2017.
- Tweetreality: Twitter is, it’s fair to say, a vile, noisy, horrible mess. What would make it better? I know! How about viewing it through an interface that presented Tweets popping up in front of your eyes like millions of little bubbles of horror, all arranged by where in the world they were Tweeted from? No, I know, it sounds ghastly. Still, as a proof-of-concept, Tweetreality’s obviously a smart bit of coding and will no doubt do the developer’s career no end of good; seriously, though, we probably ought to burn the code to make sure it can never become a mainstream reality. If you want to imagine what a proper dose of futureinformationmadness might feel like, download this and have a play (iOS only, I’m afraid).
- Amazon Pet Profiles: I don’t think that these are live in the UK yet, more’s the pity; shoppers in the US, though, concerned that their pets are feeling somehow excluded from the relentless march of Jeff Bezos into every single corner of their waking and sleeping existences, can now create user profiles on Amazon for their pets. No, no, you’re entirely right, there is no conceivable reason why anyone would want to do this (oh, ok, fine, there are discounts on petfood orders and the nebulous promise of vouchers and deals), but this is where we are. What’s that, Jeff? You don’t know enough about my household and our hopes, dreams, fears, wants and lusts? No problem, MINE MY PETS FOR ADVERTISER-FRIENDLY DATAPOINTS, JEFF! COME INTO MY LIFE JEFF! I ACCEPT YOUR BODY AND BLOOD AS THE EUCHARIST OF MY MODERN RELIGION, JEFF. Hang on, I’ve gone wrong here haven’t I? Sorry.
- Photos of the Year 2017: The Atlantic, doing their thing. Man, it has been a BLEAK 12 months.
- Cheerfriend: This is, I think, a really nice idea with lots of potential other applications. Cheerfriend is designed for people running marathons and the like; it’s an app which they download onto their phone and which lets their friends send them messages of support through the Cheerfriend website which they can hear through their headphones as they run. Which is obviously HUGELY open to abuse – it would be sort of darkly funny to send random messages shouting things like “GOD LOOK OUT!” – there’s all sorts of places you can go with this idea; for a start you could use this tech to power a sort of Challenge Anneka, with teams of people guiding runners around a city, say. Actually that’s a really good idea, I’m going to use that.
- Top9: Your top nine Insta photos of 2017, based on how much ENGAGEMENT they got, presented in a pretty grid and available to buy as prints and stuff. Web Curios takes no responsibility for any emotional distress caused by all your top photos featuring your ex.
- Mayku Formbox: Remember when 3d printing was going to be the future, and when we were all going to have little makerbots in our houses churning out replacement plug fittings and model railway parts and stuff? God, those were happier times, weren’t they? Now we’ve all realised the limitations, though, the world has slightly moved on – this is an interesting addition to the maker movement which looks like it has rather a lot of potential. You sort of have to watch the video to really get it, but basically this is a little piece of kit which uses vacuum to create instant, incredibly accurate moulds of, well, anything at all. Presuming you’re making stuff which can be moulded, this could be transformative; certainly from the point of view of the ability to quickly knock out bespoke pieces it’s a potential godsend.
- Beloved Recluse: A little bot churning out tiny lines of algogenerated ‘poetry’ and oh me oh my this is lovely.
- 3d Printing Wifi: Ok, this is included not because it is ‘fun’ but because it’s honestly genius and the potential to do really fun stuff with the idea is honestly huge. It’s a research paper from the University of Washington whose authors have managed to 3d print objects which can connect to WiFi networks (the plastic in the 3d printer’s mixed with metals/minerals, is the upshot, but, er, there’s a lot more science in here than that which I simply don’t understand at all) – which, as they explain, can mean “buttons, smart sliders and physical knobs that wirelessly control music volume and lights as well as smart bottles that can sense liquid flow and send data to nearby RF devices, without batteries or electronics.” Seriously, just think of the possibilities here – even if only for stupid, pointless, advermarketingpr stunts.
- Social Justice Kittens 2018: This year’s iteration of Liartown’s Social Justice Kittens calendar once again features a selection of adorable cats, each of whom is presented with a quote along the lines of “Persistent disagreement is the height of harassment”. As a bonus, this year it also includes social justice puppies who are taking sincere and accountable stock of their actions and who ADMIT THEIR FAULTS. You know someone who will find this hilarious, and you will also know someone who will find this annoying and actually quite problematic if you stop to think about it. Both those people are annoying and probably sort-of dicks, so send this link to both of them. Actually, here’s an idea – a calendar of cat images which can be personalised with whatever copy the buyer chooses, printed on demand – actually, I reckon that would work; Saz, get mong on it asap please thanks.
By Wayne Sorce
- View From 30k: This might be my favourite high-concept Insta account of the year. View from 30k presents abstract depictions of runways at airports as seen from above; so just lines. Black lines on a grey background. These are ACE, seriously.
- The Good News Podcast: Accompanied with my standard “I don’t really listen to podcastzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz NOONE CARES WHAT YOU LIKE OR DON’T LIKE MATT, FFS” disclaimer, this is MORE CONTENT by Cards Against Humanity (yes, I know, it’s marketing, sorry) – the idea being that it’s a podcast about nice stuff in an era full of awful stuff. Might be good, might not be, but it’s a nice idea and I know how much you all LOVE podcasts (as an aside, fair play to CAH for really putting the money into this content marketing stuff).
- The History Chicks: Another podcast! Thematic consistency! Sequential links! Occasionally the random way in which I throw links into the GDoc during the week throws up unexpected curatorial coherence, such as now when I link to two podcasts in a row. The History Chicks is all about women from history, whether fictional or factual,. It was recommended to me by someone (who exactly I forget; sorry, someone), and the archive looks DEEP -the latest one’s nearly two hours on Coco Chanel, which for some of you will be absolute catnip.
- Jam: This is interesting – Jam’s basically an online learning course academy thing for kids, where they can take a variety of video-led courses on a range of topics (music, coding, craft, art, etc) guided by their teacher and with the option to get one-on-one support via video link with a mentor…the courses cost, though, and it’s not exactly easy to see on the site how much they go for, so caveat emptor and all that, but a cursory glance through the available modules makes this look like quite a useful service for young and old kids.
- Marginalia Paraphernalia: Who doesn’t love marginalia, the weird doodlings of bored monks in the margins of illuminated manuscripts? NO FCUKER, THAT’S WHO! This Kickstarter will, if funded, offer backers small lapel badges of selected doodles, meaning that YOU could be the proud owner of a small pin featuring a nun picking penises from a tree – trust me, you WANT this.
- Vlipsy: Like Giphy, but for clips from shows (basically); Vlipsy (that NAME, though) is set up to be a repository for quickly and easily finding short clips of TV shows, animations; rather than gifs, these are standard videos which can be paused, fast forwarded, etc. They’re actively soliciting CONTENT PARTNERS, so for publishers this might be a useful way of packaging up content in bitesize fashion. Might, I said.
- What We Hated In 2017: The clever people at Pudding, undisputed kings of the ‘fun, pop culture dataviz blogpost’ in 2017, present an overview of what people (well, Americans) hated in 2017, broken down by age and location. Mainly interesting from a dataviz point of view; I particularly enjoyed the graphs showing how hate levels for different things change over time (older people tend to like numbers more than younger people, whilst the popularity of ‘butt selfies’ is apparently consistent regardless of age, which is nice to know).
- The Neil Young Archives: How much Neil Young do you want in your life? Do you want ALL the Neil Young? You do, don’t you, I can tell. Here, in exchange for just an email address, you can basically wallow in Neil Young’s sweat, musically speaking – this is an insanely comprehensive site, and whilst I’m normally not a fan of a skeuomorphic UX I also quite like the filing cabinet interface. Man, Mr Young is PROLIFIC.
- Milkfloat Corner: Sometimes the web is an awful place – argumentative, shouty, confrontational, violent, cruel, venal and stupid. Occasionally, though, one stumbles across oases of purity amongst the blasted desert of horrors, and one pauses to breathe a lungful of clean, sweet, goodness before once again donning the gasmask and heading out again into the wasteland. Milkfloat Corner is one such oasis, a site seemingly in abeyance, which celebrates milk floats – no more, no less. Want to know about different float models? Course you do! If you are having a bad day, or at the very least a ‘difficult’ and hungover one, read the FAQ Page and feel better about EVERYTHING. It’s like a cup of very milky warm tea and a Nice biscuit.
- Missing Fabrics: It’s ANOTHER one! Actually I have a vague idea that quite a few of you knit and do craft stuff, so this link may in fact serve a purpose beyond whimsy, but read this and fall in love: “Imagine you are in the middle of a project and suddenly realize you don’t have enough fabric to finish! Or you have your next quilt all planned and are anxious to start, but you can’t find one of the fabrics! What do you do? How would you like to have quilters and fabric shop owners THE WORLD OVER looking for your fabric for you? Instead of just a handful of people you now have thousands looking! Mind boggling idea isn’t it?” HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE SOMEONE SO HAPPY ABOUT THE MERE CONCEPT OF THE INTERNET?
- Defunctland: You may never have realised that the one thing missing from your life was a regular video series exploring abandoned and defunct amusement parks and talking about the rides, the themes and the special attractions there, but that is in fact exactly what you need to complete your existence. Don’t fight it.
- Butterfly: This is crazy, and as far as I can tell it’s not a hoax or a spoof – launching next year, this is an ultrasound scanner which works by being plugged into your phone and which displays the readings on your device’s screen. This is truly transformative if it works as advertised, although it will also lead to a trend of pregnant people carrying one of these around and aggressively foisting LIVE UTERUSWATCH on anyone who’ll bear to listen (no, no, not ALL pregnant people, obviously, but I bet you can all think of someone who’d do that, don’t lie).
- What’s Your Tech Generation?: Nice interactive by the Washington Post – tell if your year of birth and it will alter the piece to reflect the sorts of things you’ll have found familiar whilst growing up with tech. Also contains some EXCELLENT ‘this is how long it took to do stuff in 1994’ which I suggest you share with your kids if you want some easy, stereotypical ‘Mum/Dad, the past was RUBBISH!’ eyerolling lols.
- 10×17: Another seasonal link returning from last year, 10×17 (you will doubtless recall) is the annual thing whereby a bunch of artists (26, to be precise) design covers for their 10 favourite records of the year, counting down from #10 to #1 each day. Beautiful designs, and it’s really interesting to see, where there are overlaps in thh selections, how different artists have responded to different musicians’ works. Oh, and the site’s nicely designed too, and you can stream the records – basically this is just great, enjoy it.
- Toy Town: Do you remember the Medieval Cities Generator? OF COURSE YOU DO! I know you remember all the links I post here, and that some of you – the most dedicated, the ones who really ‘get’ what I’m trying to do here, yeah? – keep detailed ledgers of them with notes about how they made you FEEL. Anyway, this is like the medieval cities generator except it creates them in 3d and lets you (sort of) wander round them. Look, I like it ok?
- Paper Signals: Another very, very fun little Google project, this is a site which gives you instructions on how to build your very own papercraft IoT toy – from a little cardboard arrow which changes which direction it’s pointing in depending on the current valuation of Bitcoin, say, to an umbrella which furls and unfurls dependent on the likelihood of rain, this is such a lovely thing to play with as an introduction to connectivity and electronics. If you’re a certain type of family/person, this is absolutely going to be your Christmas project.
- Dear Cat Callers: Hugely depressing Insta of the week! This is an account run by a woman in the US, who decided that for a month she’d take a selfie with all the men who catcalled her as she walked around. The idea is obviously to demonstrate the prevalence of the behaviour, and also, I imagine, to confront the guys with the reality of what it is they’re doing, how it might make someone feel, etc – what’s most striking about the images is, well, how incredibly pleased with themselves the men look, like they can’t imagine why anyone might have a problem (“it;s just a compliment, sweetheart!”) FFS, GUYS!
- Rogue Puzzles: Last up this week, a series of ASCII-rogue games which, if that means anything to you, really are rather nicely done; pleasingly oblique, these reward a bit of thinking. ENJOY THEM.
FINALLY IN THE MUSICAL SELECTIONS, SOUNDTRACK THE LONGREADS WITH THE SUPERB MAVIS STAPLES!
THE CIRCUS OF TUMBLRS!
- The Page 99 Test: Not in fact a Tumblr! Look, if you lot won’t keep making Tumblrs then I’m just going to have to get a bit lax on the category distinctions, deal with it. Anyway, this is quite an interesting little site; from what I can tell, it’s a bunch of authors/academics presenting page 99 of their works as an argument as to why anyone might theoretically want to read them; the site as a whole presents a really broad range of topics and arguments in a way that honestly does make you think “actually, I wouldn’t mind knowing more about that” and which might be useful if you’re looking for heavyweight reading material to ignore while you get drunk this Christmas.
- Eat More Bikes: A comic! On Tumblr! Whodathunkit? This is quite funny, in a very ‘black and white line drawn comic on Tumblr’ sort of way.
- Effect Pedal: A Tumblr devoted to, er, guitar effects pedals. Look, SOMEONE might care.
- Sound Designer Jeans: Look, this is mostly just a pretty standard Tumblr so I’m linking to a specific post which links to a selection of this person’s remixes. These are…dear God, I didn’t know sound could *do*that to a person. I can absolutely guarantee to you that the track right a the top of the page is one of the most upsetting things you will ever have heard, ever. Go on, click the link and press play. Go on. *waits* SEE? I TOLD YOU.
LONG THINGS WHICH ARE LONG!
- The Best Online Essays of 2017: Not according to me, you understand, but according to whoever Ted Gioia is; I haven’t, I confess, read all of these, but I recognise enough of the titles here to be reasonably confident in Mr Gioia’s taste; as you limp towards the end of the working year, these are a good resource for the ‘things I can do at work which aren’t work but which involve me reading and so which I can probably just about pass off as ‘research’ or similar’ (as an aside, back in the day when I had to do timesheets I used to regularly fill entire days with ‘general internet research’ under ‘non-billable’ – amazingly, this was considered a reasonable use of my time. No wonder the economy’s going to tits).
- Airport Novella: Brilliantly silly idea which also doubles up as a sort of proper literary art project; this is an actual, ‘proper’ 40-page novella in PDF form, made up solely of excerpts from the sort of novels sold at airports – you know, the ones in which the author’s name is embossed on the front in such a way to present their surname in the manner of the giant, looming letters from the 80s AIDS adverts. Includes contributions from Brown, Childs, Crichton and the rest, and is sort of weirdly good in a nonsensical and obviously very bad way.
- The Year in Band Names: An annual Web Curios favourite, this is the AV Club’s yearly rundown of the best new band names they stumbled across over the past 12 months. There is SO MUCH GOLD in here, but let me pick out a few favourites – The Vaticunts, Marijuana Deathsquads and Coach, I’m Gay, I SALUTE YOU!
- Damien Hirst: As Hirst’s Biennale show, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, wraps up, this interview with him covers the money, the work and again the money; it’s one of the more sympathetic interviews with Hirst I’ve read, though the degree of ‘sympathy’ will probably depend on your reaction to the sales figures being dropped throughout. The show, I’ll say again, is one of the most astounding, vulgar, huge, brash, shouty and fun things I saw all year; wherever it ends up (it’s going to be the Middle East, isn’t it?), do try and get to see it.
- The Best Books of 2017: There were loads of these I could have included, but NPR’s is the most wide-ranging, the interface is nice, you can filter by interest or theme, and there are just SO MANY to choose from. This list (and, er, some money) is all you need to cocoon yourself away from your family for the festive period.
- 52 Things I Learned In 2017: Another returning Christmas favourite, this is the fourth year that Tom Whitwell’s written one of these lists; again, it’s fascinating as a general ‘where are we now / where are we going?’ overview, and also in a ‘wow, there are whole sentences on here which 12 months ago would have made no sense at all, doesn’t the world move fa…oh, there it goes!’ way. My personal favourite? ”For 11,111 yuan (£1,250), you can buy a lifetime’s supply of alcohol: 12 bottles of baijiu — a potent grain spirit — delivered to you every month for the rest of your life.” GREAT!
- Raising A Teenage Daughter: This is an interesting and well-written piece, but the reason for including it is the way in which the design of the Page informs the way the reader experiences the story; the piece is written by journalist Elisabeth Weil, but is peppered with her daughter’s annotations, giving her perspective on her mother’s account. It’s simple (and the interface could be handled more elegantly, if I’m really going to be a dick about it), but it completely changes the way in which you read the piece. Such a wonderful conceit, this is going to become quite the thing as a mechanic (at least I think it is).
- Meeting Ursula K Le Guin: As a small child I devoured Ursula K Le Guin’s ‘Earthsea’ stories; they had an atmosphere that was totally unique, part celtic, part middle-eastern, slow and cold and austere and just beautiful, and I’ve loved Le Guin’s writing ever since. Well into her 80s now, this interview with her is wide-ranging and intelligent; what’s striking is what a strong voice she remains into her dotage (you wouldn’t mess, basically). The paragraph about why ‘progress’ as an idea is a harmful one is just one case in point; do read this, she’s wonderful.
- On Interactive Fiction: This year’s Interactive Fiction Contest (see Curios passim) produced the largest number of entries of any year to date; this piece looks at the growth of the genre and some of the reasons why it’s growing as a medium. I think that there’s a lot of opportunity to merge IF and journalistic techniques which we’ll see being explored in the coming year or so – the Teen Daughter piece above’s got elements of IF in the way it presents the UI, for example – which is rather exciting from the point of view of STORYTELLING (sorry).
- Genetically Engineering Yourself: You may recall the subject of this piece from a previous Curios, in which I featured a longread about him giving himself a fecal transplant (it was memorable). Josiah Zayner believes we should all be free to mess with ourselves however we like, and by way of demonstration regularly does stuff like, I don’t know, shove a syringe full of strange DNA into his thigh to see what happens (the answer usually seems to be “Hm, not sure, let’s wait a few years and see”). The piece is a fascinating look at the weird, fringe world of bodyhacking – you may finish it with a strange compulsion to REWORK YOUR WETWARE (they actually talk like that, these people), so take care.
- Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: An explainer on how it all works, so you’ll be able to get through the inevitable, interminable Christmas conversations with your nan about ‘blockcoins’. It’s a bit maths-y, but in general it’s one of the friendlier explainers I’ve read; it won’t, though, make you feel any less bitterly angry about that one bloke you know who bought 10 for ‘a laugh’ 5 years ago and is now planning early retirement. As an aside, can anyone – anyone, please, this really is a serious question – explain to me what makes Bitcoin a ‘currency’ rather than a ‘good’? Please?
- Metal Machine Music: Lou Reid’s famously-unlistenable noise album gets a reappraisal by Pitchfork (they love it! Who saw that coming?!); this is less a review, though, than a history of the record and Reid, and is actually a really good piece of writing about the man and the influence that Metal Machine Music had. Go on, try listening to it while you read. Go on. Enjoying that? You’re not, are you?
- The World Facebook Created: A really good article, this, looking at the responsibilities Facebook could be seen to have in a world in which, for some, it *is* the internet. This touches on freedom of speech issues, political power as exercised in the second and third world through the platform, and how Facebook to date has continually failed to acknowledge the immense power it wields as a platform. You think the most recent round of elections worldwide were interesting from the point of view of Facebook’s role? Wait til India’s next proper elections, that’ll be MENTAL.
- Selling Cat Blindfolds: Another Facebook piece, this looks at how Facebook’s automatic inventory ads – the ones that retailers can use to automatically generate carousel ads of shoppable products within FB, with Facebook determining which products are shown to whom based on interest affinity, etc – have had the unforeseen consequence of flooding much of America’s Facebook feed with ads for bizarre, pointless products from massive US retailer Wish – oh algorithms, how do we love thee? More than we understand thee, at least. Thanks to the polymathic Jay Owens for the tip here.
- Parliament is Falling Down: As the Parliamentary Estate prepares to decide which contractor gets the multi-million gig to refurb the House, this Guardian piece slips beneath the exterior to peruse the piping (and the damp, and the rats) under the impressive veneer. I love the Houses of Parliament – if you’ve never visited, you really must – but even when I was working there 15 years ago it was very creaky and the toilets, as noted in the piece, were pretty feral in nature; christ alone knows what another nearly two-decades of wear and tear will have done to the place. Anyway, this is far more interesting than anything about building conservation ought to be.
- The Lonely Deaths of Japan: Not ashamed to say I did a RIGHT weep when reading this; Japan’s ageing population is not a new story, and nor is the loneliness that afflicts the elderly in modern society, but the portraits of the individuals in this essay, particularly the guy going to the little concert and standing facing the wall to experience the music, just broke me.
- The Problem with Muzak: A brilliant critical essay about Spotify and how they own music, probably forever (yes, ok, hyperbole, but), this is a brilliant look at the company from the tech to the business model, as well as how its rise has changed the way in which we consume music, and in turn how that has changed what is sold to us, and how that has in turn changed what artists make. Really, really good, this.
- Why Dating an Entrepreneur is Different: Finally this week, the most amazing man – I mean that in the very literal sense – you will meet all month (no matter HOW bad your office party is/was); meet Tim Denning, a man for whom the word ‘prick’ really isn’t a strong enough epithet, a man who I am pretty certain doesn’t just ‘do’ things, he ‘crushes’ them; he doesn’t complete tasks, he ‘kills’ them. Tim wants to tell you about all the ways in which entrepreneurs are special and brilliant and, fundamentally, better than you, and why as a result you ought to take extra special care to understand and nurture your ENTREPRENEURIAL UNICORN. I can’t stress enough what an incredible journey this article is – you can quote almost all of it for comic effect. Look! “It’s a philosophy of always pushing the boundaries, and not accepting what we’re told just because everyone else accepted the same answer. It’s our rebel nature coming alive for the greater good. Deep down we’re lions ready to pounce on our prey.” See? Tim, on the offchance you google yourself – I am pretty sure you do, you know – Tim Denning, PLEASE, TIM, I KNOW YOU ARE UNHAPPY BUT THIS IS NOT GOING TO HELP YOU, TIM.
By Gil Rigoulet
By Trey Ratcliffe
AND NOW, MOVING PICTURES AND SOUNDS!
3) This short is called HB – it’s a minute long, and it’s very good indeed. No spoilers, just watch:
5) This is by Oy, it’s called ‘Full of Love’ and this video is just WONDERFUL: