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Dec 23, 2016Moving into the next year, lifting up quality journalism―specifically quality journalism written by women and members of other marginalized groups―will be all the more vital.
↩︎ Huffington Post
In an effort to celebrate artists while they're still alive, Slate is saluting Stevie Wonder with "Wonder Week." Including "A Beginner’s Guide to Stevie Wonder," "Stevie Wonder Is My Favorite Drummer," and "Stevie Wonder Wrote the Black Happy Birthday Song… for Martin Luther King!"
Dec 12, 2016The experience of the black Southerner is universal. It inspires a feeling of kinship in an audience. It garners sympathy. It renders the invisible visible. And because it is capable of all of this, it sells.
↩︎ Buzzfeed
The Millions does its fun annual "year in reading" series of write-ups. Guests this year include heavyhitters like Proulx and Russo and Yuri Herrera.
From Nick Ripatrazone: "[Marilynne] Robinson is the type of writer who makes me want to slow down, sit down, and calm down. A taste of Robinson’s Calvinism with a side of subordinate clauses does good for my Catholic sense (which is superstitious and supernatural). She makes me think. And realize my inadequacies."
Dec 9, 2016This harrowing character study reads like Breaking Bad only after Walter White becomes rich and evil, also he somehow becomes younger and more insufferable and flies to Dubai occasionally.
↩︎ GQ
Next year's Tournament of Books is right around the corner, which means it's time to release the Long List of titles we'll be considering—"long" meaning 120 of the finest works of fiction published last year.
It's that time of year, and what a year to look back on. Here are some of our favorite takes so far, to be updated as 2016 walks slowly offstage.
1. Trends and commentary: Some of the year's best tweets and hastags.
"To all the little girls watching...never doubt that you are valuable and powerful & deserving of every chance & opportunity in the world."
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 9, 2016
2. Trump v. Clinton: Nineteen things learned from the US presidential election, from a statistical modeling point of view.
The 2016 election was not about shark attacks or football games but rather about big stories that didn’t matter much, or canceled each other out.
3. Music: The Quietus albums of the year; the best of Bandcamp; Popmatters's best of the year in jazz.
4. Books: We've previously summed some of these up, but here are 30 medieval texts that were translated this year, also what Bill Gates enjoyed reading.
String Theory is a collection of five of Wallace’s best essays on tennis, a sport I gave up in my Microsoft days and am once again pursuing with a passion. You don’t have to play or even watch tennis to love this book. The late author wielded a pen as skillfully as Roger Federer wields a tennis racket. Here, as in his other brilliant works, Wallace found mind-blowing ways of bending language like a metal spoon.
5. Longtime gear reviewer Michael Lanza's favorite backpacks and things from 2016.
To be updated.
Dec 9, 2016When you really, really play yourself—when you attach your identity to a political or moral position, and end up damaging or repudiating that position by your own actions—the process often takes years.
↩︎ The New Yorker
An annual special issue of the Economist looks forward to the year to come. What to expect for 2017? Bolshiness around the world, toxic politics in France, ever more money dumped into virtual reality.
Tom Whitwell kept track during the year of interesting new facts and stories that he learned about.
The list of 52 things includes, with citations:
A Japanese insurance company is offering policies that cover social media backlash.
Australian musicians have performed with a synthesiser controlled by a petri dish of live human neurons.
PornHub used 1,892 petabytes of bandwidth in 2015, equivalent to filling all the storage on all of the iPhones sold in 2015 with porn.
The most expensive search keyword in the UK is “Play Live Blackjack”. One ad click on that results page could cost the advertiser £148.51.
A Swiss perfume company worked with the Gates Foundation to create an artificial scent that smells exactly like a pit latrine.
(h/t Kottke)
Yo! Don't sleep on Matthew Baldwin's fantastic annual line-up of the year's best board games.
