We Love the Internet 2020/04: The Mastiff competing at dog agility edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• E-boys are the new teen heartthrobs — and they’re poised to make serious money
• How Ms. Marvel became Marvel’s most important superhero
• Hey! You! Get on my Cloud
• The strange case of Paul Zimmer, the influencer who came back as a different person
• The Key Difference Between Video Game and Film Remakes
• Why One ‘Friends’ Fan Now Has 236 Episodes Recorded on Her DVR
• As Google Chrome crumbles the third-party cookie, what’s next for adtech?

Longer reads:

• The amazing stories of a man you’ve never heard of
• All the money in the world couldn’t make Kinect happen

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Baby Ryan “Sings” Thunderstruck
• Matchstick Art, 7.5 Million sticks over 40 years
• Baby’s first taste of ice cream
• Man Gets The Daylights Scared Out Of Him Filming A Tornado From His Garage
• See Through Catalytic Converter
• Dirt biker crosses arch bridge the hard way
• Gas station’s underground tank explosion

Things to look at/read:

• Detroit man settles race discrimination lawsuit, then bank won’t cash his check
• Jean-Luc Picard: Starfleet’s Hopepunk Captain
• Incredible, secret firefighting mission saves famous ‘dinosaur trees’

Animal corner:

• Mastiff Competing At Dog Agility
• Alaska man ducks into shed to avoid bull moose
• We now have snoods so no more manky ears after dinner
• the world’s an awful place but also have you seen this video of a tiny deer meeting a tiny human

Tweets of the week:

• This amazing movie is why all your award shows are a sham.
• Me calling Chili’s to make a dinner reservation for my bachelor party:
• There are only 10 types of movies. (A short thread)
• So a few days ago a pediatrician made a TikTok video about how vaccines don’t cause autism. It was cute and fun, and it went viral.
• Excellent work from Paul Rudd
• He’s in deep shit
• “What’s England like?”
• this should be illegal

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Inside the outrageously prestigious world of falcon influencers
• May the Score Be With You: How John Williams Defined the Sound of ‘Star Wars’
• A Doctor’s Diary: The Overnight Shift in the E.R.
• Chaos at the Top of the World
• How NBA executive Jeff David stole $13 million from the Sacramento Kings
• Romance is publishing’s most lucrative genre. Its biggest community of writers is imploding.
• The secrets of Lyndon Johnson’s archives
• What if your abusive husband is a cop?

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We Love the Internet 2020/03: The What happened in the 2010s edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Can an online star really make it in Hollywood?
• How to sell good ideas
• Grindr around the world
• Advertisers give a mixed verdict on Amazon’s Premier League debut
• All of YouTube, Not Just the Algorithm, is a Far-Right Propaganda Machine
• In 2020, Little Women has a men problem. But it used to be seen as a story for everyone.
• Inside the “Reckless” World of In-Flight Movie Censoring
• Personality Tests Are the Astrology of the Office

Reference points:

• What Happened In The 2010s
• Steven Soderbergh seen, read 2019
• Ashley Friedlein’s marketing & digital trends for 2020 to 2030
• How Do Bullets Work in Video Games?
• List of stories set in a future now past
• Memos
• Which emoji scissors close

Longer reads:

• Amazon Advertising, Explained
• 7 Reasons Why Video Gaming Will Take Over
• History as a giant data set: how analysing the past could help save the future
• The everything town in the middle of nowhere
• All of Jacob Wohl’s Spectacularly Failed Smear Attempts
• Tinder Lets Known Sex Offenders Use the App. It’s Not the Only One.

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Two Jabroni Truck Drivers Block Both Lanes Of Traffic For Miles
• The flight that almost killed me
• Danny MacAskill’s Gymnasium
• Hitting Earth with a Grain of Sand Going 99.9% the Speed of Light
• Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 20 years
• Pro Chefs Make Their Favorite Sandwiches
• This Violinist Went Ham Went Ham At This Wedding
• Making Abe Lincoln’s Mystery Mallet!

Things to look at/read:

• How to Survive a Nuclear Bomb
• 40 tourist scams to avoid this summer
• Deceased GOP Strategist’s Daughter Makes Files Public That Republicans Wanted Sealed
• Who Actually Uses London’s Least-Used Underground Station?
• Around the World in Rare and Beautiful Apples

Animal corner:

• Impatient Dog Jumps On Car Horn

Tweets of the week:

• i simply cannot cope with this man
• I’ve lost it. Absolutely lost it.
• Him: we’re being attacked by a UFO
• “2020 will be my year” First full week:
• Celebs get excited for Love Island! (Impressions!)
• My postman has left his sack on my doorstep. What does this mean? Am I the postman now?
• Nadine? She has experience of carrying four girls.
• toxic guys when their ex finally gets over the breakup

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• How Chinese Sci-Fi Conquered America
• Hunting black men to start a ‘race war’
• The Influencer and the Hit Man
• The Incredibly Happy Life of Larry David, TV’s Favorite Grouch
• How William Gibson keeps his science fiction real
• The art of dying
• These researchers think poop could unlock athletic supremacy. Are they right?
• The Sort-Of Socialist Church Is Taking A Radical Approach To Christianity

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We Love the Internet 2020/02: The Click here to kill edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• I created my own deepfake—it took two weeks and cost $552
• The Final Chart Topper of the Decade Perfectly Summarizes the Current State of Media
• This YouTuber’s Videos Were Demonetised. He Says It’s Because Of His Aussie Accent.
• Why we love Instagram’s “What Pokémon are you?” filter even though it’s meaningless
• A pioneer of wearable technology explains how it can connect instead of divide us
• How headphones are changing the sound of music
• SoftBank Vision Fund Employees Depict a Culture of Recklessness
• Running A Neighbourhood Facebook Group Has Become A Seriously Complicated Job

Reference points:

• Reddit’s 2019 year in review
• The best photos of 2019
• Streaming Wars Anxiety
• The Top 20 Business Transformations of the Last Decade
• The 56 Best — And Weirdest — Charts We Made In 2019
• The best and worst brand designs of the decade
• The 10 best new technologies coming out of CES 2020, including robots and wearable devices
• 14 of the Greatest Breaks in Comedy History

Longer reads:

• Bad romance
• Meet the wannabe kidfluencers struggling for stardom
• Fake and dangerous kids products are turning up for sale on Amazon
• Google Loved Me, Until I Pointed Out Everything That Sucked About It
• Addicted to video games
• The terror queue
• The “celestial jukebox” era is dead. What’s next for music streaming?
• My Life as a Robot

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• 6 year old Irish girl hilariously insists on going to the pub
• Celebrities Failed Auditions
• The Worst, Highest-Paid NBA Player, Ever
• Boxing Match Ends With Ultra-Rare Simultaneous Knockout
• Superhydrophobic Knife Slices Water Drops in Half
• Why movies went from 15 minutes to 2 hours
• Great Impractical Ideas in Computer Science: PowerPoint Programming
• Why calories are a con

Things to look at/read:

• ‘I see any dinosaur, I buy it’: at home with the embattled owner of the Flintstone house
• Rob Krar’s Never-Ending Race
• The secret Pakistan masters of Tekken
• ‘Civilization’ and Strategy Games’ Progress Delusion
• BarkBox is aware their dog toy looks like a Fleshlight
• A Judge Adorably Held A Lawyer’s Baby While He Swore Her In To The State Bar
• Welcome to the Era of the Post-Shopping Mall
• Kid Rock is still Kid Rock — it’s the culture that has changed since he hit the scene

Animal corner:

• Dog Accidentally Drinks Some Pond Water And He Does *Not* Like It
• Cats vs Invisible Maze
• Tiny Frog Jumps Onto A Newfoundland’s Paw And We’ve Never Seen A Dog More Fascinated
• Boy reunited with lost dog
• Guy Gets His Tiny, Deformed Tortoise Wheels To Help Him Walk
• Communication; the key to bridging the gulf.
• DOGS, BRUH..
• since we throwing shit

Tweets of the week:

• Tfw your Piccadilly line service is haunted by a Victorian shoe shine boy
• THEY TOOK HIS SNEAKS
• the emmys need a category for TikToks right this instant
• I’m not one to nitpick. Hold up. This figure is totally wrong! As a banana aficionado and ex-container ship bod, I think I may comment.
• welcome to 2020: an AI in a mental health app is telling me to pay up
• no one: every writers’ room in history: I’ve thought of a great title for this episode
• Have you, like me, ever wondered how long it would take the Diocesan Bishops of the Church of England to walk from their cathedrals to a Nando’s if they were peckish? Wonder no more.
• as news of the College Humor layoffs emerges, please remember that Facebook inflated viewership numbers 150-900% on videos to encourage businesses like CH and Funny or Die to pivot away from YouTube and make native content for Facebook

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Click Here to Kill
• The Rise and Fall of an All-Star Crew of Jewel Thieves
• The gospel of wealth according to Marc Benioff
• The mystery of Rudy Giuliani’s spokeswoman
• When GoFundMe Gets Ugly
• Deep trouble: can Venice hold back the tide?
• How This Con Man’s Wild Testimony Sent Dozens to Jail, and 4 to Death Row
• Dominic Cummings: The Machiavel in Downing Street

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We Love the Internet 2020/01: The Decade tech lost its way edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Inside Twitch’s Wildest Talk Show
• A CGI and completely fake influencer claims she was ‘sexually assaulted’ and people are well and truly p****d
• How Sony bought, and squandered, the future of gaming
• Here’s the typography of the next decade
• How trends — from oat milk to ugly sneakers — get so huge so fast
• No longer under BuzzFeed, the Try Guys are building an independent media business
• Fake Faces: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook To Influence 2020 Elections
• What is Lorem? Inside One of Spotify’s Best New Playlists

Reference points:

• Total Christmas price index
• 100 Hysterical Tweets From 2019 That Got 100K Retweets And Kept On Going
• The Decade in Internet Culture, in 34 Emblematic Posts
• The Worst Hacks of the Decade
• 32 moments that made the decade
• The Most Disappointing Gadgets of the Decade
• 2019 in Photos: How the First Months Unfolded
• The 84 biggest flops, fails and dead dreams of the decade in tech

Longer reads:

• The decade tech lost its way
• Carat’s 10 trends for 2020
• Fjord trends 2020
• The year in culture 2019
• 20 Games Every Creative Thinker Should Play
• The year in stupidity
• Fandom went mainstream in the 2010s — for better and worse
• The Untold Story of the 2018 Olympics Cyberattack, the Most Deceptive Hack in History

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• 100 Interesting Facts We Learned in 2019
• Portrait of Lotte, 0 to 20 years
• Dual Axis Illusion
• Chinese man who can ‘jump on water’ goes viral
• Pushing A Roomba To Its Limits
• World’s First Protosaber!
• World Record Elephant Toothpaste
• RC loader pushing snow

Things to look at/read:

• What did ‘authenticity’ in food mean in 2019
• Here’s What Billionaires Actually Give Each Other As Gifts
• How we spent it: the changing face of luxury
• These Guys Just Drove an E63 AMG Across America in a Record 27 Hours 25 Minutes
• This Dad Got Really Attached To His Daughter’s Hamster. Then He Escaped And The Texts Are Gold.
• Chinese criminal gangs spreading African swine fever to force farmers to sell pigs cheaply so they can profit
• My 27-Hour Vacation in Singapore’s Changi Airport
• If The Universe Is 13.8 Billion Years Old, How Can We See 46 Billion Light Years Away?

Animal corner:

• Cat Likes To Lick Owner’s Face, Does Not React Well When Owner Does The Same
• Suspicious Deer Encounters A Decoy Deer In The Woods, Snaps It In Half
• Waking a sleeping rabbit by surrounding him with carrots
• Dog Throws A Temper Tantrum When She Catches Cat Sleeping In Her Bed
• Do Cats Walk On Foil? An Experiment
• Dog Panics When His Favorite TV Show Gets Paused
• LMFAOOOO this tik tok is so chaotic I love it
• Strong defence

Tweets of the week:

• Give this baby all the awards immediately
• I am a music historian, and with @AdrianRMG  I have researched the best-selling single of every decade all the way back to 14,000BC.
• I changed my mum’s autocorrect whilst we’re on holiday in Germany. She just texted this to the cat-sitter:
• Hereditary (2018)
• holy shit
• they’ve hired a PR firm
• anime swordsman: *opens and closes his sword* anime villain:
• A lads just sent me his number so thought I’d take advantage of it

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• What Was the Worst Wellness Trend of the 2010s?
• 99 good news stories you probably didn’t hear about in 2019
• One Perfect Shot Presents The 100 Most Beautiful Shots of the Decade
• The age of perpetual crisis: how the 2010s disrupted everything but resolved nothing
• The Decade The Kardashians Took Over Everything
• Seeing red: Tech and consequences
• Trump Got His Wall, After All
• Living through the era of school shootings, one drill at a time

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My ten fives of the 2010s

Annual lists for 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010.

Top 10 Films

(Released in UK cinemas or on streaming services in the 2010s, which I have seen. Links point to IMDb)

1. Boyhood
2. The Raid
3. Inception
4. The Florida Project
5. Mad Max: Fury Road
6. American Honey
7. The Wolf Of Wall Street
8. Moonlight
9. Marriage Story
10. Arrival

Top 10 Albums

(Released in the UK in the 2010s, which I have heard. Links point to Spotify)

1. Robyn – Body Talk
2. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
3. Chvrches – The Bones Of What You Believe
4. The National – High Violet
5. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp A Butterfly
6. Deafheaven – Sunbather
7. LCD Soudsystem – This Is Happening 
8. Beach House – Teen Dream
9. Japandroids – Celebration Rock
10. Idles – Joy As An Act Of Resistance

Top 10 TV series (non BBC)

(Majority of full series released in the UK in the 2010s, that I watched. Links point to IMDb)

1. Breaking Bad
2. The Americans
3. Parks And Recreation
4. Mad Men
5. The Leftovers
6. Succession
7. Mr Robot
8. Broad City
9. Halt and Catch Fire
10. The Good Place

Top 10 Books

(That I read in the 2010s. Links point to Amazon)

1. Margaret Atwood – Oryx and Crake
2. Jonathan Franzen – The Corrections 
3. Neal Stephenson – Snow Crash
4. Michael Chabon – The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
5. Donna Tartt – The Goldfinch
6. Haruki Murakami – 1Q84
7. Tom Wolfe – Bonfire of the Vanities
8. Mario Puzo – The Godfather
9. Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell – From Hell
10. Hillary Mantel – Wolf Hall

Top 10 Live performances

(That I attended in the 2010s. Links point to the act’s website)

1. LCD Soundsystem @ Primavera (2016)
2. Guns N’ Roses @ London Stadium (2017)
3. Robyn @ Pitchfork Festival, Parc de Villette (2012)
4. Fucked Up @ The Scala (2011)
5. M83 @ Somerset House (2012)
6. Sleater-Kinney @ Roundhouse (2015)
7. At The Drive-In @ Brixton Academy (2018)
8. Joanna Newsom @ Royal Festival Hall (2010)
9. Bright Eyes @ The Scala (2011)
10. The Postal Service @ Primavera Sound (2013)

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My five fives of 2019

Previous lists for 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009.

Top 5 Films

(Released in UK cinemas or on streaming services in 2019, which I have seen. Links point to IMDb)

1. Marriage Story
2. Eighth Grade
3. The Farewell
4. Little Women
5. The Favourite

Top 5 Albums

(Released in the UK in 2019, which I have heard. Links point to Spotify)

1. Dave – Psychodrama
2. Lana Del Ray – Norman Fucking Rockwell!
3. Lizzo – Cuz I Love You
4. The National – I Am Easy To Find
5. Sharon Van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow

Top 5 TV series (non BBC)

(Released in the UK in 2019, that I watched. Links point to IMDb)

1. Watchmen
2. Succession S2
3. Chernobyl
4. Russian Doll
5. When They See Us

Top 5 Books

(That I read in 2019. Links point to Amazon)

1. Mario Puzo – The Godfather
2. Liu Cixin – The Three-Body Problem
3. John Steinback – The Grapes Of Wrath
4. Cormac McCarthy – No Country For Old Men
5. Donna Tartt – The Little Friend

Top 5 Live performances

(That I attended in 2019. Links point to the act’s website)

1. Chvrches @ O2 Victoria Warehouse
2. The Chemical Brothers @ All Points East
3. Converge @ The Electric Ballroom
4. Hot Water Music @ The Underworld
5. Bikini Kill @ Brixton Academy

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We Love the Internet 2019/52: The What life in 2019 can tell us about life in 2029 edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be?
• The Big Business of Unconscious Bias

Reference points:

• 136 internet videos that blew my mind
• 2019 in Photos: How the First Months Unfolded
• From renewables to Netflix: the 15 super-trends that defined the 2010s
• Best inventions 2019
• Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy
• An A-Z of Words That Defined the Internet in the 2010s
• The 100 best, worst, and weirdest things we saw on the internet in the 2010s
• Emoji storm

Longer reads:

• The Anatomy of a TikTok Hit
• Inside the Most Watched YouTube Channel in the World
• The Strange Life and Mysterious Death of a Virtuoso Coder
• Behind the smiles
• The golden age of kids’ YouTube is over. Good.

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• 11 Levels of Origami: Easy to Complex
• The new canopener nibbles on a box truck
• Match between the Philippines (in red armor) and Cambodia (in blue armor) on the LS Welterweight Men’s Semi-Finals
• Dropping Ice Down A 300 Foot Hole In Antarctica Will Make A Very Ethereal Sound
• Milton Martinez’s “¡DEMOLICIÓN!” Part
• Archery: Will it EVER be the same again? Wow.
• Someone Help Us Understand How This Guy’s World Record For Highest Standing Jump Is Possible
• That’s a ten

Things to look at/read:

• Soups in Europe
• The trends that may end the “y’all” vs “you guys” debate
• Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’

Animal corner:

• Dash camera captures the moment deer jumped over car on Tennessee highway
• Cute Golden retriever rescuing her teddy bear
• Angry French Bulldog on Diet Throws Tantrums for Not Getting Food
• World’s Most Adorable Badger
• baby moose  🐴  first pavement
• My son was on the menu in Dublin Zoo today
• I can’t stop watching this
• cat’s a master of physical comedy

Tweets of the week:

• WHY THE FUCK IS THE UBER HELICOPTER THE CHEAPEST OPTION
• this meme it was made for me
• This is the best Christmas video of 2019
• Well it made me laugh
• when i peel a potato
• Apparently I’ve ruined Christmas?
• Ladies take notes!
• forgot that mum thing mums do where they leave things on the stairs for u to take up with u

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• What Life in 2019 Can Tell Us About Life in 2029
• The Miseducation of the American Boy
• How to buy drugs
• Lessons from a year of six women running for president.
• My life as a child chef
• How natural wine became a symbol of virtuous consumption
• The Cutthroat Battle Between S’well and Its Bougie Water Bottle Copycats
• Adam Sandler’s Everlasting Shtick

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