My five fives of 2014

Previous lists for 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009.

Top 5 Films

(Released in UK cinemas in 2014, which I have seen. Links point to IMDb)

1. Boyhood
2. 12 Years A Slave
3. The Grand Budapest Hotel
4. Only Lovers Left Alive
5. The Guest

Top 5 Albums

(Released in the UK in 2014, which I have heard. Links point to Spotify)

1. Transgender Dysphoria Blues by Against Me!
2. St Vincent by St Vincent
3. Here and Nowhere Else by Cloud Nothings
4. LP1 by FKA Twigs
5. Dangerous Days by Perturbator

Top 5 TV series (non BBC)

(That I watched in 2014. Links point to IMDb)

1. Hannibal series 2
2. Game of Thrones series 4
3. True Detective series 1
4. Orange Is The New Black series 2
5. The Americans series 2

Top 5 Books

(That I read in 2014. Links point to Amazon)

1. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
2. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
3. Maus by Art Spiegelman
4. The Circle by Dave Eggers
5. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

Top 5 Live performances

(That I attended in 2013. Links point to the act’s website)

1. 65daysofstatic @ Koko
2. St Vincent @ Primavera Sound
3. The National @ Primavera Sound
4. Chvrches @ Somerset House
5. Arcade Fire @ Primavera Sound

And as a bonus, here is a Spotify playlist of my top 14 tracks of 2014.

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We Love the Internet 2014/52: The Year consensus died edition

Season’s greetings from the internet.

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The Year Consensus Died: 2014 and the Baffling Post–‘Breaking Bad’ Television Universe
• The state of consumer technology at the end of 2014
• How YouTube MCNs are Conquering Hollywood
• Two eras of the internet: pull and push
• Morgan Stanley Analysts Try GoPro, Discover Their Lives Are Boring
• How Hollywood’s toxic (and worsening) addiction to franchises changed movies forever in 2014
• The pilots of Instagram: beautiful views from the cockpit, violating rules of the air

Reference points:

• The 2015 predictions bucket
• Content, Forever – meandering essays created by algorithm
• Fundamental plot arcs, seen through multidimensional analysis of thousands of TV and movie scripts
• Malcolm Gladwell gets fact-checked
• The top apps of Homescreen users
• Anachronism finder
• The 85 Most Disruptive Ideas in Our History

2014 lists:

• The year of outrage – everything we were angry about in 2014
• The 50 Most Shared Facebook Posts Of 2014
• Google year in search
• 2014 year on Twitter
• Facebook year in review
• Tumblr year in review
• The 25 Best Inventions of 2014

Longer reads:

• Reading in the age of Amazon
• How I grew up on the internet
• Inside the Buzz-Fueled Media Startups Battling for Your Attention
• The Troll Hunters
• YouTube’s Chief, Hitting a New ‘Play’ Button
• The future of digital – latest Business Insider slide deck
• 10 trends for 2015 and 10 more – slideshare presentations

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch:

• NZ news reporter with an uncensored retort to a heckler
• The subconscious menu
• Jimmy Fallon Laughing & Clapping
• Super-fast card packing

Things to look at/read:

• The Most Astonishing Photos That Won Awards In 2014
• Most decade-specific words in Billboard song titles
• 19 Times “Family Feud” Contestants Spoke The Damn Truth
• 28 Individuals Who Failed And Failed Damn Hard
• The 26 Most ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Things That Happened In 2014
• 18 Badass Women You Probably Didn’t Hear About In 2014

Animal corner:

• Excited puppy spots its owner
• Drone vs. kangaroo
• Derby the dog: Running on 3D Printed Prosthetics
• Doug the Pug – All I Want For Christmas Is Food
• Denver the guilty dog strikes again
• The 50 Cutest Things That Happened This Year
• The 41 Most Awkward Cats Of 2014

This week on Tumblr:

• If paintings could text
• Photographs rendered in play-doh

Tweets of the week:

• Possibly the best screen capture of recent times.
• Time to wheel out the two greatest tweets of 2014.
• FFS Floppy
• Here you go. My favourite tweets of the year, in no particular order.
• C̫͖͎̆̈ ̪̺̻̆̂̂͂̈ͅY̖͈̖ͨ̓̀ͤͤ̚ ̙̠͙͕̲͎̖̂B̬̈́̆̑ ̰̪̙̜͉̞̺͋͂ͣ͐̚Ḛ̱̱̝̱ͥͭ̅ͮ͗̚ ̲̖̜̊̚R͉̰̯͇ͮͬ̐ ̬̭̫͙̳̀̇̍̄̊̐W͉̠̽A̎ͩ̋ ͈͙R̮̣̞͍͈͕ͩ́ͧ̄̋̋̍

Part 3: For the holidays

Reference points:

• 50 browser based games to play
• A free PC game – currently Sim City 2000

Longer pop culture articles:

• Three decades of photo-journalism
• The Economist essay on suburbs
• How Darude’s “Sandstorm” Became the EDM Track Everyone on the Web Knows
• Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State
• What is graphene for?
• Vanity Fair profile of Tony Blair

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We Love the Internet 2014/50: The Decandant edition

There won’t be a 2014/51 edition next week, but there will be a 2014/52 edition before the Xmas break.

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Why our memory fails us – which has implications for the quality of testimony in the Adnan Syed investigation
• Network TV Is Suffering Through a Great Sitcom Recession. Here’s How to Pull Out of It
• Why Do All These New Video Games Look So Old?
• Hate The Idea Of ‘Peter Pan Live’? NBC Is Counting On It – hate-watching as social TV event
• An experiment in forced nostalgia and questionable parenting
• Metrics should support a strategy, not be a strategy
• Here’s what happened when a news site only reported good news for a day

Reference points:

• Who tweeted it first?
• The Quartz chart of the year short-list
• What if Guys Were Social Networks – Creative Photo Shoot
• The Economist’s innovation prize
• How To Write A Marketing Trendpiece In 5 Winning Steps
• YouTube review of 2014

Longer reads:

• The Bitcoin Boy: 16-Year-Old Erik Finman Is in His Silicon Valley Prime
• The rise of the professional cyber athlete
• 30 Really Bad Things In FilmBiz 2014
• The complete history of Reddit
• A-Z Culture Glossary of 2015 – Slideshare presentation
• 10 hot consumer trends of 2015 report – Slideshare presentation

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch:

• Picard’s Make It So to the tune of Let it Snow
• Shot for shot, homemade version of Sia’s “Chandelier”
• Get Nick Offerman’s Solid Wood Emojis For Charity
• The Cicret Bracelet: Like a tablet…but on your skin.
• Wang Rong Rollin – Chick Chick – defies classification

Things to look at/read:

• The In Focus year in photos – Jan-Apr, May-Aug, Sep-Dec
• 29 Old People Rocking Highly Inappropriate T-Shirts
• Bros being basic – mocking Instagram photos from females
• 23 Insanely Delicious Food-On-Food Recipes
• The 35 Most Hipster Things That Happened In 2014
• The 23 Most Painfully Awkward Things That Happened In 2014
• Spending 10 years carving a giant cave

Animal corner:

• 30 adorable animals who fail miserably at looking tough.
• Sophia Grows. A Rhodesian Ridgeback Time-lapse.
• The 31 Most Popular Animal Instagrams Of 2014
• Dog fetch fails
• 38 Dogs Who Won 2014 and 37 Cats Who Totally Won 2014
• German Shepherd dog sings with his owner
• Dean the basset

This week on Tumblr:

• Ant and Dec photographed the wrong way round
• Rappers on Etsy

Tweets of the week:

• Happy Bishop of Southwark day! It’s the eighth anniversary of the greatest news story ever:
• Shout out to Alain for this smashing late entry into the year’s most annoying tweet award
• Meanwhile In Coventry
• “Hi, I’m Gamergate. Let me tell you why all this feminism stuff is nonsense. By the way, check out my mural!”
• Sorry kids, judging by this evidence, Christmas is CANCELLED
• Totally classic moment in mansplaining.  via many people
• The Great Vanishing of Facial Hair (1842-1972) Have Hipsters and #SantaClaus reverted this trend?

Part 3: For the weekend

Reference points:

• Create a personalised santa video for a friend
• 51 Of The Most Beautiful Sentences In Literature
• Every Movie Poster that Saul Bass Ever Made

Longer pop culture articles:

• An oral history of Boogie Nights
• Confessions of a mortician
• Oath Keepers and the Age of Treason
• In conversation with Chris Rock
• Did Kevin From ‘Home Alone’ Grow Up to Be Jigsaw?

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We Love the Internet 2014/49: The Menace of memes edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The menace of memes: how pictures can paint a thousand lies
• Marco … YOLO! Why Netflix Spent $90 Million on Its (Terrible) New Series
• Film Franchises, Platforms and IP: Future of Superhero Cinema
• How an Illegal Gambling Website Became the King of Marketing
• The new age of cultural manias.
• How Medium Is Trying to Bring Back the Web We Lost
• eBay’s magic mirrors will give shoppers fashion advice

Reference points:

• Trendwatching’s 10 trends for 2015
• Buzzfeed’s version of market research
• Cards Against Humanity’s version of market research
• Pomplamoose 2014 Tour Profits (or Lack Thereof)
• 14 innovations that improved the world in 2014

Longer reads:

• VH1 and the growing power of black TV viewers
• Jack Dorsey is not Steve Jobs
• The secret life of passwords
• Thoughts on Google+

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch:

• United State of Pop 2014 – DJ Earworm’s annual mash-up
• Breaking Bad remixes – seasons 1-2 and 3-5
• An ingenious way to do viewings around your house

Things to look at/read:

• 74 Of The Most Amazing News Photos Of 2014
• 22 glamour photographs that will leave you utterly speechless
• These Amazon Reviews Of “Mr Men” Books Are A Triumph Of Literary Criticism
• 10 Christmas Decorations That Will Haunt Your Dreams
• 24 foods that desperately don’t want to be eaten.
• The Complete List of True One-Hit Wonders (US charts)

Animal corner:

• Bath-time for mini dachshunds and Barry the pug
• Dog in snow maze
• Oops I let the cow in
• Ferret falls asleep dramatically
• 27 Adorable Animals Who Are So Ready For Bed
• Check out the majestic hair on these animals.
• Interrupting sheep

Tweets of the week:

• “You wot m8?” “Tony, leave it”
• Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, But the very next day, My lack of formal surgical training became very apparent.
• This is now my favourite pie chart ever.
• What awful news.
• Star Wars breaks the internet

Part 3: For the weekend

Reference points:

• 20 Covers Of Radiohead’s “Creep,” Rated
• The economics of Seinfeld
• 19 Indie Christmas Songs That Deserve to Be Classics

Longer pop culture articles:

• The World Is Flatulence: The Enduring Appeal of the Tasteless
• It Took A Nation: The Greatest Rap Album Gets Its Due
• The secret Hollywood procedure that has fooled us for years
• Inside the secret world of competitive bass fishing cheaters
• What writing the script for a bad film feels like

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