Clarification for any of you wondering about the subject line, today in Ireland is the almost-annual celebration of "The Money Was Just Resting In My Account" day.

• Context

Ad Hoc International Roundup

North Korea has sort of declared war on Seth Rogen. The Abu Dhabi police win the award for inappropriate musical choices for this CCTV footage of a murder suspect.

Internets

A long history of Reddit. A shorter history of and reflection on file formats. ReplyAll is a podcast about the Internet. The latest episode talks to the man who created the pop-up ad. Chart Brut: "why does the super-sophisticated conspiracy-troll machine draw diagrams like a 1st grader?" 'A Eulogy to ClipArt, In ClipArt'

Christmas Corner

Watch It's a Wonderful Life. Awww.

Eye Candy

Concept Currency

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

100 years of beauty, fishing cheating, no brand monkeys, classic poems updated and the misery index.

Finally, the current LinkedIn Clem Fandango count stands at a paltry 2. This is disappointing. Do people not create spoof LinkedIn accounts?

Yours etc., @loughlin

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First things first. Start listening to this three hour retrospective of Chris Morris radio bits and pieces.

Bill Cosby, who knew? Tina Fey probably did.

Get ready for the season of New Year's resolutions early. Electroshock yourself to a
better you with this not-at-all-disturbing device.

Paddington’s story is that of the modern migrant. He is in many ways typical of my clients. This is more than a mere subtext to the film and it is, I hope, instructive to consider his tale from a legal perspective.

An immigration lawyer reviews Paddington.

Argentinian seagulls losing the run of themselves. Context.

Internets

Today in pointless headline seeking studies, 'The Global Geography of Internet Addiction'. None of the people surveyed come even close to actually living inside the Internet.

Eye Candy

Shark Cats

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Typography in Alien, Uberfacts still lies, winning the breakup, Whisper party and Internet Party USA.

Finally, Gene Simmons of Kiss fame was in the Dail yesterday.

Yours etc., @loughlin

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Welcome to December! My attempt to remain ambivalent towards Christmas rather than grouchily disliking it was dealt a blow yesterday when the Spotify web player served up a selection of playlists with very punchable titles. Folksy Christmas! A Very Indie Christmas! Ugly Sweater Party! It may be a long December.

You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive

Anyway, Chris Rock did an interview with NYMag and it's really fantastic. On a similar theme

• 'The Science of Why Cops Shoot Young Black Men'
• 'My Vassar College Faculty ID Makes Everything OK'
• Ferguson grand jury 'mistake'

Internets

Britain is set to be the first country where more than half the total advertising spend goes to digital channels. And they said this Internet thing wouldn't last, eh? Wikipedia has piles of cash yet still wants more. Speaking of (crypto)cash, this snarky take on a BitCoin convention in Las Vegas is a fun read.

Eye Candy

2014 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar

Worth Pondering

Christmas Corner

Inappropriate Santa. "A family claimed he told kids that he wasn't real, and then described the Sandy Hook massacre to them."

Number one on my Christmas list right now is this adorable crab robot.

Totally Confused

Screencap culture, breaking in jeans, generating journalism, Ryanair hell and the Cataquarium.

Finally, this Kickstarter. The rise of the concept hat has begun.

Yours etc., @loughlin

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Much to read and think about regarding Ferguson. The best place to start is Today In Tabs.

Do you like Swedish pop? Of course, there is much more Swedish pop that the article doesn't mention.

Well worth getting your ears around is 'A Girl's Own Story', this week's BBC Radio 4 documentary (direct MP3 link, 27MB). It covers topics close to my heart such as Riot Grrl and the Internet not being an entirely terrifying place populated by predators but actually a pretty damn good thing. It goes away in three days, so get listening.

I missed this nice profile of Megan Amram in the Guardian. Entirely worth reading for this quote about Jenny McCarthy alone:

“Ladies, if this Jenny McCarthy stuff teaches you anything, it’s that all anyone wants to do is listen to a hot blonde tell them exactly what to do and how to think. Just keep on keeping your body tight, gals, and you can basically make up any sort of science you want!!

• @meganamram on Twitter

In Octopus Raft updates, you can now virtually fly through your skyscrapers of cash. Now who wouldn't want to do that?

Along similar lines, aim-to-please employees are now a real, and rather silly, thing.

Eye Candy

The Best Album Covers Of 2014

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Untereisboot, Maria Merian's butterflies, stray dog trekking, alcohol-addled speech and how many calories?

Finally, 'Yes, People Will Strip To Their Underwear And Wait Outside In The Cold For Free Stuff'

Yours, @loughlin

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An earlier version of this column was published in error. That version included what purported to be an interview that Kanye West gave to a Chicago radio station in which he compared his own derrière to that of his wife, Kim Kardashian. Mr. West’s quotes were taken, without attribution, from the satirical website The Daily Currant. There is no radio station WGYN in Chicago; the interview was fictitious, and should not have been included in the column.

Naughty New York Times. Always attribute …

There is a veritable universe of unsold Samsung Galaxy Fives out there. This could be a positive as it turns out your phone may actually be KILLING you.

Here's a marvellous rewrite of 'Barbie Computer Engineer' in which Ken spends more time on his hair than Barbie does. You can also roll your own remix here.

This War Of Mine is a rather different war game, not the sort that GamerGators are interested in preserving presumably. Speaking of that ongoing trainwreck, there is some live sea-lioning happening in this Metafilter thread. Fascinating.

Libertarian Fantasy Corner

Underwater city plans proceeding. 'One Day I Will Die On Mars'

Eye Candy

Your face on Facebook, Sterling Crispin

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Feral Disneyland cats, thirty least influential people, unhappy families, big-breasted turkeys and the Royal Order of the Rug.

Finally, here are some truly indispensable food and drink related tips and tricks, sometimes known as life hacks by the Internet 🙂

Yours, @loughlin

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(Subject line courtesy of DisapprovalLook.com)

From Paul Reuter through to John Reith, at the BBC, the pioneers of journalism were also pioneers of communications technology. Today however we have reached a point of transition where news spaces are no longer owned by newsmakers. The press is no longer in charge of the free press and has lost control of the main conduits through which stories reach audiences. The public sphere is now operated by a small number of private companies, based in Silicon Valley.

Emily Bell on Silicon Valley and journalism. This could be dismissed simply as journalism’s unease with a shifting of power, but it’s more significant than that. Accountability is important and Silicon Valley firms don’t have a particularly strong track record on that.

• ‘In The Trenches of the Facebook Election’

Here are some grown up journalists pretending to be teenagers. I think it is some kind of arch in-joke. It might just be stupid though.

Good writing in Gawker from Kelly Conaboy on oversharing online:
‘This Kid Just Died VIDEO: Grief Porn Enters the Facebook Era’

It turns out that despite all the ill-informed and mandatory outrage over the latest Grand Theft Auto title, video games aren’t melting children’s brains.

Red Red Wine

The new weapon of choice for the discerning disgruntled soccer fan. Thanks to climate change these fans will soon be able to source their missiles locally.

Eye Candy

Kerby Rosanes

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

A bus that runs on poop, searching for snow leopards, the secret life of string cheese, early web battles and teddy bear mugshots.

Finally, watch Paul O’Connell pick up one Australian and use him to knock another Australian over. On an endless loop.

Yours, @loughlin

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Welcome, reader. Are you reading this on a tablet or a phone? You're probably spending more time gawping at it each day than the idiot box in the corner. Now that's progress. Clap along with Shia up there.

The Vice empire has deployed Terraform, a "new home for future fiction". Definitely worth keeping an eye on if that's your sort of thing.

Also in Vice, Emily Gould wants everyone to Leave Jonathan Franzen Alone. As if that's likely to happen.

“John Franzen of Manhattan
Ance lived in Bellygan,
And stole King Malcolm’s daughter,
The King of fair Scotland.
He beats her, he binds her,
He lays her on a band;
And every day he dings her
With a bright silver wand
Like Julian the Roman
He’s one that fears no man.
It’s said there’s ane predestinate
To be his mortal foe;
But that ane is yet unborn
And lang may it be so.”

Steve Albini is relatively happy about the music industry. Should we all be concerned?

Thoughtful Games

There are a few great pieces in the New Yorker about the sorts of games that still don't get mentioned enough outside niche game publications.

the council believed that a video game offered a chance to share the community’s stories and culture with new audiences around the world. “Our stories feature strong characters, fascinating settings, and are filled with wisdom and learning that address universal human themes. We believe they can travel.

Could A Video Game Help To Preserve Inuit Culture? | Never Alone

In Ether One, I found that the distance between these seemingly incompatible worlds lessened just a little. Even though I couldn’t quite forget myself inside its artifice, it was comforting to have the space to try.

Ether One: The Video Game That Tries To Simulate Dementia

YRSHIT

Introducing a new occasional feature, You Really Should Have Ignored This, which aims to bring you the very best stories that you just couldn't look away from, even though you thought you knew better. Today in YRSHIT, Fine Gael TD Noel 'ISIS Situation' Coonan. Here he is cutting loose in Dáil Éireann. Here is the transcript, for completeness.

• Bonus: How ISIS corporatized Terror. Is this what Deputy Coonan was talking about?

Eye Candy

Super Flemish

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Bot hunters, French kitchen culture, oven payout, ten Mike Nichols trailers and Dorito looting.

Finally, have a listen to The Flying Teapot, the 1973 album from the endearingly bonkers Gong. This is Radio Gnome Invisible.

Yours weekendingly, @loughlin

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The real difference between state surveillance programs and techbro surveillance programs? It's all in the names. The former are usually fairly innocuous-sounding: ECHELON, PRISM etc. The latter could have been thought up by 15 year old gamers, drunk on their own wild power – "look upon my GOD VIEW and despair, puny mortals!"

Five A Day

Everybody wants to buy organic. Nobody has the faintest idea what that means. Nestle to the rescue with their exercise in a bottle thing?

This may all be immaterial, because it looks like your health and fitness apps and various devices will ultimately betray you in court.

One A Day

It's the new thing that's not that new at all. this.cm lets users post one story a day. meh.com offers one product a day for sale.

Early Christmas Gift Klaxon

Get your loved ones the Good Web Bundle. Full access to five of the greatest things on the web for half the usual price. It's what the web should be, and still can be. Anil Dash explains it better than I can.

I see a bunch of sites where instead of women getting harassed, women are founders. I see a web where people are having fun with each other, while they're goofing off during their lunch hour. I see the web we'll curl up with when we're stuck at our parents' house at Thanksgiving and can't stand listening to the TV blasting anymore.

Eye Candy

Cities On Cliffs

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Sad compliant robot, mammoth resurrection, food porn addiction, Yelp prison reviews and the museum of selfies

Finally, Wait, What Does Your Startup Do?

@loughlin

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Today is a pretty damn good day for headlines. 'Uber Has An Asshole Problem', 'Barbie Fucks It Up Again' and 'Got Milk? Might Not Be Doing You Much Good' are all standouts and relevant to my interests.

Continuing on, 'Anonymous Takes On The Ku Klux Klan', 'Artist 3D Prints the World’s Smallest Sculptures. Loses Them.' and 'San Francisco’s New Dog Mayor Calls For Mandatory Belly Rubs' are, I'm sure you'll agree, also all very strong headlines deserving mention.

Anyway, programmers have agents now and we all remember how well that worked out the last time, right?

Take the hassle out of sexting with Flirtmoji. Follow how 2 sext on Twitter for lovingly pre-crafted sexts.

If you have a few more minutes to spare, the YouGov profiler provides all kinds of fun opportunities. Bob Geldof fans are the people who still use Internet Explorer.

Eye Candy

Kilian Schönberger

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Word of the year, religious Vader, bear-boganning, embarassing tweets revealed and 8chan is completely horrible

Finally, today's mix is Weighted Eyelids by Dan Bodan. I don't advise listening to this whilst falling asleep, despite what Dan says.

@loughlin

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Why spend three grand on a mass manufactured telepresence robot? Locally grown artisianal telepresence solution iPad On A FaceTM brings telepresence doubling to you!

Brought to you by the amazing Stupid Projects From The Stupid Hackathon. Even more Stupid Projects.

It looked like a cross between social media and talk radio, if talk radio had a visual component where a bunch of digital characters shoot one another. And as a form of entertainment, it seemed perfectly suited to a world where people jump around browser windows, watching a video in one, checking Facebook in another.

It seems to be that time where there are a few pieces about professional video gaming doing the rounds. I have yet to figure out why this happens every few months, or whether it’s becoming more frequent, considering that this has been a ‘thing’ for a considerable number of years now. The New Yorker does it well, not surprisingly. The New York Times can’t resist rolling out a few of the traditional cliches but comes up with a good profile piece. Ultimate takeaway: it’s just another job.

The NYT also has a piece on the improbable success of John Oliver. The shorter version of this article would read “perfect for YouTube”.

Remaining with cyclical thinkpieces, ‘The Web is Dying!’ In cyclical response pieces, ‘No it isn’t!’

This is a wearable that will definitely be a success.

Man wears the same suit for a year. Nothing happens.

Whilst reading this piece about Facebook at Work, bear in mind that Facebook has been announcing something similar to Facebook at Work on a fairly regular basis for quite some time now.

Eye Candy

Porcelain Fractal Sculptures

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Gordon Ramsay’s table booking nightmares, Beards of Time, thieving squirrel, scam artist to clean up Ebola and emoji evolution.

Finally, ‘Biblical Verses Where “Philistines” Are Replaced With “Haters”‘.

@loughlin

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