Last call for letters to Santa.

The Internet's still pretty awful today, and still resistant to attempts to rein it in.

If there's any positive outcome from all of this, it's the brute-force reminder that we're all vulnerable in ways we don't even realize. The best we can do—the deeply imperfect solution we're left with—is to be aware of what we say at all times.

It's the mundane things in the Sony hack

Citizen journalism was one of the great dreams of the mid-2000s internet. Just as blogs had given anyone with an internet connection and a keyboard a platform, media companies like AOL and CNN hoped that cell phones and high-speed internet would transform an army of private citizens and online hobbyists into freelance, oftentimes pro bono writers, videographers, and reporters.

The frankly scary rise of the online vigilante

Only Facebook’s ill-advised intentional manipulation of users’ emotions could top the academic excitement generated in 2014 by an otherwise dry study that happened to catch fire thanks to a very snarky author comment.

“Should we cite the crappy Gabor paper here?”

Eye Candy

Rollergirls and skateboarders

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Inside an octopus' mind, building a network using your customers, grotesquely violent Shakespeare, atheist discrimination and how to ask for a discount.

Finally, 'Why James Cameron’s Aliens is the best movie about technology'.

Yours etc., @loughlin

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Amidst all the larger-scale awfulness …

“I mostly look for malfeasance by larger companies,” he said. “It certainly seems like a situation that could call for legal redress. But this is a small business in the town where I reside.”

How to be unnecessarily obnoxious over four dollars, by a Harvard Business School professor.

A Korean Air executive has resigned from some of her duties after she ordered a flight to be turned around to the gate and a flight attendant off the plane because she was served nuts in a bag instead of on a plate.

Nuts

Although gender inequality in the adult world continued to diminish between the 1970s and 1990s, the de-gendering trend in toys was short-lived. In 1984, the deregulation of children’s television programming suddenly freed toy companies to create program-length advertisements for their products, and gender became an increasingly important differentiator of these shows and the toys advertised alongside them. During the 1980s, gender-neutral advertising receded, and by 1995, gendered toys made up roughly half of the Sears catalog’s offerings—the same proportion as during the interwar years.

Things are worse now than fifty years ago

Jackie, the anonymous woman at the center of UVA’s ongoing rape scandal (and Rolling Stone’s ongoing journalism one), was unceremoniously outed on Twitter over the weekend — to the enormous consternation of tweeters on both sides of the U-Va. debate.

2014 Internet culture summed up

Still, it's not all bad. 126 million people have watched a YouTube video called 'People are awesome'. That must count for something, right?

Eye Candy

2014: The Year in Photos, May-August

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Mistletoe drone injury, horse-drawn ban, Black Twitter, women laughing alone with tablets and Christmas trees around the world.

Finally, if you install one app today, make it JakeDate. The hollowness of it all.

Yours etc., @loughlin

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Happy new week, and welcome to the inadvertent surveillance edition.

Should our future robot overlords decide to write a history of how they overcame their human masters, late 2014 will be a key date in the timeline. Last week, an official report from the parliamentary intelligence and security committee handed over responsibility for the UK’s fight against terrorism, or at least part of it, to Facebook’s algorithms – the automated scripts that (among other things) look at your posts and your networks to suggest content you will like, people you might know and things you might buy.

Are you at risk from the anti-terrorism algorithms?

• When data gets creepy

Meanwhile in Ireland, 'State sanctions phone and email tapping'.

• 'Thoughts on Ireland's new Surveillance Order'

Too many surveillance programs to keep track of? Here are all the NSA revelations in one handy chart. Be prepared to be amazed!

The increasingly ugly Uber juggernaut rumbles on. The app has been banned in Delhi. As of yesterday Portland, Oregon is the latest city to sue the company.

Eye Candy

2014: The Year in Photos, January – April

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Wizard school, passive-aggressive shopping, Tom Baker versus Clem Fandango, pensive Biden and celebrity aliases.

Finally, if you're looking for Illuminati gifts, Etsy has you covered.

Yours etc., @loughlin

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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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