For many of us, myself included, it’s been .. a year. Rather than rehash all of that again, I thought I’d mark the end of the year by just listing some things I’ve loved. Here you go.
Books
Not just a retelling but a complete recasting of 1984. It's helpful to consider this as a separate work: a response to 1984, in a way, rather than a layering on top or a direct sequel. It's a criticism, an extension, a modernization, and a deep appreciation for the ideas all in one - and I was hooked. There's so much I want to write about here, but I don't want to spoil it. The ending, in particular, is perfect.
It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over, by Anne de Marcken
Breathtaking from start to finish. A zombie novel as carrier for something deeper, so true and so sad. I read it alone in the dark, and thought to myself, thank god, something is real.
Infinite Detail, by Tim Maughan
A book about what happens when the Internet goes away, yes, but there’s something much more than that: the exploration of humanity as content between advertising, the questions about what happens next post-revolution, the overlapping mysticism and open-source pragmatism, the breathing, beating characters, the class politics woven throughout.
An adventure story that didn't quite sit in any of the categories I had for it in my head, and which frequently made me laugh out loud with its tiny details. It sits somewhere between science fiction, fantasy, satire, and a meditation on the role of stories, wrapped up in a whimsical, breezy narrative that was always a joy. I'd hoped it was leading to a more momentous ending than the one that eventually landed, but that's only because the constituent pieces were so satisfying to explore through.
TV
While cozy mysteries have been a mainstay of British TV for decades, American television has generally veered towards procedural stories that serve as propaganda pieces for law enforcement, complete with weak network television writing and story-of-the-week production values. There hasn’t been, as far as I’m aware, a really good cozy series since Murder, She Wrote — but Only Murders fits the bill. It’s as funny as anything Steve Martin and Martin Short have ever done, but also completely unthreatening: a lovely way to spend an evening.
This ongoing tale of dysfunctional MI5 agents could have been rotten: for example, if it had intentionally glorified the security services of played into tired Cold War tropes. It doesn’t and it isn’t; frequently the worst offender in its seasons is the machinations of the government itself, and its characters are nothing like the spy tropes we’re used to. Most of all, it’s great fun, and pretty one of the best things to have come out of any streaming service.
Look, obviously. I’m well-documented as a lifelong Whovian. But this year’s offerings were fresher than usual, if pitched down to a younger audience than the series had been aiming for recently. The two-parter finale was a ridiculous take on an almost 50-year-old story, but episodes like Boom (an anticapitalist tale about the arms trade), Dot and Bubble (which could have been one of the best Black Mirror episodes), and 73 Yards (a kind of time travel ghost story) were some of the best the show has ever delivered. It’s still the best TV show of all time, so there.
New to me this year, this had the right combination of tension and wry irony to keep me watching. I’ve been a fan of Jamie Dornan since The Fall, but Danielle Macdonald is an equal standout: some beautiful acting that makes a ridiculous premise seem real. The second season isn’t quite as good at the first, but only because some of the mystery has understandably been lost.
Articles and Blog Posts
We Need To Rewild The Internet, by Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon
Rewilding the internet is more than a metaphor. It’s a framework and plan. It gives us fresh eyes for the wicked problem of extraction and control, and new means and allies to fix it. It recognizes that ending internet monopolies isn’t just an intellectual problem. It’s an emotional one. It answers questions like: How do we keep going when the monopolies have more money and power? How do we act collectively when they suborn our community spaces, funding and networks? And how do we communicate to our allies what fixing it will look and feel like?
An important — and detailed — call to action about the future of the internet. In lots of ways it should set the tone for how we build on the internet in 2025.
On Being Human and “Creative”, by Heather Bryant
What generative AI creates is not any one person's creative expression. Generative AI is only possible because of the work that has been taken from others. It simply would not exist without the millions of data points that the models are based upon. Those data points were taken without permission, consent, compensation or even notification because the logistics of doing so would have made it logistically improbable and financially impossible.
A wonderful piece from Heather Bryant that explores the humanity — the effort, the emotion, the lived experience, the community, the unique combination of things — behind real-world art that is created by people, and the theft of those things that generative AI represents.
Inside Medium’s decade-long journey to find its own identity, by Ryan Broderick
Replacing Williams was Tony Stubblebine, who may have seemed a little random to anyone scanning the headlines at the time. At that point he was running Coach.me, a personal life coaching platform, and heading up Better Humans, a Medium partner publication dedicated to personal development. But his roots in Twitter and, thus, in Medium, go all the way to, well, before the beginning. In the mid-2000s, he was the director of engineering at Odeo, the podcasting startup that would become the launching ground for Twitter.
Tony has turned Medium around, which has been lovely to see. I have emotional but not financial skin in this game: I enjoyed my time working at Medium eight years ago, I’ve known Tony for going on 20 years, and I’m similarly a fan of Ev. But I also just think the more places there are for considered voices to find their community, the better, and Medium has an important take on how to do it well. This piece was a good introduction to all of it.
Why we invented a new metric for measuring readership, by Alexandra Smith
We used to measure our journalism’s reach and impact with website views, visitors, and engaged time—the methods many of our funders insisted on. But even when we included stats about our social media engagement, newsletter subscribers, and member community, our audience data reports still didn’t accurately reflect the ways we were serving people with our journalism.
In this piece, Alexandra introduced a way of measuring reach and impact for journalism that took into account the fact that audiences don’t encounter it in one place — that the internet is, in fact, fractured, and journalism often takes different forms to meet its readers where they’re at. That’s light years ahead of how most newsrooms have been thinking. This piece has shaped the conversation since it was released. It’s also thought-provoking for indieweb stalwarts like me: for lots of reasons, I think the website shouldbe the center of the universe for journalism, and ultimately you measure what matters. This approach doesn’t downplay the website but does say: what matters is the connection you make with other humans, wherever it happens.
Software
I’m late to this party, but what an actual joy to find a todo list utility that actually works the way my brain does. The hotkeys allow me to add a task to the list whenever I need to — often mid-conversation — and then let me order them by time so I can figure out what to do next. And it’s everywhere I need it to be. No notes or complaints.
Surf
Flipboard’s new “browser for the social web” is ace: an app that wouldn’t have been possible with proprietary social media. Users create playlists of sources — which is to say, people and publishers, irrespective of where they happen to be publishing. You can then peruse new content by people on those playlists and filter them by links, video, other media, and so on. Not only is the signal to noise ratio far higher, but it’s far less exhausting than other social media apps. It’s now the only social app I’ll allow on my phone.
HTML and CSS
They’re still pretty great, and getting better and better! Did you know CSS has nesting now? I’ve been enjoying using it.
The Fediverse
The single most important improvement to the web in decades. Hooray!
Hardware
Honestly, this ebook reader has changed my life. The color screen (canonically a colour screen, but I’ve been in the States for long enough that I feel compelled to discard the “u”) doesn’t matter to me all that much, but it’s responsive, has really great clarity, is light enough to read one-handed, and, most importantly of all, allows a parent of a co-sleeping toddler to read in bed without waking up his child. That last one is a gamechanger. Also, it works with library books and isn’t Amazon-bound, which were both important to me.
I’d never really needed a docking station until this year. This thing’s got a bunch of ports, a huge amount of throughput, memory card support, 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, and sits on my desk in perfect silence. I flip between my work laptop and my personal computers really easily. It’s perfect. Now all I need to add is a USB-C KVM switch and I’ll be able to switch between personal and work machines with one button.
Other
These days I travel between Philadelphia and New York City very regularly. Amtrak’s generously rewards points system means that I quickly built up enough status to gain access to its station lounges. They’re not spectacularly fancy but do come with comfortable seating and free coffee, and for that alone they’ve been a big upgrade for my commutes. A shoutout also needs to go to the Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station, which improves the experience of spending time at Penn from being locked in the Backrooms to something you might actually choose to look forward to.
The only news publication I let send notifications to my phone (aside from the one I work for). The Guardian’s breaking news journalism is reliably good, and it has specialized feeds to subscribe to particular topics — not just for high-level topics like Business, but for example, specific news for the Middle East conflict or the war in Ukraine. I also appreciate The Guardian’s responsible, reader-centric approach to funding: despite being paywall-free, readers account for over half of its budget.
We’re reluctantly on the YouTube train with our toddler. There are a bunch of performers who are trying very hard to find audiences in the wake of the success of the likes of Ms. Rachel (who is great) and Blippi (who is like nails on a chalkboard to me, although his stablemate Meekah is a lot better). By far my favorite of the genre is Monica Ferreira: an Australian teacher and professional musician who started recording YouTube videos after experiencing chronic pain. She edits, composes, and builds the graphics for her videos herself, with high production values and no junk content. It’s been a breath of fresh air, and honestly, a relief.
What about you?
What were your favorite things from 2024? Let me know what I missed.
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