Above: time lapse video shot by my friend Mark of him, my wife and me putting down flooring in my new office.
Status Update
I had an eventful year. A few highlights:
Writing a cover story for Oregon Business magazine
Doing an art installation at the Weird Shift gallery, and giving a talk on tarot there as well.
And, of course, buying a house. We’ve only just hauled the last bits of stuff out of our old apartment into the new place today, which is why I decided to just do a best of 2014 post instead of a new post.
Browsing
The best article I read all year was, hands down, Betsy Haibel’s “The Fantasy and Abuse of the Manipulable User”, which manages to sum up exactly what’s wrong with the Silicon Valley mindset: a complete disregard for gaining users’ consent for practically anything, from data collection to whether to sign-up for email notifications.
My nine other favorites of the year, in no particular order:
Grooming Students for A Lifetime of Surveillance by Jessy Irwin.
A Mysterious Sound Is Driving People Insane — And Nobody Knows What’s Causing It by Jared Keller.
The Sexist Facebook Movement The Marine Corps Can’t Stop by Brian Adam Jones.
The Future Of The Culture Wars Is Here, And It’s Gamergate by Kyle Wagner.
Mark Dery’s interview with Mikita Brottman.
The New York Times’ profile of Dark Mountain founder Paul Kingsnorth.
The Mindfulness Racket by Evgeny Morozov.
Miya Tokumitsu’s article on how the “Do What You Love” mantra enables exploitation.
Data Doppelgängers and the Uncanny Valley of Personalization by Sara Watson.
Watching
The best TV show I watched this year had to be True Detective. (Stephen Grasso’s take on the show is definitive).
The best new series I watched was The Knick which, as Matt Zoller Seitz put it, is doing some next level shit, despite something of a slow start.
I didn’t see many new movies this year, but I liked and Snow Piercer well enough. It didn’t come out last year, but I loved Electrick Children.
Reading
I didn’t read any other novels that came out in 2014, so The Peripheral by William Gibson wins by default. But I have the feeling it probably would have been the best thing I read anyway.
My favorite books I read this year, overall, were Cat’s CradleThe Dispossed by Ursela K. le Guin.
Comics
I didn’t read many comics last year, and to be honest am feeling a bit disenchanted with the medium. But I enjoyed what I read of Zero, The Private Eye, and Prophet. But the big highlight of the year for me was Stray Bullets Uber Alles Edition. Reading that is keeping me from giving up on comics altogether.
Listening
It was sort of a disappointing year for music. My favorite release was probably White Lung’s Deep Fantasy. Runners up: the new Bruxa and Nolon Ashley albums.
Podcasts
Podcasts of the year (besides Mindful Cyborgs, of course): Gin and Innovation and Weird Shift Radio.
Playing
I’m not much of a gamer, and didn’t really play any other games this year, but I think A Dark Room deserves a mention, even though I think it was released in 2013.
I still haven’t played Technoccult the game (no relation to me or this blog), but thought it worthy of note as well.
Top Technoccult Posts of the Year
In terms of pageviews, these were the top five hits of the year:
On Race and Sexual Violence in the Works of Alan Moore
The Baffler on Neoreactionaries
Why Google’s New Open Source Crypto Tool Might Not Be Such a Good Thing
Grinders: Tomorrow’s Cyberpunks are Here Today
Favorite Things I Wrote Elsewhere
I think my favorite thing I wrote this year was this thing on bullshit jobs and Silicon Valley.
My top nine other favorite things I wrote this year, in chronological order:
Forget Mega-Corporations, Here’s The Mega-Network
This Farmbot Makes Growing Food as Easy as Playing Farmville
Raise Your Own Edible Insects With This Free Kit
How to Build a Kinder Web for the Transgender Community
Google Renews Battle With the NSA by Open Sourcing Email Encryption Tool
The Internet of Things Could Drown Our Environment in Gadgets
Online Security Is a Total Pain, But That May Soon Change