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A belated look back at 2014

I wrote a lot of stuff last year. And, because I'm horrible, I want you to read it. Here were my favorites.

Reporting and Essays

I wrote about a morning in San Francisco at a tech conference

I wrote about a morning in San Francisco and getting [SPOILER]

I wrote about a morning in the not so distant future

I wrote about liking everything I saw on Facebook

I wrote about a new new media shutdown

Features:

I wrote about Stewart Butterfield and his crazy startup (But it's really about ice. Or San Francisco. Or startups.)

I wrote about the new new new media startup landscape

I wrote about marijuana. I think.

I wrote about the then-impending fight over messaging apps (WhatsApp was bought out by Facebook just as this story was closing)

And because it came out at the very end of last year, I'm linking to it again. I wrote about Google Glass.

Fourth Annual Ocean Beach Polar Bear Club

This isn’t my event, and it’s in no way official. It’s just an option to jump in the Pacific to start the year. But Ocean Beach is no joke. The water is frigid and rough, the currents are strong, and people drown there, consistently. There are no lifeguards. Don’t do this unless you are a strong swimmer. Don’t go very far out. And please make sure you go into the water with a buddy, and come out with one too.

The ocean is great, right? It’s big and wavy and wonderful and smells delightfully briny. Let’s all go jump in it on New Year’s Day.

What? On January 1, at 12 noon, let’s all go jump in the Pacific Ocean at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.

Where and when We can meet up at 11:45 on the beach, by the Judah intersection. Afterwards, we can head up to Judah for hot beverages and camaraderie. I’ll bring whiskey.

Who is invited? You. Also other people.

What should I bring? Yourself. Something to warm you up afterwards. A Towel. A sense of humor. The ability to swim. (Seriously, the ability to swim. Some years the water is pretty rough. Ocean Beach in winter is not forgiving.) Maybe whiskey.

Can we have a campfire on the beach? Not technically.

Have you done this before? Yeah, it was great. Both times. Actually, all three. Leah even wrote something about it for The Awl, which means she has to come right? I think so. At least, I’m pretty sure.

Can I wear a wetsuit? You can do whatever you want. But no.

I mean, sure. Of course. Wear a wetsuit. Do what you gotta do.

Will there be T-shirts? There should be T-shirts. Let’s make T-shirts! Who can make T-shirts? I keep wanting T-shirts. Every year, T-shirts.

Isn’t There Another Polar Bear Club at Ocean Beach? Apparently! In fact I think there may be several of them. The Riptide has done one in the past at Taraval (since the 80s?) and I think there may be another at The Park Chalet. But, whatever: Whiskey and friends, yo. Whiskey and friends.

No one asked for my opinion, but I’m going to provide it anyway, having sat with these kids for a good bit on a tough day. They got carried away. They’re not children. But they’re not quite adults, either, and at least Mr. Islam was literally quaking as we spoke. So yeah, they probably should have known better. But New York and the New York Post probably should have, as well. This story smelled fishy the instant it appeared and a quick dance with the calculator probably would have saved these young men—and a couple reporters—some embarrassment.

EXCLUSIVE: New York Mag’s Boy Genius Investor Made It All Up | New York Observer

A recent “Economic Mobility Project” (the title of which made me want to snort ironically in a Gen X kind of way) from Pew found that our age group lost 45 percent of its wealth between 2007 and 2010. That’s right, almost half its wealth. In the maw of the Great Recession, Generation X—defined by Pew as people born between 1966 and 1975—was harder hit than both the boomers ahead of us and the millennials behind us: Early boomers lost 28 percent of their wealth, late boomers lost 25 percent, and millennials saw their net worth decline by 25 percent.

Reality, Still Biting - Pacific Standard: The Science of Society

robertobaldwin

You can embed this tweet, it’s fine.

— mat honan (@mat)

July 24, 2014

In a world where traditional beats may not make sense, where almost all marginal traffic growth comes from Facebook, where subscription revenue is a rumor, where business concerns demand breadth because they want scale… a big part of the industry's response this year has been to create sites that become known by how they cover something rather than what. (With the implication: And then they can cover anything that looks viral.) I think this is the next step in the formalization of the move away from "newspaper voice." At first in the freedom of web media, we got the cacophony of the blogosphere. Then, the corporatization and systematization of "webbiness." And now we get these sites, which are trying to develop a point of view and way of doings things that is differentiated from the melange we see on every kind of webby website.

Method Journalism - Alexis C. Madrigal - The Atlantic

Yelp Is Down!

Oh no! Yelp is down! How will I know what some rando was doing in the time leading up to the restaurant they went to and what their friend was wearing and that they normally hate, hate HATE muffins, and, like even the word muffin is kind of disgusting when you think about it yall-but WHATEVER rando's friends all wanted muffins so they dragged rando to this place and it was okay kind of good I have to admit, but really you should try something completely other than this thing that doesn't really make sense in any way as a comparison, anyway, Yelp is down. One star.

I know this must exist

Is there a service that will copy and/or digitize any and every form of media you send it, and send you back a hard drive full of your stuff in the mail? I want to be able to just fill up a box with floppies, ZIP discs, DAT, ancient rolls of undeveloped film, CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, cassettes (lots of cassettes), you name it and have it mailed back to me on a big old honking USB key. And the thing is, I only want to send one box to one place. I'm way too disorganized to do this twice.

Someone does that, right? Someone must do comprehensive media transfer. Who does that?

judgmentalmaps

San Francisco, CA by Dan Steiner

emptyage

Bar of the Drowned God is my nabe pub.

My quote in The Wire makes me seem awfully nice! (And I am nice! I am a teddy bear!) But I do think my full response to Allie’s question is a much better description of my true thoughts on faving. Here’s what I sent her the other day:

Hey Allie,

I fave things because I like them, or hate them. I do it to say good job, or fuck you, or just because I want to see them again. (But I never, ever see them again.) I fave things because I want the writer to know that I know too—I fave stuff just to let people know I’ve seen it. I fave things out of obligation. I fave things because I’m bored. I fave things to be a part of something bigger than myself. I fave things because favoriting is important and society is broken and Twitter is a meaningless and empty way for me to pass the time and avoid any form of introspection that might make me a better or more productive person. I favorite things to get people’s attention. (“Take out menus left on the doors of other restaurants,” but I may be misquoting that.) I favorite things to feel less alone, and so that you’ll feel less alone too. I favorite stuff that makes me laugh. Sometimes I favorite things by accident. Fave.

-Mat via mobile

+++++++++

This goes unmentioned but I think it’s worth noting that favorites were one of Twitter’s earliest features. In 2006 there even used to be a most favorited page that showed the most popular tweets that day (or week or something). I think it helped establish the culture that you see there to this day.

#twitter

no-commercial-value

Sketchnotes from the #dad panel.

A lot of good and funny conversation that I missed. Sometimes it’s better to listen than note. Oh and draw fat guys drinking Pepsi.

Your genx piece do you live in your momma basement lame

humansofnewyork

"You want to photograph me eating chicken?" "Yep." "Well, if I let you, I need you to help me deliver a message." "What’s that?" "I work at this library. And before that, I was coming here for twenty years. It’s my favorite place in the world. As many people know, the main reading room of this library is supported by seven floors of books, which contain one of the greatest research collections in the world. Recently, the library administration has decided to rip out this collection, send the books to New Jersey, and use the space for a lending library. As part of the consolidation, they are going to close down the Mid-Manhattan Library Branch as well as the Science, Industry, and Business Library. When everything is finished, one of the greatest research libraries in the world will become a glorified internet cafe. Now read that back to me."

Saying you’ve lived here for nine years (or 29 years, or—jackpot!—since birth) isn’t just about putting yourself and your interests in context. It’s an implicit argument about who has the right to exist in this city and who doesn’t. It's about nativism. It's about authenticity. It’s about who got here first.

Modern Luxury | San Francisco Magazine | The Google Bus Protests Aren't About Google or Buses or Even Affordability

So yes, I say that paying for coke is equivalent to donating to the Nazi party. The unspoken thing here is that the reason Americans aren’t more outraged or guilt-ridden is that the people dying are poor brown people—many of them in a tragic irony are classified as narcos so governments can claim it's just gang-on-gang violence.

Cocaine trafficking horrors: Users are complicit in the atrocities of the drug trade.

My problem with Google Glass is primarily not about the basic concept of eyewear with a built-in HUD, or even the camera, but with the actual design and execution of Glass. It is ugly and clunky and ridiculously expensive for what it does. To me, that’s everything. Same thing with all existing smartwatches — the problem isn’t the idea, it’s the actual execution.

Daring Fireball

Exactly

Third Annual Ocean Beach Polar Bear Club

The ocean is great, right? It's big and wavy and wonderful and smells delightfully briny. Let's all go jump in it on New Year's Day.

What? On January 1, at 12 noon, let’s all go jump in the Pacific Ocean at San Francisco's Ocean Beach.

Where and when We can meet up at 11:45 on the beach, at the Judah intersection. Afterwards, we can head up to Judah for hot beverages and camaraderie. I’ll bring whiskey.

Who is invited? You. Also other people.

What should I bring? Yourself. Something to warm you up afterwards. A Towel. A sense of humor. The ability to swim. (Seriously, the ability to swim. Last year the water was pretty rough. Ocean Beach in winter is not forgiving.) Maybe whiskey.

Can we have a campfire on the beach? Not technically.

Have you done this before? Yeah, it was great. Both times.

Can I wear a wetsuit? You can do whatever you want. But no.

I mean, sure. Of course. Wear a wetsuit. Do what you gotta do.

(But no.)

Can I Get Naked? I think it's legal, right? Anyway, much respect to jonnypartys and alanrules. That water was cold and they were as un-scared as sea lions.

Will there be T-shirts? There should be T-shirts. Let's make T-shirts! Who can make T-shirts? We never made T-Shirts last time. Or the time before that. Won't someone make a T-shirt?

Isn't There Another Polar Bear Club at Ocean Beach? Apparently! In fact I think there may be several of them. The Riptide did one last year at Taraval, and I think there may be another at The Park Chalet. But, whatever, whiskey and friends, yo. Whiskey and friends.

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