A little overwhelmed by all those end-of-the-year best-of lists? No worries. The
Toronto Review of Books offers this
list of lists, "a quick-and-dirty shortcut, a best-of the 'best-ofs' if you will, a recap of the recaps of the world-historically tumultuous and unpredictable year 2011 was."
posted by anothermug
on Dec 22, 2011 -
5 comments
"
On GChat, I type many things – sincere and not – that I would never say in person because it’s easy, when typing certain things into a box, to forget whom you are typing to." From
Thought Catalog, writer Caroline Bankoff lists 45 things she thinks about when she thinks about google's chat service.
[more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue
on Jan 6, 2011 -
34 comments
It's a simple concept: Given a choice between two random movies, which one do you like best? That's the driving force behind
Flickchart, an
addictive review site for movie lovers. Faced with two posters, click the one for the title you prefer (weeding out the ones you haven't seen). Good! Now do it again. And again. And again. With each new face-off, Flickchart perfects a growing list of your favorite films -- and there can be no ties. This leads to some
difficult dilemmas:
Star Wars or
Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Citizen Kane or
The Godfather?
WALL-E or
Spirited Away? But you needn't struggle alone -- Flickchart is also social. By drawing on
the data of tens of thousands of fellow users, you can create
remarkably specific lists:
Martin Scorsese's Best Period Films.
The Best Road Movies of the 1980s.
The Worst Movies of All Time. If you rank enough films, you can generate interesting personalized charts, like "Your Favorite Musicals" or "The Best Movies You Haven't Seen." These filters carry over to the ranking system, letting you judge nothing but Horror movies or 1960s movies or unranked movies or movies from your top 100. You can also comment on
popular match-ups, lending your voice to contentious debates like
Ghostbusters vs.
Back to the Future or
Jaws vs.
Predator. Not a movie fan? Don't worry. Flickchart will be expanding into books, games, and music soon. Until then, you can give your own data sets the Flickchart treatment using
this tool from CNN.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Sep 3, 2010 -
202 comments
When Alan Cooper was in the second grade, his teacher introduced him to "homonyms," those words, like "caret" and "carrot" that are pronounced the same, but are spelled differently, and that have different meanings. The concept intrigued him, and over the years he has maintained an ever-growing list.
Alan Cooper's Homonyms.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Feb 20, 2010 -
54 comments
Five Elastic Years of infosthetics.com — On the occasion of the recent fifth birthday of
infosthetics.com, they thought a bit about the archival nature of the whole enterprise. With (almost) daily updates about fresh projects from visualization and information aesthetics, about 1950 different projects have been described and documented. This is a first step towards making this growing archive more accessible: a custom adaptation of
the elastic lists principle for the 1950 posts of infosthetics.com.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Dec 15, 2009 -
2 comments
The Top Ten Top Ten Top Ten of 2008;
NY Times blog,
Social Citizens,
Swan Fungus,
lifehacker,
PC World,
Tynan,
Something Else,
The Exploding Barrel,
Technorati,
Google,
Toptentopten.
posted by twoleftfeet
on Dec 27, 2008 -
13 comments
In 2009,
a remarkably gifted politician, confronting a remarkably difficult set of challenges, will
have to learn to say "No we can't",
Guantánamo will prove a moral minefield,
economic recovery will be invisible to the naked eye,
governments must prepare for the day they stop financial guarantees,
we will judge our commitment to sustainability,
scientists should research the causes of religion,
we will all be potential online paparazzi,
English will have more words than any other language (but it's meaningless),
Afghanistan will see a surge of Western (read: American) troops,
Iran will continue its nuclear quest while
diplomacy lies in shambles,
the sea floor is the new frontier,
we should rethink aging,
(non-)voters will continue to thwart the European project --
but cheap travel will continue to buoy it --
though it has some unfinished business to attend to, and
a Nordic defence bond will blossom.
The Economist: The World in 2009.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 27, 2008 -
31 comments
I often find myself asking, "Who wants to kill me and how can I avoid them?"
It seems that the list is pretty long. There are a whole batch of
international threats out to get me. There also appear to be a number of
street gangs, happy to do the deed as well. What's worse is that they are
spreading. However, since I don't travel abroad and I don't live in a fancy-dancy city like Los Angeles, Chicago or
Fargo, I'm probably safe right? Nope, sadly it seems hate groups are everywhere -- in
my backyard and probably
yours. I think this year I'm having Thanksgiving in the bunker.
posted by BeReasonable
on Nov 26, 2008 -
43 comments
The 25 Greatest Duets Of All Time (with embedded YouTube videos of each) from retroCRUSH.
Duets, by nature, are a corny type of song. Sure, there's a handful that we recognize here that are also some of best tunes ever recorded, but there's something inherently cheesy and fun about duets that make them a fun guilty pleasure for millions to enjoy.
posted by amyms
on Jan 26, 2008 -
67 comments
Jon Swift asked everyone on his blogroll to pick what they considered their best post of 07--
...There are posts on politics by liberals, conservatives and moderates, posts on movies, music, television, books, economics, health care, science, sports, religion and history, personal stories and slices of life, poetry, prose, pictures and video. Some are very funny, some are quite serious, some will make you angry and some will make you say "Huh?" ...
posted by amberglow
on Dec 28, 2007 -
12 comments
