The Tremendous 10 link roundup, #97

1. 100 things that made my year | From Austin Kleon.
2. John Berger, Provocative Art Critic, Dies at 90 | “John Berger, the British critic, novelist and screenwriter whose groundbreaking 1972 television series and book, Ways of Seeing, declared war on traditional ways of thinking about art and influenced a generation of artists and teachers, died on Monday at his home in the Paris suburb of Antony. He was 90.” More: John Berger (RIP) and Susan Sontag take us Inside the Art of Storytelling (1983).
3. The Best Maps of 2016 | “From the craters of Mars to the streets of Zurich, these maps show cartography at its best.”
4. SAID THE GRAMOPHONE: BEST SONGS OF 2016 | “These are my 100 favourite songs of 2016: songs I love more than sparklers, epilogues and guava with lemon. I follow just one arbitrary rule: that no primary artist may appear twice.”
5. What it feels like to be the last generation to remember life before the internet | “[Michael] Harris is the author of The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection, a new book about how technology affects society. It follows in the footsteps of Nicholas Carr, whose The Shallows is a modern classic of internet criticism. But Harris takes a different path from those that have come before. Instead of a broad investigation into the effects of constant connectivity on human behaviour, Harris looks at a very specific demographic: people born before 1985, or the very opposite of the ‘millennial’ demographic coveted by advertisers and targeted by new media outlets.”
6. 1200 Years of Women Composers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now | “In modern times, we don’t regard female musicians as in and of themselves unusual. Our rosters of favorite rockers, pop-stars, solo singer-songwriters, and what have you might well feature as many women as men — or, depending on the subgenre, many more women than men. But those of us who listen to a great deal of classical music might feel a tad sheepish about how much more heavily male our playlists slant, at least in terms of the composers. For a variety of historical and cultural reasons, the classical canon can feel like a man’s world indeed.”
7. The Calm Company (our next book) | “It’s about time for something new. What follows is the introduction to our next book The Calm Company. We’re working on it now, and will be shopping to publishers soon for publication later this year.”
8. The Way We Visualize Big Data Is Broken | “The Office for Creative Research has recently released its second journal exploring some of these issues. The self-described “hybrid research group” founded by Mark Hansen, Ben Rubin, and Jer Thorp in 2013 has put forth a series of 18 digestible essays, research pieces, and data visualizations for edition number two.”
9. The Worst Design Of 2016 Was Also The Most Effective | “Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hat was pervasive, potent, and deeply misunderstood.”
10. In 2017, Pursue Meaning Instead of Happiness | “What would you rather have: a happy life or a meaningful life? You can both be happy and lead a meaningful life, of course. But most of us, consciously or not, choose the pursuit of happiness over the pursuit of meaning.”

Image: map drawn by Anton Thomas, link #3.