Items of Interest

Chinese Spacecraft Lands on Farside of The Moon

The Chinese spacecraft Chang'e-4 has been reported to have successfully landed on the farside of The Moon. Chinese state broadbaster CCTV have published an image of the moon's dark side sent back from the lander. Heere's what Buzz Aldrin has to say about it:

Space

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Bill Gates Year in Review

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Bill Gates has published a post on gatesnotes.com describing his work learnings for 2018. The interesting read highlights trends he noticed with Alzheimer's disease, Polio and the global energy landscape. Gates also ponders the future of gene-editing and dealing with global epidemics, as well as defining his focus topics for 2019, privacy and innovation, and technology in education.

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Holiday Radio

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Jon Keegan has an interesting post on medium that analyses 122 hours of holiday radio from New York's WLTW 106.7 LiteFM. The data plots the most played Christmas song (Santa Claus is Coming to Town - all versions), most played specific version (Bing Cosby's White Christmas) and most played performers (Bublé) among other interested facts like plays per time of day and song versions by play count.

Data Vis

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Tá / Yes

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On a positive note, among the many wonderful things that happened in 2018, one of my favourite was when 66.4% of Ireland voted to repeal the 8th amendment to the constitution on May 26, 2018, and has since been passed into law. I could not have been more proud to be Irish this year.

Life

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Frankie Boyle's Review of 2018

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Frankie Boyle has being playing a blinder on Twitter all year, but his review of 2018 in The Guardian is truly fantastic and well worth a read. It is just unfortunate that the content with which he has to work with is so disheartening.

Life

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IPCC Climate Change Report

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For me, irregardless of any Brexit machinations or Trump controversies, the IPCC Climate change report was the most important piece of "news" this year, if not this decade. We have 12 years to stop catastrophic climate change. 1.5 > 2

Environment

Life

Science

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My Favourite Podcasts of 2018

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2018 for me was the year of podcasts! I've included many of them in previous editions which you can view here, but my standout ones are The Blindboy Podcast and Baz and Andrew's House of Rugby.

Life

Podcast

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My Favourite Albums of 2018

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Villagers - The Art of Pretending to Swim Villagers fifth album, The Art of Pretending to Swim was a fantastic late release for 2018. I love the supporting musical arrangement to Conor O'Brien's fanstastic vocals. Trick of the Light is my favourite track on the album.

Life

Music