Assorted Year-End Lists ⇥ theatlantic.com

The Atlantic has published National Geographic’s collection of the best nature photography of the year. It’s inspiring.

Poynter’s list is their annual roundup of the best media corrections, including this gem from the New York Times magazine:

An article on March 20 about wave piloting in the Marshall Islands misstated the number of possible paths that could be navigated without instruments among the 34 islands and atolls of the Marshall Islands. It is 561, not a trillion trillion.

Pure gold.

The Times also asked a bunch of public figures about what they read in 2016. For what it’s worth, my favourite reads of the year, in no particular order:

• “Weapons of Math Destruction” by Cathy O’Neil. A bit of a corny title doesn’t undermine a critical look at what “big data” has wrought.

• “One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place Left to Hide” by Christian Kiefer. Written as a film, a story about an installation artist wrestling with the complexities of balancing his life with his craft.

• “The Jokes” by Stephen Thomas. If you like Lydia Davis’ punchy style of flash fiction, you’ll dig Thomas’ wry debut.

• “We Gon’ Be Alright” by Jeff Chang. An immediate, urgent collection of essays touching on various aspects of the modern concept of race in America, including a particularly brilliant piece on Asian-Americanness.

• “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics” by Carlo Rovelli. A very short set of explanations of the rules governing our universe that, while presented in plain English, never feels dumbed-down.

Meanwhile, every music review site has published their best-of-2016 lists: Pitchfork, Spin, NME, and the Quietus. You’ll probably find something you like from each of those; the latter has some especially strange stuff that no other reviewer would touch.