It’s just three days till the big one, so we haven’t got a full bulletin today. We hope you’re all with family already, for a well-earned rest – or that you’ll be heading home shortly. In the meantime, here's the role-call of our favourite items from the last 12 months of the TCC Weekly:
First up, our Interventionof the year is the idea of dog poo DNA tests, as proposed in the Isle of Man and reported in The Weekly in February; the Silver medal going to this Lego-based construction idea to brighten up neighbourhoods
Also from February, our Values map of the year is pictured at the bottom of this email; you can read our full commentary here, but the key thing, looking again at the heat map, is that it seems to show where right and left populist is coming from
Twitter feed of the year is @CrapLocalNews, which has brought amusement aplenty – and Poll of the year goes to this Ask Fans analysis, in September, of Brexiteer tendencies at Premiership football clubs
The Conspiracy theory of the year, from March, is definitely this loony suggestion that Guardian crossword-writers were looking to frame Nicola Sturgeon as a racist
For Product of the year we’ve chosen these Scarfolk-themed confirmation bias goggles (a close-run thing with these Blairite playing cards); perhaps a good companion to thisBook of the year on magical thinking
This ‘post-modern nonsense generator’, which creates a new pretentious essay each time you click it, wins Meme of the year; and Spoof of the year is this Blur Versus Theresa May rehash
The beautiful Language Tree pictured above wins Visualisation of the year
For Charts of the year it’s a dead heat between Centre for Towns’ graph on age and this chart of which Friends characters drank the most coffee (both pictured below)
Programme of the year is this on psychopaths, Podcast of the year is this on the Tory Machine, and Day out of the year goes to home of neon, Gods Own Junkyard
The scientific Finding of the year – which came in our Weekly just last month, and which will delight J.K. Rowling fans everywhere – is that Harry Potter fans are more tolerant
And lastly, the coveted Map of the year award is a three-way tie, with this Londonist passport map, this map of the places most vulnerable to automation, and this brilliant piece of tree-based cartography all nabbing Gold Medals (pictured below)
If you’ve got a friend who you think might benefit from a Friday dose of psycho-sociological mischief then send them our way. They can sign up to the Weekly by clicking here.
Lastly, if you’re in search of some quiz-fodder during a festive lull, then check out this list of the royalties received for the respective Xmas songs – and test how well you do compared to the rest of the population for knowing the full twelve days of Christmas. And of course, if you haven’t already taken it, then give our Christmas Trust Quiz a twirl!
Have a great Christmas and New Year, and we’ll see you in 2018!