This is the July 2015 edition of the Gwern.net newsletter; previous, June 2015. This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with Changelog; brought to you by my donors on Patreon.
Writings
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A/B tests: finished metadata test; proposal towards recurrent neural network for reinforcement learning of CSS
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Air conditioner upgrade cost-benefit analysis
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Gwern.net:
- switched to Patreon for donations
- optimized website loading (removed CSE, A/B testing, non-validating XML, outbound link-tracking; simplified Disqus; minified JS, and fully async/deferred JS loading)
Media
Links
Politics/religion:
- “The Really Big One: An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.”
- “Of Malevolent Democracies and Benevolent Autocracies: A Very Short Quantitative History of Political Regimes, Part 1.9325”
- “Utopian for Beginners: An amateur linguist loses control of the language [Ithkuil] he invented” (where are those Ukrainians now, I wonder?)
Statistics/AI/meta-science:
- Ch6: “Deep Learning” (latest in Nielsen’s Neural Networks and Deep Learning)
- “How One Man Poisoned a City’s Water Supply (and Saved Millions of Children’s Lives in the Process)” (on John L. Leal & water chlorination)
- “Reanalyses of Randomized Clinical Trial Data”, et al 2014
- “The Aging of Science”
- “List of 19 Natural Experiments”
- “The Null Ritual: What You Always Wanted to Know About Significance Testing but Were Afraid to Ask”, et al 2004
Psychology/biology:
- “Physics of Wound Healing I: Energy Considerations”, 2012
- “The Biodeterminist’s Guide to Parenting”
- “A Year of Spaced Repetition Software in the Classroom”
- “Whole-personality emulation”, 2012 (with enough data, the Big Five personality factors can be replaced with the “Small 100”)
- “Does it pay to know your MBTI type?”
- “Burn-in, bias, and the rationality of anchoring”, et al 2012
Technology:
Economics:
- “Economic Gains Resulting from the Reduction in Children’s Exposure to Lead in the United States”, et al 2002
- “When the Doctor Is Not Needed”
- “How The Talmud Became A Best Seller in South Korea” (no one tell them about signaling or genetics)
- “The Patent Troll You Don’t Read About In Bar-Code Inventor’s Obituaries”
Philosophy:
Fiction:
Books
Fiction:
- Still Alice (our obituaries)
- The Martian (Weir)
- Asimov’s Puzzles of the Black Widowers (review)
Nonfiction:
- Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, Schlosser
- Donald Keene’s 1984 Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era; Poetry, Drama, Criticism (Meiji & imperial period)
- Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (review)
Film/TV
Live-action:
Anime:
Music
Touhou:
- the latest TLMC has been released: “Touhou lossless music collection: TLMC v.18 (2015.06.30)”
- “Fires of Hokkai” (くみちょ; Knights of Round 3 {C77}) [post-rock]
- “マンドラゴラの庭” (siva; Gensokyo St. Patrick’s Day {K10}) [Celtic]
- “Rince Oiche” (Escarmew; Gensokyo St. Patrick’s Day {K10}) [Celtic]
- “Sleepy Maiden” (Marasy; 幻想遊戲<眠>2 {C86}) [classical]
- “Septette for a Sleepy Princess” (Marasy; 幻想遊戲<眠>2 {C86}) [classical]
- “籠居漏水” (PIROPARU; Kyouon no Ooi Ryouriten {Reitaisai SP}) [instrumental]
- “Lotus World” (PIROPARU; Kyouon no Ooi Ryouriten {Reitaisai SP}) [instrumental]
- “Going back to Sleeping Night” (Marasy; 幻想遊戲<眠>2 {C86}) [classical]
- “Drowsy Eyes” (Marasy; 幻想遊戲<眠>2 {C86}) [classical]