Links

Genetics:

• Everything Is Heritable:

  • “Genetic ‘General Intelligence’, Objectively Determined and Measured”, de la Fuente et al 2019 (the UKBB cognitive measures properly analyzed using genetic correlations, allowing better prediction of the genetic g ‘generalist genes’ and also test-specific cognitive performances)
  • “Social and non-social autism symptoms and trait domains are genetically dissociable”, Warrier et al 2019 (more evidence that embryo selection for intelligence would not also lead to greater social dysfunctionality/​autism)
  • “The Genetics of Human Skin and Hair Pigmentation”, Pavan & Sturm2019
  • “Extreme inbreeding in a European ancestry sample from the contemporary UK population”, Yengo et al 2019 (>10% ROH → -0.3–0.7SD on 7 traits like height/​intelligence)
  • UKBB announces WGS of all n = 500,000 participants
  • “A Prospective Analysis of Genetic Variants Associated with Human Lifespan”, Wright et al 2019

• Engineering:

  • “Controlled modelling of human epiblast and amnion development using stem cells”, Zheng et al 2019 (creation of quasi-embryos from stem cells; towards IES; media: TR⁠, Nature)
  • “The Perfect Milk Machine: How Big Data Transformed the Dairy Industry” (for estimates of limits to selection/​how valuable the perfect cow would be, see Cole & VanRaden2011)
  • “Genetics-based methods for agricultural insect pest management”, Alphey & Bonsall2019

AI:

• “AI-GAs: AI-generating algorithms, an alternate paradigm for producing general artificial intelligence”, Clune2019

• “Fine-Tuning Language Models from Human Preferences”, Ziegler et al 2019 (blog⁠; source⁠; training better text generation using human ratings of quality)

• Matters Of Scale:

  • “Megatron-LM: Training Multi-Billion Parameter Language Models Using GPU Model Parallelism”, Shoeybi et al 2019 (text samples⁠; earlier blog)
  • “Exascale Deep Learning for Scientific Inverse Problems”, Laanait et al 2019
  • “Large-scale Pretraining for Neural Machine Translation with Tens of Billions of Sentence Pairs”, Meng et al 2019
  • “Learning to Seek: Autonomous Source Seeking with Deep Reinforcement Learning Onboard a Nano Drone Microcontroller”, Duisterhof et al 2019 (reminds me of Bonsai)

Statistics/​Meta-Science:

• “Registered reports: an early example and analysis”, Wiseman et al 2019 (parapsychology was the first field to use Registered Reports in 1976, which cut statistical-significance rates by 2⁄3^rds: Johnson1975a⁠, Johnson1975b⁠, Johnson1976¹)
• “Methods for Studying Coincidences”, Diaconis & Mosteller1989
• “The Power of Two Random Choices: A Survey of Techniques and Results”, Mitzenmacher et al 2001
• “Sparkline theory and practice”⁠, Edward Tufte (examples & questions)

Politics/​religion:

• “Constitutional Hardball”, Tushnet2004
• “Anthropology’s Science Wars: Insights from a New Survey”, Horowitz et al 2019 (visualizations)
• “Leninthink: On the practice behind the theory of Marxism-Leninism”
• “Dear Young Eccentric”

Psychology/​biology:

• “Effect of Lower Versus Higher Red Meat Intake on Cardiometabolic and Cancer Outcomes: A Systematic Review of Randomized Trials”, Zeraatkar et al 2019 (“diets lower in red meat may have little or no effect on all-cause mortality (HR 0.99 [95% CI⁠, 0.95 to 1.03])”; on the accusations of conflicts of interest)
• “Reading Lies: Nonverbal Communication and Deception”, Vrij et al 2019
• “Is Cognitive Functioning Impaired in Methamphetamine Users? A Critical Review”, Hart et al 2012
• “Dumb or smart asses? Donkey’s (Equus asinus) cognitive capabilities share the heritability and variation patterns of human’s (Homo sapiens) cognitive capabilities”, González et al 2019
• “Nature’s Spoils: The underground food movement ferments revolution”

Technology:

• “STEPS Toward Expressive Programming Systems: ‘A Science Experiment’”, Ohshima et al 2012 (writing a GUI OS in 20k LoC; tricks include ASCII art networking DSLs & generic optimization for text layout)
• “Secrets by the thousands”, Walker1946 (more on the post-WWII brain drain from Germany/​Europe to the USA)
• “Secrets of the Little Blue Box”, Rosenbaum1971; “Terminal Delinquents: Once, They Stole Hubcaps And Shot Out Street-Lights. Now They’re Stealing Your Social Security Number And Shooting Out Your Credit Rating. A Layman’s Guide To Computer High Jinks”, Hitt & Tough1990 (I feel this article must have been a reference for Hackers)
• “The Radioactive Boy Scout: When a teenager attempts to build a breeder reactor”, Silverstein1998
• “Fancy Euclid’s Elements in TeX”⁠, Slyusarev Sergey (with generative drop caps); “Making of Byrne’s Euclid”⁠, Nicholas Rougeux (how to create a beautiful interactive HTML version of Byrne’s unique color-diagram book interpretation of Euclid’s Elements (Tufte discussion); you shouldn’t do this sort of thing for everything, but maybe you should try to do it for something)
• “SpeechJammer: A System Utilizing Artificial Speech Disturbance with Delayed Auditory Feedback”, Kurihara & Tsukada2012
• “Mark of Integrity”⁠, Jonathan Allen (on juiced cards, luminous readers, sunning the deck, and other card sharpers’ tricks for card marking)

Economics:

• “Managing an iconic old luxury brand in a new luxury economy: Hermès handbags in the US market”, Lewis & Haas2014 (Summary⁠; see also “Birkin Demand: A Sage & Stylish Investment”, Newsom2016)

Fiction:

• Bakker’s Second Apocalypse & Frank Herbert’s Dune: time loops & finding freedom in an unfree universe (compare Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life”)

Misc:

• “Japan Sings Along With Beethoven”

Film/​TV

Live-action:

• Mandy (2018; review)
• Weiner (2016; review)
• Falling Down (1993)

Animated:

• Redline (2009; review)
• Neon Genesis Evangelion Concurrency Project (2013; review)

Music

Touhou:

• “ann～庵～” (茶太 feat. Chata; 『spill over』 {C95}) [rock]
• “cardiac sound” (Kirin; Cleave Spark the Instrumental {C95}) [trance]

MLP:

• “Getting Stronger” (Michelle Creber, Black Gryph0n, Baasik; Getting Stronger {2016}) [rock]
• “Landscapes” (Mane in Green {2016}) [electronic]
• “Moonlight” (Black Gryph0n & Baasik; IMmortal {2014}) [trance]
• “Faster Than You Know” (Black Gryph0n & Baasik; IMmortal {2014}) [pop]

Doujin:

• “Natsukage -endless summer lights-” (Falmaki⁠; Natsukage -endless summer lights- {C94}) [post-rock]