AI

Matters Of⁠ ⁠Scale⁠:

• “Scaling Laws for Generative Mixed-Modal Language Models”⁠, Aghajanyanet al2023 (crossovers for unimodal vs multimodal models)

• ⁠“Inverse Scaling Prize: 2^nd Round Winners”⁠

• “VALL-E: Neural Codec Language Models are Zero-Shot Text to Speech Synthesizers”⁠, Wanget al2023

• “StyleGAN-T: Unlocking the Power of GANs for Fast Large-Scale Text-to-Image Synthesis”⁠, Saueret al2023 (1b-param n = 250m GAN competitive with GLIDE⁠/Latent⁠-Diffusion/Make-A-Scene⁠—proving GANs work fine at scale)

Genetics

Everything Is Heritable:

Recent Evolution:

Engineering:

• “Diverse partial reprogramming strategies restore youthful gene expression and transiently suppress cell identity”⁠, Rouxet al2021; “Gene Therapy Mediated Partial Reprogramming Extends Lifespan and Reverses Age-Related Changes in Aged Mice”⁠, Macipet al2023

• “DNA synthesis technologies to close the gene writing gap”⁠, Hooseet al2023 (review)

Statistics/Meta-Science

• “Blind Analysis In Nuclear And Particle Physics”⁠, Klein & Roodman2005

• “A Handbook of Integer Sequences 50 Years Later”⁠, Sloane2023

Politics/Religion

Psychology/Biology

• “Indoor Air Quality and Strategic Decision Making”, Künnet al2023 (zero effect of indoor CO₂ on chess performance)

• “A discipline-wide investigation of the replicability of Psychology papers over the past two decades”⁠, Youyouet al2023

• “Factors Contributing to the Facial Aging of Identical Twins”⁠, Guyuronet al2009

• “Visual discrimination of species in dogs (Canis familiaris)”⁠, Autier-Dérianet al2013 (dogs don’t know they’re dogs, but they can learn)

• First-in-cat⁠ study of longevity drug rapamycin is enrolling cats with chronic kidney disease at Ohio State University Veterinary Medical Center

• “Observations of ‘pseudoparasitism’ involving snake eels (Teleostei: Ophichthidae) in commercially important Black Jewfish Protonibea diacanthus (Sciaenidae) and other teleost species”⁠, Bartonet al2020

Technology

Economics

• “Victorian Pioneers of Corporate Sustainability”⁠, Desrochers2009 (more cornucopian⁠ historical examples)

• “The Mechanics of the Industrial Revolution”⁠, Kellyet al2022

• “Survey finds low office productivity linked to staffing imbalances”⁠, Sassone1992 (has office automation & simultaneous reduction of support staffing been penny-wise-pound-foolish, and thrown away the productivity gains of computers?)

• “Was There Really a Hawthorne Effect at the Hawthorne Plant? An Analysis of the Original Illumination Experiments”⁠, Levitt & List2011

Philosophy

• “Humanist Lives of Classical Philosophers and the Idea of Renaissance Secularization: Virtue, Rhetoric, and the Orthodox Sources of Unbelief”⁠, Palmer2017

Fiction

• Julian Gough’s⁠ Minecraft⁠ ⁠“End Poem”⁠ is ⁠now public domain (CC-0); amusingly, this decision probably gifts Microsoft millions of dollars (bonus: Microsoft’s anti-Streisand-effect PR tactics⁠); cf. ⁠Tolkien’s subcreation theory

Miscellaneous