AI

Matters Of Scale:

• “Scaling Laws for Generative Mixed-Modal Language Models”, Aghajanyan et al 2023 (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”, Wang et al 2023

• “StyleGAN-T: Unlocking the Power of GANs for Fast Large-Scale Text-to-Image Synthesis”, Sauer et al 2023 (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”, Roux et al 2021; “Gene Therapy Mediated Partial Reprogramming Extends Lifespan and Reverses Age-Related Changes in Aged Mice”, Macip et al 2023

• “DNA synthesis technologies to close the gene writing gap”, Hoose et al 2023 (review)

Statistics/Meta-Science

• “Blind Analysis In Nuclear And Particle Physics”, Klein & Roodman 2005

• “A Handbook of Integer Sequences 50 Years Later”, Sloane 2023

Politics/Religion

Psychology/Biology

• “Indoor Air Quality and Strategic Decision Making”, Künn et al 2023 (zero effect of indoor CO₂ on chess performance)

• “A discipline-wide investigation of the replicability of Psychology papers over the past two decades”, Youyou et al 2023

• “Factors Contributing to the Facial Aging of Identical Twins”, Guyuron et al 2009

• “Visual discrimination of species in dogs (Canis familiaris)”, Autier-Dérian et al 2013_13ya (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”, Barton et al 2020

Technology

Economics

• “Victorian Pioneers of Corporate Sustainability”, Desrochers 2009_17ya (more cornucopian historical examples)

• “The Mechanics of the Industrial Revolution”, Kelly et al 2022

• “Survey finds low office productivity linked to staffing imbalances”, Sassone 1992_34ya (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 & List 2011

Philosophy

• “Humanist Lives of Classical Philosophers and the Idea of Renaissance Secularization: Virtue, Rhetoric, and the Orthodox Sources of Unbelief”, Palmer 2017

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