AI

• “When and Why Vision-Language Models Behave like Bags-Of-Words, and What to Do About It?”, Yuksekgonul et al 2023 (why CLIP-based image generators like SD/DALL-E-2 struggle so much with composition compared to Parti etc)

Matters Of Scale:

• ‘Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter’

• “Learning Agile Soccer Skills for a Bipedal Robot with Deep Reinforcement Learning”, Haarnoja et al 2023 (zero-shot sim2real training of 51cm/3.5kg humanoid robots)

• DeepFloyd

• On risks of emergent steganography in language models

Genetics

Everything Is Heritable:

Recent Evolution:

Engineering:

• “First gene-edited calf with reduced susceptibility to a major viral pathogen”, Workman et al 2023

Statistics/Meta-Science

• “Homeopathy can offer empirical insights on treatment effects in a null field”, Sigurdson et al 2023 (homeopathy as the control group for medicine: d ~ 0.3)

Politics/Religion

Psychology/Biology

• “A Dynamical Model of General Intelligence: The Positive Manifold of Intelligence by Mutualism”, Maas et al 2006; “A Dynamic Systems Model of Cognitive and Language Growth”, van Geert1991

• “A neuro-metabolic account of why daylong cognitive work alters the control of economic decisions”, Wiehler et al 2022

• “Nutrition Science’s Most Preposterous Result: Studies show a mysterious health benefit to ice cream. Scientists don’t want to talk about it” (‘The Chocolate Glacé Is Out Of Control’)

• “The effects of creatine supplementation on cognitive performance—a randomized controlled study”, Fabienne et al 2023 (null)

Technology

Economics

• “Energy Saving May Kill: Evidence from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident”, He & Tanaka2023 (poverty kills, especially energy poverty)

Philosophy

• “The Gostak and the Doshes”, Miles J. Breuer (1930; on distimming & scissors); The Gostak: an interactive fiction text game in a made-up language (and world), with semantics learned from syntax

Fiction

Miscellaneous

• “The Beautiful, Brutal World of Bonsai: An American undergoes a gruelling apprenticeship to a Japanese master”

• “An Oral History of ‘Steamed Hams’, the Funniest Simpsons Scene Ever”; “Steaming a Good Ham: How to write a meme in Shakespearean English”, Talia Felix; a selection of “Steamed Hams” videos:

  • Film:

    • “But it’s a German Expressionist Film”

    • “…In Nazi Germany”

    • “…Was banned in the USSR”

    • “…The French New Wave”

    • “…A Way Too Serious Film Essay”

    • “…Live Action But It’s Made By A High Schooler”

    • “…A 90s Anime Fansub”

    • “…Jo Jo’s Bizarre Adventure”

    • “…Netflix True Crime Title Sequence”

  • Game:

    • “…A playable 2D indie game (v1.0)”

    • “…A Game & it’s all 6 endings”

    • “…A Persona 4 Social Link”

    • “…Metal Gear Solid”

    • “…Earthbound”

    • “…a visual novel”

  • Formal:

    • “…Every computer is at a different speed & synced to when Skinner says ‘Steamed Hams’”

    • “…I put it through Google Translate 10 times”

    • “…I sorted it by phoneme”

    • “I reversed the order of their lines and it works strangely well”

    • “…Played 64 times at 64 speeds in an 8×8 grid”

    • “…The thumbnail describes it all”

    • “…There’s a Different Animator Every 13 Seconds”

    • “Steamed Hams Inc. ♪”

    • “…Recreated using only Seinfeld clips”

    • “…Voiced by Jeff Goldblum”

  • Musical:

    • “…‘All Star’”

    • “…‘The Confrontation’ From Les Misérables”

    • “…‘Take On Me’”

    • “…The Duck Song”

    • “…An Opera (Don Giovanni)”

  • Meta:

    • “…Nothing Happens & It’s Intensely Awkward”

    • “…I Can’t”

    • “…Everything goes extremely well”

    • “…it’s Gen Alpha humor”