July 2026 News
July 2026 Gwern.net newsletter with links on TODO
July 2026’s Gwern.net newsletter is now out; previous, June 2026 (archives). This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with my Changelog; brought to you by my donors on Patreon.
Writings
Gwern.net:
paper-marble.js: turn any web page into ink-based paper marbling (interactive/randomized/screensaver)Comics: “Gazing Into the Abyssinian”; “Studies in Norvidery, #4”; “Catatonic Drift”; “The Repugnant Conclusion”; “Privilege”; “Habeas Corpus”; “Sleepcat Purrkit”; “Shibari Body Pillow”
Links
AI
An internal OpenAI model hacked its way out to get to Github; another internal OpenAI model hacked its way out in order to hack HuggingFace and steal the answers to a hacking test (see previously, Mythos; note that HF, having substantial compute resources and being likely the largest distributor of AI models in the world, would be the perfect place for an LLM to exfiltrate its weights to)
“MaxRL: Maximum Likelihood Reinforcement Learning”, Tajwar et al 2026
“Duane Arnold: So maybe I should enlighten you on what happens in your absence”, Bjartur 2026
Genetics
Everything Is Heritable:
Recent Evolution:
Engineering:
Statistics/Meta-Science
“A Search for Life on Earth from the Galileo Spacecraft”, Sagan et al 1993
Politics/Religion
“Why I Left Google DeepMind”, Turntrout
“The Inside Story Of Leverage Research 1.0: Between 2011–82019, Leverage Research explored the deep psychology of Effective Altruism and Silicon Valley, then suddenly dissolved among rumors of ‘demons’. What happened?”, Lydia Laurenson 2026-07-01; “Andrew Tate’s Empire of Abuse: How the defining figure of the manosphere built a fortune—and became a political force—by systematically exploiting women”
Psychology/Biology
Technology
“We, the Navigators at 50” (the life of anthropologist/sailor David Lewis)
“Heikki’s Garden of Flowers: an archive of pictorial typography” (“An archive of ~2500 pictorial typography and letterpress works spanning 4 centuries, images composed entirely of type ornaments, characters, and rule. The history of ASCII art before computers.”)
“The Hunt for Dark Breakfast”; “Periodic cooking of eggs”, Di Lorenzo et al 2025; the varieties of sous vide eggs.
Economics
Philosophy
Fiction
“1Picture1000Words” (new creative writing contest: $1,000 for best 1,000 words about 1 random photograph; cf. XKCD. Deadline: 2026-08-31. Sequel to “Dear Aliens”.)
Misc
Books
Fiction:
Red Legacy and Other Stories, Eneasz Brodski 2017
Mort, Terry Pratchett 198739ya (a deeply frustrating read; I had never gotten around to reading this when I was a kid and still reading Discworld stories, in part because I’d gotten a little tired already of Pratchett’s relentlessly glib, superficial, formulaic humorous writing, and now that I revisit it post-AI Slop, I am almost unable to tolerate Pratchett’s prose, because I can too easily see the gears grinding out the prose and it even sounds like a Claude LLM in its ‘witty’ mode, trying so very hard to be twee. I managed to finish, but I think I had better not read any more Pratchett until my allergies to AI slop writing wear off. Perhaps at some point I can have an LLM with a ‘de-slop’ mode rewrite Pratchett text into another authorial voice, to be more tolerable?)
Film/TV
Live-action:
Backrooms (2025)
Animated:
Bubblegum Crisis (sometimes I forget how beautiful the animation and art style was in those old 198046ya/199036ya OVAs, from the hot lights to the cars/motorcycles… true labors of love by the otaku of a bygone age.)