Links

Technology:

• “In the Beginning was the Command Line”, Neal Stephenson

• Data Compression Explained, Matt Mahoney

• “A Pedagogy of Diminishing Returns: Scientific Involution across Three Generations of Nuclear Weapons Science”, Gusterson2005

• “Responses to Catastrophic AGI Risk: A Survey”, Sotala & Yampolskiy2013

• “It’s All About The Benjamins: An empirical study on incentivizing users to ignore security advice”, Christin et al 2012

• “Visualizing Algorithms” (sorting, maze-drawing)

• “how I created 8088 Domination, which is a program that displays fairly decent full-motion video on a 1981 IBM PC”

• “Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames: Control Characters (such as Newline), Leading Dashes, and Other Problems” (on the nigh-insuperable difficulties of correct filename handling)

• “TCP ex Machina: Computer-Generated Congestion Control” (“Although the RemyCCs appear to work well on networks whose parameters fall within or near the limits of what they were prepared for—even beating in-network schemes at their own game and even when the design range spans an order of magnitude variation in network parameters—we do not yet understand clearly why they work, other than the observation that they seem to optimize their intended objective well. We have attempted to make algorithms ourselves that surpass the generated RemyCCs, without success.”)

• Ultra-long-term civilizations: planets warmed by neutrinos

Statistics:

• “Knowing When to Stop: How to gamble if you must—the mathematics of optimal stopping”

• “Model Combination and Adjustment”

• “Big Data: New Tricks for Econometrics”, Varian2014 (Readable overview of some machine learning techniques for economics.)

• “If correlation doesn’t imply causation, then what does?”, Nielsen

• “Sequence Thinking vs. Cluster Thinking” (False dichotomy—“cluster thinking” is simply “sequence thinking” sans arbitrary restrictions of hypotheses/models, like a cryonics analysis which only uses conjunctions and never disjunctions, so it’s unsurprising that sequence thinking is faster & easier but generally less accurate than cluster thinking; but still interesting.)

• Using Repeated Measures & LOESS smoothing to Remove Artifacts from Longitudinal Data (The idea of measures which systematically vary over time terrifies me, but that’s a neat approach: occasionally take calibration samples and fit a curve to control for the bias.)

• “The Neutral Model of Inquiry (or, What Is the Scientific Literature, Chopped Liver?)”

• Gustav III of Sweden’s coffee experiment

Medicine:

• “Who By Very Slow Decay”: end-of-life medical care

Economics:

• “How Copyright Keeps Works Disappeared”, Heald2014 (large deadweight losses)

• “How bad were the Navigation Acts really?”

• “Results of the German and American submarine campaigns of WWII”, Poirier1999

• The price of the Cold War: ~$12,000 billion?

• The price of Apollo: ~$170 billion

• The price of the Manhattan Project: ~$30 billion

• “Should Oregon fund college through equity?”

Politics/religion:

• Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Graeber2004

• “A Genome-Wide Analysis of Liberal and Conservative Political Attitudes”, Hatemi et al 2011

• “Growing Up Sexually in Europe”

• “Losing the War” (WWII in propaganda vs as experienced)

• Basil Zaharoff

• “A Filthy History: When New Yorkers Lived Knee-Deep in Trash”

• “Bin Laden raid reveals ‘state failure’: Leaked report offers scathing assessment of how al-Qaeda chief was able to evade detection” (and if you believe that…)

• “New New Fatherhood in the Inner City: A new book reveals how poor urban dads are reversing gender roles in caring for their children, but not being providers”

• Higher education is signaling

• “‘Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book’: The new warrior cop is out of control”

• “U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement”

• “What Can the Middle East Learn From What’s Happening in Qatar?”

• “Xhosa cattle-killing movement and famine (1854–1858)”

Psychology:

• “A preliminary report of kayak-angst among the Eskimo of West Greenland: a study in sensory deprivation”, Gussow1963

• “Do Rational People Exist?”

• “Social Psychology Is A Flamethrower”

• “Hikikomori as a Gendered Issue: Analysis on the discourse of acute social withdrawal in contemporary Japan”, Dziesinski2004

• “Drugs and the Meaning of Life”, Sam Harris

• “Fooled twice, shame on who? Problems with Mechanical Turk study samples, part 2”

• Training Murder Investigators:

  • Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death

  • Death in Diorama

  • “These Gruesome Dollhouse Death Scenes Helped Create Forensic Science”

Philosophy:

• “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences”, Wigner1960

• “Shaka, When the Walls Fell: In one fascinating episode, Star Trek traced the limits of human communication as we know it—and suggested a new, truer way of talking about the universe”

• On The Epistemology Of Miracles, Witnesses, And ESP:

  • Hume’s “Of Miracles” (WP, SEP overview & impact)

  • Hanson: “Extraordinary Claims ARE Extraordinary Evidence”; Hanson: extraordinary claims are not extraordinary evidence

  • “Is there sufficient historical evidence to establish the resurrection of Jesus?”

  • “Some Claims Are Just Too Extraordinary”

  • “The Argument from Witness Testimony”

  • “Trust in testimony and miracles”: psychology research

  • Modus tollens vs modus ponens

  • Bayesian approaches, Jaynes (commentary)

  • Laplace on witness testimony

  • “The Control Group Is Out Of Control”: parapsychology & philosophy of science

• “Near-Death-Experience Experiment: Ethical Concerns” (it is difficult to believe anyone could debate the ethics of such experiments, but the author manages it.)

Literature, fiction:

• “Lady Yodo-Dono”

• “Combustion Hour”, Lee2014 (“This story is about the eschatology of shadow puppets.”)

• “Chapter Six”, Jones2014 (“an anthropological zombie story about Crain, a grad student, who has a theory of mankind’s evolution. As he and his former professor scavenge on bone marrow left behind by the local zombie horde, he makes his well-reasoned argument.”)

• “Asches to Asches”

• “The Six Fingers of Time”, Lafferty1960

Literature, nonfiction:

• “Dune Endures”

• How movie options destroyed R.A. Lafferty’s novels & short stories on the market

• “J.K. Rowling and the Chamber of Literary Fame”

• “Moretti: Adventures of a Man of Science”

Books

Fiction:

• The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro (review)

• The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, Swanwick (review)

• The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Gaiman (review)

• Paul Celan: Selected Poems (review)

Film/TV

Anime:

• Seto no Hanayome (review)

Music

Touhou:

• “Adiós, Illusion de los Compañeros ～ さよなら友の幻よ” (ジャージと愉快な仲間たち; 63/64 Completion {R11}) [folk]

• “Camino a la Luna ～ 月へ至る山道” (ジャージと愉快な仲間たち; 63/64 Completion {R11}) [folk]

• “¡Gritá Su Nombre! ～ 彼女の名を叫べ” (ジャージと愉快な仲間たち; 63/64 Completion {R11}) [folk]

• “Dance even Owl” (surreacheese; FETA {R11}) [jazz}

• “Magical color(bossa)” (surreacheese; FETA {R11}) [bossa nova?]

• “SAISEN girl” (あき; 恋綴里-第五話- {R11}) [Jpop]

• “亡き王女に捧げるセプテット” (Foxfactory; Touhou Gensoukai -Koumakyou no Oto- Irodori {C84}) [orchestral]

• “Magic of the Gavel” (ZUN; Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character {C84}) [electronic]

• “Eyes On Me” (Coro; 癒しの風 vol.2 蓮台野夜行 ～ Ghostly Field Club {C84}) [jazz]

• “第1回東方M-1ぐらんぷりR 劇中BGM集 10” (R-note; Comic market 84 R-note Omake CD {C84}) [instrumental]

• “IDEALiZED” (Babbe feat. Suzuki; BLOSSOMING DANCEFLOOR {2014}) [house]

• “ほたる (Firefly)” (Crazy Berry; くるいちご三ルク {R11}) [rock?]

• “liar lips” (Crazy Berry; くるいちご三ルク {R11}) [dubstep?]

• “Lunatic Princess ~ Flight of the Bamboo Cutter” (TAM; TOHO DRAMATIC VIOLIN -enthusiasm- {R11}) [classical/rock]

• “Border of Life ~ Bloom Nobly, Cherry Blossoms of Sumizome” (TAM; TOHO DRAMATIC VIOLIN -enthusiasm- {R11}) [classical/rock]

• “Love Coloured Master Spark” (TAM; TOHO DRAMATIC VIOLIN -enthusiasm- {R11}) [classical/rock]

• “Septette for the Dead Princess” (TAM; TOHO DRAMATIC VIOLIN -enthusiasm- {R11}) [classical/rock]

Doujin:

• “ウサギトエゴ” (kous, ef; 中庭△ {2013}) [electronic?]

Vocaloid:

• “残らずの森” (kous; 中庭M {2013}) [Jpop]