Links

Genetics:

• Everything Is Heritable:

  • “Genome-wide association study identifies 74 [162] loci associated with educational attainment”, Okbay et al 2016

  • everything is correlated:

    • “Genetic link between family socioeconomic status and children’s educational achievement estimated from genome-wide SNPs”, Krapohl & Plomin 2016
    • “LD Hub: a centralized database and web interface to perform LD score regression that maximizes the potential of summary level GWAS data for SNP heritability and genetic correlation analysis”, Zheng et al 2016 (Web interface to scores of GWAS results, allowing combined inference over them all: LD Hub. Gets around privacy & scaling problems by using, not GCTA, but LD regression which only needs summary statistics. LD score regression is definitely the wave of the future. GCTA was king for a few years, but the inability to use summary data is killing it; in the modern context of a thousand different funding sources, ‘medical ethics’, & empire building driving countless genetic silos, a method must be able to work on just summary statistics if it’s to have any real uptake and get n into the hundreds of thousands.)
    • “Detection and interpretation of shared genetic influences on 42 human traits”, Pickrell et al 2016
    • “An Atlas of Genetic Correlations across Human Diseases and Traits”, Bulik-Sullivan et al 2015
    • “Genetic contributions to self-reported tiredness”, Deary et al 2016 (GCTA estimate is not too impressive, but the pleiotropy is interesting. What do you get when you sum a lot of weakly genetically-correlated variables? A giant difference.)

• Recent Evolution:

  • “Detection of human adaptation during the past 2,000 years”, Field et al 2016
  • “Population structure of UK Biobank and ancient Eurasians reveals adaptation at genes influencing blood pressure”, Galinsky et al 2016 (Biobank—the gift that keeps on giving. The genetic revolution continues.)
  • “Quantitative Genetics in the Postmodern Family of the Donor Sibling Registry”, Lee 2013 (maternal selection of sperm donors for height increases offspring height as much as predicted by heritability estimates+breeder’s equation)
  • “Genetic evidence for natural selection in humans in the contemporary United States”, Beauchamp 2016
  • “Gene Flow by Selective Emigration as a Possible Cause for Personality Differences Between Small Islands and Mainland Populations”, Ciani & Cialuppi 2011

• “Schizophrenia and subsequent neighborhood deprivation: revisiting the social drift hypothesis using population, twin and molecular genetic data”, Sariaslan et al 2016 (good use of polygenic scores for confirmation)

• “The phenotypic legacy of admixture between modern humans and Neandertals”, Simonti et al 2016

• “The MC1R Gene and Youthful Looks”, Liu et al 2016

• “Molecular genetic contributions to self-rated health”, Harris et al 2016 (I love how you can ask people something as super-vague as ‘do you think you’re in good health’ and you still get noticeable heritabilities and disease-related hits with a big enough dataset like Biobank.)

• Engineering:

  • “Continuous evolution of Bacillus thuringiensis toxins overcomes insect resistance”, Badran et al 2016

Politics/religion:

• “Gods and Gamma” on “‘God has sent me to you’: Right temporal epilepsy, left prefrontal psychosis”, Arzy & Schurr 2016 (an EEG recording of a messianic religious conversion experience!)
• “At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction” (Qui vult decipi decipiatur.)

AI:

• “One-shot Learning with Memory-Augmented Neural Networks”, Santoro et al 2016
• “Programming with a Differentiable Forth Interpreter”, Riedel et al 2016
• “FractalNet: Ultra-Deep Neural Networks without Residuals”, Larsson 2016
• “Artistic style transfer for videos”, Ruder et al 2016 (video demonstration; I particularly like the inkwash-style footage at the end)
• “Deep Reinforcement Learning: Pong from Pixels”
• SSC book review: Robin Hanson’s Age of Em

Statistics/meta-science:

• “What should we learn from past AI forecasts?”
• “Jeffreys’ Substitution Posterior for the Median: A Nice Trick to Non-parametrically Estimate the Median”

Psychology/biology:

• “When Lightning Strikes Twice: Profoundly Gifted, Profoundly Accomplished”, Makel et al 2016 (Intelligence increases success as high as it can be measured; diminishing returns≠zero returns… This replicates the SMPY results in a separate TIP sample.)
• “Dogs Test Drug [rapamycin] Aimed at Humans’ Biggest Killer: Age”
• “Effect of Calorie Restriction on Mood, Quality of Life, Sleep, and Sexual Function in Healthy Nonobese Adults: The CALERIE 2 Randomized Clinical Trial”, Martin et al 2016
• “Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor?”, Jonas & Kording 2016 (amusing followup to “Can a biologist fix a radio?”, Lazebnik 2002)
• “Physical Activity, Sleep, and Nutrition Do Not Predict Cognitive Performance in Young and Middle-Aged Adults”, Gijselaers et al 2016
• “A Second Year of Spaced Repetition Software in the Classroom”

Technology:

• “Beaver: A Decentralized Anonymous Marketplace with Secure Reputation”, Soska et al 2016
• “The Mastermind” (In depth series about international criminal mastermind Paul Le Roux who ran his group online while ordering hits on employees using mercenaries and smuggling drug until he is captured and becomes a USG asset to entrap his employees and assist who knows what covert operations. Oh, and he created TrueCrypt. His story is even wilder than Ross Ulbricht’s.)
• “How Harry Brearley’s Stubborn Insistence Gave Us Knives That Don’t Rust” (see also multiple discovery)
• “Have I Been Pwned?” (service for looking up whether email addresses are linked to past hacks, and subscribing to alerts)

Economics:

• “Going for the Gold: The Economics of the Olympics”, Baade & Matheson 2016 (The case against the Olympics. Too late for Brazil, though, but others can learn from that debacle.)
• “Results of an international drug testing service for cryptomarket users”, Caudevilla et al 2016
• “Railway Paradise: How a Fine-Dining Empire Made the Southwest Palatable to Outsiders” (statistical discrimination vs taste discrimination: profiting from sexism)

Fiction:

• “Spring and Fall”, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Books

Nonfiction:

• Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Chernow (review)

Fiction:

• Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, by Gerard Manley Hopkins (review)
• “CORDYCEPS: Too clever for their own good” (SF/horror humor novella on overthinking things; early chapters are best in exploring acausal & amnesiac reasoning, somewhat like Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria, but goes on perhaps a bit too long and explains too much)

Fanfiction:

• Significant Digits (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: sequel intended to conclude the story; more action-focused with a literary bent, and much less didactic/“author tract” and Harry-focused than MoR. Highly recommended for anyone who liked MoR.)

Film/TV

Live-action:

• Father Goose (peculiar Cary Grant WWII comedy-drama; it’s unusual to see Grant cast as a misanthropic drunkard and the movie can’t quite decide whether to be deadly serious or comedic, but most of the comedic beats are highly predictable)

Anime:

• Short Peace (anthology of 4 short anime; the first is a curious folk-tale-esque story of a wandering peddler who is almost improbably skilled at repair and his overnight labors at a shrine devoted to & haunted by the animist spirits of old inanimate objects—“tsukogami”. The 3D CGI is interesting but also somewhat offputting. The second takes a ukiyo-e inspired form of animation, in its initially tedious exploration of a doomed romance in Tokugawa-era Edo; this is merely the prologue to the unhappy bridge knocking over a lantern and starting a city-wide fire—one of many, historically, given that fireproofness was not one of the virtues of traditional Japanese architecture—at which point the animation kicks into high gear with some truly impressive animations of fire. Western viewers will probably be irritated by how the short assumes that one knows how city fires were fought in the pre-modern era: by empowering firefighters not with water pumps, which hardly existed, but construction equipment and large brigades of laborers given unlimited power to tear down large connected sections of buildings to form “fire-breaks”.

  The third story is the most bizarre and troubling: an enormous and grotesque ogre preys on the countryside, demanding tribute of young girls to rape and eat, and when he goes after nobility, a wild bear attacks it at its home, which is not a cave but a crashed flying saucer or rocket (‽). The scenario makes little sense, and the unmistakable saucer invites an allegorical reading—perhaps the bear as Russia, the ogre as America, and the raped & murdered girls as Japan? Odd. The final short film, the eponymous “Short Peace”, is the best: an engaging exploration of near-future warfare using networked soldier squads assisted by drones and robotic suits fighting an autonomous military robot, which extrapolates existing trends in the American military as being prototyped in Iraq & Afghanistan. After watching it twice, I still don’t quite get some aspects of the worldbuilding like why there is apparently an ICBM underneath Tokyo or why the protagonists would try to launch it, but the action itself is memorable and worth watching.)

• Death Parade (expansion of Death Billiards, as an episodic series; stories remain a bit heavily focused on suicide and murder, but while the dark background story arc ultimately ends in a whimper, the main story arc ends in an emotionally satisfying way)

Music

Touhou:

• “無間の鐘 ～ Infinite Nightmare” (xi-on feat.oz_hiro; Mapleaves {C89}) [jazz]

• “Zen～然～ -hybrid remix-” (NSY feat. 茶太; LessExtra {C89}) [electronic]

• “Monolog -Remix-” (Pastry; ‘Plusieurs Fleur’ {K8}) [electronic/classical]

• “金木犀” (Ringing Volcano; Shinmyômaru’s Little Adventures {C89}) [folk]

• “露時雨” (Ringing Volcano; Shinmyômaru’s Little Adventures {C89}) [folk]

• “Like the geese” (Escarmew; Secret Sealing Moratorium {K2012}) [Celtic]

• “This apple is bad” (thj.quartet; Jazz Funk Live! {C89}) [jazz]

• “Tea Funk” (thj.quartet; Jazz Funk Live! {C89}) [jazz]

• “俯瞰する蒼然暮色” (とらっしゅ; 秘封サウンドスケープ集III Phantasma Sound Archive No.53 {TK10}) [orchestral rock]

• “還流大洋の原点へ” (とらっしゅ; 秘封サウンドスケープ集III Phantasma Sound Archive No.53 {TK10}) [orchestral rock]

• “飛来する蓬莱物質” (とらっしゅ; 秘封サウンドスケープ集III Phantasma Sound Archive No.53 {TK10}) [orchestral rock]

• “アンラクト・フィリング” (とらっしゅ; 秘封サウンドスケープ集III Phantasma Sound Archive No.53 {TK10}) [orchestral rock]

• “Your World” (はちみつれもんxAftergrow; TOUHOU SIX STRING 02.封 {C89}) [instrumental rock]

• “Month of Flowers” (あいざわ feat. ゆーな; TOUHOU SIX STRING 02.封 {C89}) [Jpop/ballad]

Vocaloid:

• “Autumn Beat” (Miku; adidkh; PRE:Days EP {2016}) [electronic]

Doujin:

• “Once Upon A Love” (P*Light; Colorful Palette {C89}) [hardcore]