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November 2019 News

November 2019 Gwern.net newsletter with 2 essays, links on PGD and AI scaling, disappearing polymorphs, and The Public Domain Review; 2 opera and 1 anime reviews.

November 2019’s Gwern.net newsletter is now out; previous, October 2019 (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

Media

Books

Nonfiction

  • Private Wealth in Renaissance Florence, Goldthwaite1968 (review)

Film/TV

Live-Action

Animated

  • Porco Rosso (rewatch; the kinship with The Wind Rises is even more apparent now, but Porco Rosso IMO works better because it doesn’t try to force an answer. Anno half-seriously criticized it for being a Miyazaki self-insert fic where he’s the hero and the center of a love triangle, to boot, but maybe that’s not so bad; the beauty of seaplanes, who travel between the sea and sky, at home in both, is enough to justify it.)

  • The Tatami Galaxy (rewatch)

  • Belladonna of Sadness (review)

  • Ushio and Tora (revival of a shonen classic; thematically shows its age but, having only been familiar with the ’90s comedy OVA, I didn’t realize how dark it would get)

Music

MLP