Links

Ge­net­ics:

• Every­thing Is Her­i­ta­ble:

  • “Genome-wide analy­sis iden­ti­fies mol­e­c­u­lar sys­tems and 149 ge­netic loci as­so­ci­ated with in­come”, Hill et al 2019
  • “Pre­dict­ing ed­u­ca­tional achieve­ment from ge­nomic mea­sures and so­cioe­co­nomic sta­tus”, von Stumm et al 2019
  • “Mul­ti­vari­able G-E in­ter­play in the pre­dic­tion of ed­u­ca­tional achieve­ment”, Al­le­grini et al 2019 (lit­tle GxE but much rGE: “the en­vi­ron­ment is ge­netic”)

• Re­cent Evo­lu­tion:

  • “A genome-wide Ap­prox­i­mate Bayesian Com­pu­ta­tion ap­proach sug­gests only lim­ited num­bers of soft sweeps in hu­mans over the last 100,000 years”, Laval et al 2019 (“∼80 sweeps in av­er­age across fifteen 1000G pop­u­la­tions when as­sum­ing in­com­plete sweeps only and ∼140 se­lec­tive sweeps in non-African pop­u­la­tions when in­cor­po­rat­ing com­plete sweeps in our sim­u­la­tions”; won­der what they all do?)

• En­gi­neer­ing:

  • “Ex­ten­sive Mam­malian Germline Genome En­gi­neer­ing”, Yang et al 2019 (me­dia—“en­gi­neer­ing 18 differ­ent loci us­ing mul­ti­ple genome en­gi­neer­ing meth­ods” in pigs; fol­lowup to Niu et al 2017)
  • “Func­tional Oocytes De­rived from Gran­u­losa Cells”, Tian et al 2019 (to­wards mas­sive em­bryo se­lec­tion/IES: cell → egg → mouse; “It got us think­ing, what if we can uti­lize these gran­u­losa cells? Since every egg has thou­sands of gran­u­losa cells sur­round­ing it, if we can in­duce them into pluripo­tent cells and turn those cells into oocytes, aren’t we killing two birds with one stone?”)
  • He Jiankui sen­tenced to 3 years prison in se­cret trial for CRISPR edit­ing of ba­bies (2 as­so­ciates sen­tenced to 2 & 1.5 years)

AI:

• /r/AIDungeon: a sub­red­dit for shar­ing AI Dun­geon 2 games (a GPT-2-1.5b fine­tuned on RPG/text ad­ven­ture sto­ries eg “My Mu­si­cal Troupe of Orcs Uses Mu­sic to Ad­vance Orc Rights”)

• Mat­ters Of Scale:

  • “Dota 2 with Large Scale Deep Re­in­force­ment Learn­ing”, Berner et al 2019 (blog; Ope­nAI fi­nal re­port on OA5, with many tips & tricks & glitch­es; cf Ten­cen­t’s 1v1 MOBA pa­per: “To train one hero, we use 48 P40 GPU cards and 18,000 CPU cores.”)
  • “Re­former: The Effi­cient Trans­former”, Ki­taev et al 2019 (blog; han­dling se­quences up to length­=64,000 on 1 GPU, which break GPT-2’s 1024 con­text win­dow bot­tle­neck & would be great for MIDI mu­sic gen­er­a­tion etc; see all the other al­ter­na­tives as well)

• StyleGAN 2: “An­a­lyz­ing and Im­prov­ing the Im­age Qual­ity of StyleGAN”, Kar­ras et al 2019 (e­lim­i­nat­ing the blob ar­ti­fact­s—this will make a nice up­grade for TWDNEv3)

Sta­tis­tic­s/meta-science/­math­e­mat­ics:

• “Com­par­ing meta-analy­ses and pre­reg­is­tered mul­ti­ple-lab­o­ra­tory repli­ca­tion projects”, Kvar­ven et al 2019
• “The mad­den­ing saga of how an Alzheimer’s ‘ca­bal’ thwarted progress to­ward a cure for decades” (apro­pos of the lat­est blow to the amy­loid hy­poth­e­sis: amy­loid does not even pre­dict cog­ni­tive de­cline)
• “Snow Crys­tals”, Lib­brecht 2019 (the com­plete mono­graph by the Snow­Crys­tal­s.­com man: the his­tory of snow crys­tal stud­ies, how to cre­ate & pho­tog­ra­phy them, how they grow, how to sim­u­late them…)
• “NP-com­plete Prob­lems and Phys­i­cal Re­al­ity”, Aaron­son 2005
• “Do GRE scores help pre­dict get­ting a physics Ph.D.? A com­ment on a pa­per by Miller et al”, Weiss­man 2019 (yes; the prob­lems with the Miller GRE pa­per go well be­yond just range re­stric­tion to con­di­tion­ing on a col­lider and oth­ers)
• “Matthew Walk­er’s Why We Sleep Is Rid­dled with Sci­en­tific and Fac­tual Er­rors”, Alexey Guzey (An­drew Gel­man dis­cus­sions: 1/2/3/4; apol­o­gist: “I study sleep…I think they are within rea­son and jus­ti­fied by the im­por­tant mes­sage he is try­ing to con­vey.” cf my Rosen­thal re­view be­low)

Pol­i­tic­s/re­li­gion:

• “An­i­mal wel­fare in Nazi Ger­many”
• “‘Shat­tered’: In­side the se­cret bat­tle to save Amer­i­ca’s un­der­cover spies in the dig­i­tal age”

Psy­chol­o­gy/bi­ol­o­gy:

• “A Look Back at 2019: Progress To­wards the Treat­ment of Ag­ing as a Med­ical Con­di­tion”, Rea­son
• “A re­al-life Lord of the Flies: the trou­bling legacy of the Rob­bers Cave ex­per­i­ment” (ma­nip­u­la­tion & se­lec­tive re­port­ing)
• “Free­dom From Fun­gus: Why Don’t Hu­mans Have Chest­nut-Style Blights and White Nose-Style Syn­dromes?”
• “So­cial con­text of shell ac­qui­si­tion in Coeno­bita clypea­tus her­mit crabs”, Rot­jan et al 2010 (her­mit crab bub­ble sort for va­cancy chains; SciAm)
• “In­stinc­tive sleep­ing and rest­ing pos­tures: an an­thro­po­log­i­cal and zo­o­log­i­cal ap­proach to treat­ment of low back and joint pain”, Tet­ley 2000 (idio­syn­cratic mem­oir/­analy­sis of sleep­ing pos­tures used by other pri­mates/tribal so­ci­eties)
• “Plumb­ing Stan­ley Kubrick”, Ian Wat­son 1999 (writer’s mem­oir of years work­ing on A.I. Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence & cop­ing with Kubrick’s ec­cen­tric­i­ties)
• “Au­dio­genic re­flex seizures in cats”, Lowrie et al 2016 (not as amus­ing as YouTube videos would lead one to as­sume)

Tech­nol­o­gy:

• “hre­f.­cool: Links of the 2010s”, Kicks Con­dor (link com­pi­la­tion: se­lected sub­cul­tures, tech demos, vi­ral con­tent, and all things ’10s In­ter­net—from the NSA to nyan­cat or SCP to space foot­ball)

• “Up and Then Down: The lives of el­e­va­tors”, Paum­garten 2008 (el­e­va­tor safe­ty, tech­nol­o­gy, and eco­nom­ics)

• Ben Car­lin: cir­cum­nav­i­gated the world in a failed am­phibi­ous jeep (1948–1958)

• Why are mod­ern com­put­ers so slow? “It’s the La­ten­cy, Stu­pid.”

  • “Key­board La­tency”, Dan Luu (Mea­sur­ing how slow mod­ern key­boards are—they differ a lot)
  • “Ter­mi­nal La­tency”, Dan Luu (How slow are ter­mi­nal em­u­la­tors? Kinda slow, and de­grad­ing badly un­der sys­tem load)
  • “Web Bloat”, Dan Luu (Bloated web­pages in­ter­act badly with la­tency in­her­ent to the In­ter­net & the HTML/browser ar­chi­tec­ture; the men­tioned Google anec­dote was YouTube)
  • “Com­puter la­ten­cy: 1977–2017”, Dan Luu; “Slow Soft­ware”, Ink & Switch 2018; “Typ­ing with plea­sure”, Pavel Fatin (to­tal la­ten­cy—where all the la­tency in the stack comes from)
  • “Lo­cal-first soft­ware: You own your data, in spite of the cloud”, Ink & Switch 2019 (Klepp­mann et al 2019; apps & clients which do all work lo­cally but use CRDTss for dis­trib­uted syn­chro­niza­tion with your other de­vices, elim­i­nat­ing net­work­ing la­ten­cy)
  • “The Wheel of Rein­car­na­tion”, Nor­man Hardy (on Meyer & Suther­land 1968—“how many com­put­ers are in your com­put­er?”)

• Christophe Plan­tin: mort­gaged home to print the Plan­tin Poly­glot Bible for the King of Spain to prove he was­n’t a heretic—but he was, a Familist; it is an el­e­gant text, us­ing mul­ti­-lin­gual drop caps & a par­al­lel lay­out of the 6 texts

• “The Floppy Toast”, But­ter­safe (PEBKAC)

Eco­nom­ics:

• “How a ca­bal of ro­mance writ­ers cashed in on Ama­zon Kin­dle Un­lim­ited”

Phi­los­o­phy:

• “Two Arms and a Head: The Death of a Newly Para­plegic Philoso­pher”, Atreus 2008 (me­mento mori—one of the sad­dest things I have ever read, this is the sui­cide note of a grad stu­dent crip­pled in a mo­tor­cy­cle ac­ci­dent; not en­tirely rea­son­able, but what is rea­son­able to ex­pect of a man in un­rea­son­able cir­cum­stances? Orig­i­nal fo­rum thread; com­ments; cf “How Do Peo­ple Com­mu­ni­cate Be­fore Death? In­sights into the lit­tle-s­tud­ied realm of last words”/who by slow de­cay…)

  • “In praise of self­-dep­re­ca­tion”, Wis­lawa Szym­borska 1976; “The King­fisher”, Mary Oliver 1990 (House of Light); “Con­ver­sa­tion with Jeanne”, Czesław Miłosz 1984 (Provinces 1991)

• “Hy­pother­mia” (how se­cu­rity re­searcher Moxie Mar­lin­spike al­most died of hy­pother­mia & drown­ing in the San Fran­cisco Bay while sim­ply mov­ing his cata­ma­ran boat to save dock­ing fees)

• When a white horse is not a horse (Ceci n’est pas une pony.)

Books

Non­fic­tion:

• ‘Small mul­ti­ples’ show change across vari­ables.
  Vi­sual Ex­pla­na­tions: Im­ages and Quan­ti­ties, Ev­i­dence and Nar­ra­tive, Tufte 1997 (less of a hodge-podge than En­vi­sion­ing In­for­ma­tion, Tufte walks through, as usu­al, graphs: how to show mul­ti­ple ver­sions of things, such as 4D data, on 2D pa­per? Key case stud­ies are John Snow’s cholera maps of in­fec­tions vs lo­ca­tion vs time, the Chal­lenger dis­as­ter’s ob­scu­ra­tion of prob­lems vs tem­per­a­ture over the course of Space Shut­tle launch­es, stage ma­gi­cian di­a­grams of tricks, which il­lus­trate change over time; Tufte then con­sid­ers show­ing par­al­lel ver­sions which differ in some ab­stract di­men­sion; then graphs which must show change in both space & time, such as sunspots or Sat­urn’s rings, rep­re­sent­ing Tufte’s usual con­cept of “small mul­ti­ples”; in a fi­nal sec­tion, Tufte high­lights fa­vorite art pieces of his which are di­a­gram­matic or sym­bolic in some sense akin to the fore­go­ing chap­ters. As usu­al, a plea­sure to read, and it fur­nished some ex­am­ples for my page on rubri­ca­tion too.)
• Sur­pris­ingly en­ter­tain­ing if not im­me­di­ately use­ful. The El­e­ments of Ty­po­graphic Style (third edi­tion), Bringhurst 2004 (I de­cided to read this based on Rut­ter’s web ver­sion of it; Bringhurst is un­ex­pect­edly amus­ing—I wish I cared about any­thing as much as Bringhurst cares about ty­pog­ra­phy. No com­par­i­son is too strong to con­demn a ty­po­graph­i­cal sin: edit­ing fonts, for ex­am­ple makes it “easy for a de­signer or com­pos­i­tor with no re­gard for let­ters to squish them into cat­tle trains and ship them to the slaugh­ter”—with an­other au­thor, one would as­sume the Holo­caust con­no­ta­tions were un­in­ten­tion­al, but with Bringhurst… Like Rut­ter, there is a great of ma­te­r­ial on ra­tios and page lay­out which smacks of nu­merol­o­gy, but that can be skipped eas­i­ly, and the rest of the ma­te­r­ial is use­ful. The book it­self is, of course, nice ty­po­graph­i­cal­ly, ex­em­pli­fy­ing the use of side­notes, and al­though he sur­pris­ingly does­n’t cover it at length (like he does what seems like every­thing else), he even pro­vides two nice ex­am­ples of rubri­ca­tion for my page.)
• A deeply dis­hon­est har­bin­ger of the Repli­ca­tion Cri­sis. Ex­per­i­menter Effects In Be­hav­ioral Re­search, Rosen­thal 1976 (long re­view; con­sider also Rosen­thal’s own de­scrip­tion in “Ci­ta­tion Clas­sic”)

Fic­tion:

• Well-in­ten­tioned but fa­tally self­-un­der­mined. String of Beads: Com­plete Po­ems of Princess Shik­ishi, Shik­ishi trans. Sato 1993 (re­view)

Film/TV

Live-ac­tion:

• Rurouni Ken­shin 2012/Rurouni Ken­sh­in: Ky­oto In­ferno 2014/Rurouni Ken­sh­in: The Leg­end Ends 2014 (re­view)
• The Magic Flute (re­view)

An­i­mat­ed:

• MLP:FiM: sea­son 9 (s1–8 re­view; sea­son 9 re­view)
• Owa­ri­mono­gatari (re­view)

Music

MLP:

• “Heart­fire” (John Ken­za; Com­pass Rose {2017}) [house]

Dou­jin:

• “Cute Swing” (Mi­honey; {2019}) [house]