Links

Genetics:

• Everything Is Heritable:

  • “Genetics and Crime: Integrating New Genomic Discoveries Into Psychological Research About Antisocial Behavior”, Wertz et al 2018 (IQ/EDU PGS predicts juvenile delinquency & crime; previously: Rautiainen et al 2016/Tielbeek et al 2017/Tielbeek et al 2018)¹

  • “Predicting educational achievement from genomic measures and socioeconomic status”, von Stumm et al 2019

• Recent Evolution:

  • “The growth of tea: Genetic studies of today’s tea plants are providing clues to how the plant was first domesticated”

• Engineering:

  • “The Death of a Dreamer—Austen Heinz and Cambrian Genomics” (what happened to an early genome synthesis pioneer)

  • “The DIY designer baby project funded with Bitcoin: Cryptocurrency, biohacking, and the fantastic plan for transgenic humans” (Bryan Bishop’s startup for genetic editing of human embryos/sperm)

AI:

• “Better Language Models and Their Implications”, OpenAI (GPT-2, a 10× larger Transformer model than before w/unsupervised learning on 40GB text leads to large gains on natural language generation & high performance on untrained NLP tasks: “Language Models are Unsupervised Multitask Learners”, Radford et al 2019. Worth pondering: GPT-2 costs only ~$43k raw compute and is not even fully trained (pg4); OA could afford to scale it 100×, which is still cheaper than their OA5 project. If GPT-2 is this good now, what does it look like scaled further, with improvements like limited recurrency?)

• “Real-time Continuous Transcription with Live Transcribe”/“Making audio more accessible with two new apps” (NN-powered Android app for live speech-to-text transcription, piloted at Gallaudet University for the deaf; great news for the hard-of-hearing too)

• StyleGAN source code & models released (I immediately applied it to create TWDNE)

• Entendrepreneur: a “Portmanteau & Rhyme Generator” using word embeddings, Simon2018 (SSC, HN; examples: “cat+rationality=mewtilitarian”; “computer+animation=miyazakistroke”; “the mapping of cats”: “geografeline”; see also “Alpha”)

• ProGAN generation of 128px anime faces, results (~3 weeks training on Danbooru2017)

Statistics/Meta-Science:

• “Most Rigorous Large-Scale Educational RCTs are Uninformative: Should We Be Concerned?”, Lortie-Forgues & Inglis2019 (the metallic laws strike again)

• “Review of Scientific Self-Experimentation: Ethics History, Regulation, Scenarios, And Views Among Ethics Committees And Prominent Scientists”, Hanley et al 2018

Politics/religion:

• “The Real War 1939^–₆1945_79ya”, Paul Fussell 1989_35ya (“…he watched in disbelief while fat maggots tumbled out of his muddy dungaree pockets, cartridge belt, legging lacings…too horrible and obscene even for hardened veterans”)

• “Avoid News: Towards a Healthy News Diet”, Dobelli2010

• “Land lotteries, long-term wealth, and political selection”, Poulos2019

• “Nggwal, who travels in structures of fiber and bone atop rivers of blood.”

• Suppression of the Society of Jesus

• “Taxes, Lawyers, and the Decline of Witch Trials in France”, Johnson & Koyama2014

• Best Of Abandoned Footnotes

Psychology/biology:

• “Deep Intellect”: the mind of an octopus

• MEMORIZE (a randomized spaced-repetition review algorithm derived using principles from control theory)

• “A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions” (psychiatric case study)

• “Congregations Of Tear-Drinking Bees At Human Eyes: Foraging Strategies For An Invaluable Resource By Lisotrigona In Thailand (Apidae, Meliponini)”, Bänziger2018

Technology:

• “What Color are your bits?”

• “Fruit Walls: Urban Farming in the 1600s” (pre-greenhouse tech: thick southern-facing walls for passive heating)

• “Crinkler secrets: 4k-intro executable compression at its best”

• Typography in Alien

• Typography in Blade Runner

• “Scanning a Braille Playboy issue”, Jason Scott

Economics:

• “The true story of Russia’s weakness [stifled by bad planning, bureaucratic inefficiency, and lack of any real incentive]”, Nutter 1957_67ya (prescient)

• “The Great Shift in Japanese Pop Culture—Part One”/Part Two/Part Three/Part Four/Part Five

• “You Say You Want a Devolution? For most of the last century, America’s cultural landscape—its fashion, art, music, design, entertainment—changed dramatically every 20 years or so. But these days, even as technological and scientific leaps have continued to revolutionize life, popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new”

• “The Borderlands Gun Collector’s Club”, Steve Yegge 2012_12ya (emergent token economies in video games)

Philosophy:

• “The Force That Drives the Flower”, Dillard 1973_51ya (existential horror)

Fiction:

• “A Colder War”, Charles Stross2000

• “The Proverbial Murder Mystery”, SSC, SSC (see also “The Study of Anglophysics”)

• “The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld”

Misc:

• Olbers’ paradox

• The terribly tragic life of the terrible painter Benjamin Haydon

• “The Gravity Research Foundation” (dedicated to the war on gravity)

Books

Nonfiction:

• Practical Typography, Matthew Butterick 2013_11ya (a useful if idiosyncratic introduction to typography with a word processor/HTML focus; reading through this was helpful in understanding possible CSS/design improvements while improving Gwern.net this month)

Film/TV

• Carmen opera (review)