January 2015 Media Thread
This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you’ve found that you enjoy. Post what you’re reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.
Rules:
Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don’t personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person’s recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.
Use the “Other Media” thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn’t fit under any of the established categories.
Use the “Meta” thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.
Short Online Texts Thread
Technology:
“Human Performance”, 2008 JASON (excerpts)
Spreadsheet mistakes
“Scholarly Context Not Found: One in Five Articles Suffers from Reference Rot”, Klein et al 2014
“The Hundred-Year Language”
M50 Ontos
Photoacoustic spectroscopy
“Turing Drawings”: flowing sand
The NSA copes with a volcano
Project Iceworm
“The Well Deserved Fortune of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin creator, Visionary and Genius”
Economics:
College major salary premiums
“What Are Foundations For?” (principal-agent conflicts; against perpetuities)
“A lucky little fish turns out to be the solution to iron deficiency among women in Cambodia, a problem solved by a University of Guelph researcher.”
“Should Psychological Neuroscience Research Be Funded?” (discussion)
Kids for cash scandal
“Smart companies try to commoditize their products’ complements.”
“The Coase Theorem is false: contracts depend on tort law”
“One Kind of Lawlessness: Estimating the Welfare Cost of Somali Piracy”
Philosophy:
“Bayesian Adjustment Does Not Defeat Existential Risk Charity”
“Transhumanist Fables”
“Study: Wolf Attacks Still Leading Cause Of Death In U.S.”
“Even More Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays from Vectors 3.0”, James Richardson
Misc:
“Limits”, Jorge Luis Borges
Great mistakes in history: the scuttling of the German navy
Hollywood Archaeology: The Super Mario Bros. Movie; Unearthing a major disaster to learn the lessons held within
“On Pins and Needles: Stylist Turns Ancient Hairdo Debate on Its Head”
Why is the Onion article under Philosophy?
I thought it was a nice example of status quo bias in ethics / deathism and reversal tests. I guess the point of the Onion article was not as obvious as I thought.
I saw how it was applicable to LW, no doubt. I just thought it would go under Rationality-related humor rather than Philosophy.
I see the core point as philosophical: criticizing an unjustified asymmetry in the way we think about things. It may be funny, but the humor is nonessential and the criticism is essential.
Everything is heritable:
“Genome-wide meta-analysis identifies six novel loci associated with habitual coffee consumption”, The Coffee and Caffeine Genetics Consortium et al 2014 (excerpts)
“Results of a ‘GWAS Plus’: General Cognitive Ability Is Substantially Heritable and Massively Polygenic”, Kirkpatrick et al 2014
“Understanding the Genetics of Intelligence: Can Height Help? Can Corn Oil?”, Johnson 2010 (excerpts)
“The impact of neighbourhood deprivation on adolescent violent criminality and substance misuse: A longitudinal, quasi-experimental study of the total Swedish population ”, Sariaslan et al 2013 (excerpts)
“Rabbit genome analysis reveals a polygenic basis for phenotypic change during domestication”, Carneiro et al 2014 (the power of selection—complex behaviors influenced by many small changes; excerpts)
Politics/religion:
“Why the World Is Not Falling Apart: Never mind the headlines. We’ve never lived in such peaceful times.”, Pinker & Mack; “Good News You May Have Missed in 2014″, Gates
“Race and Justice: Much More Than You Wanted To Know”
“The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side”
“Police, Paramilitaries, Nationalists and Gangsters: The Processes of State Building in Korea”, Porteux 2013 (excerpts)
“Hitler’s Declaration of War Against the US”
Sacculina parasite
“Truncated transcript from today’s SCOTUS argument” (parody)
“Question 94. The relations of the saints towards the damned: Whether the blessed in heaven will see the sufferings of the damned?”
Statistics/AI/meta-science:
“Contradicted and Initially Stronger Effects in Highly Cited Clinical Research”, Ioannidis 2005 (excerpts)
“A ‘Sham Procedure’ Leads to Disappointing Multiple Scelerosis News”
The power of placebos: when water feels like LSD.
“What Went Wrong? Reflections on Science by Observation and The Bell Curve”, Glymour 1998 (correlation & causation)
“Full publication of results initially presented in abstracts (Review)”, Scherer et al 2008 (publication bias & incorrect papers; excerpts)
“Prisons Are Built With Bricks Of Law And Brothels With Bricks Of Religion, But That Doesn’t Prove A Causal Relationship”
“Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial”, Leibovici 2001 (Norvig comments)
“What effect size would you expect?”
“On the distribution of time-to-proof of mathematical conjectures”, Hisano & Sornette 2012
“Bayes’ rule in Haskell, or why drug tests don’t work”
“Kalkalash! Pinpointing the Moments The Simpsons became less Cromulent”
“Bayes Academy: Development report 1”
Psychology/biology:
“Thank you for doing something ambiguously between smoking and not smoking”
“CBD in Colorado: Seeking a marijuana miracle [for children with severe epilepsy]” (“The question is not whether it is ethical to run a randomized trial, but whether it is ethical to not run a randomized trial”, I found myself thinking again and again in this sad and pitiable story of being fooled by randomness.)
“Morningness-eveningness and educational outcomes: The lark has an advantage over the owl at high school”, Preckel et al 2013
“What Do You Desire?” (on the porn company Kink.com)
“Suicide: An Economic Approach”, Becker & Posner 2004 (excerpts)
“The Graying of Academia: Will It Reduce Scientific Productivity?”, Stroebe 2010 (excerpts)
“Can Behavioral Tools Improve Online Student Outcomes? Experimental Evidence from a Massive Open Online Course”, Patterson 2014 (excerpts)
“Direct Effect of Sunshine on Suicide”, Vyssoki et al 2014
“The future of teratology research is in vitro”, Bailey et al 2005
“Spaced Repetition and Mnemonics Enable Recall of Multiple Strong Passwords”, Blocki et al 2014 (excerpts)
“Subu Must Die: How a nation of junkies went cold turkey”
Golden Gate Bridge suicides
“Refugees of the Modern World: The “electrosensitive” are moving to a cellphone-free town. But is their disease real?”
“Secrets of the Magus: Ricky Jay does closeup magic that flouts reality”
“How fast does the Grim Reaper walk? Receiver operating characteristics curve analysis in healthy men aged 70 and over”
“The drugs do work: my life on brain enhancers”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/confirmation-bias-is-a-basic-human-frailty-1420045281
Online Videos Thread
Alcor’s CEO Max More on “How to sustain an organization for over a century:”
Part 1 of 2: http://youtu.be/SEZoaNiMsho
Part 2 of 2: http://youtu.be/po91pP2VT4Y
I’d be more interested in More’s analysis here if he were from a company that had successfully sustained itself for over a century, but the basic points seem interesting.
Fanfiction Thread
It’s pony time, I’m afraid.
My Little Economy: Economics is Science and its sequelae.
“It’s the NGDP Targeting Festival in Ponyville,” Twilight said. “I’ll have a miserable time trying to explain monetary theory to a bunch of hicks and then come home. What’s the worst that could happen?”′
Really good—perhaps the best compromise between the needs of characterisation, parable, and comedy I’ve ever seen. Seems like it should be accessible to people who haven’t seen MLP.
ETA: The author seems to have randomly deleted all hir blog posts, made the stories inaccessible, and then returned them to semi-accessibility (possibly due to pleading in comments). This seems a funny response to people liking one’s work, but eh, humans. The important thing is that I’ve downloaded them all as ePUBs. PM me for them if the source vanishes again. (I’m a bit upset about the demise of the blog posts, mainly because they referred approvingly to Scott Alexander as a “friendship blogger”, which is just the best description of him, ever)
The Best of All Possible Worlds
Assuming he survived the next five seconds, Voltaire congratulated himself on finding the one topic liable to drive Princess Celestia into a homicidal rage, a very useful lever to have against your monarch and employer.
Epic Voltaire/Celestia friendshipping set against the backdrop of a Griffin reenactment of the French Wars of Religion. Extremely long, but worth it.
Mandatory Fun
It was six against an army, and even I knew the odds favored the half-dozen.
Cheese Sandwich conquers Equestria. Short and amusing.
Nonfiction Books Thread
Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II, Lowe (review)
Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose, Thomas & Turner (review; online guide)
Fiction Books Thread
Waylander book 1, a fantasy series. Readable, but meh. The world is a pretty standard fantasy setting, the sudden character development from selfish to self-sacrificing is not at all believable, the fantastic elements are run-of-the-mill. Relying on deux-ex-machina and coincidences doesn’t help. Still, a way to pass the time without getting too bored.
Camouflage by Joe Haldeman: a disappointment. No idea how it won the Nebula in 2004. A mundane shape-shifter story, with no emotion, no reason for the protagonist to do what he does, and an idiotic ending.
Currently reading: The Blade Itself, Pretty amazing so far. Great characters, great dialogue, a quality world. The author does an admirable job of self-consistently and believably describing the inner dialogue of the major characters, which are all multidimensional and interesting, not just good or evil. Reminds me of the Song of Ice and Fire, only a PG version. The trilogy has not won any awards, so I am afraid that the quality will drop off.
Huh, I loved Camouflage. Different strokes I guess.
Could be the difference in the medium, print vs audiobook.
I felt the writing quality wasn’t good enough, even in The Blade Itself; I think I might have read the second one but certainly gave up before the third. If you like that kind of world I found The Straight Razor Cure to be a more enjoyable/better-plotted example of it.
The Peripheral; very readable, very Gibson. Felt if anything like a reworking of Pattern Recognition into a more explicitly sci-fi story; the same style, the same kind of arc, but with an explicit premise that requires a bit more suspension of disbelief. I liked it for being a vision of the post-scarcity future that at least took a few stabs at telling us what ordinary people do all day (in contrast to e.g. the Culture novels, where I never had any sense for what non-special-circumstances people did with themselves). Though part of that is probably just being set in London.
Ra, Sam Hughes (hard SF web serial; Goodreads)
Un Lun Dun, China Miéville (review)
Reject Hero, Farmerbob1 (About; superhero web serial, set in a Worm-like universe; somewhat unusual conservative middle-aged perspective as he negotiates his way into the deeper magical universe, culminating in a fun twist Jurassic Park ending with a sting; good fic but not great, and probably goes on too long)
Perseverance island: or, The Robinson Crusoe of the nineteenth century, by Douglas Frazer (review)
CVN73 USS George Washington (manga; review)
Yeah, I felt Un Lun Dun was weaker Miéville. Kraken is better (by which I mean I remember some of it rather than none of it), but still relies overmuch on a lazy, conventional kind of magic. The works of his that I’d really recommend are The City & The City (shorter, clever, and in some sense not even sci-fi) and the Bas-Lag series (Perdido Street Station et al) (long, high but non-tolkien fantasy, plot that was clever enough (at least for me). Mostly I love the worldbuilding so maybe not for people who don’t value that as much as me).
TV and Movies (Animation) Thread
Just watched the film version of Macross Frontier with some friends (i.e. The False Songstress and The Wings of Goodbye), and really enjoyed it. Not something I’d defend as particularly intelligent or rational, but really beautifully animated, ridiculous amounts of visual detail (particularly the concerts), and certainly doesn’t have the slow pacing problem of the series. If anything it’s too fast; not enough breathing room around some events, and what different parties are doing doesn’t always quite connect up. But good Macross fun, singing and robot fights.
On visiting family I was reminded again how good The Legend of Korra is (haven’t seen all of it yet). I love seeing a world that’s changing, evolving, noticeably different from that of the previous series. And the central conflict has taken a very interesting turn, putting those who were the unambiguous heroes of the first show into a different light; it’s shaping up to make a case for either noblesse oblige or nonintervention, either of which would be interesting. By creating a world where some people really are better than others, it’s going where few media would dare—think X-men, but rather than having cool powers and being oppressed by society, our protagonists have cool powers and wealth and power as a result. The big villain gets some slightly unsubtle presentation, but his cause is still one we can be sympathetic to.
And at the same time as all these big issues, the show’s having human drama, but hitting the balance where it doesn’t take over. Where Aang was an enlightened monk at age ten, Korra comes off as a real teenager—with all the cringe-inducing things that sometimes means. I’m constantly afraid that the romance or sports sides will derail the main plot, but so far it’s walked the tightrope beautifully, managing to be interesting on every level, without anything trivializing anything else.
TV and Movies (Live Action) Thread
Music Thread
Touhou:
“Sixth Movement Dawn of East End” (MORRIGAN feat. 三澤秋; Symphonic Tarantella “Lily” -Illusionary Waltz: Belladonna Lily- {M3-27}) [orchestral]
“Fifth Movement 9th moon / Pale Indigo Dream” (MORRIGAN feat. 三澤秋; Symphonic Tarantella “Lily” -Illusionary Waltz: Belladonna Lily- {M3-27}) [orchestral]
“The Black Eyes” (Swing Holic Band; SWING HOLIC VOL.9 {R9}) [jazz]
“NEMESIS” (Sanokan; SWING HOLIC VOL.9 {R9}) [brass]
“ON FIRE” (Maurits”禅”Cornelis feat. Vivienne; DANCE with WOLVES {C86}) [house]
“Fantasia Nightbug” (激戦の人 feat. 迷犬; Summer Festival {C86}) [Rock]
“Eternal Steam Engine” (Suzumu feat.Sae Tsukiyama; Summer Festival {C86}) [vocal]
“To the Limit” (あとぐる feat. Mai Kotoge; 悠啼 YU-NARI {C78}) [rock]
Doujin:
“Prelude (Instrumental)” (Treow; KOLLECTION+OI {2012}) [electronica]
“A Longing” (yuxuki waga; Evergreen {VM23}) [ambient]
Kantai Collection:
“ThroBBing (母港BGM)” (W*M; Splash! {C85}) [instrumental]
Vocaloid:
“Sunrise” (Miku; akayaka; KARENT presents Skylight Theater {Trans city}) [ambient]
“トウキョウトガリ” (Miku; Kobayashi Onyx; LOG {2010}) [electronic]
“サイハテ(ver,LOG)” (Miku; Kobayashi Onyx; LOG {2010}) [electronic]
“Moon Walker” (Gumi & Piko; KTG; FREEZE {2011}) [electronic]
“Welcome to the Future” (Miku; 青屋夏生; Welcome to the Future {2014}) [Jpop/trance]
“Light Falls” (Miku; yuxuki waga {2011}) [Jpop]
“ヒトリの誕生日” (Miku; ため; 7 Kilometer {VM28}) [Jpop]
“ルッキング・フォー・ザ・ヘヴン” (Yukari; カミウラ, カミウラレコーズ; Lavender and White Rose {2013}) [vocal]
Best songs of 2014.
Rock:
Shellac—Riding Bikes. The bassline is catchy and the lyrics are fun. Steve Albini is consistently awesome.
Foxy Shazam—Don’t Give In. A change from Foxy’s last few albums (also awesome). The newest album is much simpler. Foxy was suffering from production creep as they got more popular, so it’s a welcome change.
Swans—A Little God In My Hands. I wasn’t a fan of some of the other songs on the album, but some of them were excellent.
Niel Cicierega—Wndrwll.
Niel Cicierega—Modest Mouth.
Pop:
Ariel Pink—Put Your Number In My Phone. Eclectic as ever. If anyone figures out what’s going on in the video, I’d like to know.
Sia—Chandelier. Don’t need to say much, probably everyone already knows this one.
Taylor Swift—Shake It Off. I definitely don’t need to say anything about this one. Good show.
Liars—Mess on a Mission. Catchy song, nice music video.
Post-rock:
Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra—What We Loved Was Not Enough. Moving.
Mogwai—Remurdered. Didn’t like this album as much as the last, but a few of the songs were good.
This Will Destroy You—Another Language. The whole album is good.
Metal:
Behemoth—Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer. Song starts at 0:57.
Behemoth—O Father O Satan O Sun.
Agalloch—Birth and Death of the Pillars of Creation. The album wasn’t spectacular like their last few, but several songs were great.
Thou—Free Will. Good album.
Sabaton—To Hell And Back. Guilty pleasure.
I thought it was pretty straightforward? The protagonist/singer has some sort of crippling medical condition, and is lonely and seeking female companionship (disabled men need love too; see also Neutral Milk Hotel’s “Two-Headed Boy, Pt. 2”). So he’s boned up on PUA, and he’s hired a young guy to assist him, appropriately peacocked up with the hair and hat and lipstick etc, and they’ve gone to the mall to hunt for phone numbers (one of the key steps). He fails dismally, as one would predict. This is a mix of sad/pitiable and optimistic: it may seem hopeless, and he has indeed failed, but there is always tomorrow, and if they make enough approaches, who knows? Maybe one day they’ll succeed.
(I realize that watching it, you might think the scenario is that it’s a young PUA forced to drag along his crippled older brother, completely ruining his chances, but this does not fit the tone or lyrics too well, and if you watch carefully, there seems to be hints that the wheelchair man is in charge; consider the phone tapping at 2:10 - it’s not the young guy’s phone which is the subject of the title, but the wheelchair guy’s phone.)
Music for Programming—Several downloadable mixes of electronica meant to be background music while you’re doing something that requires attention.
After reading a biography of Hugh Everett, I checked out his son’s music and was pleasntly surprised. I especially liked this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYvj7oeIMCc
Podcasts Thread
Other Media Thread
I’ve been playing Endless Legend and enjoying it a lot. It’s a Civilization-style/4X PC game in a fantasy/post-post-apocalypse setting, but with some nice changes that elegantly improve on Civ in some ways. Also has good art, pretty decent world-building, and 8 unusually varied factions to choose from. On the downside it still doesn’t solve all the late-game issues with Civ and the tactical combat is not very compelling (but can be skipped). Like any game in this genre, be warned that it can consume a lot of time.
Endless Legend has some improvements over Civ, but also some specific things that rub me the wrong way; as a lot of the changes I dislike are closely tied to changes I like, I expect this might be a taste thing.
Cities automatically work every adjacent hex; population can be allocated to any of the resources at some rate adjusted mostly by the hero governor, and cities can be expanded to be adjacent to more hexes. But there are predefined regions and cities can only work hexes inside their region, and there can only be one city per region- and so many spots which would be great places for cities simply cannot be settled, and settling a region without completely exploring it sets you up for regret later. (This also applies to your starting region!)
Heroes have potent effects as governors- but those effects are determined by their traits and race, both of which you have very little control over. You might have a great city placed on a river in a region with lots of river hexes, but not have access to a Broken Lords or Drakken hero who could greatly magnify the amount of dust or food produced by that city, because there’s a random set of 10 heroes to choose from in the marketplace.
Terrain produces four different resources instead of three (science can come from land instead of people or an offshoot of wealth like in Civ), but hex production tends to be a huge component of overall empire wealth, and so you may have very limited ability to specialize your empire’s resources. (If you’re in a tundra, you’re going science-heavy; and if there’s not a nearby tundra, you may be science-deprived.) This is partially offset by the ability to allocate population freely to any resource, and not as bad as it is in Endless Space (a very similar game made by the same people).
It seems like most of the changes from historical / fantasy 4X games are inspired by space 4X games; the regions seem to me to be the analog of planets in Endless Space, the hero system is basically the same, and so on.
Meta Thread
This is a good one. I tried to put it into words but I can’t. But instead of stringing together some words from an epic novel to describe my feelings, I’ll just say this song reminds me, or makes me feel my life, or just sounds like a description of my life. Can’t say I remember my life clearly, but ya know, when someone recites an event that you’ve completly forgotten (more like never consciously remembered it) and it just clicks. Oh well, enough wannabe sequences now, here’s the holy grail you’ve been waiting for:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SWYoEOU2fI