April 2016 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
Everything is heritable:
“Molecular genetic contributions to social deprivation and household income in UK Biobank (n=112,151)”, Hill et al 2016 (correlation graph)
“Genetic risk for autism spectrum disorders and neuropsychiatric variation in the general population”, Robinson et al 2016
“Genetic relationship between five psychiatric disorders estimated from genome-wide SNPs”, Psychiatric Genomics Consortium 2013
“Height, body mass index, and socioeconomic status: Mendelian randomisation study in UK Biobank”, Tyrrell et al 2016
“Mutation and Human Exceptionalism: Our Future Genetic Load”, Lynch 2016
“Older fathers’ children have lower evolutionary fitness across four centuries and in four populations”, Arslan et al 2016 (from “The cost of inbreeding in terms of health”)
“Engineering the Perfect Baby”
“Welcome to the CRISPR Zoo” (roundup of recent & planned CRISPR applications in animals)
“Genetic variance estimation with imputed variants finds negligible missing heritability for human height and body mass index”, Yang et al 2015
Politics/religion:
“The Dog Thief Killings”
“How a detachment of U.S. Army soldiers smoked out the original Ku Klux Klan”
“Legalize It All: How to Win the War on Drugs”
AI:
“Dynamic Memory Networks for Visual and Textual Question Answering”, Xiong et al 2016
“Learning Hand-Eye Coordination for Robotic Grasping with Deep Learning and Large-Scale Data Collection”, Levine et al 2016 (video)
“Generating images with recurrent adversarial networks”, Im et al 2016 (Another nice improvement in the state of the art; getting RNNs working with adversarial training is believed to be pretty tricky.)
“Deep Exploration via Bootstrapped DQN”, Osband et al 2016 (Who’d’ve thought there was a way to combine bootstrapping and deep q-networks?)
AlphaGo as AI risk example (Inside View beat Outside View 4-1)
Statistics/meta-science:
“Underreporting in Psychology Experiments: Evidence From a Study Registry”, Franco et al 2015 (previously: Franco et al 2014)
“Is there a publication bias in behavioral intranasal oxytocin research on humans? Opening the file drawer of one lab”, Lane 2016
how often does correlation=causation?
“Comparison of Evidence of Treatment Effects in Randomized and Nonrandomized Studies”, Ioannidis et al 2001
“Comparison of Effects in Randomized Controlled Trials With Observational Studies in Digestive Surgery”, Shikata et al 2006
“The Scientific Impact of Positive and Negative Phase 3 Cancer Clinical Trials”, Unger et al 2016
“The Stress Test: Rivalries, intrigue, and fraud in the world of stem-cell research”
Psychology/biology:
“Evolution of the Human Brain: From Matter to Mind”, Hofman 2015 (plenty of room at the top; excerpts)
“What sparked the Cambrian explosion?”
“‘High’ Achievers? Cannabis Access and Academic Performance”, Marie & Zölitz 2015 (Dutch natural experiment in selective marijuana ban in a university town)
“Correlation and Causation in the Study of Personality”, Lee 2012
“State-Space of Drug Effects: Results”
2016 Nootropics survey results
Technology:
“Lessons from 30 Years of MINIX”
Heat pipe
“The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel”
“Why America abandoned nuclear power (and what we can learn from South Korea)”
Economics:
“Typhoid Fever, Water Quality, and Human Capital Formation”, Beach et al 2016
Fiction:
“With No Inkling of the Contents: Viewing Narnia Through a Hindu Lens” (creative hermeneutics)
Fiction:
Story by R.S. Bakker about a boy talking to a hobbled AI. https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2016/03/22/the-dime-spared/
13 perspectives to help see things as they really are, not as we expect them to be
Rupert Murdoch’s Ex-Wife Wendi Deng Is Dating Vladimir Putin
Ferdinand Waldo Demara
Economists Are Warming to Government Intervention
The incentives for individually feminists to be controversial rather than fight the really important battles where they actually exist continues to plague university campuses
Hass avocado Retail Volume & Price Data
Anyone know anything about drug discovery for antidepressants and antianxiolytics? Pharmacology of antidepressants
The Hidden Art of Achieving Creative Flow
Does Posting Facebook Status Updates Increase or Decrease Loneliness? An Online Social Networking Experiment—the answer is yes, posting on facebook makes you less lonely irrespective of whether people actually interact with your content.
How do you evaluate the effectiveness of additional research, effective altruists? Don’t reinvent the wheel, we already have a framework for that
Ben Folds Five “DO IT ANYWAY” f. Fraggle Rock AND 6 Mindsets That Will Make You Magnetic AND Game of Thrones: How Power Really Works AND Why Tyrion Can’t Be Killed
AI for advertising and shopping overview. Mostly about personal assistants tho...
https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/01/how-artificial-intelligence-can-be-used-for-marketing
An economics paper on the incestuous interlinking of the trans-national corporations, with formula to show structures.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.5728v2
and what it means to the average joe,
http://www.bullionbullscanada.com/index.php/commentary/international-commentary/26284-oligopolies-unmasked-the-death-of-competition
I haven’t read the econ paper yet, but with the leak of the Panama Papers, a shell corporation forming law firm, there is going to be some interesting correlating going on...
http://www.zerohedge.com/print/527900
and the source https://panamapapers.icij.org/the_power_players/
can you say Lenin ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Stage_of_Capitalism
Come on guys, this didn’t deserve the downvotes. Thanks for your contribution, please continue.
Bullshit.
Yes, I can say Lenin, but it doesn’t spell what you want it to spell.
Online Videos Thread
Reasons to remain single
Can I recommend all the RSD channels again?
If a girl can keep it interesting she doesn’t have to worry about any other girls—smooth kiss transition move!
{Charisma on Command](https://www.youtube.com/user/charismaoncommand) - best ‘pickup’ tips channel I’ve seen. It’s not just about pickup and generalises well to politics, business, friendship, etc. I think it’s as close as they get to that one of a kind Relationship Science blog.
Fanfiction Thread
Nonfiction Books Thread
The Looming Tower is a very well-written history of the people and background of the 9/11 attacks.
I thought this anecdote, that happened at the Kabul zoo in the aftermath of the Taliban’s takeover of the city, was poignant:
Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle, Everett 2009 (on the Pirahã people; review)
Drugs 2.0, Powers (review)
The Recollections Of Eugene P. Wigner: As Told To Andrew Szanton (review)
Handbook of Intelligence: Evolutionary Theory, Historical Perspective, and Current Concepts (review)
(Links are to my GoodReads notes about them)
The related books Superforecasting and Future Babble are about predicting the socio-econo-political future—how people usually fail at it, esp. overconfident pundits—and how it doesn’t matter because people forget and they get invited again. The contents align nicely with LW-themes (in terms of instrumental rationality, probabilistic reasoning and recognizing biases etc.), and apply them to read-world prediction making. Some people get quite good at foreseeing events.
Fiction Books Thread
TV and Movies (Animation) Thread
Just saw Zootopia. Best movie I’ve seen so far this year—it’s a legit “buddy cop” detective story as well as a satisfying parable about racism and stereotyping. There’s even a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Breaking Bad reference. ;)
In the story the attacks supposedly committed by minorities are actually committed by the government. To map this onto reality, it appears that the story is an allegory for how Bush did 9/11!
But I’m fairly sure Bush didn’t actually mastermind 9/11. And I imagine that if there were a society of animals with human-level intelligence, different species would commit crimes at vastly different rates—after all, regardless of whether human biodiversity is a thing, animal biodiversity certainly is!
So I thought the moral of the story completely falls to pieces when you think about it. Despite that, the film was certainly enjoyable.
Well, by a faction within the government...
Aside from mapping onto anything in particular, the mayor is a predator. Why is he involved int the conspiracy?
He was in a separate conspiracy. The deputy mayor was turning the carnivores savage, the mayor was covering it up. They had no knowledge of what the other one was doing.
I had a lot of fun watching it, but the story fell apart the more I thought about it. Who was behind the conspiracy? Why did they think it made any sense at all?
Not exactly a logical failure, but what’s going to happen with our idealistic cop and her friendship with an organized crime boss? I’m hoping this will be the central issue driving a sequel.
Not to mention all that tax evasion never actually got resolved.
She eventually gives him the carrot pen so he can delete the recording, no?
Sure, but that doesn’t change all the tax he evaded.
In the scrapped early version of the script, the world is a much darker place. Carnivores are made to wear taser collars that activate when their emotions (measured by physiological stress) reach a point that the collar believes the carnivore is attacking someone, or about to.
The beast at the top of the scheme we see in the movie is power-mad with a Napoleon Complex, tired of being put down and put upon. But it’s too well done, too well-funded, to be just a rogue politician. No, this has money behind it. And I have no doubt that were this fiend’s plot to have reached its conclusion, there would surprisingly quickly have been a taser collar around the neck of every carnivore in the city.
I saw it and I liked it, Breaking Bad reference included… I was actually surprised that there wasn’t a Gazelle app like the one shown in the movie, after all similar apps are quite common.
There is this.
:D
The Tale of Princess Kaguya: very beautiful but enigmatic
TV and Movies (Live Action) Thread
Music Thread
Dan tes reves
And, the Linkin Park Discography (their earlier stuff)
Clean bandit—rather be
Dragon Age Score—The Party Camp Extended
Melanie Martinez—Carousel − 1 Hour Oh that ting ting ting sound so orgasmic
Anything Melanie Martinez ever made. I’m just like her.
Touhou:
“Longing of Forest” (ハム; Re*Collection {C89}) [jazz/folk]
“Doloza (Fires of Hokkai)” (Maurits”禅”Cornelis feat.舞花 & W.nova; Spatial Moving {C89}) [trance]
“Reawakening ~ ``second″ chance, for the tenth time or so” (the distant journey to you; untitled {C89}) [postrock]
“音の瓶詰 - 神さびた古戦場 ～ Suwa Foughten Field” (ジャム; 守矢幻燈録 ～ Separation of Spirit {R12}) [classical]
“死霊の夜桜” (Marasy; 幻想遊戯＜神＞ ～ Museum of marasy {R12}) [classical]
“素敵な墓場で暮らしましょ” (Marasy; 幻想遊戯＜神＞ ～ Museum of marasy {R12}) [classical]
“神社の新しい風” (Marasy; 幻想遊戯＜神＞ ～ Museum of marasy {R12}) [classical]
“佐渡の二ッ岩” (Marasy; 幻想遊戯＜神＞ ～ Museum of marasy {R12}) [classical]
“デザイアドリーム” (Marasy; 幻想遊戯＜神＞ ～ Museum of marasy {R12}) [classical]
Doujin:
“Magic” (Chroma; Black Magic {C89}) [vocal/Jpop]
“THE GREAT VOYAGE” (Tenmon; MEMORY OF THE GREEN {C89}) [progressive rock]
“Sāi-bak-hō (HiRoSYO Remix)” (kamome sano; tatsuta compilation 4 {2015}) [electronic]
Vocaloid
“Paradox” (Kimkim feat. Miku; MONOPHOBIA {2015}) [electronic]
Podcasts Thread
Other Media Thread
For anyone who’s been interested but who prefers completed works, Homestuck is finally coming to an end on the 13th. If you start reading now you’ll probably catch up sometime after it’s done. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a long and increasingly epic comedy/action/sci-fi/drama web-comic/multimedia-extravaganza with an interesting setting and a huge cast of characters, with a fanbase ranging from hordes of teenage girls to Eliezer Yudkowsky. Definitely not for everyone though. Helps if you can enjoy irreverent humour.
edit: If you do start reading, it may be helpful to know that for the first 3.5 acts Homestuck was designed to resemble an adventure game, and the commands on the bottom of the page (linking to the next page) were submitted by readers, with the resulting panels being created in response to the commands. This leads to a fairly high level of silliness early on. Later it gets a bit more focused.
Meta Thread
I think it speaks to the unfortunately(?) low status of videogames in current society that this thread has so many specific sections but none for games. (Not that I have any recommendations to make right this minute). (Obviously we can just put them under “other”, but it still seems odd to me. Surely games are more popular than podcasts?)
I’ll find the time within the month to examine the past half year and so of past media threads and see if it would make sense to make some such adjustment, replace podcast subthread with games subthread or something similar. If so I’ll put it on a vote.
The Grid, an AI assisted website design platform
https://thegrid.io/
I, for one, really like this section of LW, which has led me to so many interesting reads. It seems there used to be more entries here, is there some other place LW-minded people now put their recommendations?