July 2014 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 use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.
If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.
Fanfiction Thread
This was mentioned last month, but The Metropolitan Man by alexanderwales is nearing its conclusion. It’s a Superman story from the perspective of Lex Luthor, set in the 1930s as a period piece.
All the Worm fanfic I can find on SpaceBattles/SufficientVelocity. Why? JUST BECAUSE.
(Wish some of them would get finished ever.)
This got mentioned last month, but The Metropolitan Man by alexanderwales is nearing its conclusion. It’s a Superman fanfic from the perspective of Lex Luthor, set in the 1930s, and does a pretty good job of showing a Lex Luthor who’s actually shown to be intelligent (and sees Superman as an existential risk).
Fiction Books Thread
Fiction:
The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro (review)
The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, Swanwick (review)
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Gaiman (review)
_Paul Celan: Selected Poems_ (review)
The second book of S.I., by DataPacRat, has been finished. (At least, its first draft has.)
Temporary page at a permanent site: http://www.datapacrat.com/SI/ . Google Drive version allowing comments: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17xCeMCTkTYih3kYexWZ3zuI5MWWab1TArfUfoMqpkLo/edit .
(Book One starts at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AU8o3wSAiufh-Eg1FtL-6656dNvbCFILCi2GbeESsb4/edit .)
Just finished catching up. I wonder who is going to burst into flames at the end of book 3.
Also, I was reading your Orion’s Arm stories, and I was amused to see that Bunny had a precursor of sorts.
Well, I /could/ have established the pattern specifically so I could break it… :)
Eyep, yep she did. ;)
This series is great and everyone should read it.
Short Online Texts Thread
Technology:
“In the Beginning was the Command Line”, Neal Stephenson
Data Compression Explained, Matt Mahoney
“A Pedagogy of Diminishing Returns: Scientific Involution across Three Generations of Nuclear Weapons Science”, Gusterson 2005
“Responses to Catastrophic AGI Risk: A Survey”, Sotala & Yampolskiy 2013
“It’s All About The Benjamins: An empirical study on incentivizing users to ignore security advice”, Christin et al (excerpts)
“Visualizing Algorithms” (sorting, maze-drawing)
“how I created 8088 Domination, which is a program that displays fairly decent full-motion video on a 1981 IBM PC”
“Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames: Control Characters (such as Newline), Leading Dashes, and Other Problems” (on the nigh-insuperable difficulties of correct filename handling)
“TCP ex Machina: Computer-Generated Congestion Control” (“Although the RemyCCs appear to work well on networks whose parameters fall within or near the limits of what they were prepared for—even beating in-network schemes at their own game and even when the design range spans an order of magnitude variation in network parameters—we do not yet understand clearly why they work, other than the observation that they seem to optimize their intended objective well. We have attempted to make algorithms ourselves that surpass the generated RemyCCs, without success.”)
Ultra-long-term civilizations: planets warmed by neutrinos
Statistics:
“Knowing When to Stop: How to gamble if you must-the mathematics of optimal stopping”
“Model Combination and Adjustment”
“Big Data: New Tricks for Econometrics”, Varian 2014 (Readable overview of some machine learning techniques for economics.)
“If correlation doesn’t imply causation, then what does?”, Nielsen
“Sequence Thinking vs. Cluster Thinking” (False dichotomy—“cluster thinking” is simply “sequence thinking” sans arbitrary restrictions of hypotheses/models, like a cryonics analysis which only uses conjunctions and never disjunctions, so it’s unsurprising that sequence thinking is faster & easier but generally less accurate than cluster thinking; but still interesting.)
Using Repeated Measures & LOESS smoothing to Remove Artifacts from Longitudinal Data (The idea of measures which systematically vary over time terrifies me, but that’s a neat approach: occasionally take calibration samples and fit a curve to control for the bias.)
“The Neutral Model of Inquiry (or, What Is the Scientific Literature, Chopped Liver?)”
Gustav III of Sweden’s coffee experiment
Medicine:
“Who By Very Slow Decay”: end-of-life medical care
Economics:
“How Copyright Keeps Works Disappeared”, Heald 2013
“How bad were the Navigation Acts really?”
“Results of the German and American submarine campaigns of WWII”
The price of the Cold War: ~$12,000 billion?
The price of Apollo: ~$170 billion.
The price of the Manhattan Project: ~$30 billion.
“Should Oregon fund college through equity?”
“Sequence Thinking vs. Cluster Thinking” is pretty obviously Holden expressing annoyance at the lower decile of LessWrong.
He has in mind Yudkowsky’s favourite far future argument, so your statement appers wrong, and thus needlessly dismissive, which I think is why you have been downvoted.
Politics/religion:
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Graeber 2004 (excerpts)
“A Genome-Wide Analysis of Liberal and Conservative Political Attitudes”, Hatemi et al 2011 (excerpts)
“Growing Up Sexually in Europe”
“Losing the War” (WWII in propaganda vs as experienced)
Basil Zaharoff
“A Filthy History: When New Yorkers Lived Knee-Deep in Trash”
“Bin Laden raid reveals ‘state failure’: Leaked report offers scathing assessment of how al-Qaeda chief was able to evade detection” (and if you believe that...)
“New New Fatherhood in the Inner City: A new book reveals how poor urban dads are reversing gender roles in caring for their children, but not being providers”
Higher education is signaling
“‘Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book’: The new warrior cop is out of control”
“U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement”
“What Can the Middle East Learn From What’s Happening in Qatar?”
“Xhosa cattle-killing movement and famine (1854-1858)”
Psychology:
“A preliminary report of kayak-angst among the Eskimo of West Greenland: a study in sensory deprivation”, Gussow 1963
“Do Rational People Exist?”
“Social Psychology Is A Flamethrower”
“Hikikomori as a Gendered Issue: Analysis on the discourse of acute social withdrawal in contemporary Japan”, Dziesinski 2004 (excerpts)
“Drugs and the Meaning of Life”, Sam Harris
“Fooled twice, shame on who? Problems with Mechanical Turk study samples, part 2”
training murder investigations:
Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death
“1930s: Nutshell studies of unexplained death”
Death in Diorama
“These Gruesome Dollhouse Death Scenes Helped Create Forensic Science”
Losing the War is incredible. Here’s an equally incredible flash animation of the Eastern Front, to counter it’s American bias.
Yeah. It takes a long time to really get going, but then it’s a pretty amazing… essay? history? debunking? critique of propaganda? I’m not even sure how to describe it.
Article:
Reality:
Article:
Reality:
5 Baffling Discoveries That Prove History Books Are Wrong from Cracked. They are:
Cocaine Discovered in Egyptian Mummies, Ancient Hebrew Inscribed on a Rock in New Mexico, Ancient Roman Statues in Mexico, A Norse Coin in Maine, and Ancient Japanese Speakers in New Mexico.
I don’t know anything about the rest, but the Maine penny, while certainly Norse (with the caveat that there’s some dispute over its context), could easily have been obtained through trade from the well-known Norse outposts at e.g. L’Anse aux Meadows. Not that baffling.
Online Videos Thread
Nonfiction Books Thread
TV and Movies (Animation) Thread
Anime:
_Seto no Hanayome_ (review; tldr: don’t bother)
I’ve been watching Silicon Valley, a sitcom about a startup in the eponymous, erm, valley. Overall I’d say that it’s fairly good. One of the characters, Gilfoyle, is a surprisingly sharp portrayal of a certain contrarian cluster type: polyamorous and satanist (and probably a libertarian, too). Shades of ESR, too, somehow. Worth a look.
(Edit: retracted in order to repost under live action subthread.)
Macross Zero (4/5 watched): half the length of a regular series, but crams in an engaging romance (with very well-done character revelations), a fun plot and some great action series. The whole thing has visuals that would be impressive in a series half its age. I’ll withhold full judgement until the ending, but right now I’d say it’s been better than Plus. Recommended.
Allison to Lillia: quite a sweet, childish fantasy series, lots of emphasis on the joy of flight. Fun but didn’t entirely stand up to a rewatch; I think Patapata Hikousen no Bouken is a more enjoyable example of the genre.
Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Not that good; reasonable visuals, but the plot was all over the place; episodes didn’t really hang together into a coherent whole, lots of plot elements that came up once and were then never referred to again. Antagonists were unable to present a believable threat after the first half or so; some of the more interesting relationships were left unexplored, whereas the ending romances seemed to come out of nowhere unsupported by the rest of the series. I’ve seen far worse series, but I wouldn’t recommend this.
A note on Hunter X Hunter now that I’m up to episode 95 or so: quality really does seem to have picked up in the last 20-or-so episodes, so some of my negativity last month was unwarranted. I still can’t really recommend a show that takes this long to get going though.
TV and Movies (Live Action) Thread
I’ve been watching Silicon Valley, a sitcom about a startup in the eponymous, erm, valley. Overall I’d say that it’s fairly good. One of the characters, Gilfoyle, is a really sharp (surprisingly so, for the mainstream media) portrayal of a certain contrarian cluster type: polyamorous and satanist (and probably a libertarian, too). Shades of someone like ESR, too, I think. Worth a look.
Music Thread
Touhou:
“Adiós, Illusion de los Compañeros ～ さよなら友の幻よ” (ジャージと愉快な仲間たち; 63⁄64 Completion {R11}) [folk]
“Camino a la Luna ～ 月へ至る山道” (ジャージと愉快な仲間たち; 63⁄64 Completion {R11}) [folk]
“¡Gritá Su Nombre! ～ 彼女の名を叫べ” (ジャージと愉快な仲間たち; 63⁄64 Completion {R11}) [folk]
“Dance even Owl” (surreacheese; FETA {R11}) [jazz}
“Magical color(bossa)” (surreacheese; FETA {R11}) [bossa nova?]
“SAISEN girl” (あき; 恋綴里-第五話- {R11}) [Jpop]
“亡き王女に捧げるセプテット” (Foxfactory; Touhou Gensoukai -Koumakyou no Oto- Irodori {C84}) [orchestral]
“Magic of the Gavel” (ZUN; Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character {C84}) [electronic]
“Eyes On Me” (Coro; 癒しの風 vol.2 蓮台野夜行 ～ Ghostly Field Club {C84}) [jazz]
“第1回東方M-1ぐらんぷりR 劇中BGM集 10” (R-note; Comic market 84 R-note Omake CD {C84}) [instrumental]
“IDEALiZED” (Babbe feat. Suzuki; BLOSSOMING DANCEFLOOR {2014}) [house]
“ほたる (Firefly)” (Crazy Berry; くるいちご三ルク {R11}) [rock?]
“liar lips” (Crazy Berry; くるいちご三ルク {R11}) [dubstep?]
“Lunatic Princess ~ Flight of the Bamboo Cutter” (TAM; TOHO DRAMATIC VIOLIN -enthusiasm- {R11}) [classical/rock]
“Border of Life ~ Bloom Nobly, Cherry Blossoms of Sumizome” (TAM; TOHO DRAMATIC VIOLIN -enthusiasm- {R11}) [classical/rock]
“Love Coloured Master Spark” (TAM; TOHO DRAMATIC VIOLIN -enthusiasm- {R11}) [classical/rock]
“Septette for the Dead Princess” (TAM; TOHO DRAMATIC VIOLIN -enthusiasm- {R11}) [classical/rock]
Doujin:
“ウサギトエゴ” (kous, ef; 中庭△ {2013}) [electronic?]
Vocaloid:
“残らずの森” (kous; 中庭M {2013}) [Jpop]
What would you say are the best Hatsune Miku songs? I rather like this one but I haven’t so much liked the couple of others I’ve heard.
Due to the preposterous number of Vocaloid songs out there, “best” in practice often means “personal favorites of the limited subset the person you are talking to has heard of”. Vocaloid seems to follow Sturgeon’s Law, as does everything else with low barriers to entry (like fanfiction), but fortunately, it doesn’t take much time to check whether a given song is good, so hunting for hidden gems is a fairly fruitful activity as far as Vocaloid songs go. A useful site for this task is VocaDB
Endorsing Gwern’s response below, here are five that I’d say are fairly decent.
Not is Destination The producer, Aerial Flow (that’s his channel, by the way, poke around on it) is one of the best trance producers in the community, and there’s quite a bit more stuff by him that I wanted to link but didn’t.
Lost Memories A fairly nice Dark Append song that is tuned higher than the one you linked, but that I still suspect you may like. Not quite sure what to class it as.
Everlasting Love First song I listened to where I went “I like the vocal tuning on this one.” Piano ballad.
Yumemidori Yes, it isn’t Miku. Yes, it isn’t electronic, it’s guitar and drums. I’m still pretty enamored by it.
Idiolect Another popular techno song with the Dark Append.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Hard to say.
Part of the problem is that I don’t think the Miku voicebank is very good—too high-pitched, as the Japanese like their singers—but Miku is overwhelmingly used by the Japanese producers, so I still wind up with a lot of Miku-using pieces I like. (Although I do try to swap them out for Luka or Ia-using versions when possible.)
And there’s a couple ways a producer can use a voicebank: you can treat it as an instrument, you can use it as a voice which can sing impossible pieces like rap or extremely-fast chants, or you can try to carefully tune it to sound as realistic as possible, or you can embrace the roboticness of the voice as a singer.
I’d describe your link as possibly a Miku Dark (deeper-pitched), realistic tuning, in an electronic/techno vein. So if you were looking for more music like that, you’d want to look at pieces mentioning using the Dark variant on the Miku voicebank or less squeaky voicebanks like Luka, in genres like electronic techno vein, and described as realistic or well-tuned. And then you can follow up particular producers. (Remember that fame in online media is highly fickle, so if you find you like one track by a producer, the odds are that he has plenty of other work as good but not popular enough to show up in your search or be reuploaded from NND to YouTube.)
I see, thanks.
Most undepressing (yes, this word exists) song I’ve ever heard: Marina And The Diamonds—Oh No!
There’s a decent Maria Holic AMV with this song.
Well that was… Weird. And why was it undepressing?
Because of its lyrics:
And because it has clicked with me.
I don’t know why, but every time I watch this video I experience a strong urge to open Brain Workshop ^^
Podcasts Thread
Other Media Thread
http://euclidthegame.com
Fantastic way to learn Euclidean geometry. High school math should be like this!
There is also Ancient Greek Geometry. The user interface is more “elegant”, but less powerful.
The main difference is that in Ancient Greek Geometry you don’t acquire constructions as atomic procedures, you need to inline all the steps each time. So it doesn’t scale to complicated constructions, but on the other hand it is kind of interesting, you get a sort of gut feeling for how many steps are involved in the proofs. For example, a high school textbook will show the construction to make perpendicular lines at, like, page 1, and then you never think about it again. But if you actually have to do all the steps of it each time, you will want to plan out your constructions to make sparing use of perpendicularity...
The What if? section of the webcomic XKCD displays excellent examples of using science to answer bizarre trivia questions. In this episode, a Fermi estimation of ink molecules:
http://what-if.xkcd.com/106/
The Last Express (I finished this a while ago but was reminded by reading Stamboul Train this month). It’s… ambitious, and mostly successful at its aims; it’s literally the only game I’ve ever played that’s created a solid-feeling world that feels like more than just a setting for the game, and the characters have lives that feel like they extend beyond a single narrative. As a game it has its downsides—the puzzle format is frustrating, at least for me (a climactic sword fight on the top of the train sounds like an excellent idea, but implementing it as 8 quicktime events in a row makes it much less so. Having to replay the same timeframe over and over again when you get something wrong can also be irritating, though mitigated in that the game does make some efforts to send you back to where you made your last mistake). But as a work of craft it’s beautiful, and the characters and scenes have stayed with me in a way that few games have.
Marvellous flash animation of WW2′s Eastern Front.
Meta Thread