July 2014 Media 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:

• 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 .)

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?"

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"

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.

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.

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.

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]

Most undepressing (yes, this word exists) song I've ever heard: Marina And The Diamonds -- Oh No!

http://euclidthegame.com

Fantastic way to learn Euclidean geometry. High school math should be like this!

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.