December 2012 Media Thread

A lot of jobs that largely involve smiling at customers while performing routine functions would be obsolete: greeters, cashiers, receptionists. Having live receptionists could be retained as a status signal.

Rapid post-scarcity (of most stuff) would happen, with AI good enough to make most goods and VR good enough to simulate others. Examples of that in fiction would be The Diamond Age (great book), Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (not great). Or for a more dystopian take, see Manna.

If you have good conversational engines then asking some sort of siri-oracle questions and having an ongoing conversation with ti would eb a much more effective way of accessing information than reading articles. Plug one into wikipedia and you have a theoretically perfect teacher. [Though how easily these engines programmes can take in new information is something you'd have to decide.]

Sorry, I'll make one. I've been busy and haven't been particularly motivated outside of work recently.

Suggestion: Categories for fanfiction, webcomics, short online texts, and online videos.

Edit: poll added as per request:

Would you like a category for fanfiction? [pollid:261]

Would you like a category for online video? [pollid:262]

Would you like a category for short online texts? [pollid:263]

For cookbooks, I've been using a lot of Cooks Illustrated. While most cookbooks reprint recipes that someone developed and which work pretty well, Cooks Illustrated does something like 30 different test runs of a recipe with small variations to recommend which version works best.

The recipes are behind a paywall on the CI site, but you can usually find them reposted on other sites if you search for "Cooks Illustrated popovers" or whatever.

I just got done reading Uzumaki, or as I like to call it, the lulziest horror manga ever. It was deliciously twisted (pun very much intended). Note however that I'm somewhat of a nightmare fetishist, so your mileage might vary.

I have been listening to Sagisu's Evangelion 3.0 OST (in lieu of camsubs of the actual movie); it's pretty good and has some nice pieces, although it's not as excellent as his 2.0 OST was.

A buddy got himself a full set of James Bond films(except Skyfall). First one was made in 1962, last one in 2008.

Watching them one after another feels a little like time travel. The technology! The cars! The fashion! The furnishings! The hair! Even the behaviour, you can see them all changing at 10000x the actual speed. Try it yourself, tell me what you think.

I'm giving you a night call to tell you how I feel
I want to drive you through the night, down the hills
I'm gonna tell you something you don't want to hear
I'm gonna show you where it's dark, but have no fear...

Drive is a masterpiece. It's not really a crime thriller or an ultraviolence/exploitation movie. Part noir fairytale, part postmodern myth (playing with archetypes and cliches), part character drama, it has brilliance and precision in every shot.

(Recently there's been an indie arcade game inspired by it, Hotline Miami, but it focuses heavily on the ultraviolence part and the tone is really different, more delirous and schizophrenic. I also recommend it, both for the aesthetics and the gameplay. People have been whining about how difficult it is, but for me the gameplay is really delightful in that it's about combining action reflexes with split-second tactical puzzles, and mere pattern memorization won't help you stop dying.

There's also the soundtrack. It makes both the movie and the game what they are, it's just too mesmerizing for words.)

P.S. Damn, if only I could've watched it two months ago! Could've had that jacket for my birthday :( I know it might be shallow and consumerist of me to, but damn, I want it. I do have the looks to pull it off.

Watched Boogiepop Phantom. Much more comprehensible the second time around. Joshiraku was a disappointment.

お誕生日おめでとう、アスカ! Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!

Damn, I'd enter an acausal deal with an UFAI if it promised to support interdimensional marriage...

David Zindell's sci-fi trilogy A Requiem for Homo Sapiens contains many themes relevant to LessWrong: gur znc vf abg gur greevgbel, fhcrevagryyvtrag NVf, vagryyvtrapr nzcyvsvpngvba, rgp. The trilogy is set in the same world as Neverness, after the events of that book, but they can be read independently, and I like the trilogy better, personally.

• Existence (review)
• Pirate Freedom (review)
• Dark Fleet Crisis trilogy (review)

Finally got around to reading Iain Banks' Player of Games.

I don't have much to say about it. Superficially similar to Das Glasperlenspiel, but with an altogether different message. The climax is sadly underwritten.

I read The Beginnings of Western Science for a class. It's excellent and I recommend it to anyone interested in the history of science.

"The Emperor of Scent" was a very entertaining and well written book about Alan Turin and his vibrational theory of scent. It really highlighted some of the problems with the scientific community's model for publishing and how theories are accepted, and it's a great read as well.

In descending order of quality:

• The Signal and the Noise
• The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament
• Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World
• Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy