April 2014 Media Thread

Cenotaph, a finished Worm fanfic. Taylor doesn't get too upset with Armsmaster, doesn't join the Undersiders.

It might be featured in today's author note since Eliezer has expressed approval of the fic in the comments.

I've mentioned it before, but it's recently completed and hence bears bringing up again:

Embers, an Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfiction, is one of the best works I've read, fanfic or otherwise. At 750k words, it'll keep you entertained for a while. It features characters who are generally smart (at least some of them, and in ways generally more age- and culturally-appropriate than eg HJPEV) and significant fleshing out of the world, with the latter drawing heavily on the author's sometimes-cited research: see eg the author's notes at the end of chapter 30 (warning, slight spoilers, though nothing that will make sense out of context) or at the end of chapter 47 (somewhat more significant spoilers).

You don't need to have seen the show to know what's going on, but it'll help, and the show is worth a quick watch if you've got time on your hands anyway. Don't skip this work just because you don't have time for the show right now, though. Also, there's a prequel of sorts called "Theft Absolute", which is three orders of magnitude shorter and will not make much sense without the show; it's not necessary for Embers.

Saruman of Many Devices takes Saruman's gunpowder weapons and Industrial Revolution angle from Lord of the Rings and runs with it for some military SF style fun.

I've been writing a Captain Planet fanfic for a while. The premise is that the original members have grown old and a new team is needed:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8642760/

Psychology:

• "The poor neglected gifted child: Precocious kids do seem to become high-achieving adults. Why that makes some educators worried about America’s future" (SMPY)
• "The Overprotected Kid: A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer. A new kind of playground points to a better solution." (Playgrounds, risk, and childrearing.)
• Frederik Pohl & cryonics

Science/technology:

• "Dorian Nakamoto has vehemently denied being Bitcoin's creator. Did Newsweek act irresponsibly in pursuit of a scoop? Could they have known, prior to the denials, that Dorian wasn't Satoshi?"
• "A Randomized Experimental Study of Censorship in China"
• Tweets which are anagrams of each other
• "A Fistful of Bitcoins: Characterizing Payments Among Men with No Names", Meiklejohn et al 2013 (excerpts)

Philosophy:

• "Searching For One-Sided Tradeoffs" (Optimality/equilibrium reasoning.)
• "SCP-988"

Business:

• Econlolcats
• "The True Story Of The Great Marijuana Crash Of 2011"

Misc:

• Have a nice day

• Lapham's Quarterly: "Death":

  • "Longing for His Son Furuhi" (Yamanoue no Okura mourns)
  • Gensen's death poems
  • "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"
  • Heraclitus
  • Montaigne, "To Philosophize Is to Learn to Die"
  • "The Masque of the Red Death"
  • "Gertrude Bell Survives a Plague"
  • John Stuart Mill's diary
  • Macaulay letter on Wilberforce's death
  • Egyptian rites

Politics/religion:

• "How Interest Rates Were Set, 2500 BC – 1000 AD"
• "How Successful Was Christianity?"
• "How is the biomarker ID aid plan going in India?"
• "The Chaos Company: Wherever governments can’t—or won’t—maintain order, from oil fields in Africa to airports in Britain and nuclear facilities in America, the London-based “global security” behemoth G4S has been filling the void"
• "Book Review: A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja, by Joost R. Hiltermann"

Statistics:

• "Laplace the Bayesianista and the Mass of Saturn"
• "Why do Phase III Trials of Promising Heart Failure Drugs Often Fail? The Contribution of 'Regression to the Truth'", Krum & Tonkin 2003 (excerpts)
• "The Efficacy of Psychological, Educational, and Behavioral Treatment: Confirmation From Meta-Analysis", Lipsey & Wilson 1993 (I love these meta-meta-analyses, since they let you say things like 'Published studies yield mean effects 0.14 SDs larger than unpublished studies.' Isn't that useful to know?)

Literature:

• "Sanderson's First Law" of fantasy

Medicine:

• "Biomarkers and Long-term Labour Market Outcomes: The Case of Creatine"
• Caloric restriction, evidence pyramid, and drug risks
• "Meta-Regression Analyses, Meta-Analyses, and Trial Sequential Analyses of the Effects of Supplementation with Beta-Carotene, Vitamin A, and Vitamin E Singly or in Different Combinations on All-Cause Mortality: Do We Have Evidence for Lack of Harm?", Bjelakovic et al 2013

The attribution of mental states to technological systems.

How Politics Makes Us Stupid

Ezra Klein's version of Politics is the Mind-Killer.

Suzanne Sadedin, "What is the evolutionary or biological purpose of having periods?"

You see, mother and fetus have quite distinct evolutionary interests. The mother 'wants' to dedicate approximately equal resources to all her surviving children, including possible future children, and none to those who will die. The fetus 'wants' to survive, and take as much as it can get.

Science fiction podcast about space travel and AI. You can also read it if that is what you rather do.

http://escapepod.org/2014/03/29/ep441-kumara/

Hugh Herr: The new bionics that let us run, climb and dance.

I have to say that this was the most blatantly transhumanist mainstream lecture that I've seen in a long time, with sentences like "a human being can never be broken - only technology is broken [because it doesn't allow us to remove all of the human's disabilities yet]". Also generally one of my favorite TED Talks so far.

Note that the implications of the technology go beyond just healing the physically disabled: the exoskeletons he mentions will do wonders to old people. We're looking at the possibility of people maintaining the mobility and ease of movement of a young person for potentially their entire lives, and this technology may become widely available within quite a short time. That means that countless of people might become capable of moving back from nursing homes to living independently with only limited assistance.

How To Build a Computer.

A friend made an Escher inspired, visually stimulating video, two mins. Called "On Reflection".

Live Forever as You are Now: pop culture depiction of transhumanism, mind uploading, and immortalism. Funny and slightly disturbing.

Levenson's Newton and the Counterfeiter (review)

Fiction:

• reread R.A. Lafferty's Fourth Mansions
• Harrison's Light (review)

Also, may I take a moment to strongly recommend Ted Chiang's short stories?

• "Understand"
• "72 Letters"
• "Hell is the Absence of God"
• "Story of Your Life" (see also Lagrangians, Principle of Least Action, Greg Egan's "The Infinite Assassin", and Qualia the Purple)
• "Liking What You See: A Documentary"
• "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling"

I've been on a bit of an alternate history kick recently. I can recommend both Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan-Behemoth-Goliath young adult steampunk v. biotech alternate World War One trilogy, and Ian Tregillis' Bitter Seeds-The Coldest War-Necessary Evil demonologists v. bioengineered ubermenchen series. (Neither is rationalist fiction in the sense of having super rational characters, but it is realist fiction in the sense of character's making mistakes for bias-related reasons.)

Also, I seem to recall seeing Yvain say something on his blog recently about being surprised that many of the people he knew who reference Lovecraft haven't actually read him. For those who aren't aware of it, all of Lovecraft's solo-authored work in chronological order is available as a free e-book here.

A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. An amazing and hilarious novel. Believe the hype.

(If you've ever been annoyed by neoreactionaries, you'll delight in the main character. "A king? You want a king? Boy, nobody wants a king! Ignatius, are you sure you're OK?" First noted on Metafilter. I see one neoreaction fan who classifies it as "Red Pill fiction" ...)

Just finished Brandon Sanderson's book "Words of Radiance". It is the 2nd book in a (projected) 10-book series, and came out last month.

I thought it was a wonderful book. It developed the story from "The Way of Kings", some parts in obvious ways, but also in some new and unexpected ways. The world that Sanderson developed for this series is clearly huge, with many different actors and sub-stories going on.

Also, one sub-story in particular was very fun for me as an LW'er. I'm talking about: Gneninatvna, naq uvf VD punatvat rirel qnl (rot 13'ed).

Btw, I love Brandon Sanderson's work. It combines very "realistic" magic systems with awesome characters, and an epic back-story. I highly recommend reading the Mistborn trilogy, I consider it the finest fantasy work around.

Anime:

• Shin Sekai Yori (review)
• Attack on Titan
• Kyousougiga

The reboot of Cosmos (available on Hulu if you're into two minutes of ads every ten minutes) is fairly good pop science. They're hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Pros: The show makes me happy-cry on a regular basis. There's a clip in the opening sequence where a dandelion seed floating in the wind fades in to Voyager. The show is pretty heavily against religious tomfoolery, death, and staying on Earth until the civilization collapses and/or destroys itself.

Cons: The show owes a lot of its goodness to Sagan. NGT is leaning really heavily on his Crowning Moment of Awesome with Sagan before NGT went to undergrad. The CG is atrocious when it's not based on Hubble pictures. The anti-religion bits are heavy-handed to the point of being outright trolling (which one might argue was also a feature of the original).

Touhou:

• "A Queen Of The Sixteenth Night" (Yuri Yuzriha; TOHO R&B HOUSE Party Vol.2 {C85}) [instrumental/electronic]
• "Hello Aliens" feat. emaru (アサヒ; デジハロ NEXUS {C84}) [electro pop]
• "Einsamkeit" feat. 綾倉 盟 (spctrm, Syrufit; Sensitive Moment {C76})
• "Ska or RED" (水橋ゆっきー; Brass Quartet {C80}) [brass]
• "気だるい図書館" (水橋ゆっきー; Brass Quartet {C80}) [brass]
• "銀河と恋色魔法" (水橋ゆっきー; Brass Quartet {C80}) [brass]
• "NEXUS WiNG" feat. peЯoco. (katsu; DiGiHalo NEXUS {C84}) [pop]

Vocaloid:

• "ウィリウィリ (Wiliwili)" (Rin; takamatt, East End Pandemonium) [trance]
• "girls' afternoon appointments" (Miku? leggysalad; Amber {VM23}) [electronic]
• "Swim Through The Air" (Miku; leggysalad; Amber {VM23}) [electronic]
• "2AM Dreamy Wonderland (CY Short Mix)" (Miku; MJQ, CY) [Progressive House]
• "パンデミックの掃除" (Rin; note@L-tone; かがみね★ふぇすた 2013) [J-pop]
• "Bling Bling★Brighten Every Days" (SeeU; Team StarRoid; On You) [house]
• "Now Here" (SeeU; Team StarRoid, On You) [house]

Metal:

• Yn Gizarm - The Ruins of Loulan - Black metal from the solo project of a member of Zuriaake.
• Baradj - Qurai - Tatar folk metal.
• Nechochwen - Four Effigies - Classical guitar + black metal.
• Rattenfänger - Clausae Patent - A Drudkh side project, I think. Death metal.
• Csejthe - La mort du prince noir - Canadian black metal. Sounds like Burzum.
• La Rumeur des Chaînes - Erythème - Progressive black jazz metal. With horns.
• Drottnar - Victor Comrade - If they'd had metal in the Roaring Twenties, this is what it would have sounded like.

Accordion:

• Truart - Die Komposition 3 - Accordion-driven martial industrial.
• Feindflug - Sturmwalzer - More accordion-driven martial industrial.
• Barney McKenna and Tony MacMahon - The Wounded Hussar - An Irish folk tune played on accordion and banjo.
• Eläkeläiset - Humppamaratooni - A humppa arrangement of Whiskey in the Jar. Eläkeläiset almost made it to Eurovision once with Hulluna humpasta.
• Detektivbyrån - Life/Universe - Electronic accordion pop.

http://www.ftlgame.com/ Fun space rouge-like.

Good April Fool's Day Media

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/introducing-auto-awesome-photobombs.html

I started using Librivox.org for audiobooks recently. One I exceptionally enjoyed was Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. I read it once upon a time, but haven't picked it up since then. "Song of Myself" is still very powerful. His earthy loves and his love of the earth mixed beautifully with native visions of cosmic time and space.

https://librivox.org/leaves-of-grass-by-walt-whitman/