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.
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Short Online Texts Thread

Everything is heritable:

Politics/religion:

AI:

Statistics/meta-science:

Psychology/biology:

Technology:

Economics:

Fiction:

Fiction:

Story by R.S. Bakker about a boy talking to a hobbled AI. https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2016/03/22/the-dime-spared/

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

[-][anonymous]00

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

[-][anonymous]00

{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:

One zealous, perhaps mad, Taliban jumped into a bear's cage and cut off his nose, reportedly because the animal's "beard" was not long enough. Another fighter, intoxicated by events and his own power, leaped into the lion’s den and cried out, “I am the lion now!” The lion killed him. Another Taliban soldier threw a grenade into the den, blinding the animal. These two, the noseless bear and the blind lion, together with two wolves, were the only animals that survived the Taliban rule.

(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.

TV and Movies (Live Action) Thread

Music Thread

[-][anonymous]00

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:

Doujin:

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?