Favourite things of 2016
This year I decided to get into the effective altruism community in person. (I’ve been some kind of radical consequentialist and crazyist since before the movement was named.)
This year I quit two consecutive jobs.
Papers
- Donoho (2015), ‘50 years of Data Science’
- Breiman (2001), ‘Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures’
- Etz (2016), ‘How to become a Bayesian in eight easy steps’
Books
- Brewer’s Rogues, Villains, and Eccentrics by William Donaldson
- Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom
- Doing Good Better by Will MacAskill
- Penguin Book of Japanese Verse
- New Year Letter by WH Auden
- The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch
- Behind the Wall by Colin Thubron
- The View From the Ground by Martha Gellhorn
- I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That by Ben Goldacre
- Critical Mass by Philip Ball
- Intelligence by Stuart Ritchie
- Plato at the Googleplex by Rebecca Goldstein
- Herzog on Herzog by Werner Herzog
- Keeping On Keeping On by Alan Bennett
Worst book: The Bald Prima Donna
Essays
- Why is machine learning hard? by Zayd Enam
- The No-Cloning Theorem and the Human Condition by Scott Aaronson
- Unnecessariat
Films / TV
- Toni Erdmann
- La La Land
-
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
- The Young Pope
- Planet Earth II
Songs
- ‘These Romantic Moments’ by Swamp Spice
- Critics,
- One-Way Glass,
- I Saw Your Hair Between the Trees
- Chifundo,
- Let the Mystery Be
- If I Think of Love
- Saponkanikan,
- Oro mo Bhaidin,
- Solanin - Rotti
- Tiny Geometries - Ray Lynch
- Got it Bad - LEISURE
- Girlfriend - Mind Enterprises
- Oh Baby - Micachu
- Cadence - St South
- Falling - Opia
- Coffee - Yuna
- Sunset Lover - Petit Biscuit
- Our Sun - Tendts
- Atomic Bomb - Hot Chip
Albums
- Living with Animals - Portland Vows
- Sky Girl, Various Artists
- The Caretaker - Everywhere at the End of Time
- The Blasting Company - Over the Garden Wall
- Field Music - Commontime
- Space Echo: The Mystery Behind the Cosmic Sound of Cabo Verde
- Kanye West - The Life of Pablo
- Kiran Leonard - Grapefruit
- Anna Meredith - Varmints