Favourite things of 2020

This year I decided to get into anime. I watched 44 seasons and found 11 great works.

This year I quit being insecure about not knowing things.

Work

Breakthroughs

Monday 30 November: Large (20-year leap) in protein folding

Tuesday: Singapore first country to sell cruelty-free meat

Wednesday: UK first to authorise a major COVID vaccine.

Thursday: A gene therapy for age-related blindness

Friday: First quantum supremacy demonstrated using photons, first time we uncontroversially go beyond classical computing.

• First polygenic screened baby born

Papers

• Bataglia et al, Relational inductive biases, deep learning, and graph networks Grand. Sweeping the furls and swarf of conferences into a dense block.
• McElreath and Smaldino, The natural selection of bad science. Stunning.
• ‘Statistical reliability analysis for a most dangerous occupation: Roman emperor’
• A Modern Retrospective on Probabilistic Numerics
• Hoffman, Blei, etc, Stochastic VI
• Cotton-Barratt, Daniel, Sandberg, Defence in Depth Against Human Extinction
• Does Commodification Corrupt?
• Pezzuto, Resveratrol: Twenty Years of Growth, Development and Controversy. A joy to read; dissolves 100 bad papers.
• Jussim et al, Scientific Gullibility
• Khovanova & Radu, Jewish Problems. An example of a precise mechanism of intentional discrimination.
• Calderhead, A general construction for parallelizing Metropolis−Hastings algorithms
• Harden, “Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated”: Behavior Genetics in the Postgenomic Era

Books

• Axiomatic by Greg Egan. Almost perfect.
• Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress.
• Disco Elysium by Robert Kurvitz.
• Cyteen by Caroline Cherryh.
• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
• The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge

• ‘The Feminist’ Tony Tulathimutte. Devastating, compassionate but in the queasiest and most scathing way. You think you’ve reached the final state of his sordid dialectic, and then the bottom drops out again.

• The Precipice by Toby Ord
• Science Fictions by Stuart Ritchie
• Odds and Ends by Jonathan Weisberg
• Utilitarianism.net by Will MacAskill & Darius Meissner

Worst book: The Mays XX

Essays and sites

• Christiano, ‘Hedonic asymmetries’. Powerful view of the human condition.
• ‘A World without Pain’. Profile of one of the most important people in the world.
• Hoffman, Simulacra. I love extracting real clear insights from ~fake obscure thinkers.
• ‘Why Deep Learning Works Even Though It Shouldn’t’
• Two kinds of defensive reasoning and a terrible case study in which to use when there are tail risks
• Gwern on his decade, 2010-2019. Just the best.
• An Overview of Technical AI Alignment in 2018 and 2019
• ‘The Weirdly Enduring Appeal of Weird Al Yankovic’. No, you’re crying.
• Action Button review of DOOM.
• Entirely Useless
• The NNT
• the-trouble-with-re-enchantment
• ‘A constructive critique of Sapiens’
• Cutting through Spiritual Colonialism. Two words which usually drive me away, but it is so good.
• nerri.eu. The EU paid millions to some academic transhumanists to write nootropics evidence reviews and SF book reviews.
• Simon Beard on Derek Parfit.
• The book reviews of Shriram Krishnamurthi. Both pungent and kind. We seem to have lost the last decade’s worth to the Google+ clysm though.
• The Amish Health Care System
• Studies on Slack
• Book Review: Just Giving
• Book Review: Human Compatible

• Why Doctors Think They’re The Best

• https://medium.com/@jencoates/i-am-a-transwoman-i-am-in-the-closet-i-am-not-coming-out-4c2dd1907e42

Films / TV

• Prospect
• JoJo Rabbit

• Parasite

• Mushishi
• FLCL
• Kaiba
• Ping Pong
• Stand Alone Complex
• Planetes. Twee slice of life in space - until episode 11, where it becomes a traumatic Dependency theory hell.
• Shirobako

Podcasts

• Great Lives
• Last Word
• Jane Street
• Better Known

Games

• Gloomhaven
• Mage Knight
• Superhot VR
• Tabletop Simulator
• 7 Wonders
• Hotline Miami
• Secret Hitler
• Return of the Obra Dinn
• Exapunks
• Invisible Inc
• XCOM2
• Celeste
• Frog Fractions
• Ah who am I kidding FTL again.
• 125 hours on Tabletop Sim too.

Albums

• Penelope Scott - Public Void
• AJJ - Good Luck Everybody
• The Avalanches - We Will Always Love You
• Zazou Bikaye - Mr Manager
• 輕描淡寫 [Understatement] - 小​圈​子
• MASTER BOOT RECORD - C:>DEFRAG
• The Mountain Goats - Songs For Pierre Chuvin
• Le Couleur - Concorde

• Altered Crates - Metaphorical Villainy

• Parallelograms by Linda Perhacs (1970)
• GREEN by Hiroshi Yoshimura
• LET THE EVIL OF HIS OWN LIPS COVER HIM by Lingua Ignota
• FLCL by the Pillows
• 小圈子 by Vill4an 輕描淡寫
• Simple.. Not Easy (2016) by Maxi Jazz
• Good (1992) by Morphine
• Soft Rains by Zarelli.
• まちあわせ ベストアルバム (Machiawase Best Album) by Tama
• ふたりぼっちで行こう (Let the Two of Us Go) by Akiko Yano
• YMO (1979) by Yellow Magic Orchestra
• Air Ni Ni by Hakushi Hasegawa
• Hawaii: Part 2 by Miracle Musical
• Space Echo by Analog Africa
• Low Kick and Hard Bop by Solex
• Come On Up To The House: Women Sing Waits

Songs

https://open.spotify.com/track/0LO9TYVTuDjZZRhJsGfxiS https://open.spotify.com/track/4Dl2WAzB3dsjJ9Br19uXZc Takurō Kubo

• Kimi ja Nakya Dame Mitai - Masayoshi Ōishi
• ‘Bring Your Love To Me’ by Jeremiah
• ‘The Great Gold Sheep’ by the Mountain Goats
• Plastic Love / Shake That - Mariya Takeuchi / Nate Dogg
• ‘Children of the Omnissiah’ - Guillaume David
• ‘Red Planet Nocturne’ by Christopher Tin
• ‘Black Hole Sun’ by Norah Jones
• ‘I love you, honeybear’ - Father John Misty. Excellent lockdown music.
• ‘Discourse on Accents’ by Amy Walker
• ‘The Rumour’ by Andy Stewart
• ‘Empty Skies’ - Kosheen
• ‘Matches’ by Guante
• ‘Sakuranbo’ by Otsuka Ai
• ‘Pehli Pehli Preet‘by Salma & Sabina
• ‘Muro Shavo Kiki’ by Ternipe
• ‘Ca me vexe’ by Mademoiselle K
• ‘Sa Haara Kinni Mu Käest’ by Tõnis Mägi
• ‘Radio’ by Supersister
• ‘Shanzhai’ by Helen Feng
• ‘LITTLE BUSTERS ’ by the pillows
• ‘Linda Linda’ by The Blue Hearts
• Sakuranohana by Elephant Kashimashi
• Salters Road by Karine Polwart
• I Lost You by Ballboy
• Trângulo Mângulo by Gaiteiros de Lisboa
• Hammond Song by the Roches
• Se telefonando by Mina
• Raet by Penelope Scott
• The End of the Rainbow by Richard Thompson
• Sound, Sound Your Instruments of Joy

Deals

• Started getting food deliveries. About £1 a pop after the pandemic learning curve unfolded.
• Built a computer (£700)
• Time Timer Original (£30)
• Bonlux 40W LED Daylight Corn Lamp (£20)
• Logitech G903 LIGHTSPEED Mouse (£70)
• Iodised salt (£10)
• AnySharp Knife Sharpener with Suction (£17)
• Knorr Professional Tomato Soup Mix, 200 Portions (£15)
• SPLAT hydroxyapatite toothpaste