What I read

Curiosities

• The Browser, curated nonfiction
• Maciej Ceglowski on scurvy and internet ads.
• Donat Studios for software engineering tidbits, especially this raucous post about CSV’s
• Bits About Money
• The Online Etymology Dictionary by Douglas Harper.
• Gwern Branwen’s amazing monthly reading lists on AI and human genetics. He also writes about all sorts of things such as why are girl scout cookie prices outpacing inflation?. He follows problems with superhuman persistence.
• Slate Star Codex contains diverse, fascinating essays, but what hooked me at first was the cost disease post.
• Edward Tufte’s “Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative” on the Challenger disaster and the Broad Street cholera outbreak
• Stephen M. Hedrick on disease ecology
• This hilarious preprint on arguments against the possibility of artificial general intelligence
• Matt Lakeman, a modern-day Ibn Battuta
• Casey Handmer for various completely unironic takes on terraforming nearby planets
• If you are bleeding out right now, check out Dr. Jean Fan’s guide to choosing a hospital.
• Bayesiant was an outstanding student in a class I taught at JHU. She writes on AI alignment and alternative protein sources.

Technical matters

• Jake VanderPlas on Python for data science, especially this excellent conda myth debunker.
• CodingHorror on programming effectively
• Julia Evans on being delighted to do it and on effective debugging.
• John Cook on math, stats, and programming
• whuber on diverse statistical questions, including the infamous Broad Street pump.
• ttnphs on visualizing CCA.
• Rich Sutton, the bitter lesson

Music

• Will Kimball on trombone history
• Elizabeth Kenny on theorbo