Things to argue about over the holidays instead of politics III
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Why probability probably doesn’t exist (but it is useful to act like it does)
All of statistics and much of science depends on probability — an astonishing achievement, considering no one’s really sure what it is.
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why you should be talking with gpt about philosophy
some thoughts on how it's become better, and how you can too
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The Dangers of Mirrored Life
Creating mirrored organisms using synthetic biology could seriously harm extant life, a 300-page report claims. While the risks from mirrored life are uncertain, it is best not to find out.
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Bringing Elon to a knife fight
Wishing for a more orderly disruption may misunderstand the nature of government reform
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OpenAI's Sora is an agent — LessWrong
If you haven't already, take a look at Sora, OpenAI's new text-to-video AI. Sora can create scarily-realistic videos of nearly any subject. Unlike previous…
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Sentence structure for writers: understanding weight and clarity [extract]
Some sentences just sound awkward. In order to ensure clarity, writers need to consider more than just grammar: weight is equally important. In the following…
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Nicholas Kristof’s Tried-and-True Packing List for Any Situation (Really)
New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof shares his packing list for when he reports across the world.
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52 things I learned in 2024
This year I took a sabbatical, recorded a podcast with Freakonomics, designed and shipped a tiny modular synthesiser, and learned many learnings. Tom Whitwell designs open source music electronics as…
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How France uncovered the mystery of the forbidden photos of Nazi-occupied Paris
The search for the unknown photographer began in the summer of 2020, with the discovery of an old photo album at a flea market in southern France.
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Responsible Parenting at the Arizona Trail Race
Richard Rothwell and his son James finished the 800-mile event this year and were the unofficial unsung heroes. Read their story...
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A Chance to Build
Silicon Valley has always been deeply integrated with Asia; Trump’s attempt to change trade could hurt Silicon Valley more than expected, and also present opportunities to build something new…
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Inside the Colorful and Cultish World of Nerds Gummy Clusters
Sales of Nerds have greatly increased in recent years, the company says. The secret? A multicolored orb. Nerds Gummy Clusters hit the shelves in 2020 and have…
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Sequence modeling and design from molecular to genome scale with Evo
Information & Authors Information Published In Science Volume 386 | Issue 6723 15 November 2024 Copyright Copyright © 2024 The Authors, some rights reserved;…
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TITAA #60.5: Blueskies after Dimension X
Migrating to 🦋 - Depth & Motion - Dark Folk - Liminality - Scythe of Birds - Geoff
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How Copperfield Vanished the Statue of Liberty
Learn how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty vanish on live television back in 1983. Free Magic: MindBlownMagic.com
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Journey of a Single Line
[Image: A1 (1930) by WacÅ‚aw Szpakowski, via Miguel Abreu Gallery]. I meant to write about these way back when they first appeared in the Paris Review, but alas. In any case, WacÅ‚aw Szpakowski was a…
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Waclaw Szpakowski Made Labyrinthine Drawings from Single, Continuous Lines
Working in isolation, WacÅ‚aw Szpakowski made mazelike drawings from single, continuous lines. WacÅ‚aw Szpakowski, B9, 1926, ink on tracing paper, 13 3/4″ x 15…
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Does All Semiconductor Manufacturing Depend on Spruce Pine Quartz?
Here’s an idea you see spreading across the internet every so often: that all semiconductor and solar PV manufacturing depends on extremely pure quartz from the town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina.
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Making of Lilies & Roses of P.J. Redouté
“Patience” was this project’s theme. Breathing new life into Les Liliacées and Les Roses—two of Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s most well known collections—taught me a lot about it during the year I spent on this project.
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Tony Hawk wanted to track down a mysterious skateboarder from 1979. We found her.
A photographer snapped a shot of Shaunda Shane skating down her street in Fayetteville when she was 10. How did the world's most famous skateboarder see that picture 45 years later?
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How a breakthrough gene-editing tool will help the world cope with climate change
Jennifer Doudna, the co-developer of CRISPR, says there’s a “coming revolution” in climate-adapted crops and animals.
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GitHub Next | GitHub Spark
GitHub Next Project: Can we enable anyone to create or adapt software for themselves, using AI and a fully-managed runtime?
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Agents' Room: Narrative Generation through Multi-step Collaboration
Writing compelling fiction is a multifaceted process combining elements such as crafting a plot, developing interesting characters, and using evocative language. While large language models (LLMs) show promise for story writing, they currently rely heavily on intricate prompting, which limits their use. We propose Agents' Room, a generation framework inspired by narrative theory, that decomposes narrative writing into subtasks tackled by specialized agents. To illustrate our method, we intro...
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BookWorm: A Dataset for Character Description and Analysis
Characters are at the heart of every story, driving the plot and engaging readers. In this study, we explore the understanding of characters in full-length books, which contain complex narratives and numerous interacting characters. We define two tasks: character description, which generates a brief factual profile, and character analysis, which offers an in-depth interpretation, including character development, personality, and social context. We introduce the BookWorm dataset, pairing books fr...
