Links and thoughts, 6-7/2016

See all the links for this month for June and July. (See April’s post for an explanation of the organization.) Here are some highlights.

• Programming: Some posts about bringing functional programming to a broader audience.
  • Codeworld’s big decisions h: C.D. Smith collects lessons learned from years of teaching functional programming to middle school students. He describes how he modified Haskell to make a consciously-designed, beginner-friendly “Codeworld”. The resemblance of functional programming to mathematics means it can be used to teach mathematics more effectively—students get to test their intuitions about functions with immediate feedback.
  • Elm: Farewell to FRP: The Elm programming language has changed a lot from 0.16 to 0.17.
    • Evan Czaplicki explains his design decisions in making Elm more mainstream. A large part is the focus on interop.
• Art from 4-D objects:
  • I went to a talk by Henry Segerman where he talked about making sculptures of 4-dimensional objects.
  • Hypernom
  • Quaternion monkeys
• 5 love languages: Understand the different styles people have of expressing and interpreting love.

• Scott Aaronson answers the call of Daddy, why didn’t you blog about Trump? h

  I think people support Trump for the same reason why second-graders support the class clown who calls the teacher a fart-brain to her face. It’s not that the class literally agrees that the teacher’s cranium is filled with intestinal gases, or considers that an important question to raise. It’s simply that the clown had the guts to stand up to this scolding authority figure who presumes to tell the class every day what they are and aren’t allowed to think.

• How vector space mathematics reveals the hidden sexism in language
• Fungi
  • Photos of fungi
  • From tree to shining tree (Radiolab): Fungi form a vast underground trade and communications network for trees in the forest (Avatar, anyone?).
• Rationalist fiction
  • Elizier Yudkowsky on rationalist fiction
  • How to write intelligent characters
  • It was you who made my blue eyes blue (SlateStarCodex): A story based on the classic blue-eyed islander puzzle.
• Books: I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction lately.
  • Hyperion, Dan Simmons
  • The world of Null-A, A.E. van Vogt (Recommended from the “rationalist fiction” post above)
  • A deepness in the sky, Vernor Vinge: My favorite in this batch of books.
  • The player of games, Ian Banks
  • The black swan: the impact of the highly improbable, Nassim Taleb
  • The Age of Em, Robin Hanson: Extensively thought-out predictions about a future world with emulated minds. If you don’t want to read the whole book, you can listen to a Review the Future podcast episode on the book. Notes in progress.