Thanks to everyone who entered or voted in the Non-Book Review Contest. The winners are:
1st: Joan of Arc, by William Friedman. William is a history enthusiast and author who lives in California, where he spends his time reading, writing, GMing, playing video games and telling people excitedly about all the horrific stuff he learned in his latest history book. His fiction blog is Palace Fiction (which is currently serializing his first novel, The Tragedy of the Titanium Tyrant) and his nonfiction blog is As Our Days.
2nd: Alpha School, by Edward Nevraumont. Edward also wrote one of last year’s finalists (Silver Age Marvel Comics)1. Now that he’s no longer anonymous, he’s going to write a post on his blog responding to the review comments (712 of them!), as well as a follow-up post on what he has learned about Alpha in the six months since he submitted his review (including the Spring and Fall MAP results for his kids). Here is the landing page with more details for ACX readers who are interested.
3rd: The Russo-Ukrainian War, by Gallow. Gallow is a wayward military consultant based in Ukraine. A long time reader of Slate Star Codex, he enjoys chess and combat sports. Forthcoming details of his experiences, along with miscellaneous thoughts and ideas can be found at his nascent Substack : https://substack.com/@gallowglassglen
The other Finalists were:
The ACX Commentariat, by Alex Bates. Alex is a statistician and health economist based near Oxford in the UK. In his review, Alex predicted that engagement with ACX would peak in July this year. Sadly this did not come to pass, in part because the Commentariat review itself dragged the average down. In his spare time, Alex is writing a novel in the hitherto-untapped genre of ‘Stat-Fic’, a thrilling blend of statistics and fantasy which is sure to find a vast mainstream audience upon publication.
Dating Men In The Bay Area, by Alex King. Alex is an engineer from San Francisco. She’ll be experimenting with more essays on her new blog, King of Daydreams. When she’s not igniting turmoil in the ACX comments section, she can be found mentoring young engineers, hosting community events, and failing to find a boyfriend. She pinky-promises she is not Aella.
Islamic Geometric Patterns In The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, by Canarius Agrippa. He is a physicist living in Boston, now on his third attempt at starting a blog, at Canis Agrippae.
Mice, Mechanisms, And Dementia, by Myka Estes. Myka is a neuroscientist and immunologist who has published in Science, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, and Immunity. She currently manages a research lab focused on children with profound neurodevelopmental disorders and publishes the Journal Club with Myka Substack. She’s also in the process of launching an independent bookstore, and in her spare time - she has no spare time.
My Father’s Instant Mashed Potatoes, by Chris Finkle. Chris manages a makerspace in central Florida, and despite writing a review about the perils of simulacra he spends much of his free time at various theme parks, haunts, and roadside attractions. His most active social media presence is letterboxd, where he watches at least one movie from each of the last hundred years every year. This was his first time entering an ACX contest, and his other short form writing (mostly science fiction and reflections on pop culture) can be found at The Viewer From Nowhere.
Ollantay, by David Speiser. David lives in New Mexico, and he writes about other stories that are 100% true at Rainbows Everywhere.
Participation In Phase I Clinical Trials, by an author who prefers to remain anonymous.
Project Xanadu, by Ari Shtein. Ari is a freshman at Yale. He has very little idea what to do with his life, but for now is writing on Substack at Mistakes Were Made. If you’ve got advice or a job to offer, he can be reached by email at ari@shtein.net.
School, by Dylan Kane. Dylan is a 7th grade math teacher in Leadville, Colorado. He writes a Substack about teaching called Five Twelve Thirteen.
The Synaptic Plasticity And Memory Hypothesis, by John V. John is a neuroscientist and AI researcher in Boston; he also wrote last year’s finalist How Language Began. He just started blogging at Theories of Intelligence. If you loved or hated his review, check his Substack soon for a detailed response to some of your comments and criticisms.
Honorable Mentions were:
Bishop’s Castle. I haven’t heard back from this person about a bio, and will profile them once I get a response.
Bukele, by a writer who prefers to remain anonymous.
Elon Musk’s Engineering Algorithm, reviewed by a former SpaceX employee and practicing aerospace engineer who prefers to remain anonymous. He is an avid ACX reader and a published writer.
JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theories, reviewed by Max Nussenbaum. Max was a finalist in previous contests with his reviews of The Outlier and Public Citizens. He writes at Candy for Breakfast and begrudgingly acknowledges that Lee Harvey Oswald probably acted alone.
Martial Arts, reviewed by Oliver Kump. Oliver was a professional Muay Thai fighter for a time. He decided at 45 that he should try writing, and was incredibly flattered to be mentioned at all. He likes Trevanian and Jack Vance.
Miniatur Wunderland, reviewed by Laura González Salmerón. Laura works on the advising team at 80,000 Hours. The world is racing towards transformative AI without much of a plan: apply to speak with the team if you want to use your career to do something about it. Outside work, she’s chipping away at a PhD on representations of science in fiction. She’s using this contest as an excuse to launch a Substack she’s been meaning to start for years, The Turing Text (we’ll see how long it lasts). Blogging about literature, linguistics, and AI seems like productive thesis procrastination.
The Watergate Affair, reviewed by Jake Scheiber. Jake is a retired engineer who now spends all his time Worrying. He blogs at the mostly inaccurately named www.souprecipies.com.
All of these Honorable mentions qualified by getting a high average rating. But on revisiting the data, I noticed that one essay was an outlier not in its average rating, but in its number of ratings - very many people chose that one in particular to read and vote upon. This is its own sort of victory, so I am adding to the Honorable Mention roster:
‘Red Means No’ Orgies, reviewed by Eneasz Brodski. Eneasz is best known for creating the full-cast HPMOR audiobook/podcast, and he now podcasts at The Bayesian Conspiracy covering rationalist general-interest topics. He has also published the novel What Lies Dreaming, a Lovecraftian horror set in 2nd century Rome. He blogs at Death Is Bad and will be participating in the Inkhaven residency this November.
All honorable mentions get free ACX subscriptions. All finalists get that plus links to their Substack and the right to try to pitch me articles (I usually say no, but Lars Doucet, Daniel Böttger, and Brandon Hendrickson managed to get through). First / second / third place get $2500, $1000, and $500 respectively2. Give me two weeks to distribute prizes, and if you haven’t gotten your prize or at least an email about it by then, message me at scott@slatestarcodex.com3.
Congratulations once again to all winners, and thanks again to everyone who participated. We’ll go back to a Book Review contest next year, and alternate yearly between Book Reviews and Non-Book Reviews thereafter.
Edward writes “I feel like I learned a ton about writing a good review from the feedback I got last year. Particularly the comment from Gwern you highlighted in the open thread afterwards. I don’t think I could have written this review the way it ended up without the harsh feedback I got last year.” I hadn’t realized you could actually learn things from people’s mean online comments, so I’ll have to go back and read all of yours on all my posts and see if there’s anything useful there.
I also ended up dating one of last year’s winners, but no guarantee this will happen consistently.
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