No new writing progress to report; moving to Berkeley ate everything. I’ve been trying to write up a small guide to writing fiction with intelligent characters and other rare vitamins of HPMOR, but that’s not done yet and may not be done soon. Next month is a MIRI workshop, but after May the pace of other imminent priorities should slow down a bit once more.

Recent good reads: I am currently in progress on the non-fanfiction Sunshine by Robin McKinley and it seems quite good so far. Back in the world of fanfiction, the Toasterverse, and particularly the first story In Which Tony Stark Builds Himself Some Friends, receives the honor of being the first fanfiction so hysterically funny that I read it even though it’s M/M slash, skipping the sexy parts so I could read more about the things Iron Man builds when he’s sleep-deprived. The non-funny parts are nothing special yet; the humor is already Terry Pratchett level. Also on the pretty-good list is the LOTR fanfiction Back Again by Waugh, featuring PeggySue!Bilbo.

There’s a large online fundraiser on May 6th for many different charities, in which the Machine Intelligence Research Institute is participating, featuring up to $250,000 in matching funding from sources that would not ordinarily give to effective altruist causes. The gotcha is that this is $250K total, not per institution, and the rules for which charity gets it seem to be complicated. If you’re interested in giving $500 or more on May 6th in a coordinated fashion, please contact Malo at [email protected], and see this blog post.

That’s it for now. Next Progress Report as usual on June 1st, 2014 at 5pm Pacific Time.