Top all-time · #6145
Ted Underwood
Personal blog · tedunderwood.comdatawriting
Ted Underwood writes The Stone and the Shell, a personal blog at tedunderwood.com about data and writing. Since 2014, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 17 times, most often “Distant reading and the blurry edges of genre”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-02-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ted Underwood's posts on text analysis in the humanities, including an explanation of topic modeling and LDA and a companion post to a paper on distant reading of genres.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Using large digital libraries to advance literary history
Most-linked posts?
- Distant reading and the blurry edges of genre2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-10-24
- Ways humanists are using computers to understand text2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-11-11
What Hacker News says?
He links to a good explanation about topic modeling and LDA: http://tedunderwood.com/2012/04/07/topic-modeling-made-just-...
Comment linking /2012/04/07/topic-modeling-made-just-simple-enough/
on “Multidimensional analysis of plot arcs in thousands of TV and movie scripts”Submitted Science fiction hasn’t prepared us to imagine machine learning as a story · 207 points
HN discussionBlog post by the lead author of the paper: http://tedunderwood.com/2014/10/22/distant-reading-and-the-b...
Comment linking /2014/10/22/distant-reading-and-the-blurry-edges-of-genre/
on “Mapping Mutable Genres in Structurally Complex Volumes [pdf]”Submitted How humanists are using computers to understand text as a story · 48 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Predictable Is Fiction? as a story · 22 points
HN discussionSubmitted You say you found a revolution as a story · 20 points
HN discussionSubmitted Mapping the latent spaces of culture as a story · 15 points
HN discussionSubmitted Should artificial intelligence be person-shaped? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Will AI make us overconfident? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Can language models predict the next twist in a story? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted We can save what matters about writing, at a price as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Using GPT-4 to measure the passage of time in fiction as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Distant reading and the blurry edges of genre as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Ways humanists are using computers to understand text as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Seven ways humanists are using computers to understand text as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Gender Balance of Fiction, 1800-2007 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Topic modeling made just simple enough as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
