[SomeStupidPoint]

I think I may be stupid, in that I can only really get details of a model I already sort of understand from most books -- I need it pretty short'n'sweet to get a major model revision.

That being said, two papers that have radically changed my mental model are:

Einstein's 1905 paper -- I'd never actually thought about what a clock or time was before, or what it meant for two events to happen "at the same time".

http://hermes.ffn.ub.es/luisnavarro/nuevo_maletin/Einstein_1...

A 2007 summary of MS's approach to (topological) quantum computers significantly changed my model of how physics worked -- likely because I hadn't gotten particularly far in physics before, but also because topological effects seem like they'd be more prevalent than I had initially conceived of (and we might need to rewrite physics to include topological features more explicitly).

https://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1889