Hasnain says:

Disappointed in Harvard; but super proud of the way these students protested and raised awareness.

“Accusations against Comaroff, a professor in Harvard’s anthropology department, date back to University of Chicago tenure in the 1970s. According to reports, Harvard disregarded warnings about this record in 2012 and decided to hire him anyway. While at Harvard, an internal investigation determined that he continued to engage in “conduct that violated the FAS Sexual and Gender-Based Harassment Policy and the FAS Professional Conduct Policy.” A lawsuit filed by three graduate students alleged Comaroff committed unwanted kissing, groping, and sexual remarks. Nonetheless, Harvard permitted him to return to the classroom this academic year. “

Hasnain says:

US tipping culture is uniquely weird.

““If you work for a company, it’s that company’s job to pay you for doing work for them,” said Mike Janavey, a footwear and clothing designer who lives in New York City. “They’re not supposed to be juicing consumers that are already spending money there to pay their employees.””

Hasnain says:

Great investigation and write up of a tricky to find bug.

“This article ended up being longer than I anticipated but I believe the detail is important. I was using several debugging features for the first time, searching for how to do almost everything as I went, so I wanted to cover every step to make it easier for the next person. GDB's ability to arbitrarily search and reinterpret memory has broad utility but I hadn't seen these commands demonstrated before, either in tutorials or using it for more basic troubleshooting.”

Hasnain says:

“"This is such a beautiful place," I said to them. "I'm sure lots of people would love to live here. How would you feel if I brought my family to live here?"

The air in the room went still. The men looked at each other in silent embarrassment. Then one cleared his throat and spoke, with a worried look on his face: "Well, you would need to learn our way of life. It wouldn't be easy."

The village was on the path to extinction, yet the thought of it being invaded by "outsiders" was somehow worse.”

Hasnain says:

Lies, damned lies, and statistics. This was a great human interest story mixed with an analysis of some controversial murder cases - that weren't actually murders.

"The similarities go beyond statistics to the way Letby has been vilified. Social media commentary will “make your stomach turn,” Gill says. “People are saying we should bring back hanging, shoot the bitch.” The media have portrayed her as an “evil creature,” says Neil Mackenzie, a lawyer based in Edinburgh, Scotland, who specializes in medical negligence cases and co-authored the RSS report. “I think there’s possibly misogyny in there,” Mackenzie says. “The press loves bad women.”

The RSS report Gill and others published in September does not claim Letby is innocent, in part because public comment on the guilt or innocence of a person standing trial may be considered contempt of court in U.K. legal systems. “We’ve got to have no opinion on this case,” Green says, but “there’s potential here for miscarriage of justice.”

Gill says a deep cognitive bias works against defendants like Letby. People “don’t believe in chance, actually,” he says. “Quantum mechanics has been shouting at us for 100 years that the physical universe is built on randomness. … But we don’t understand this. It upsets us deeply. When a succession of bad things happens, we know there must have been an agent responsible. And so we naturally believe in devils and witches, gods and angels.”"

Hasnain says:

“In photos of 2023’s World Economic Forum—or Davos as it is commonly called, after the Swiss resort town where it annually occurs—you might not notice the HEPA filters. They’re in the background, unobtrusive and unremarked upon, quietly cleansing the air of viruses and bacteria. You wouldn’t know—not unless you asked—that every attendee was PCR tested before entering the forum, or that in the case of a positive test, access was automatically, electronically, revoked. The folks on stage aren’t sporting masks (mostly), so unless you looked at the official Davos Health & Safety protocol, you wouldn’t be aware that their on-site drivers are required to wear them. You also might be surprised to learn that if, at any point, you start to feel ill at Davos, you can go collect a free rapid test, or even call their dedicated COVID hotline.”

Hasnain says:

Ah, fond memories of Karachi.

“DESPITE THEIR ENCUMBRANCE ON HUMAN life, the crows cawing away are the soundtrack to Karachi, and so to my childhood. The crazy cawing was the backdrop to when I first learned to ride a bike, when I sat for exams, when I played with my dolls. One crow visited my bedroom window every single afternoon; I once opened my window and tried to touch him, but he disappeared fast, fading into the crowd of other crows hanging out at the electric poles that lined the main road. I remember looking at that seemingly perpetual gathering when my grandfather died. I was sixteen and until then he had been a constant in my life. The crows were there as always, still meeting and parting, equally interested in the living and the dead.”

Hasnain says:

"According to the book——the eight marines parked the AI robot in the middle of a traffic circle and played a game: Whoever could reach the robot from a long distance away without being detected won. And all eight marines were able to do so. Some did cartwheels, throwing off the robot’s detection algorithm. Another pretended to be a tree, using branches and slowly moving toward the robot, smiling the whole time. But perhaps the best tactic used by the marines: hiding under a cardboard box.

Apparently, two different marines shared a single cardboard box and hid under it while moving toward the robot. “You could hear them giggling the whole time,” said a person in the book referred to as Phil.

As explained in the book, the AI system was trained to spot humans walking and running, not people doing somersaults or hiding in boxes. So these fairly simple and childish tactics worked and fooled the AI. Meanwhile, any average person would have easily spotted a moving box or a flipping soldier, showcasing a major issue with AI and its reliance on previous data and algorithms."

Hasnain says:

"According to archival nautical charts and aerial photographs, the Ashby Shoal first formed sometime around the middle of last century. One theory connects its appearance to the construction of Interstate 80, which runs along the nearby waterfront. “Mud was pumped from the highway site out into the bay and sand pumped from the bay back to the site, since fine bay mud is not ideal for building on,” according to a 1982 research paper authored by Allison Turner."

Hasnain says:

Am definitely curious to see if/when the no fly list gets published (even if it is from 2019).

“so what happens next with the nofly data

while the nature of this information is sensitive, i believe it is in the public interest for this list to be made available to journalists and human rights organizations. if you are a journalist, researcher, or other party with legitimate interest, please reach out at nofly@crimew.gay. i will only give this data to parties that i believe will do the right thing with it.

note: if you email me there and i do not reply within a regular timeframe it is very likely my reply ended up in your spam folder or got lost. using email not hosted by google or msft is hell. feel free to dm me on twitter in that case.”