Hasnain says:

“On 4 October 2022, just over a week after Brink’s remarks about the significance of Wu’s experiments, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that it had selected Alain Aspect, Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger as the recipients of that year’s Nobel Prize in Physics “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.” Because Wu died in 1997 and Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously, she could not have been considered for her early photon entanglement experiment. Despite at least 12 Nobel nominations and two leading-edge experimental contributions in topics that ultimately received the accolade, Wu never received the honor (see “Physics Nobel nominees, 1901–70,” Physics Today online, 29 September 2022). That oversight, though, does not diminish her accomplishments.

Wu’s scientific achievements transcend the development of the atomic bomb. She contributed to a profound and meticulous understanding of the physical universe. “As a woman in a field almost entirely dominated by men, when most doors were closed to women, she was a trailblazer with an indomitable spirit and determination and a focus on scientific inquiry,” said Columbia’s Elena Aprile at the 2022 anniversary celebration of Wu’s life and work.8 Aprile joined the physics department faculty at Columbia in 1986; she was the second woman to join the department, more than four decades after Wu.”

Hasnain says:

“Bickel suggests that as more adults developed overbites, they accidentally began to use "f" and "v" more. In ancient India and Rome, labiodentals may have been a mark of status, signaling a softer diet and wealth, he says. Those consonants also spread through other language groups; today, they appear in 76% of Indo-European languages.”

Hasnain says:

“I love the shouts of “gola kabab para aqui,” “tres naans, por favor” and “rapido, rapido” that ring out of our kitchens — Pakistani cooking instructions delivered in another language and prepared by cooks from another food culture. And yet, nothing is lost in translation. Immigrants are the backbone of our restaurant and, by extension, of the community we serve. And as a fellow immigrant, I am very proud of the migrant mosaic at the heart of Zareen’s.”

Hasnain says:

I miss the open web. Also super ironic that this came with a full blown ad for the guardian app.

“Apps have burrowed their way into seemingly every aspect of our lives and there are lots of reasons why companies are pushing us to use them. With an app, it is often “one click and you’re in”, rather than having to faff around online finding the website and remembering passwords. It is also for the “push notifications” that mobile apps send to grab our attention and get us to buy stuff. Many tech experts also argue that apps are generally more secure than websites and allow banks and others to carry out sophisticated ID verification using face, voice and fingerprint biometrics.

But millions of people who cannot afford a smartphone or have an older device that does not support some services are increasingly being locked out of deals, discounts and even some vital services, say digital exclusion and pro-cash campaigners.”

Hasnain says:

This was fascinating. Especially the part about the bear attacks. TIL.

“By pretty much any measure you can look at to gauge a town’s success, Grafton got worse. Recycling rates went down. Neighbor complaints went up. The town’s legal costs went up because they were constantly defending themselves from lawsuits from Free Towners. The number of sex offenders living in the town went up. The number of recorded crimes went up. The town had never had a murder in living memory, and it had its first two, a double homicide, over a roommate dispute.”

Hasnain says:

Powerful words here.

“It is a source of great confusion first, then growing rage, among establishment Democrats that there might exist a sizable group of people in this country who quite simply cannot condone a real, ongoing genocide, no matter how much worse an alternative ruling party may be or do. This stance boggles a particular kind of liberal mind because such a conception of political affairs, applied with any regularity, forces the establishment to stand for something. It suddenly becomes insufficient to say: Elect us or else they will abolish abortion rights; elect us or they will put more migrants in concentration camps; elect us or they will make your lives so much worse. What is the use, once elected, of doing anything of substance when what was necessary, the negation of some other hypothetical outcome, has by definition already been achieved?”

Hasnain says:

Apps are deceptively easy to make.

Great apps hide all that complexity behind the scenes.

TIL Boehm (yes, that guy, of Boehm GC fame) wrote the android calculator app and went through some reasonably advanced math to get it right.

“With this representation, they're in the sweet spot:

All the digits shown on the screen are always correct. And they almost never show more digits than necessary.

A "computer algebra system" would have accomplished a similar goal, but been much slower and much more complicated”

Hasnain says:

“Cornish views Compact as a “low-probability, high-reward” proposition. “If I had to bet, I don’t think they’re going to find anything,” he said. “But the question is so important,” he added, that it ought to be explored “to the fullest extent.””

Hasnain says:

“Noether was an assistant in name only. She was already a formidable mathematician when, in early 1915, Hilbert and Klein invited her to join them at the University of Göttingen. But other faculty members objected to hiring a woman, and Noether was blocked from joining the faculty. Regardless, she would spend the next three years prodding the fault line separating physics and mathematics, eventually setting off an earthquake that would shake the foundations of fundamental physics.”

Hasnain says:

“Bethe ansatz methods show up in so many places, said Pedro Vieira (opens a new tab), a professor at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. “It seems like nature appreciates beautiful things.””