Hasnain says:

Learnt a lot about history, politics, and contemporary affairs from this one. This quote though… (Baradar is the Taliban’s deputy PM)

“Two days later, Trump called Baradar. According to an official who listened to the exchange, Trump told him, “You guys are tough fighters.” Then Trump asked, “Do you need something from me?”

“We need to get prisoners released,” Baradar said, adding that he had heard Ghani would not coöperate. Trump said that he would tell Pompeo to press Ghani.”

Hasnain says:

This was an absolute delight to read, I was grinning throughout. So well written and hilarious, even though I feel quite bad for the author.

“I’m not talking about a meal that’s poorly cooked, or a server who might be planning your murder—that sort of thing happens in the fat lump of the bell curve of bad. Instead, I’m talking about the long tail stuff – the sort of meals that make you feel as though the fabric of reality is unraveling. The ones that cause you to reassess the fundamentals of capitalism, and whether or not you’re living in a simulation in which someone failed to properly program this particular restaurant. The ones where you just know somebody’s going to lift a metal dome off a tray and reveal a single blue or red pill.”

Hasnain says:

“With no timetable on the horizon for the end of a pandemic that has upended lives and killed over 788,000 in the United States, the surgeon general’s advisory calls for rapid action, encouraging more resources and urging a greater acknowledgment of mental health as a vital component in overall well-being.

For Prinstein, the “moment to demand change,” as Murthy’s report implores, necessitates the focus to shift from acknowledging mental health problems at their onset to preventing them in the first place.”

Hasnain says:

Very well written human interest story on what it feels like to get famous without your consent and the associated baggage - and avalanche of internet sleuths.

“Certainly, noncelebrities have long unwillingly become public figures, and digital pile-ons have existed in some form since the dawn of the digital age—just ask Monica Lewinsky. But on TikTok, algorithmic feedback loops and the nature of the For You page make it easier than ever for regular people to be thrust against their wishes into the limelight. And the extent of our collective power is less obvious online, where pile-ons are delivered, as journalist Jon Ronson put it, “like remotely administered drone strikes.” On the receiving end of the barrage, however, as one finds their reputation challenged, body language hyperanalyzed, and privacy invaded, the severity of our collective power is made much too clear.”

Hasnain says:

Hash functions are always interesting.

“After all this, my appreciation for FxHasher has grown. It’s like a machete: simple to the point of crudeness, yet unbeatable for certain use cases. Impressive!”

Hasnain says:

Gotta love math. This was an interesting analysis of some number theoretic puzzles

“I hope you enjoyed the heavy dose of transcendence from this most fascinating and fundamental constant. The Quanta Insights award for this month goes jointly to Michel Nizette, for clarity of exposition, and Lazar Ilic for the usual mathematical mastery. Congratulations to both!”

Hasnain says:

Looking at the pay disparities highlighted in the article, the numbers are staggering. $9500 a week for some postings, contrasted against $74,000 annual salaries. Yikes.

“The nation’s largest nurse union maintains that hospitals are suffering the consequences of the just-in-time staffing model they created to cut costs by keeping the number of full-time staff nurses as small as possible.

“This current staffing crisis is one of the hospital industry’s making,” Deborah Burger, president of National Nurses United, said in a written statement. “They need to take a long hard look at how their treatment of permanent staff and exploitation of the nursing ethos has inevitably led to this unsustainable model of staffing hospitals.””

Hasnain says:

Long and scary read.

“Conspicuously missing from Biden’s speech was any mention even of filibuster reform, without which voting-rights legislation is doomed. Nor was there any mention of holding Trump and his minions accountable, legally, for plotting a coup. Patterson, the retired firefighter, was right to say that nobody has been charged with insurrection; the question is, why not? The Justice Department and the FBI are chasing down the foot soldiers of January 6, but there is no public sign that they are building cases against the men and women who sent them. Absent consequences, they will certainly try again. An unpunished plot is practice for the next.”

Hasnain says:

“In October, the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the bluest tenth, according to Charles Gaba, an independent health care analyst who's been tracking partisanship trends during the pandemic and helped to review NPR's methodology. Those numbers have dropped slightly in recent weeks, Gaba says: "It's back down to around 5.5 times higher."

The trend was robust, even when controlling for age, which is the primary demographic risk of COVID-19 mortality. The data also reveal a major contributing factor to the death rate difference: The higher the vote share for Trump, the lower the vaccination rate.”

Hasnain says:

This was a great and thought provoking read.

“This maxim holds true for other areas of your life as well. When you get a good night’s sleep, you’re better at basically everything. When you take rest days, you’re a better athlete. The restoration we find in hobbies can make us better partners, better friends, better listeners and collaborators—just overall better people to be around. Hobbies help cultivate essential parts of us that have been suffocated by productivity obsessions and proliferating obligations. The hobby itself ultimately matters far less than what its existence provides: a means of tilting your identity away from “person who is good at doing a lot of work.””