Faisal’s Web Site
Tuesday, 22 April 2025
MAHA and “soft eugenics” revisited: The “autism tsunami,” Dr. Oz, and your “patriotic duty” to stay healthy
David Gorski, Science-Based Medicine: “If a condition is underdiagnosed, for example, its observed prevalence could easily increase with increased awareness, better screening, and decreased stigma in the case of conditions for which there was formerly a stigma.”
Monday, 21 April 2025
REPOST: Hacking The Papal Election
April 14, 2005 – Bruce Schneier: “when an election process is left to develop over the course of a couple thousand years, you end up with something surprisingly good.”
Saturday, 19 April 2025
April 18, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson: “What Newman and Pulling did was simply to honor their friendships and their principles and to do the next right thing, even if it risked their lives, even if no one ever knew.”
Wednesday, 16 April 2025
We have no bros and no oligarchs
Ulrich Ladurner and Bernd Ulrich: “This and more are all values that must be defended, and which show that Europe is more than a union. Europe is our home.”
Saturday, 12 April 2025
This is called “capital flight”
Noah Smith: “ If the dollar weakens, America will be able to afford fewer imports, and U.S. exports will be cheaper. […] If we balance our trade by making ourselves poorer, that’s not a good thing.”
Also: Treasuries Suddenly Trade Like Risky Assets in Warning to Trump: “An auction of 30-year bonds on Thursday also saw investors snap up $22 billion of the debt, supporting the argument that Treasuries continue to be attractive even during the selloff.”
Thursday, 10 April 2025
Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being
Noah Castelo, Kostadin Kushlev, Adrian F Ward, Michael Esterman, Peter B Reiner: “Humans evolved in a world where information, entertainment, and social contact were relatively hard to come by”
Wednesday, 9 April 2025
Manufacturing is a war now
Noah Smith: “If it comes to pass, it will mean that China is basically free to start any conventional conflict it wants, without worrying that it will be ganged up on — because there will be no possible gang big enough to beat it. The only thing they’ll have to fear is nuclear weapons.”
Sunday, 6 April 2025
Protesters Rally Against Trump and Musk Across the U.S.
Shaila Dewan, Minho Kim, and Katie Benner, The New York Times: “New York, the United States, is the melting pot. Like, what do we want? Like, not diversity, not inclusion?”
Friday, 4 April 2025
Congress has the power to halt Trump’s tariffs. But Republicans aren’t ready to use it.
Stephen Groves, AP: “Instead, they were focusing all their attention on advancing the president’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ of tax breaks and spending cuts …”
Also: The Day America Lost Everything
Thursday, 3 April 2025
Will Malignant Stupidity Kill the World Economy?
Paul Krugman: “Businesses can’t plan if they have no idea what to expect next. Foreign governments won’t make policies that help America if they don’t expect us to respond rationally. […] One of these days we’ll probably get the full story, but it looks to me like something thrown together by a junior staffer with only a couple of hours’ notice. That USTR note, in particular, reads like something written by a student who hasn’t done the reading and […] The Trump formula is apparently what you get if you ask ChatGPT and other AI models to make tariff policy”