Faisal’s Web Site
Sunday, 16 February 2025
Euclid telescope captures Einstein ring revealing warping of space
Hannah Devlin, The Guardian: “Einstein rings are a powerful tool for astronomers because they reveal objects that would otherwise be obscured from view and indicate the mass of the intermediate galaxy – including any hidden mass in the form of dark matter.”
Saturday, 15 February 2025
Why annexing Canada would destroy the United States
Aisha Ahmad, The Conversation: “How could Canadians pay for this decades-long insurgency? The answer lies in every single historical example of the old adage: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’”
Wednesday, 12 February 2025
This Ain’t The Apprentice. Stop Calling Them Firings. They’re Purges.
David Kurtz, Talking Points Memo: “There is really no such thing as unilateral mass ‘firings’ or ‘layoffs’ in the federal government, and yet most of the coverage headlines Trump’s purges using exactly those words. Unilateral is the key there. Congress can pass laws to cut funding, to eliminate positions, to zero out programs, but it hasn’t. The president is doing this on his own in contravention of the laws Congress has already passed to fund these positions and to give them civil service protections.”
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Have We Been Partying Like It’s 1999?
Paul Krugman: “Shiller argued that asset bubbles can act like natural Ponzi schemes: those who get in early make money, not from underlying asset returns, but from rising prices driven by later entrants”
Sunday, 9 February 2025
Erased by executive order – When a government decides who counts as human
Leslie Kouba, cleveland.com: “What does it mean to be denied a U.S. passport? It means your country is holding you captive. You can’t leave.”
Saturday, 8 February 2025
The blatant lie behind Elon Musk’s power grab
Eric Levitz, Vox: “So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once”
Also: ‘What Elon Musk Said Is a Bold-Faced Lie’
NASA Intern Found Hope in the Moon
NASA: “[Rose Ferreira] … didn’t have access to science education … was placed in an underserved high school that sent her back multiple grades because they weren’t satisfied with her English language skills … became homeless in New York and lived in train stations. … was able to earn enough to rent an apartment in Queens and, eventually, get an associate degree … getting hit by a car and a cancer diagnosis … enrolled in a planetary science and astronomy degree program at Arizona State University … dreams of becoming an astronaut and has a shorter-term goal of earning a doctorate.”
“Until a man is twenty-five…” - Neal Stephenson
Tuesday, 4 February 2025
The End of North America
Paul Krugman: “And even if the tariffs go away, the private sector will know that they can always come back; the credibility of this trade agreement, or any future trade agreement, will be lost.”
The Wages of Leaving Guantanamo Open Have Arrived
Spencer Ackerman: “The entire point of doing this at Guantanamo is to apply the machinery of the post-9/11 state to this latest version of the Enemy. It is to entrench in the public mind a conflation of migration and terrorism.”
Sunday, 2 February 2025
Air traffic control staffing ‘not normal’ during DC crash - officials
Mallory Moench, BBC News: “US media has reported that more than 90% of air traffic control facilities in the country are operating below FAA recommended staffing levels.”