Faisal’s Web Site
Wednesday, 16 October 2024
Steve Bannon Has Called His “Army” to Do Battle—No Matter Who Wins in November
James Pogue, Vanity Fair - I think this is the best piece I’ve read about the moment in America finds itself in.
Saturday, 5 October 2024
Make-work is not the future of work
Noah Smith: “Stasis looks free in the short term, and it makes some people feel like the world is safer and more predictable, but, it eventually makes the economy poorer.”
Friday, 4 October 2024
China Used to be a One-Way Street of Happiness and Rising Prosperity, But That’s Over Now
Mark Dittli, The Market: “40 years is long enough to erode the memories of many people. But what is very important is that Xi always says what he thinks. He has always done that, but for a long time it was not noticed in the Western world.”
Thursday, 3 October 2024
The iPhone 16 Pro Camera Review: Control
Sebastiaan de With: “Recall the introduction of the iPhone as a phone, an internet communicator, and an iPod. Notably lacking? The camera. This iPhone is a camera. Maybe the first, if you were to define a camera as a device that has dedicated control for it.”
Tuesday, 1 October 2024
The Abandonment of Ukraine
Karl Marlantes and Elliot Ackerman, The Atlantic: “Achilles made his appeal with an urgency that American policy makers don’t seem to share. The speed of innovation on the battlefield has made some long-awaited Western weapons systems all but obsolete by the time they were delivered.”
Monday, 16 September 2024
‘The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out’ – Ig Nobel winner Saul
Justin Newman, The Conversation: “In Okinawa, the best predictor of where the centenarians are is where the halls of records were bombed by the Americans during the war. … According to the Greek minister that hands out the pensions, over 9,000 people over the age of 100 are dead and collecting a pension at the same time.”
Friday, 13 September 2024
Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars
Albert Burneko, Defector: “People have this idea that life is like some kind of magical force; that the reason Mars does not have life is that life has not yet gone there; that once life goes to a place, then it just figures out how to go on living there. […] it is a testament to humans having formulated nearly all of their ideas about the nature of life from the absolute easiest (and only known) place to have life.”
Thursday, 15 August 2024
Dx Machina
Jenka Gurfinkel: “For the patients who came to their doctors presenting with the symptoms of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, for example, (the ones 77% of them had had a physician suggest were psychological or psychiatric) and were ultimately able to get relief, what treatment approaches yielded the best results?”
Friday, 9 August 2024
A Scientist Says Humans Will Reach the Singularity Within 21 Years
Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics: “And no one makes futuristic predictions quite like Ray Kurzweil.”
See also: MIT predicted society would collapse by 2040. New data tells how we’re doing
Saturday, 27 July 2024
How Soon Might the Atlantic Ocean Break? Two Sibling Scientists Found an Answer—and Shook the World
Sandra Upson, Wired: “Besides, there’s another possibility. A remote one, sure, but one that also can’t be ruled out: The AMOC might have already tipped. And we wouldn’t know it for years.”