Faisal’s Web Site
Wednesday, 15 May 2024
Against Sunscreen Absolutism
Rowan Jacobsen, The Atlantic: “Such a stance surely reflects understandable concerns about mixed messaging. But it also seems more and more outdated, and suggests a broader problem within American public-health institutions.”
Wednesday, 8 May 2024
The macro arsonists
Noah Smith: “This allows us to answer the question of ‘Why does the government borrow in a currency that it can print?’.”
Monday, 6 May 2024
North Korean weapons are killing Ukrainians. The implications are far bigger
BBC: “‘We are witnessing the real-time crumbling of UN sanctions against North Korea, which buys Pyongyang a lot of breathing space’”
Saturday, 4 May 2024
What the Debate Over Famine in Gaza Is Missing
Yan Slobodkin, Slate: “Yemen and Ethiopia have suffered tens of thousands of deaths each under IPC Phase 4 ‘emergency’ conditions without sliding into Phase 5. Sudan is currently facing a food crisis that threatens to be more deadly than the one in Gaza because the affected population is larger, but the IPC has not designated famine there either.”
Saturday, 27 April 2024
The Court Just Sealed Everyone’s Fate, Including Its Own
Brynn Tannehill, The New Republic: “Except, what happens when neither Democrats nor Republicans have any respect for the courts?”
Sunday, 7 April 2024
Meet Stephanie Pope, The Woman Trying To Clean Up Boeing’s 737 MAX Mess
Jeremy Bogaisky, Forbes: “A little-known finance specialist who had most recently run the smallest of Boeing’s three divisions […] the surprise promotion was seen as giving Pope the chance to gain the operational experience to succeed […] ‘Proficiency in Microsoft Excel is not what’s missing here,’ Richard Aboulafia, a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, told Forbes.
Tuesday, 2 April 2024
Baby bust
Paul Campos: ”… but it’s also the case that pro-natalist government policies seem to have very little effect on TFR. Another huge political problem is that there’s massive resistance to immigration in most of the countries that are in desperate need of immigration …“
Wednesday, 27 March 2024
Mounting research shows that COVID-19 leaves its mark on the brain, including with significant drops in IQ scores
Ziyad Al-Aly, The Conversation: ”… a three-point downward shift in IQ would increase the number of U.S. adults with an IQ less than 70 from 4.7 million to 7.5 million – an increase of 2.8 million adults with a level of cognitive impairment that requires significant societal support.“
Dealing with Global Warming Over the Next Fifty Years
Brad DeLong: "And given the pace of Schumpeterian creative-destruction we have experienced since 1870, we have only managed to hold things together when […] we have had a large positive technological dividend to distribute.”
“No way to prevent this” say users of only language where this regularly happens
Xe Iaso: “At press time, users of the only programming language in the world where these vulnerabilities regularly happen once or twice per quarter for the last eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as "helpless.”“