18 — quintessentially lums
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Hello peeps,
Welcome to خوش خط, a collection of ideas, articles, links and tools curated by Saad Hasnain.
🤗 Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
🎵 Here’s some instrumental music to listen while you read:
🎁 YourGiftShop x 💌 خوش خط LUMS Merch
خوش خط is collaborating with YourGiftShop for our very first merch collection: Quintessentially LUMS.
The merch will be on display at a dedicated Khoka Stall, on Tuesday, 7th December from 1pm to 6pm.
Designed by yours truly, Quintessentially LUMS includes the following designs which (like خوش خط covers are contextualized with LUMS in some way):
😫 School Descriptions to match your school's vibe
🥤 Super Freshie — Straight outta LUMS Discussion Forum
🍯 The SDSB Honeycombs
💬 Khoka Ajao (j: atop khoka umbrella)
🥺 Bleachers — Well, we don't talk about that
✨ LUMS (since 1984) — 2 Variants!!
💻 "hello world" — for the CS kids
🎒 Day Scholar — In a perpetual state of FOMO
🏦 Library — by @Kinza Ghanchi
🧋 Khoka Chillings — by @Kinza Ghanchi
To keep it transparent, we have original Adidas (tagged 👀) hoodies sourced from their local partners plus prints that never wear off (3 years guarantee).
You can buy a basic hoodie, zipper hoodies, sweatshirt, half-sleeved or full-sleeved shirts printed with these designs!!
🙌 Merch Stall
In addition to fancy merch, we have in store for you some exciting surprise games at the stall plus a Scavenger Hunt for discount vouchers!! 🤩
📅 Mark the Date
7th December 2021
Tuesday, 1pm
If you get there early, you might even get a freebie that is guaranteed to make you smile!! 🌹
Companion Playlist (cuz why not?)
Now without further adieu let’s resume the newsletter.
📝 A Few Things From Me ———— ابتدائی الفاظ
Had an interesting experience at Street 7, on the way back from Kashis (h: dare) when I got mugged of my possessions. Stay safe and don't go for them Jaybees walks at midnight. Zindagi zyada pyari hai. (For a detailed account here's the Facebook post)
After several trips to the banks in the past 3 days, I have come to a conclusion that it is not only the Banking Apps that have a terrible UI/UX, it's also the banks themselves.
💡 3 Ideas ——————— ۳ خیالات
🤔 Consistency As A Metric
It's nearing a year that I started this newsletter, and although I've had a lot of fun making every single entry, I've sucked a lot at being consistent which was one of the goals I had when I started: 52 issues by the end of the year 💀. But looking back I'm kinda glad I wasn't consistent with this.
I've noticed that consistency as a metric is good when you have a definite benchmark or goal to reach. However, for things open-ended (this newsletter for example), I would rather have fun making it rather than forcing it on myself. It's not another academic deadline to meet. I've learned that when creative endeavors use consistency as a metric, it becomes a chore. (i: edh, on the grill) Most of my personal favorite entries of this newsletter have been super spontaneous and candid. On days that I forced myself to work on this newsletter like an obligation, I found myself in a writer's/creator's block.
So, moving forward in the next year. I shall be continuing with the same spirit i.e being lazy with the newsletter until I feel like it, lol.
Just Stop With the Bad Surveys
If you met a mapper* or a muppet*, you must know that we've been taught to hate surveys, specifically bad surveys. (n: sdsb first-floor stairs)
The reason surveys are used so widely is because they are highly accessible, easy to fill, and easy to spread via common communication media (mainly Whatsapp, Facebook and LDF. But it's that convenience that enables a number of biases and survey errors that lead to erratic data by the survey doer. Therefore, if you don't know how to do a survey well. Just don't do it. Having no data is better than having wrong data.
That being said, Surveys can sometimes be very useful to gauge the market and the audience, (emphasis on sometimes).
Here's an example of a deliberately bad survey I made for yourgiftshop in 5 minutes!! (o: sse 3️⃣ floor corridors)
* People who took PSY 313 are called Mappers or Muppets
🔇 Even a Silent Phone Disconnects Us
It was a powerful intuition. What phones do to in-person conversation is a problem. Studies show that the mere presence of a phone on the table (even a phone turned off) changes what people talk about. If we think we might be interrupted, we keep conversations light, on topics of little controversy or consequence. And conversations with phones on the landscape block empathic connection. If two people are speaking and there is a phone on a nearby desk, each feels less connected to the other than when there is no phone present. Even a silent phone disconnects us. (c. main entrance exit, 1️⃣ floor🪑)
So it is not surprising that in the past twenty years we’ve seen a 40 percent decline in the markers for empathy among college students, most of it within the past ten years. It is a trend that researchers link to the new presence of digital communications.
Why do we spend so much time messaging each other if we end up feeling less connected to each other? In the short term, online communication makes us feel more in charge of our time and self-presentation. If we text rather than talk, we can have each other in amounts we can control. And texting and email and posting let us present the self we want to be. We can edit and retouch. (b: seat 43 🧊☕)
I call it the Goldilocks effect: We can’t get enough of each other if we can have each other at a digital distance—not too close, not too far, just right.
But human relationships are rich, messy, and demanding. When we clean them up with technology*, we move from conversation to the efficiencies of mere connection.*
Indeed, when young people say, “Our texts are fine,” they miss something important. What feels fine is that in the moment, so many of their moments are enhanced by digital reminders that they are wanted, a part of things. A day online has many of these “moments of more.” But as digital connection becomes an ever larger part of their day, they risk ending up with lives of less.
— Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (a.k.a the book that's giving me a new existential crisis recently thanks to Usama Waheed)
📖 Stuff To Read ———— پڑھنے کا مواد
Do your course readings and literature reviews smh, I got nothing for you this time. (a: library charging spot)
🍿 What To Watch? —————— نیٹ فلکس اینڈ چل
Something to watch in your winter breaks (pls abhi sab parho 🙏*)*
🎯 Hawkeye
Hawkeye is Marvel's latest entry among the ever-growing catalog of Disney Plus originals. After fleshing out backstories and making characters come to terms with traumatic pasts (WandaVision, Loki), it seems the latest contender to go through Disney Plus' season-long therapy sessions is Marvel's favorite archer. (l: outdoor classrooms, instructor table drawers) Among the likes of super-soldiers, giant gamma-radiating beasts, and aliens from other planets, it can get hard holding one's own as just an ordinary guy with a "bow and arrow". Hawkeye makes sure to drive this point home, serving as the inspiration for young Kate Bishop, portrayed by Hailee Steinfeld. Borrowing heavily from the Hawkeye run of the same name by writer Matt Fraction and artist David Aja—I mean seriously, the entire intro and marketing is a copy-paste from Aja's designs—the show captures the energy of the source material with fast-paced action sequences centered around Kate and Clint's developing dynamic. With some teases to rumored reveals that line up conveniently with No Way Home's opening weekend 👀, Hawkeye shows great promise in doing justice to one of the most underrated Avengers.
P.S. If you like the show, check out Fraction and Aja's original comic run!!
🎒 What's Up in LUMS? —— یہ لمز میں کیا ہورہا ہے
🌹 Ibrahim Janjua hosted a phool stall for all the Masquerade-going and romance-seeking souls. Even though masquerade didn't live up to people's expectations, the phools certainly did.
🥱 LDF — LUMS Dating Forum has risen back from the dead while the original LDF becomes a Confessions forum for TAs and their students to express their crushes. (e: between supercrisps) This place is wild.
🎉 INDEX - The Design and Innovation Society organized Lahore Design Festival last two weeks. The festival included a number of subevents with workshops, talks and conferences from speakers like Hasan Habib, Arafat Mazhar, Areeba Siddiqui and more. The event was followed by a Line+Fill Art Exhibition at the Academic Block Central Courtyard and a Food Street!!
🎵 Some Good Music ——— خوش موسیقی
What I'm vibing to:
🎵 Soona Jahan Hai — Chaar Hazaari (#1 Song on my Wrapped 😫)
🎵 Robbery — Lime Cordiale (Dedicated to the mugging ofc)
What I'm meditating to:
🎵 Ariana — Tony Anderson (d: dayfresh 🧃)
🎵 Middle of Nowhere (g: churail bench) — Vancouver Sleep Clinic
👀 Cool Stuff —— کول سٹف
✏️ TryDraw
Lots of people want to get into either traditional or digital art but don't know where to start. TryDraw makes it easy to get comfortable with the initial humps of digital art. A lot of beginners tend to to jump to simple things like using anime or manga as a reference as it doesn't require much technical knowledge at first. (f: JF 147 blue parking) TryDraw offers material for complete beginners and those who want to really get the basics and advance of anatomy down. Learn how to draw human heads, ears, nose, eyes, and more in an easy-to-follow step-by-step process.
🍃 Pseudo Zambeel 1.5
pseudoZambeel is a course planner made exclusively for LUMS Student struggling with enrollment. It allows one to effortlessly make backup-backup enrollment with a few clicks. Just use your Notion account to duplicate the template to your workspace, and start shopping 🛍️🛒🤡
📊 Some Cool Data Visualizations:
👂 Gendered Body Parts
A very interesting visual article that parses the language used across 2000 Pulitzer-winning classics and bestsellers to analyze the physical traits that define men & women in literature.
It’s easy to dismiss or overlook the differences in the way men’s and women’s bodies are depicted because they can be subtle and hard to discern in one particular book—one or two extra mentions of “his bushy hair” may not register over 300 pages.
But when you zoom out and look at thousands of books, the patterns are clear.
(m: law reading room)
In real life, women are obviously more dimensional than soft, sexual objects. Men are more complex than muscular lunkheads. We should expect that same nuance of the characters in the books we read.