Hello besties,
Welcome to خوش خط, a newsletter of ideas, articles, links and cool stuff curated by Saad Hasnain.
🤗 Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
🎧 Some instrumental music to listen while reading:
Let’s begin with the pressing question first:
❓ Kahan Ghayib Hou? ————— کہاں غائب ہو
It’s no news that I’ve been sleeping on this newsletter for a while. I approach my personal projects, such as this newsletter, as means of excitement. But when they become a chore: that excitement just fades away. Similarly, I preferred to publish this newsletter only when I would feel like it, and not turn it into another obligation. However, with no incentive to write, the months gone by and the newsletter left untouched: I’ve come to realize — there’s no organic time to start writing. That is just more or less an excuse for my perfectionism.
As I draft this right now, there’s not some creative spark compelling me to write, but only a mantra that a friend said to me:
It doesn’t always has to be remarkable.
Well, there’s also another reason. I have been up to… a lot. At a given time, I’ve had multiple ongoing projects alongside academics and it’s been hard to juggle them around with the same priority. So let’s catch up a little?
Here’s some of the stuff I’ve been up to, in the past 6 months:
💻 Launched a website for YourGiftShop with my friend Ibrahim Janjua, plus two Khoka Stall LUMS merch drops.
🎞️ Served as the CC Creativity for FILUMS ‘22: International Film Festival.
😖 Did so poorly in Principles of Finance that I had to form an ECON 261 Trauma Support Group.
🌟 Gained a Notion Essentials Badge. I guess I can say, I’m somewhat of a Notion expert myself.
🧑🏫 Gave a guest lecture in LUMS School of Education about “Integrating Wikis in Classrooms Through Notion” to a class of teachers and educationists from across different schools in Pakistan.
👨🎓 Stood for Student Council Elections. Glanced at my Task Manager and realized “yeh tou tumse na hou payega”, dropped out of the race then ran again, as a joke. You can still vote btw!
and some other stuff, most of which is NDA, in progress, or saved up for the next newsletter, kyunke content chahiye hota hai.
Okay, enough about me. Let’s begin this week’s (😧) newsletter, or shall I say: the snoozeletter.
💡Some Ideas ———— کچھ خیالات
🤯 The Failed Simulation Effect
Accomplishments that are hard to explain are much more impressive than accomplishments that are hard to do.
Every time I open LinkedIn, I see people announcing their lavish achievements like it’s a Common App extracurricular section being filled.
And while of course, there are many people actually working hard for their accomplishments not being too vocal to populate their LinkedIn. I think it’s becoming increasingly easy to just guise your way into the “whoaa!” factor with just some clever wording.
Impressiveness may seem like a function of hard work and talent, but there’s ample evidence, that indicates otherwise. So where does this sense of impressiveness come from? Dr. Cal Newport explains this as a phenomenon called “The Failed Simulation Effect”: An instinct to mentally simulate the path that led to that person’s achievements.
Simply put, when our brain reads words like “LUMS '24 | 360° Growth Hacker | Digital Marketer Specialist | SDSB | #OpenToWork”, it’s like “whoa! that sounds very impressive.” But is it though?
The answer I think, says a lot about our society.
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😱 Is AI Becoming Sentient?
🔱 Twitter As Hell
What makes Twitter so axiomatically hellish? It’s a place where even the most well-intentioned attempts at intellectually honest conversation inevitably devolve into misunderstanding and mutual contempt [...]
It amplifies our simultaneous interdependency and alienation, the overtaking of meaningful political life by the triviality of the social. It is other people. But mostly Twitter is Hell because we—a “we” that, in Twitter’s universalizing idiom, outstretches optimistically or threateningly as if to envelop even those blessed souls who have never once logged on—make it so.
It’s our own personal Hell, algorithmically articulated and given back to us, customized enough that I can complain to another very online friend about something that’s “all over Twitter” and he can reply, in confusion, “hmm, not my Twitter,” but shared enough that another friend can affirm, “on my Twitter too.”
— Suspended Hell: it is other people (Katie Kadue n+1)
📖 What I’m Reading ——— پڑھنے کا مواد
🧠 The Extended Mind — Annie Murphy Paul
An Excerpt:
The encouraging implication of this research is that we have it within our power to induce in ourselves a state that is ideal for learning, creating, and engaging in other kinds of complex cognition: by exercising briskly just before we do so.
As things stand, however, we don’t often take intentional advantage of this opportunity. Our culture conditions us to see mind and body as separate— and so we separate, in turn, our periods of thinking from our bouts of exercise. Consider how many of us make our visits to the gym only after work, for example, or on weekends.
Instead, we should be figuring out how to incorporate bursts of physical activity into the work day and the school day—which means rethinking how we approach our breaks. Lunch breaks, coffee breaks, downtime between tasks or meetings: all become occasions to use exercise to maneuver our brains into an optimally functioning state.
✔️ How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question — Michael Schur
A book on moral philosophy by the creator of The Good Place. It draws from 2500 years worth of philosophy and presents them in a funny, wholesome, and thought-provoking way, and applies them to everyday situations.
Mike Schur’s narration and additions from the Good Place cast make this book a treat to listen to in audio. Besides, as someone who’s tried to get into philosophy, but left most books halfway unread because they were… too dry to read; How to Be Perfect feels more like a fun thought-provoking exercise than a non-fiction philosophy dump.
🎒 What's Up in LUMS? —— یہ لمز میں کیا ہورہا ہے
Skip this if you’re not from the bubble that is MGSHSS ‘24 or Lahore University of Management Sciences 😪.
🧳 It’s officially “how did they afford that trip to Europe” season.
🗨️ The titular MGSHSS Whatsapp Group gets an upgrade. Now the entire HSS Batch of ‘24 can join the highly sought-after group chat without being put on the eternal waitlist!
😡 The administration has hiked up the fee by 14%. Students protest online and on campus. #LUMSFeeHike trends on Twitter. But is there any hope for a revert?
🎉 Congratulations to those from HSS ‘24 who got their desired majors (almost everyone?)
☕ Cardamom tea is now Rs. 70. Honey Crispy at Chop Chop, Rs. 400. Happy Inflation!
🍣 Ratatouille at PDC menu (???)
🧪 Finally, Injeel Abdul Aziz puts some “discussion” on the LUMS Discussion Forum!
😈 “Writing “i still miss you” in every ngl.link story to disrupt their healing process.”
🔊 Shoutout to my friend Taymur Jibran for finally discovering Tariq Road, and giving the idea for this newsletter’s title: snoozeletter.
🎞️ LMA’s new CC enters a civil war over… an app. #TeamNotion Vs. #TeamDiscord.
💳 Petition to enable cash-less transactions with Sadapay and Nayapay across campus! Who’s with me?
💗 My bestie-ship cohort Fall’22 Early Admission Applications are open. Here’s how to apply.
🎵 Some Good Music —— خوش موسیقی
Indie Finds:
🎵 Doobne De (Reprise) — Hassan & Roshaan
🎵 Meteorite — Gus Dapperton, Anna of the North
🎵 Free — Florence + The Machine
Banger Soundtracks
🎵 Sonata in Darkness — Michael Giacchino (From The Batman)
🎵 Heartstopper — Adiescar Chase (from Heartstopper)
🎵 A Man Without Love — Engelbert Humperdinck (From Moon Knight)
👀 Cool Stuff —— کول سٹف
🗓️ Cron Calendar
The next-generation calendar that supercharges your Google Calendar with a native interface for managing your events and packs a bunch of powerful features. I’ve been using it for the past 2 weeks, and it’s become central to my (sadly) Calendar-based lifestyle.
The universal keyboard shortcuts are also a godsend. Ctrl + Alt + K + Enter launches my online course when it’s time. Saves the time for searching those pesky Zoom links 😫.
🌟 The app is in invite-only beta right now but luckily, I have 4 invites lying around. Leave a comment and I shall giveth!
💸 Napkin Finance
Struggling with understanding financial jargon? This website is a no-bs resource giving quick and easy answers to your financial questions. Every concept is paired with a napkin visualization which helps in understanding and visualizing them better.
🚮 Remover.App
Use AI magic to remove anything unwanted in seconds. Remover.app gets rid of photobombers, your ex, watermarks, or defects. Just upload your photo and mark the bit. The app will do the rest. It’s also free!
📊 Cool Data Visualizations
1. 🖥️ History of Icons
History of computer icons through different graphical user interfaces in different operating systems.
2. 😲 A Brief History of Rickrolling
A super interactive page that uses data from Google Analytics to visualize a hilarious history of the rickroll.