Ali Ruth

Malala Yousafzai Thought She’d Never Fall in Love

This is a beautiful interview with (now-28!) Malala Yousafzai

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/p...

Column | 4 phone calls furloughed workers can’t afford to skip during the shutdown We don’t know how or when this shutdown ends. But there are resources to help if you’re not getting a paycheck.

We don’t know how or when this government shutdown ends. But there are resources to help if you’re not getting a paycheck. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Thanks for this! Sharing with my fellow furloughed people

YouTube video by Ali R. Ruth music Wicked parody - Populist - Popular - AP US History

While furloughed I am dusting off old song parodies and contemplating a Sesame Street career pivot into educational Broadway songs (joking / actually not entirely joking given… everything going on)

#Wicked #Broadway #WickedForGood

youtu.be/E7yIwWn0F2c

spent Day #5 of my furlough learning how to create a MIDI musical backing track by plugging a cable into my electric piano keyboard, just as the GOP intended

Opinion | Sudden Pop Stardom After 50

Absolutely loved this quick read about later-in-life pop stardom www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/o...

It is truly wild what people put out there

Excited to listen. Years ago I had an abstract idea of making an account called “What do U mean by ‘we?’“ that just screenshotted every sloppy / ambiguous use of ‘we’ by major columnists like Brooks etc

Actually think a lot of “debates” should force the speaker to always define this

Did I get very bored during the pandemic and make a fake horror movie poster based on this premise? Yes I did

Opinion | The 50 best Halloween songs of all time If you are an artist looking to break into a seasonal music canon, go for Halloween.

@petridishes.bsky.social plz consider it for your next list www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

YouTube video by Oleg Berg «Sweet Caroline» by Neil Diamond in minor key

Beginning of October means beginning of Spooky Season, the month in which I argue that "Sweet Caroline" in a minor key is *actually* the scariest Halloween song of all time - www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vH4...

Chatbots Play With Your Emotions to Avoid Saying Goodbye A Harvard Business School study shows that several AI companions use various tricks to keep a conversation from ending.

A Harvard Business School study shows that several AI companions use various tricks to keep a conversation from ending. www.wired.com/story/chatbo...

Watch Marc Maron: Panicked (HBO) | HBO Max Watch Marc Maron: Panicked (HBO) on HBO Max. Plans start at $9.99/month. ​In his second HBO special, comedian and podcaster Marc Maron offers up his nuanced perspective on our increasingly uncertain w...

I'm late to catch up on it but the timing ended up being ideal for watching Marc Maron's new "Panicked" special - so so good (& perfect for right now) play.hbomax.com/movie/c51673...

Mezcal lime juice simple syrup hibiscus

Spiced salt around the glass as a finish

Have worked a lot with parsing urls for webscraping etc but somehow had not explicitly used this trick before when sending someone a link!

Random useful thing I learned today - when you’re hyperlinking to a url for a pdf, you can append “#page=11” at the end of the link to direct the user to land on a specific page when clicking

Map of the US showing cumulative measles cases reported in 2025 from Johns Hopkins University. Red dots signify imported cases, blue dots signify local. Dot sizes indicate case numbers: 40, 150, and 400. Labels include Los Angeles, Gaines County, New York, Washington, DC.

Centralizing data from diverse reporting systems enables timely, actionable measles surveillance, helping guide public health interventions, improve vaccination efforts, and model outbreak risk more precisely within communities.

ja.ma/3IwmxUl

This would be great to include as it’s such a real issue rn - I was studying shingles epi as part of my dissertation while simultaneously *several* of my 30-something grad school peers got it! (it can be stress-induced…sigh)

Understanding the broader impacts of non-fatal firearm violence trauma in the United States: a scoping review Exposure to firearm violence produces ripples of impact that extend far beyond the physical wounds of direct survivors. This scoping review aimed to d…

Related - just found this valuable review in a quick search and am reviewing / absorbing: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Understanding the broader impacts of non-fatal firearm violence trauma in the United States: a scoping review Exposure to firearm violence produces ripples of impact that extend far beyond the physical wounds of direct survivors. This scoping review aimed to d…

Yes - even hard statistics on mortality and injury have been a struggle to produce.

I did just find this useful scoping review in a quick search; am still reviewing it: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Gun violence has such a massive blast radius the stats never capture. Those who witness it in person, the medical professionals that handle the wounds, the injured who carry the damage with them forever, the families shattered, the communities permanently scarred.

*edit: Just as far-reaching

It has always struck me that we collect concrete statistics on mortality and physical injuries from gun violence yet the psychological impacts are even more far-reaching and difficult to quantify

yes! imo the difference is most striking when there is a *noticeable* lower quality to the writing outputs, arguments etc when you see works (op-eds etc) side-by-side in outlets that take pains to present right wing ideas as a “diverse“ perspective next to better-written essays by leftist authors

💯I wish people would just call sociopathy what it is when they see it

They all starred in ‘Godspell.’ Then they became comedy legends. An oral history of the legendary 1972 Toronto production of “Godspell,” which featured Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber and Paul Shaffer.

Ooo hadn't heard of this and am so excited to check it out! I loved the WaPo deep dive on this a few years back www.washingtonpost.com/arts-enterta...

reading-wise I am really leaning into my Retired Dad Era* right now

*exclusively reading books abt WWII and Ancient Rome

Women and the Piano: A History in 50 Lives In her latest book, Susan Tomes delivers an impassioned exposition of the impact that gender has had, and continues to have, on the development of professional pianism and the wider piano community...

I have also really enjoyed reading this book alongside my adult piano learning journey - pianodao.com/2024/03/12/w...

Python Environment

I share this cartoon every time we set up Python at work for a new colleague xkcd.com/1987/

*as an adult learner