The grapevine says the Fed. Budget is going to get delayed. This is really shabby if true.
Many other countries provide firm schedules weeks, and even months in advance, or simply pick one fixed date of the year for this.
Meanwhile, here we are on a Tuesday unsure about Friday
Geo Fact Check’s Maha Kanwal filed a Right to Information request with the CM Punjab office regarding Punjab CM Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s visit to COP30 in Brazil in Nov 2025, following claims that unofficial individuals and family members accompanied the delegation.
Thread:
For those who don’t know:
Israel doesn’t allowing the entry of prescription lenses or eyeglass frames into Gaza.
Not weapons.
Not military equipment. Glasses.
When civilians are denied even the most basic tools needed to see, it raises serious questions about the human cost of these restrictions.
@chamani_axhak Will try, but there is no substitute for tinkering yourself.
Anything I know is stuff I learned from scratch in the last 6-8 months. Your generation should aspire to overtake the rest of us soon.
But yes, will inshAllah share what little I know.
I'm a very visual person. when I was first getting into ML, I'd try to draw out every concept on pen and paper.
back then I couldn't vibe-code a visualization. but now you can!
here are my favorite ML visualizations I've been saving for a while. take them as inspo for the next complex topic you want to visualize 🧵
🇵🇰 Pakistan has two economies: IMF-on, and IMF-off. Since 2000, the data is brutal 👇
📉 The rupee. Out of a program: a cumulative +270.6% depreciation against the dollar.
In the program: just +45.4% cumulative depreciation, even though those in-program stretches cover more months.
Outside a program the rupee doesn't drift, it lurches: confidence evaporates, capital flees, and the currency depreciates sharply with disorderly jumps. Every major crash in 2008, 2018-19, 2022, the hits were more severe when we were out of the program. 💥
💸 Reserves. In a program, they build: +$262M/month. Out of one, they bleed: −$237M/month. That's a ~$500M monthly swing between survival and crisis.
📊 The REER volatility hits the hardest in the gaps too with no program, no anchor, no defense.
🔑 It's a trap: leave → reserves fall → rupee crashes → crisis → crawl back to the IMF. 🔁
The point isn't to stay forever. It's that walking away only works with a plan. A real strategy to stockpile reserves, stabilize the fluctuations in the rupee, and absorb shocks ourselves, not borrow more to build reserves.
❓One question decides everything: can we build a reserve buffer big enough to stand on our own?
If not, every IMF "exit" is just an intermission before the next crisis drags us back. 🇵🇰
We took another look at the capability gap between open-weight and proprietary models. Since the start of the year, open-weight models have lagged the state of the art by four months.
Essential, clarifying work by @AliHasanain. A lot to ponder.
📉 Pakistan has lost its share in global economy. The numbers tell the story better than any argument:
📊 Figure 1 : Pakistan in the global economy: Our share of world exports peaked at 0.172% in the early '90s and has drifted down to 0.12% today
🔻 FDI inward stock tells the same sad story, from a 0.195% high in 1997 to just 0.058% in 2024. We are shrinking on the world stage.
📊 Figure 2 : Pakistan vs Vietnam tariffs: In the late '90s we were near parity. Today Pakistan's applied tariffs are 7.11x Vietnam's, peaking at 7.72x in 2021
⚠️ Vietnam opened up & its exports exploded.
The link is hard to miss: our persistently high tariffs have likely played a key role in shrinking Pakistan's footprint on the global stage
🔻 We taxed our way out of world trade & investment. 🇵🇰
I think most domains look like this at the moment: the returns to expenditure on agents diminish much more quickly than the returns to expenditure on human labor: (1/n)
Price at the pump as a ratio of cost is well within historical range.
@SaleemFarrukh has cherry-picked May 2022, a month in which the fuel subsidy had not been fully withdrawn.
Pick a different starting data and the narrative collapses.
1. Petrol Price in Pakistan May 2022 to May 2026: Rs179.86 → Rs403.78 (+124%)
2. Brent (per barrel): Rs22,600 → Rs25,300 (+12%)
3. Government claims that petrol prices in Pakistan are pegged to international oil prices???
It feels strange to look at myself in this interview video by EO. What am I showing? I am showing my original "C++ by Hand" notes in my intro programming course many years ago, that eventually led to AI by Hand. ✍️
What else did I say? Here are some of my favorite self-quotes:
"I can only write at humanly possible speed by hand because students also learn at humanly possible speed"
"AI can't change who you are, but you can change AI"
"Tools can become obsolete but foundation will always stay"
Thanks Jiyoon Lim and the team for conducting the interview and producing this wonderful video. I can really see they understand me and keep these in the cut that speaks my heart. ❤️
Watch on YouTube: https://t.co/bv8D7mXOsV