browser archaeology by Fatima A. '25

inspired by Alan’s browser archaeology post, I started looking at the tabs open on my phone to see if such a post would be worth doing. it was then, looking at the over 1500 tabs open, that I realized that I had likely not closed any tabs⁠01 any is an overstatement but it was pretty bad... in the last 3 years, since I got my phone.

after closing the many repeated tabs of instagram, NYT games, gradescope, canvas, “<enter any city I have lived in the last 3 years> weather,” that I got it down to about 1300, which is still pretty bad.

then, I just decided to write about the most recent (I think?) 105 tabs open, because why not! will follow a similar format to Alan’s post :)

poems (18)

• “The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot because April is the cruelest month
• pareshan houn k meri khaak aakhir dil na ban jae by Allama Iqbal
• zindagi se darte ho by Noon Meem Rashid. listen to a very beautiful reading here!
• “The Dong with the Luminous Nose” by Edward Lear. this one was on Alan’s discord status a while ago.
• “I’M GOING BACK TO MINNESOTA WHERE SADNESS MAKES SENSE” by Danez Smith
• “This Be The Verse” by Philip Larkin
• kabhi ae haqeeqat e muntazir nazar aa libaas e majaaz mai by Allama Iqbal. listen to a very beautiful version here!
• “Beautiful Short Loser” by Ocean Vuong because what I did with my one short beautiful life—was lose it on a winning streak. (at least three tabs of this oops–)
• tanhai by Faiz Ahmad Faiz. listen to a very beautiful reading here (Zia Mohyeddin supremacy)!
• “Not Even This” by Ocean Vuong
• “The Silken Tent” by Robert Frost
• “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot
• Ulysses. this was just a google search, 0/10 for conviction
• kah do ye kohkan se ki marna nhi kamal
• “How to not be afraid of everything” by Jane Wong. I read this book in Advanced Poetry Workshop last year & really loved it.
• Martha Graham’s quote “there is a vitality, a life force.” I love this quote a lot and probably opened this tab when referencing this to someone
• Mahmood Darwish: Opening Pages of “Memory for Forgetfulness.” I read this book during freshman year and loved it, will probably re-read at some point!
• The Tale of the Coffee Cow. peak art.

articles (12)

this is me mostly fooling you into reading more about poetry!

• Saving Time about living life to the fullest. “Remember you are going to die. Or, if you prefer, YOLO.”⁠02 today I learned this means you only live once...
• The Poems That Taught Me How to Love about Pablo Neruda’s poetry. because love is so short, forgetting is so long.
• Delmore Schwartz’s Poems Are Like Salt Flicked on the World
• Ada Limón Won’t Let Prose Touch the Poetry on Her Shelves
• This Cube Cured My Mortality. sadly, the original review has been removed but see this.
• Taylor Swift Wants You to Google Her. okay xD
• 7 Unusual Writing Systems From Around the World & How They Developed 
• The Most Important Poem of the 20th Century: On T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” at 100
• “I got saved by the beauty of the world.” an interview article with Mary Oliver.
• Happening Live: Michael Imperioli and Ocean Vuong in Conversation. (I don’t know where this should go)
• In ‘Time is a Mother,’ poet Ocean Vuong reflects on life, and time, without his mom
• “A flight attendant shows the view of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour from the sky”

MIT websites (10)

• MIT Integration Bee
• Margaret Cheney Room, one of my favorite places on campus to take naps!
• Student Lending Art Program. I participated in SLAP this year and got a piece of art to hang in my room for the fall!
• how-to-dormspam. probably for someone else, I have never dormspammed myself!
• hydrant. as one does.
• DormCon’s REX website
• Battlecode 2022 website
• Math Learning Center
• Hayden Library
• Widener Library (that’s MIT, whatever do you mean!)

math (13)

I don’t have much math on my phone because I will keep to-read links somewhere more organized and also mostly read on my computer or iPad. these are mostly me struggling for my life.

• Cauchy-Schwarz. mandatory.
• Laurent series
• “serre topology”
• Legendre transformation. likely from 8.223⁠03 Classical Mechanics II. I took this with Matthew during IAP 2023!
• “milnor on h cobordism”
• The Long Line. one always needs to know about the long line, which is like a line but very long.
• Torsion subgroup
• “groupoid definition”
• Homology of Klein bottle
• RP2
• Suspension
• “The Global Nonlinear Stability of the Minkowski Space”
• “\tilde” (probably the right place to put this–)

physics/astro (3)

only a couple of articles here!

• exoplanet transit. always need a tab open in case of emergencies
• New nearby mini-Neptune exoplanet discovered
• Topological materials become switchable. I have no recollection of what this article was about…

leave me alone i don’t know english (5)

• “judgment”
• cinch meaning
• dork definition
• malarkey definition
• eiderdown definition
• English to Urdu names of herbs

wow fatima, you live in london? (3)

• Deliveroo Voucher Codes because I’m broke
• UK Travel passes and transport tickets 
• “tesco meal deal”

games you should not be playing (2)

• Swiftle
• Octogram

wikipedia (5)

minus the wikipedia articles that already fit in other categories, here are the remaining few, which are truly a collection.

• Badeshi language
• Corfu
• Coloratura soprano. what is this???
• International Phonetic Alphabet
• Erdős-Bacon number

media (7)

I don’t really know how to classify this, I am just making up categories at this point. I think the first couple are probably from someone giving me recommendations and me just writing them down although I have no recollection.⁠04 wait, I have a vague feeling this may have been Ross Gay.

• Of Human Bondage
• Do the Right Thing
• The Lives of Others
• “azula always lies”
• “dobby house elf”
• “hagrids brother”
• “This Quiz Will Reveal Which “Midnights” Lyric Taylor Swift Wrote For You”

places (3)

• Mathews Arm
• There’s An Adventure Park Hiding Near St. Louis And You Need To Visit. Why do I have this, I do not know.
• many tabs on bus routes in Acadia National Park from October last year when I was there with SAAS⁠05 south asian association of students people!

random (15)

• Cadbury five star
• many henna designs
• many blogs
• an instagram tab that is open to a picture captioned “us if we were two hash browns”
• iafischer’s city game, opened to a link for the script that Alan & Carl wrote.
• random word generator
• Concerts in the Courtyard
• electric bill from last July
• my brother’s exam results
• jellycat
• You Gotta Know These Short Story Authors from when I went to quizbowl sophomore year.
• pakistan vs england 2022 (such a cricket fan omg!)
• syncopate font
• SL3 bus schedule

???? (9)

• “ragcat”
• “crystal boba”
• “bolognese dog”
• “farkas lemma rock band song.” I have no idea what this means and I am too afraid to find out.
• “raisins”
• “how long does it take to fill an air mattress” (the real question I should have asked: how many MIT students does it take to fill an air mattress. the answer, three.)
• “phalian”
• “diamond rattlesnake”
• “owo city”