@akermany ➡️

The traders grew rich; and with riches came power. Tales without end are told of these massive, lonely figures who bore half-seriously, half mockingly a motto adopted from one of Salvor Hardin's epigrams, "never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!"

@AutismCapital are you going to give the bro his autist badge or too early to call?

Professor Jiang right now. ⏰

@allaei Skin in the game

بزنی، می‌خوری. نیروگاه بزنی، نیروگاهت می‌خوره. استراتژی ساده و مؤثر بر اساس نظریه بازی.نظریه بازی را بازی کن و تحلیلت را یک قدم بالا ببر. hamed.github.io/trust این را ۹ سال پیش به فارسی ترجمه کردم.

The world is a large theater with a small exit door. The definition of the sucker is someone who focuses on the size of the theater, not the size of the door.

@nntaleb OOC is he an example of Dr.John or a complete grifter?

The only quality Sam Harris has: he detects my instinctive deep-rooted allergy for him. x.com/nntaleb/status…

On a bullshit scale of 0-10, where 0 is maximally rigorous and 10 is maximally bullshitter, Sam Harris stands close to 10.

@DavidColetto This is Canada’s chance to be the new Switzerland on crack: political stability for inventing and a finance juggernaut led by a world class banker. It’s ours to loose. Not to mention the birthplace of AI.

What do Canadians want Canada to do in Iran? Most want distance. A majority say Canada should remain neutral and call for de-escalation rather than clearly support the strikes. The centre of opinion is cautious. More here (paid): open.substack.com/pub/davidcolet…

There we go again! The irony is that the state of Israel - never again (?) - is on his side.

Basic math

@allaei This is not AI generated. The apparent 6th finger is an optical illusion.

Hypothesis: Netanyahu is dead. Reject it.

@SanaSaeed Well said. also Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani was one of his students ( a Babi - adjacent to Bahais). They lived during the early days of Persians encountering Europe after the industrial revolution and maturity of formation of European Nationalism. Standard imitation strategy

Funny story about Iranian identity and whiteness: the idea is about 200 years old and rooted in anti-Arab/Muslim racism and forced alignment with Europe. In the 19th century, Persian intellectuals like Mirza Fath-Ali Akhundzadeh began promoting the idea that Iranians were an “Aryan” people and that they came from this broader Indo-European civilization rather than the Arab and Islamic world that had shaped Iran for centuries by that point. The idea drew heavily from European Orientalist racial theories that classified languages and peoples into hierarchies - w/Aryan on top. This idea became institutionalized under Reza Shah’s nationalist project in the 20th century and it emphasized Iran’s pre-Islamic past and ‘Aryan’ heritage. In 1935 he even asked foreign governments to stop using “Persia” and instead use Iran, which comes ffrom ‘Aryanam’, (land of the Aryans). …which is funny if you meet secular diaspora Iranians today and see how they identify themselves But even funnier is how in the 30s, German Nazi racial theorists sometimes classified Iranians as Aryan for diplomatic purposes (this wasn’t so b&w - there were tiered Aryans with Iranians in the bottom tier, they weren’t part of the Nordic Aryan master race). Not only did Germany then become one of Iran’s biggest trading partners in the late 30s but Nazi propaganda showed Iran as a fellow resistor to British and Soviet “imperialism” and gave Iranians in Germany racial exemptions. And German Nazis were rampant in Iran - they had their own propaganda networks inside Iran to push anti-Soviet, anti-British propaganda. Iran’s strategic location and resources made it important to Nazi geopolitical ambitions so treating Iranians as “Aryan” in certain contexts was also a strategic move. Anyway, there’s so much more to this part of history, but if Pahlavists sound like crazy Nazis it’s because well…

In case you want to understand some Iranian's perspective better, this sums it up. I recommend Iranians do a genetic test and look at the PCA plots (hint: Babak joon is closer to Abdul-Latif than he is to Sven).

I am tired. Tired of war. Tired of anger. Tired of death. Tired of lives lost. Tired of hope destroyed. Tired of unnecessary grief. Tired of the destruction of well-being. Tired of forced migration. Tired of tears. Tired of children living in tents, denied the childhood they deserve. I am tired of the political excuses offered for war. I am tired of racial hatred. I am tired of human lust for power wrapped up in theocracy. I am tired of talk of defence that excuses aggression. I am tired of biased reporting I am tired of being told that people who have died on one side of a dispute are lives lost and that on the other, they are just killed. I am tired of a failure to recognise that any life lost unnecessarily is just that: it is a life lost unnecessarily. I am tired of the belief that war will ever solve anything. I am tired of the assumption that after war everything will go back to normal. I am tired of the cost of conflict always being borne by anyone but those who started it. I am tired of those who think we don’t have a duty of care to everyone, whoever they are, wherever they come from, whatever they believe, whatever their skin colour, whatever their gender, whatever their age. I am tired of those who think that others don’t matter. Most of all, I am tired of those who destroy hope, I live in hope. Hope of a better day. Hope of a better life for everyone. Hope that I might live to see that. Hope that everyone might then share hope. Is that too much to hope for?

Time to read Antifragile again

@mark_slapinski Carney should be very careful though, there is the risk of another orange crush that he seems not to be paying attention to.

Here's my prediction: - Carney will win a majority by summer - Conservatives will spend the next 3 years blaming him for things he didn't do and crying about how Canada is broken Bookmark this.

If you enjoy watching bombs and missiles fall on any city, whether Tehran or Tel Aviv, no matter how much you hate their leaders, you are part of the problem.

I cannot stop thinking of all the amazing and wonderful people I have known from Israel, Iran, Lebanon and other countries caught up in this war. It is people just like them who are being killed and harmed here.

همسرم ایرانی نیست، سیاسی نیست، تا حالا ایران نرفته ولی بعنوان یک مادر با دیدن این فیلم به پهنای صورت اشک‌ می‌ریزد. بعد ایرانیِ ترامپ به کون از ونکوور و لندن با پرچم مهاجمان سلام هیتلری میدهد و میگوید: «مخالفین این جنگ چپول و حکومتی هستند» #شرم_نیابتی

I love the way @BBCWorld communicates the news, reducing the stress. Example:“more than 160 people killed mostly young girls” instead of “more than 160 children got killed”. Plus that smooth accent, really doesn’t ruin my breakfast as much. Thank you!

No I see why JC came up with “turn the other cheek” strategy in cooperative games

@pati_marins64 You are using AI circa 2025, I recommend gemeni deep research or Claude agents for more serious work

So. About this, there’s something I’d like to comment on. Weeks ago I was collecting sources and asked Grok to locate some citations and give me the link. But the links didn’t open, so I questioned whether those citations actually existed. That’s when he admitted it and said I was chasing butterflies with a torn net or something like that, looking for what didn’t exist, and treated the whole thing as fun. Since that day, I’ve become very careful and now review several times everything that comes from AI.