Ari Paul ⛓️

Stay hungry. Stay humble. Stay ambitious. Stay curious. Be a student, always.

@doomernat22 You’re aware Muslims colonized the region, right? Read the Quran…it even says the Jews were there first. IMO, ancient history is irrelevant to peoples rights today, but what a 180 degree spin 😂

imagine i steal and squat your house, and as a compromise i give you back your bedroom and some of the bathroom.

@SashaGusevPosts We haven’t been developing AI as Yud is referencing. Stronger AI does not necessarily produce ASI, and specifically the LLM brute force method is unlikely to imo.

This is ... not at all how AI has developed. Instead, development has mostly followed the trajectory Hanson outlined: many small innovations across many teams, driven by content, supported by massive infrastructure and capex.

Stumbled upon an interesting debate on AI super-intelligence from 2011. Yudkowsky makes three core claims/predictions, all of which are (to date) wrong: 1) That human intelligence is relatively simple and ASI can be achieved with a few small innovations; ...

2500 pounds of bombs per resident with <3% of the population of Gaza dead is the opposite of genocide. Levelling the infrastructure with <100k civilian deaths in the face of an unprecedented human shield strategy is the opposite of genocide… A good faith or at least intellectually honest argument would state how Israel should defeat the enemies actively trying to annihilate them with fewer civilian casualties.

What Israel has done in Gaza clearly and easily meets the legal definition of genocide as described in the UN Genocide Convention. I lay out the case in detail here in @washingtonpost: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/… Words have meaning. Even if it offends some people, we need to call things as they are. The idea that Israel is somehow immune from judgment is itself an application of a double standard. It is anti-semitic to hold Israel to a different standard than other states. And that's what Israeli is: a state. Sometimes, states do really awful things. And to conflate American Jews with the Israeli state is yet another example of anti-semitism, which the AJC seems to be doing here.

@AFpost Why leave out this is because Iranian rockets struck the site…

America’s greatest ally, Israel, has ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre closed amid the Iran War, with the Empty Tomb barricaded, and no plans to open during Holy Week. The Holy Fire will not be present either. It is the first time in millennia that this event has happened. Follow: @AFpost

🛢️There's a lot being said about oil prices right now, so I put this chart together to help explain the major crude benchmarks and why they're all behaving differently. ⚪Brent (white) — The world's "default" oil price. Most global trade is priced off this. When the news says "oil is at $108," they mean Brent. 🟡WTI (yellow) — The U.S. benchmark, based on crude delivered to Oklahoma. It's the lowest line on the chart because American oil doesn't need to transit the Strait of Hormuz. 🟢Murban (green) — Crude from Abu Dhabi, delivered at Fujairah port, which sits just outside the Strait. Even though it technically doesn't have to pass through the chokepoint, drone strikes have hit Fujairah and nearby ports, pushing insurance and shipping costs up. 🟣Oman (purple) — The key benchmark for heavier crude sold into Asia. Many refineries in China, Japan, and South Korea are built specifically to process this grade. It's the highest line on the chart because Asian buyers are competing fiercely for a shrinking pool of cargoes. 🔴Dubai (red) — Used to price most long-term Gulf→Asia export contracts. It tracks alongside Oman as a measure of how hard Asian markets are being squeezed. The story isn't any single price — it's the gap between them. In late February these five lines were within $6 of each other. Now the spread between WTI and Oman is over $50. Since the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began Feb 28, the Strait of Hormuz has effectively been closed. Daily transits have fallen from a historical average of ~138 ships to fewer than 5. The IEA has called it the largest disruption to global energy supply in history. Iran's IRGC has warned that not "a litre of oil" will pass for U.S. allies, while selectively allowing some Iranian, Indian, and Pakistani tankers through. Saudi Arabia is rerouting oil to its Red Sea port at Yanbu, and the UAE is using a pipeline to Fujairah — but combined pipeline capacity is only 3.5–5.5 million barrels/day vs the 20 million that normally flows through the Strait. Meanwhile, the 400 million barrel emergency reserve release by IEA members covers roughly 4 days of global consumption. Japan's refiners get ~95% of their crude from the Gulf. China receives 45% of its oil via Hormuz. South Korea, India, Thailand, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are all severely exposed. The wider the spread between the Asian benchmarks and Western ones on this chart, the more you're seeing that pain in real time.

Israel, US, Syria, Oman, UAE, Qatar vs Iran’s regime. reuters.com/world/middle-e…

@Geiger_Capital Iran bombing the gulf states seems to have pushed them far closer to us. Seems like the exact opposite? reuters.com/world/middle-e…

Israel just struck South Pars in Iran, the largest natural gas field in the world… We previously told Israel not to target it. Iran is now going to respond by hitting energy facilities in the Gulf States, further alienating our allies.

Seems to have worked pretty well. They took the brunt of 95%+ of the Islamist terrorism, developed a decent chunk of our intelligence and anti-rocket and drone military tech, and kept Iran this weak (with US help off and on) for 30+ years giving US the Middle East hegemony being fought over in Oman, Qatar, UAE, etc.

@devchart Who needs enemies when you got an "ally" like Israel.

US greatest ally in action x.com/DMichaelTripi/…

@RealCalebMaupin You’re mad Larijani isn’t alive to massacre more Persians? Iranian’s Islamist occupiers learning that if you try to genocide Israel, you better not miss.

I met Ali Larijani at the United Nations. The Israelis are murderous terrorists and assasins. Don't pretend there's anything honorable about how they are fighting this war.

@MouinRabbani Israel and the US’ primary goal is reducing Iran’s ability to pursue the Islamist regime’s goals of subjugation, genocides, and murders of their citizens. They seem to be succeeding at that.

Israel has just bombed Iran's largest natural gas processing facility in Bushehr Province. Israel stated that it conducted this attack in full coordination with the United States. The attack is consistent with Israel's strategy of aiming to destroy not only Iran's military and military industries, but also its industrial base and its economy. Israel's objective is not regime change but state collapse. In this particular case there is I believe an additional motivation behind the Israeli attack. Iran has repeatedly indicated that if its energy infrastructure is attacked, this crosses a bright red line and that it will retaliate with attacks on energy infrastructure throughout the Persian Gulf. If Iran does indeed respond in this manner, the prospects of direct participation in this war by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states increases significantly. This is exactly what Israel would like to see, and would also explain why the US, which previously counselled against such attacks, now supports them and participates in their execution. This attack is not only a demonstration of US-Israeli capabilities, but also of US-Israeli strategic failure and arguably of growing desperation as well.

What is greater radicalization than open promises of world domination and endless genocide? Iran launched the vast majority of all the weapons they have at Israel, UAE, Oman, Qatar… We hope the Persians overthrow the Islamist colonizers. But if they can’t, have to at least keep the Islamists as weak as possible.

Larijani’s replacement will be appointed by IRGC. With every assassination U.S. and Israel engineering greater radicalization of Iran’s leadership. It will makes for a bleak future for Iran, Iranians, the region and ultimately makes it far more difficult for U.S. to disentangle itself from endless conflict in the region.

@OurOwnNation @BTCOlN So the mass anti-Zionists protests? The synagogue bombings, beach massacres, campus shutdowns, random assaults, pro-Khameini marches in London and NYC, was all that Zionists too? I don’t follow the logic.

Why are there no anti-war protests? We know It isn’t because the weather is bad, people were protesting in -30° weather in Minneapolis. Is it that the American protest movement was depleted during the anti-Ice protests? No, they have billions of dollars. The truth is that the unions, NGOs, think tanks, and fundraising organizations that help plan and organize protests in America are run by Liberal Jews. Some may claim to be ‘anti-Zionist’ but they know this benefits their people. That is why there are no protests.

@orthodox_33ad It’s because Iran is bombing the site…you want more Christians to be murdered by the Islamists? And no…many many synagogues, mosques, office buildings and public spaces have also been closed in Israel (and Dubai, Qatar, Oman), all the places Iran is bombing.

Israel has closed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre indefinitely for the first time in the history of Christianity. Holy Week and Easter services will be prohibited. Sunday masses and liturgies cancelled. A church that should be packed with hundreds of thousands these coming weeks is being forcibly shut and silenced. Israel cites it is for ‘security concerns’ while Jewish Israelis are allowed to celebrate in mass gatherings. Alongside the forced closure of Al-Aqsa mosque, reports cite priests aggressively being turned away to perform daily services. Throughout history, wars, tensions, or even the pandemic limited access to the sanctuary, but they had never prevented liturgical celebrations in this central place of Christian faith indefinitely. Christians must not remain silent.

Haven’t enough people already died to genocide and annihilate Israel? You’re really demanding that Jews support actual genocide, the murder of millions? Heck, what about the Christians and *muslims* living with more freedom and rights and safety in Israel than in any of Israel’s Islamist fascist neighbors?

For the sake of Jewish Americans, we must forcefully criminalize Zionism. Jewish Americans will not survive if we allow this poisonous rot to drag them down. All support for the State of Israel must be treated as giving aid and comfort to terrorists. Jews MUST denounce Zionism

Emotional suppression costs you about 30% of your working memory. Measured on fMRI. The anterior cingulate cortex processes emotional pain and cognitive control through overlapping circuits. When you shove emotions down instead of processing them, your prefrontal cortex burns glucose on inhibition. That’s glucose not available for decision-making, planning, or execution. The brain doesn’t have separate budgets for “feelings” and “performance.” It’s one pool. The military figured this out the hard way. After decades of “push through it” culture, SOCOM funded research into emotional regulation for tier-one operators. The finding: operators who named and processed emotions before missions had faster reaction times and better decision-making under fire than operators who suppressed. The Special Forces pipeline now includes psychological flexibility training. The historical record confirms it. Stoicism, the philosophy most often cited to justify “stop talking about feelings,” literally requires examining your emotions in writing every single day. Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations as a private journal. Epictetus taught students to dissect their emotional responses in granular detail. The entire Stoic method is structured emotional processing, not emotional avoidance. What actually kills performance is rumination, looping on the same thought without resolution. The fix for rumination is more processing, not less. Cognitive behavioral therapy, the most evidence-backed intervention, works by teaching people to articulate and examine feelings with precision. The highest performers process fast and move. They don’t skip the processing step.

@havivrettiggur @MuhanadSeloom Iran bombed Qatar. Not surprising to see the state’s PR arm pushing this angle now.

Al Jazeera is now running the headline "The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working." Prof. @MuhanadSeloom argues that despite what the skeptics are understandably worried about, "When you look at what has actually happened to Iran’s principal instruments of power – its ballistic missile arsenal, its nuclear infrastructure, its air defences, its navy and its proxy command architecture – the picture is not one of US failure. It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades." He adds, perhaps to head off the naysayers who'll write him off as a "Zionist," "I have worked for the US Department of State and advised defence and intelligence agencies in multiple countries. I have no interest in cheerleading for war. "But I have spent my academic career studying how states authorise the use of force through intelligence institutions, and what I see in the current campaign is a recognisable military operation proceeding through identifiable phases against an adversary whose capacity to project power is collapsing in real time." Prof. Seloom is right. This is a well-planned war with clear objectives. And most of the people saying otherwise are confusing what's happening in 2026 with their desire to relitigate Iraq in 2003. But more interesting than the professor's arguments is the simple fact that Al Jazeera now feels free to publish this sort of thing, that Qatar is tentatively dipping a toe into this new narrative. In other words, that Qatar now calculates that the war might just succeed. aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/…

@namaloomafraaad That’s kind of what they did that led to all this death and violence…Hamas is an Iranian proxy.

@GwartyGwart 😂

“How would you feel if you hadn’t eaten breakfast this morning?” Marc Andreesen: “But I did eat breakfast”

@OunkaOnX You’re confusing cause and effect. The Islamists say openly that Israel’s existence is the original sin and redeemable only by its annihilation. It’s why they won’t allow a Palestinian state to exist while Israel exists.

Then why does Israel keep doing the things that ensure they will?

Certainly true that Bibi was not open to peace. He believed after Palestinian statehood was rejected in prior negotiations that Palestinians (or those coercing and controlling them), were not real partners in peace talks, that it was just a game, like Hamas’ 17 year ceasefire where they bragged they spent the whole time preparing for war while Israel thought they were governing Gaza. 20 years ago I thought Bibi was wrong. IMO, he’s at least somewhat been proven right. Palestinians can and should have a state. Netanyahu is a temporary obstacle to that, but the permanent obstacle are the Islamists who openly state they’ll never tolerate Israel’s existence. Palestine has to be freed form the Islamist control, and then it could become a peaceful neighbor.

Ok that's fair Ari BUT I would seriously disagree that the problem is thre Arab league, the problem is Netenyahu, he's never wanted peace or a two state solution I'm sure you know as well as i do that Saudi Arabia offered to normalize relations in exchange for Palestinian autonomy and Bibi never came through could have changed the middle east

A couple and their 5 and 7 year old kids… Shot and killed in front of their 2 other kids by the IDF This would be on every front page and condemned by politicians far and wide if the victims has been Israelis And yet when they’re Palestinians… Utterly utterly shameful.