@geofffhughes
Teacher, Ethnographer, Arabist; Author of Affection and Mercy (2021) and Social Media Tribes: Jordan's Bedouin and the Margins of the State (2026) โฅ๏ธ๐ฏ๐ดโฅ๏ธ๐ต๐ธ (he/ูู) https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lLU0JwkAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Calculators seem like the best analogue. They're ubiquitous, but you can't use them unless you know how to formulate the problem, what inputs are important and (most importantly) how to check the outputs. I'm retrospectively glad they didn't decide that arithmetic didn't matter because of phones!
Memorization needs a PR campaign. The disdain for it explains a lot of our problems here. Perhaps we can rebrand it as "actually knowing stuff?"
My first attempt at an AI-proof exam wasn't a wild pedagogical success: wp.nyu.edu/sjpearce/202...
Thought you'd find this interesting! I think this article is an insight not only into contemporary political conditions in Iran but also to how much of a reality distortion bubble a lot of foreign persophone media has helped to construct around a lot of domestic Iranian regime opponents...
Pressure from the US and Israel on Lebanon's political leadership to disarm Hezbollah is threatening to split the Lebanese Armed Forces, with a group of officers (including the LAF head Rudolphe Haykel) reportedly refusing to participate...
The Netanyahu Doctrine appears to be that perpetual war in the Middle East is a price worth paying for Israel to feel a bit more secure.
You can see why he thinks that. You can even see why it might be a popular policy in Israel.
But why should anyone else go along with it?
Any way they could describe it in normal language (impersonation, basically) would only further increase their legal exposure.
Right???
writing "why do you hate us?? :(" on a JDAM-guided 2000lb bomb
Sanctions regimes obviously immiserate average folks and lead to poverty and unnecessary deaths, but do they lead to regime change? No. Do they strengthen civil society in relation to the state? Also no. Do they at least weaken that state's ability to wage war? The answer appears to yet again be no.
Come for the discussion trying to get to the bottom of how much an Iranian drone costs to make and stay for the discussion of how the sanctions regime has fostered a massive and surprisingly nimble domestic manufacturing base in Iran:
So true
The hypocrisy is truly something to behold.
If anything describes the donor class at the moment is that they seem more driven by libidinal urges than anything ideological, so any talk of "left-wing antisemitism" is only useful if it acts as a permission slip to indulge in racism and antisemitism (of the "Soros is behind Gaza protests" kind)
Prevailing RoE according to the Rules Based International Order seem to be something like, 'if a suspected militant enters a school or hospital, those civilians had it coming. But if a sovereign state has bombers taking off from its territory, its claims to neutrality should be taken at face value.'
To be fair, the US and lots of its other allies are doing this as well even if it's usually a bit less comical: very unfair for the people I hit to hit back (or, I suppose, for the people being hit from the bases I'm hosting to hit back)...
So the people who say that whatever horrible thing is happening is a distraction from the Epstein files may actually be revealing something even if it's the precise opposite of what they think they're revealing.
Obviously the Epstein crimes are very real, but I can't help but think the fixation on them is at least sometimes a psychological defense mechanism that helps people avoid having to process even greater horrors now unfolding.
They're doing post-9-11 "why do they hate us" style takes from the cockpits of bombers.
Elad Simchayoff on twitter: I interviewed two Israeli Air Force pilots who are part of the operation in Iran. When I asked what it felt like to enter Iranian airspace for the first time, one of them said: โYou find yourself thinking, what do these people, so far away from us, actually want from us? They have a huge and beautiful country. Right now full of snow and lakes. Truly a very, very beautiful place. What do they want from us, this small piece of land? Itโs such a strange feeling.โ
A surprising number of Israelis seem to have already forgotten that they're the ones who started the war.
Yeah, I just found it fascinating: on the one hand he's set for life, academic dream job etc. BUT he can't give a talk without disavowing his career-defining work. Swings and roundabouts...
Saw Michael Cook of Hagarism fame speak a few weeks back and even he started by saying he doesn't really stand by a lot of claims from that book.
Playing on the emotions of utterly desperate people, leading them to slaughter and then abandoning them. I feel like this won't end well...
"Marjan, a housewife, could not hide her emotions when news of Khamenei's death broke. She has believed it would usher in the regime's collapse. 'Now I wonder, even if the Islamic Republic falls, what will I inherit: a land in ruins?'"
"Sara, a teacher in her forties who once hoped for the regime's overthrow... now admits she has changed her mind. 'I've come to terms with the bitter reality: the Islamic Republic is resilient,' she said... 'In the end, we just want peace and welfare.'"
"'We weren't supposed to be bombed,' Mandana said, her voice trembling after a massive explosion near her apartment by Vanak square in Central Tehran. "Our city, our country. This wasn't supposed to happen. How is it that Venezuela... saw clean, bloodless regime change but not here?"
Some grim stuff in here. Imagine: your country is a mess. The son of the former leader calls you out into the streets promising victory. You're slaughtered en masse. Then you're told you're going to be liberated from the air. That doesn't happen either. Instead, the bombing just gets worse and worse
Very true!
Great example of how the US military industrial complex is a machine for turning tactical victories into strategic blunders: they thought they were buying missile defense, but they were actually buying a very costly illusion of invulnerability.