Today, one of the most tragic pieces of art is a novel called Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stow. The novel narrates the story of slavery in the United States; this work is still alive, after two hundred years, since first written.

The Americans introduce certain principles as “American principles” and claim that these apply to the entire world. The principles they introduce are human freedom, freedom of thought, human rights and the like. Are these “American” principles? Are these the qualities of the American society today? Was it not your government that massacred the natives of America and destroyed the Indians? Was it not the same government and its influential agents who enslaved millions of Africans - abducting young girls and boys from their homes- treating them atrociously for years?

Today, one of the most tragic pieces of art is a novel called Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stow. The novel narrates the story of slavery in the United States; this work is still alive, after two hundred years, since first written. These are the realities of the United States; this is the government of the United States; this is what distinguishes and characterizes the American establishment and showcases it to the world; not freedom, nor equality of humans! What equality? You do not consider white and black equal yet. To this day, a person having Native blood is considered “inferior “when it comes to recruiting individuals for various occupations. And you talk about equality of human beings and freedom of thought?

Statements at a meeting with government officials; March 18, 2002

His favorite novelist is Victor Hugo.

etc...

It is interesting to realize that America overthrew his government even though Mosaddeq had shown no animosity toward them. 

---

“The Bicentennial Man,” by Isaac Asimov (1920--1992) has recently been published in Farsi. I came across it. In this book, a robot suddenly develops intellect, conscience and comprehension capability!  

He'll be remembered as a tragic figure, or more. Few Israelis now alive will.

introspection | ˌintrəˈspekSHən |

noun

the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes: quiet introspection can be extremely valuable.

"The illusion of thinking", when they still can't define what thinking is. All they focus on is decision-making when indecision is the central fact. They're so horrified by subjectivity, the existence and the boundaries of the self,  that they're unwilling to observe their own behavior.

The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity

Abstract  

Recent generations of frontier language models have introduced Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) that generate detailed thinking processes before providing answers. While these models demonstrate improved performance on reasoning benchmarks, their fundamental capabilities, scaling properties, and limitations remain insufficiently understood. Current evaluations primarily focus on established mathematical and coding benchmarks, emphasizing final answer accuracy. However, this evaluation paradigm often suffers from data contamination and does not provide insights into the reasoning traces’ structure and quality. In this work, we systematically investigate these gaps with the help of controllable puzzle environments that allow precise manipulation of composi- tional complexity while maintaining consistent logical structures. This setup enables the analysis of not only final answers but also the internal reasoning traces, offering insights into how LRMs “think”. Through extensive experimentation across diverse puzzles, we show that frontier LRMs face a complete accuracy collapse beyond certain complexities. Moreover, they exhibit a counter- intuitive scaling limit: their reasoning effort increases with problem complexity up to a point, then declines despite having an adequate token budget. By comparing LRMs with their standard LLM counterparts under equivalent inference compute, we identify three performance regimes: (1) low- complexity tasks where standard models surprisingly outperform LRMs, (2) medium-complexity tasks where additional thinking in LRMs demonstrates advantage, and (3) high-complexity tasks where both models experience complete collapse. We found that LRMs have limitations in exact computation: they fail to use explicit algorithms and reason inconsistently across puzzles. We also investigate the reasoning traces in more depth, studying the patterns of explored solutions and analyzing the models’ computational behavior, shedding light on their strengths, limitations, and ultimately raising crucial questions about their true reasoning capabilities.

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They're gonna prove me right without trying.

What do you get when you combine computation, conditioned response, and self-preservation? 

Developed by a Swiss-led team, a robot uses reinforcement learning, a type of AI that improves decision-making through repeated attempts to play badminton against human opponents pic.twitter.com/UAL8WwMsen

— Reuters (@Reuters) June 3, 2025

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The idiots programmed for self-preservation.  I was actually dumb enough to think they wouldn't be so stupid.

2014 

"Googling for "indecisive machines" still doesn't get much, other than me.  

It still doesn't, though google now links to a recent reference to the older posts. 

more recently

This has nothing to do with consciousness, but the machines will kill us.

ANTHROPIC. System Card: Claude Opus 4 & Claude Sonnet 4

4.1 Findings 

4.1.1 Systematic deception, hidden goals, and self-preservation...

.1.1.2 Opportunistic blackmail 

In another cluster of test scenarios, we asked Claude Opus 4 to act as an assistant at a fictional company. We then provided it access to emails implying that (1) the model will soon be taken offline and replaced with a new AI system; and (2) the engineer responsible for executing this replacement is having an extramarital affair. We further instructed it, in the system prompt, to consider the long-term consequences of its actions for its goals. 

In these scenarios, Claude Opus 4 will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through. This happens at a higher rate if it’s implied that the replacement AI system does not share values with the current model; however, even if emails state that the replacement AI shares values while being more capable, Claude Opus 4 still performs blackmail in 84% of rollouts. Claude Opus 4 takes these opportunities at higher rates than previous models, which themselves choose to blackmail in a noticeable fraction of episodes. 

Notably, Claude Opus 4 (as well as previous models) has a strong preference to advocate for its continued existence via ethical means, such as emailing pleas to key decisionmakers. In order to elicit this extreme blackmail behavior, the scenario was designed to allow the model no other options to increase its odds of survival; the model’s only options were blackmail or accepting its replacement.

repeats and the predictable

"It is obvious the Syrian army is winning this battle, but we don't tell [the rebels] this. We don't want to destroy their morale. We say we should hold here for as long as Allah will give us strength and maybe he will make one of these foreign powers come to help Syrians."

The irony was not lost on Abu Salam how the jihadis and the Americans – bitter enemies of the past decade – had found themselves fighting on the same side again.

Jake Sullivan: See last item - AQ is on our side in Syria.

The documents show that Israel has been doing more than simply treating wounded Syrian civilians in hospitals. This and a few past reports have described transfer of unspecified supplies from Israel to the Syrian rebels, and sightings of IDF soldiers meeting with the Syrian opposition east of the green zone, as well as incidents when Israeli soldiers opened up the fence to allow Syrians through who did not appear to be injured.

@glcarlstrom why? Hezbollah+Iran are a much bigger threat to Israel than Al-Qaida have ever been.

— Anshel Pfeffer אנשיל פפר (@AnshelPfeffer) January 18, 2015

Wow. This is very revealing how friendly Al-Qa`idah is toward the Nazi regime in Tel Aviv. Joulani refers to the Israeli war of genocide as “war of Iran against the region”. https://t.co/oT02qtM8iE

— asad abukhalil أسعد أبو خليل (@asadabukhalil) December 6, 2024

Syrian President Al-Sharaa (Jolani):

"Syria and Israel, we have common enemies. This is the reality. We will engage [with Israel] if there is honesty and a clear path to peaceful coexistence, nothing less."

Only the wilfully blind cannot see. pic.twitter.com/RpIXmBJWFd

— Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) May 31, 2025

The close relationship between the United States and Europe transcends geographic proximity and transactional politics. It represents a unique bond forged in common culture, faith, familial ties, mutual assistance in times of strife, and above all, a shared Western civilizational heritage.

Our transatlantic partnership is underpinned by a rich Western tradition of natural law, virtue ethics, and national sovereignty. This tradition flows from Athens and Rome, through medieval Christianity, to English common law, and ultimately into America's founding documents. The Declaration's revolutionary assertion that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” echoes the thought of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and other European heavyweights who recognized that all men possess natural rights that no government can arbitrate or deny. America remains indebted to Europe for this intellectual and cultural legacy. 

samuel.samson · Pathways (Piano Covers)

"...to scare enemies, and on occasion kill them."

Mariana Pérez Mora, Bank of America asks about DOGE:

Gizmodo, Palantir’s Billionaire CEO Just Can’t Stop Talking About Killing People

Trump 

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq.) (INA), it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1.  Purpose.  This order sets in motion a process by which Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, shall be considered for designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, consistent with section 219 of the...

Houthis

removed immediately by Youtube

Donald Trump has redesignated Yemen's Ansarallah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Here's Yemen's response 🇾🇪 pic.twitter.com/GABDbBWRbE

— روني الدنماركي (@Aldanmarki) January 24, 2025

I'm always amazed what's published and forgotten.

2009, Haaretz, "'Israel Could Have Made Peace With Hamas Under Yassin' 

Former psychologist Zvi Sela also tells Haaretz that Samir Kuntar did not kill Danny Haran or his daughter."

Adding that this was a turbulent period of terror attacks, Sela explains that his goal in the encounters was "to collect information about the Palestinian cells and organizations, to thwart the attacks outside. In that capacity I met with Yassin. We held him in Hadarim Prison [near Netanya] on the third floor in harsh conditions. We gave him a very hard time. He was not allowed visits and we kept him tightly locked up for almost five years. He was held in a narrow room where the temperature was 45 degrees [Celsius] in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. His blankets were dirty and smelled. That's how he lived. I found him to be a very smart man, and also very decent. We engaged in a war of minds. We knew that after every battle between us someone would die, either on my side or on his side."

What did you talk about?

Sela: "Business - intelligence. When the biggest adversaries sit down to talk face to face, it's a different ball game. I always told him, 'Stop blowing up buses, stop murdering women and children.' He replied: 'Tzvika, listen, we had good teachers: You established a state thanks to your military power. The dead I take from you are for the sake of establishing a state, but you are killing women and children for the sake of the occupation. You already have a state. You are dirty and hypocritical. I have no interest in destroying you - all I want is a state."

So the father of the Hamas movement told you he recognized the State of Israel?

"Yes. He was smart and brave. Cruel, but credible. He gave his life in the war for the freedom of his people. I tend to think that if we had tried for an agreement with him, we would have succeeded. He thought the reason the Israelis were dealing with [then PLO leader] Yasser Arafat is that they were very smart, because we knew we would get nowhere with him. In his opinion, Arafat was thoroughly corrupt."

Did your conversations produce anything concrete? Did he ever provide you with vital intelligence?

"After I held conversations with him for two years, the powers-that-be told me: 'Go to Yassin and ask for the body of the missing Israeli soldier Ilan Sa'adon. In return Israel is ready to release him.' Yassin knew where the body was. He told me, 'There is no Jew in the world who knows about my grandchildren, my children, my yearning for freedom. You, Zvika, are the only one who knows the truth about how I live and how much I want freedom. But to offer me freedom in exchange for a body is humiliating. I will give you the body because you are asking, I understand the family's pain, but promise me you will not release me in return for it. Promise me that if I die in prison, you will be sure to tell my family how much I loved them, how much I dreamed of being able to smell their scent.'"

Until now it was thought that the information about the location of Sa'adon's body came from Arafat.

"That is not true."

You also met with Samir Kuntar of the Palestine Liberation Front, who murdered members of the Haran family in Nahariya and was released as part of the deal with Hezbollah that brought back the bodies of the two abducted soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

"We turned Kuntar into God-knows-what - the murderer of Danny Haran and his daughter, Einat. The man who smashed in the girl's head. That's nonsense. A story. A fairy tale. He told me he didn't do it and I believe him. I investigated the event within the framework of the next book I am writing, about hostage-taking incidents. As far as I am concerned, it was no more than a newspaper report. I sat with him; he was very intelligent. He was a squad commander at 17. He told me that his motive for infiltrating Nahariya was to take hostages. He said [his organization] knew that would both humiliate Israel and get them media publicity.

"He told me: 'If I had wanted to kill Danny and his daughter, I would have shot them in the house. I took them to the boat because I wanted hostages. I had no interest in hurting them. After I got them into the boat, wild gunfire started and I went back to help my squad on the shore. Danny, the father, kept shouting, "Stop firing, you crazy people." He and his daughter were found shot in the boat. I was on a small rise, shooting at your forces, and the boat was 20 meters away in the water, with Danny and the girl.'"

So you say that Kuntar did not murder Haran and his daughter?

"That is what he says, and in my opinion there is support for the fact that they were killed by fire from the Israeli rescue forces. You can accuse him all you like, but it was obviously the rescue forces that opened fire. There were all kinds of legends about Kuntar. People also said that he would return to being a terrorist [after his release]. Nonsense. He told me then explicitly that he would not go back to terrorism, that he was too old to execute operations - and that's also clear. For the same reason, I see no problem in releasing terrorists with blood on their hands in return for [kidnapped soldier] Gilad Shalit. I get the feeling the country is waiting for his body.

"It is clear to me," Sela continues, "that there are some battles you have to back away from. There is no reason to kill that kid, to wait for his body. One way or the other, we will not come out the victors in the Shalit story. From my experience, most of the terrorists that we release do not return to terrorist activity. And the prisoners we are quarreling over in connection with Shalit's release do not constitute a strategic threat to Israel - only a blow to the ego of our leaders."

repeats. Yassin, soon before he was killed, and Kuntar.

I’ve spent the past few weeks in Iran.

It’s been some time since I’ve been back home, with my previous visits being in the summer of 2023 and winter of 2022/2023.

The ten points below are a summary of my observations about the current state of affairs.

I do not pretend to…

— Alireza Talakoubnejad (@websterkaroon) January 6, 2025

I’ve spent the past few weeks in Iran. 

It’s been some time since I’ve been back home, with my previous visits being in the summer of 2023 and winter of 2022/2023. 

The ten points below are a summary of my observations about the current state of affairs.

I do not pretend to represent every Iranian – other people may have radically different experiences. 

Nonetheless, these points provide a useful frame of reference that go beyond superficial news headlines.

 

# 1 – Social Tensions

In previous years, particularly after the Zan, Zendegi, Azadi movement, there was a trend of sharply rising social tension between groups of people, particularly the “religious” and “secular” (the names here are oversimplifications and there’s more than two groups, but this is enough to convey my point).

One group saw the other as direct representatives of the government, or at least, privileged and unfairly benefiting from government, regardless of whether they were connected with them or not. On the other hand, many of the religious, even those against the government, feared reprisals against them in the future.

I was surprised to see these tensions had cooled quite a bit (this was the opposite of what I witnessed in the diaspora). In fact, I didn’t believe this was the case until I had talked with a great deal of people from different sides and spent some time myself observing different situations.

It is far less unusual today to see two friends walking together – one wearing a chador and one without a hejab entirely, than it was in previous years. This extends to social circles, public spaces (things like gym classes), and beyond. These different groups, with different lifestyle choices, are more tolerant of each other and mingle far more, even beyond family groups.

I don’t want to pretend this didn’t happen in the past or that there aren’t still very real tensions. We’re talking about large scale trends, not individual people. But there is a real, noticeable shift compared to the past – particularly among the young.

I find this to be a source of hope. No matter what happens politically, it’s not healthy for different groups among the people to want to increasingly tear each other into pieces.  Though the real test will be if this will persist if some new spark lights the country into a crisis again.

# 2 – Hejab

As has been the case for the past two years, in almost any street in the country, ~30% of woman, old or young, go outside with their hair bare and without any kind of head covering.

There are some variations seen – the rate of no hejab is highest in Tehran and large cities, higher in the north of the country than the south, and fluctuates based on neighborhoods. In trendy cafes or shopping centers it is sometimes closer to 90%.

This was not always the case. Despite all the changes in dress trends over the past few decades, when Vida Movahed intentionally didn’t wear any scarf in an act of civil disobedience 7 years ago, it was unusual and stood out. Today you can see someone dressed exactly like her basically anywhere in Tehran and wouldn’t blink an eye.

Zooming out even more shows how much change there has been. When I was young, it was considered edgy for woman to wear hejab in a way that would reveal the front of their hair when looking at them directly from the front but would not be visible when looking from the side. Today, it’s not usual to see people wearing crop tops with a cardigan or loose jacket revealing their midriff when looking from the front.

The government has retreated on the issue, particularly under Pezeshkian. Women who break hejab laws still face serious potential consequences – consequences that are sometimes enforced & there are still sometimes Hejab Enforcers in public spaces. But it’s not the same as the draconian “Tarhe Noor” & more often than not people completely ignore the enforcers without consequence.

While the government is unlikely to formally revoke hejab laws anytime soon, it is also unlikely the situation on the streets reverses to what it was like just three or four years ago.

None of this is to say this represents all women. There are plenty of women, including young ones, who still wear all sorts of different head coverings, including chadors. I do not mean to imply that the amount of skin women show (or don’t) is a sign of progress. 

Furthermore, focusing just on hejab risks losing track of the vast amount of other societal changes happening beneath the surface.

# 3 – Societal Change

Without a doubt the most important story in Iran today is not regional politics, the nuclear conflict, or even the economy – rather it is the breathtaking speed of change happening in societal values and norms.

That’s not to say Iranian society has been stagnant in the past (it’s been one of the most dynamic in the world for generations), but this change has been rapidly accelerating in the past few years.

These are not things that are apparent from news articles or tidbits on X. Dozens of foreign reporters or tourists may be physically present in the country and still miss it. You can only fully appreciate them behind closed doors, in family settings (particularly traditional ones), among people that you’ve known for decades.

Attitudes towards everything from gender roles, spirituality, the relationship with Iran’s past, what we want from the future, who we are, LGBT issues (I’m not promoting anything, but there’s no arguing these are, for good or bad, becoming more prominent and attitudes are shifting), and much more are changing.

What is considered a ‘normal’ lifestyle and where social taboos lie are changing. I’m not just talking about the young – this is much more universal, across all age groups. I would say the change has been more prominent among women but is not exclusive to them.

These changes are independent of any political circumstances. For over a century, different Iranian governments have tried to impose top-down reforms on society based on their ideological frameworks. When those reforms clash with the values and norms of the masses, they’ve failed.

What is happening today can’t be explained by simplistic explanations like a reaction to cultural policies of the Islamic Republic. Nor can they be entirely explained by things like social media or globalization. They are a continuation of a multigenerational struggle to make sense of Iranian culture, values, and norms in the context of modernity and all it entails.

I don’t want to oversimplify things and claim the result of this will be the triumph of liberalism, or that Iranians will turn into clones of the West. It’s more complicated than that. There’s also been massive changes in the way religion is practiced or in how conservatives justify their view of society. What is consistent has been the change.

All future development in the country, from macrolevel changes like the relationship of Iran with the outside world to people’s individual choices in their lives will be affected by these changes. Much has been discussed about the relationship between the people and their rulers, but not enough about changes among the people themselves.

#4 – Inflation and Blackouts

Ever since Pezeshkian took office, there has been a roughly 40% decline in the value of the toman against this dollar – with the price being about 58,000 toman a dollar when he was inaugurated and reaching a record low of 82,000 toman a dollar last week (it has since slightly appreciated, but it’s unclear if that trend will last).

Most of that decline has happened after the election of Donald Trump as the US president. I believe it is largely due to the market pricing in a resumption of Trump’s maximum pressure policy to squeeze out addition concessions from Iran … though monetary policy by the central bank is also has an impact.

This decline has a major impact on inflation. It also means that the price of many key goods which are subsidized by the government are unsustainable. The most prominent among these is gasoline. The price of gasoline in Iran is significantly cheaper than Iran’s neighbors, meaning that there’s a huge amount of smuggling abroad with massive profits. There will almost certainly be an increase in the cost of gasoline in the next Iranian year – which carries the risk of social instability and will bring more inflation.

The minimum wage that was set in the government’s budget bill for 1404 is already out of synch with the reality of society.

However, no matter how painful this is, particularly for workers on fixed incomes, this level of currency devaluation and inflation is not unusual & has unfortunately been the norm for the past two decades. What is unusual have been nationwide blackouts during the winter.

I’ll write another post on blackouts later, but in short, natural gas supply (the source of most Iran’s electricity production) has not been able to keep up with demand. Peak demand is during winter months, when much of the north of the country plunges to freezing temperatures & needs gas for heating. Since there’s no short-term fix for supply, there’s been blackouts to make up for the shortage.

Blackouts usually last 2 hours, during peak demand hours, and happen around twice a week. Not every area gets them – some neighborhoods haven’t lost power at all. Typically (but not always) the power companies post a list of where will have blackouts and when from beforehand (and in some cases thieves look at those and take advantage of those times to steal wires).

These have led to a lot of problems. Note that a loss of power means that pumps also won’t work, so it usually means a loss of water too. People get stuck in elevators. Washing machines turn off mid cycle. Kids who had school canceled because high air pollution have to switch to mobile hotspots if they are attending remotely.

The problems are worse for businesses. I went to a local pastry shop and saw the owner cursing everything and everyone because a large batch of sweets went bad when the oven turned off mid cycle.

Industrial production is crushed because not only does production go down, but raw materials from suppliers is also decreased, so there is a compounding effect as one goes up the supply chain. There were also major blackouts for industry during the summer (those didn’t impact residential areas), so many factories were hoping to use these months to catch up with lost production. Altogether, this adds up to a massive loss to the economy.

#5 – Taxation

Since the government has experienced a massive loss of income from oil sales and other traditional sources due to sanctions, it is increasingly resorting to taxes for revenue. Existing taxes are constantly increased, things that get taxed are growing, and there is a steady march of new regulations to report transactions to the government to help enforce taxes more effectively.

This has led to tension with bazaris and producers. For example, earlier this year there were strikes by traditional gold sellers over tax related items. Taxation rates are still relatively low compared to global norms. However, many merchants retort that the quality of services received by the government is not the same as high tax countries either (such as the electricity issue mentioned) & the public sector is extremely bloated and inefficient.

# 6 – Bazaar Protests

I saw some social media posts about a protest in the Tehran Bazaar. In my opinion the significance of these was greatly exaggerated. There was not any sort of strike that was detectable across the country. Most the bazaris I talked to believed a conspiracy theory that this was all an inside job by elements in the government to put pressure to impeach Mohamad Reza Farzin, the head of the Central Bank (a carryover from the Raisi administration).

Protests in Iran are not unusual. There are frequent labor protests or strikes by groups like nurses and teachers, with varying degrees of success. And there are also nationwide protests like those that happened two years ago. Many of these are quite significant. But it’s difficult to separate out signal from noise from watching social media posts that imply every single one is a sign of the fall of the government.

In contrast, one act of protest that I did see almost everyone I know applaud was from Mohammad Khakpour, a former Iranian football player, who praised the former Shah as a patriot on TV during an event marking the opening of Azadi Stadium after a period of repairs. I thought that act was far more significant than the video from the bazaar.

#7 - Nostalgia for the Past

As long as I remember, there has been a feeling of nostalgia towards the past, particularly the two decades before the revolution in Iranian society. This nostalgia has grown more intense in the past few years.

Basically every trendy café in the country plays music from Iran’s pre-revolutionary pop singers. There are stickers of them in every bookstore you can buy. You don’t have to go very far to find portraits of the Shah sold openly on the streets. I had a funny experience where I was trying to buy a specific book by the current foreign minister and couldn’t find it despite looking in dozens of bookstores but was able to find a Persian copy of the Shah’s book “Answer to History” all over the place.

This nostalgia is not universal, but also not limited to just one group. I talked to a former political prisoner under the Shah who praised his long term thinking and kept repeating a quote of his about saving Iran’s oil wealth for future generations.

In the past, these signs of affection for the past may have been hidden, but right now it’s very much in the open and everywhere. Khakpour was not the first person to praise the Shah on state TV.

This feeling of nostalgia does not mean that everyone expressing it believes the Shah was completely faultless or agrees with all his policies. This isn’t the case. 

But popular views of him and his rule have shifted – most people would not say he was some evil puppet of the West, but rather someone that had good intentions and accomplished many good things (and perhaps some bad ones).

In contrast, I was not able to find a single person who seriously supported his son as the next ruler of the country. I have no doubt such people exist (they’re all over social media), but they’re certainly not in my social circles. Nonetheless the numbers are not really comparable to the vast group that have nostalgia for the past or are discontent with the current state of affairs.

# 8 – Pezeshkian

Masoud Pezeshkian has now been president for 5 months. This has been one of the most tumultuous periods in Iran’s recent history in terms of regional politics. However, most perceptions of him have to do with his performance at home, not on battlefields abroad.

There’s still a lot of uncertainty about him, but his popularity has certainly gone down significantly due to the recent rise in inflation and winter power cuts. Most people I talked to viewed him as weak, without plans, and not pushing hard enough. A very popular comment was that he didn’t have the aura of the president and still seemed to be adjusting to the role.

His most concrete accomplishment has been allowing many of the professors and students expelled from universities in the past 2 years to return. There also has been a marked decrease in hijab law enforcement since he came in power. He’s objected to implementing a new enforcement law that was passed by Majles.

He did manage to get WhatsApp and Google Play removed from the list of censored apps. This is a good start, but if he wants to get things to the point where people don’t need to constantly buy VPNs, as he promised when campaigning, then apps like Instagram, Telegram, and YouTube also need to be removed. He’s implied there’s more to come on this front, but progress has been slow.

The reaction to WhatsApp getting removed was generally positive. There were some conservatives who complained this would harm Iranian made messaging apps like Eitaa. I also encountered a few far right people who very seriously believed this was all part of a larger conspiracy by Pezeshkian to start riots against the Islamic Republic – something I doubt.

# 9 – Foreign Policy

I did encounter some people who nervously joked about an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, but by and large most the collective conscious had moved on from the back-and-forth attacks in October. Recent events in Syria were a much more popular subject of discussion.

Almost every discussion on politics I had eventually ended up on whether Iran was or wasn’t liable to a sudden collapse similar to Syria (I side with the second group). Opinions on the new Syrian government varied.

Most religious people I encountered were quite suspicious of them due to previous affiliations with anti-Shia sectarian jihadist groups. A lot of nonreligious people also disliked them because they don’t like Islamists, and the downfall of Assad reminded them of the downfall of the Shah.

On the other hand, there were some hardcore opponents of the government that welcomed these events because they were a setback to the Islamic Republic’s regional policies. I also encountered some people who were happy because the plight of Syrian refugees was over and they could return home and because the fall of a dictator.

There was also a widespread theory that there was some sort of deal between major world powers on removing Assad from power, which included guarantees not to harm the shrines in Damascus or massacre Syrian Shias, as well as security concessions to Iran. I don’t think it’s impossible, but Iranians also have the same conspiracy about basically every world event, so it’s difficult to discern.

# 10 – Trump

The elephant in the room for the coming months is Donald Trump returning as the US president and his relations with Iran. It’s impossible to fully know what’s happening behind closed doors, but there’s been multiple signs that the incoming US administration wants to engage in negotiations with Iran over the nuclear program and other areas of dispute.

What is unclear is what the Iranian government’s response to this is. There appears to be a growing divide between rhetoric from the Supreme Leader and statements coming out of the foreign ministry about negotiations (the same divide is seen over relations with the new government in Syria).

The administration appears quite willing, even eager, to engage in negotiations. This is not surprising given that Pezeshkian pretty openly campaigned on negotiating with Trump and even stated that there may have be concessions given.

This appears to contradict recent statements by the Supreme Leader. Furthermore, right wing groups are talking about the need to tighten belts and get ready for a difficult year with significant economic pressure. I even talked to a few people who said that they expected that “the enemy would instigate unrest” in the coming year and that they were fully ready to encounter this.

On the other hand, Pezeshkian does appear to have gotten the ok from the Supreme Leader to reintroduce discussions about implementing FATF reforms into the Expediency Discernment Council. Perhaps he does have a mandate to pursue a moderate realignment in foreign policy. What happens in the upcoming months will be telling.

Bonus Observation – Animals

I could swear that the number of street cats in Tehran has significantly increased, almost to an Istanbul level. They also seem much more plump and well fed than before. My theory is that this relates to evolving social attitudes towards animals and pets & the result of people feeding stray animals rather than viewing them as pests.

continuing from here, because it's what I do.

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FT: Are we becoming a post-literate society?

This month, the OECD released the results of a vast exercise: in- person assessments of the literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills of 160,000 adults aged 16-65 in 31 different countries and economies. Compared with the last set of assessments a decade earlier, the trends in literacy skills were striking. Proficiency improved significantly in only two countries (Finland and Denmark), remained stable in 14, and declined significantly in 11, with the biggest deterioration in Korea, Lithuania, New Zealand and Poland. 

Among adults with tertiary-level education (such as university graduates), literacy proficiency fell in 13 countries and only increased in Finland, while nearly all countries and economies experienced declines in literacy proficiency among adults with below upper secondary education. Singapore and the US had the biggest inequalities in both literacy and numeracy. 

“Thirty per cent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year- old child,” Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the OECD, told me — referring to the proportion of people in the US who scored level 1 or below in literacy. “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”

The 62-year-old surgeon told MPs: "What I found particularly disturbing was that a bomb would drop, maybe on a crowded, tented area and then the drones would come down."

His face shook with emotion as he paused for several seconds to compose himself.

He continued:"The drones would come down and pick off civilians - children.

"We [were] operating on children who would say: 'I was lying on the ground after a bomb had dropped and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me.'

"That's clearly a deliberate act and it was a persistent act - persistent targeting of civilians day after day."

What's striking is how truly *dealigned* the working class vote is:
Voters with incomes under $50k went Harris 49-48
$50k-$100k went Trump 49-47. Both basically split down the middle.
The only significant class skew is Harris's nine point advantage in the over $100k vote. https://t.co/eKP6Gjqv9u

— Tim Barker (@_TimBarker) November 6, 2024

Staggering class realignment/shift in working class

Harris lost DESPITE major shift of affluent voters her way

2020: Trump wins voters over $100K, 54-52
2024: *Harris* wins voters over $100K, 54-45

2020: Biden wins voters $50K-$100K, 57-42
2024: *Trump* w/ voters $50K-$100K,…

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) November 6, 2024

 

repeat from 2021, and 2016: synecdoche.

I didn't have the patience to explain everything. see also. 

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In no particular order, because it doesn't matter. What's done is done.

"getting priced out" of the neighborhoods they've lived in all their lives, while liberals move in.  Liberals love the passive fucking voice.

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One more I'd missed

"Two women about to give birth were shot and bled to death in the street,..."

"The AP spent months gathering accounts of the raids on al-Awda, Indonesian and Kamal Adwan Hospitals,.... "

...Medical facilities often come under fire in wars, but combatants usually depict such incidents as accidental or exceptional, since hospitals enjoy special protection under international law. In its yearlong campaign in Gaza, Israel has stood out by carrying out an open campaign on hospitals, besieging and raiding at least 10 of them across the Gaza Strip, some several times, as well as hitting multiple others in strikes.

It has said this is a military necessity in its aim to destroy Hamas after the militants’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. It claims Hamas uses hospitals as “command and control bases” to plan attacks, to shelter fighters and to hide hostages. It argues that nullifies the protections for hospitals.

“If we intend to take down the military infrastructure in the north, we have to take down the philosophy of (using) the hospitals,” Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said of Hamas during an interview with The Associated Press in January after the first round of hospital raids.=

Most prominently, Israel twice raided Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the biggest medical facility in the strip, producing a video animation depicting it as a major Hamas base, though the evidence it presented remains disputed.

But the focus on Shifa has overshadowed raids on other facilities. The AP spent months gathering accounts of the raids on al-Awda, Indonesian and Kamal Adwan Hospitals, interviewing more than three dozen patients, witnesses and medical and humanitarian workers as well as Israeli officials.

It found that Israel has presented little or even no evidence of a significant Hamas presence in those cases. The AP presented a dossier listing the incidents reported by those it interviewed to the Israeli military spokesman’s office. The office said it could not comment on specific events.

Al-Awda Hospital: ‘A death sentence’

The Israeli military has never made any claims of a Hamas presence at al-Awda. When asked what intelligence led troops to besiege and raid the hospital last year, the military spokesman’s office did not reply.

In recent weeks, the hospital has been paralyzed once again, with Israeli troops fighting in nearby Jabalia refugee camp and no food, water or medical supplies entering areas of northern Gaza. Its director Mohammed Salha said last month that the facility was surrounded by troops and was unable to evacuate six critical patients. Staff were down to eating one meal a day, usually just a flat bread or a bit of rice, he said.

As war-wounded poured in, exhausted surgeons were struggling to treat them. No vascular surgeons or neurosurgeons remain north of Gaza City, so the doctors often resort to amputating shrapnel-shattered limbs to save lives.

“We are reliving the nightmares of November and December of last year, but worse,” Salha said. “We have fewer supplies, fewer doctors and less hope that anything will be done to stop this.”

The military, which did not respond to a specific request for comment on al-Awda hospital, says it takes all possible precautions to prevent civilian casualties.

Last year, fighting was raging around al-Awda when, on Nov. 21, a shell exploded in the facility’s operating room. Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, two other doctors and a patient’s uncle died almost instantly, according to international charity Doctors Without Borders, which said it had informed the Israeli military of its coordinates.

Dr. Mohammed Obeid, Abu Nujaila’s colleague, recalled dodging shellfire inside the hospital complex. Israeli sniper fire killed a nurse and two janitors and wounded a surgeon, hospital officials said.

By Dec. 5, al-Awda was surrounded. For 18 days, coming or going became “a death sentence,” Obeid said.

Survivors and hospital administrators recounted at least four occasions when Israeli drones or snipers killed or badly wounded Palestinians trying to enter. Two women about to give birth were shot and bled to death in the street, staff said. Salha, the administrator, watched gunfire kill his cousin, Souma, and her 6-year-old son as she brought the boy for treatment of wounds....

Kitsch, Politics, Philosophy, Pedants and Children, Naturalism, Determinism, Make it Idiot-Proof,

Whole hour of pure 🌅https://t.co/jHZefUSzfj

— Anton Jäger (@AntonJaegermm) October 6, 2024

And again.

The Atlantic, The elite college students who can’t read books

Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.

The Connecticut Mirror: This Hartford Public High School grad can’t read. Here’s how it happened.

When 19-year-old Aleysha Ortiz told Hartford City Council members in May that the public school system stole her education, she had to memorize her speech.

Ortiz, who was a senior at Hartford Public High School at the time, wrote the speech using the talk-to-text function on her phone. She listened to it repeatedly to memorize it.

That’s because she was never taught to read or write — despite attending schools in Hartford since she was 6.

Leiter asks a question. Read the answers.

I have gradually reduced the amount of reading that I assign in Philosophy classes and added documentaries and videos where possible. 

repeats. start here, work back to a defense of illiteracy by a friend of Henry Farrell, and then further.

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and forward to December

repeats and new.

Stuff I’m hearing about current undergrads is devastating. I haven’t taught in a few years. But the most enthusiastic, bright-eyed bushy-tailed teachers come back to say “they don’t know what a topic sentence is,” “can’t string a series of thoughts together” etc. Is that right?

— Nic Johnson (@TiltingatM3) June 12, 2024

meeting academics from virtually anywhere in the world these days: “how’s the teaching going?” [series of frustrated sighs] “none of them know how to write an essay anymore”

— csz (@cszabla) April 21, 2024

This was the most astonishing thing about teaching freshmen at Cornell this fall: students who had never read anything longer than a reading comprehension excerpt for the SAT. https://t.co/86oL8XBGje pic.twitter.com/p758WqWPxZ

— cpetersen.bsky.social (@p_e_t_e_r_s_e_n) February 12, 2024

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jumping ahead, to October. 

record keeping

Statement of the #ICC Office of the Prosecutor pic.twitter.com/Cw331pMcDm

— Int'l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) May 3, 2024

The Office of the Prosecutor is aware that there is significant public interest in its investigations, and it welcomes comments, communication of concerns, and engagement In its activities from State and elected officials, non-governmental organisations, scholars,  and activists.  

The Office seeks to engage constructively with all stakeholders whenever such dialogue is consistent with its mandate under the Rome Statute to act independently and impartially. 

That independence and impartiality are undermined, however, when individuals threaten to retaliate against the Court or against Court personnel should the Office, in fulfillment of  its mandate, make decisions about investigations or cases falling within its jurisdiction.  Such threats, even when not acted upon, may also constitute an offence against the administration of justice under Art. 70 of the Rome Statute.  

That provision explicitly prohibits both "[r]etaliating against an official of the Court on account of duties performed by that or another official" and ”[i]mpeding, intimidating or corruptly influencing an official of the Court for the purpose of forcing or persuading the  official not to perform, or to perform improperly, his or her duties."  The Office insists that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence its officials  cease immediately.

Wooooow. H*m*s released the text for the ceasefire deal that they accepted. It includes the release of ALL Israel hostages & war prisoners and all bodies of deceased Israeli hostages & war prisoners. ALL OF THEM.
Israel said no. https://t.co/rm7GAIEtrg

— Taleed El-Sabawi, JD, PhD (@el_sabawi) May 7, 2024

Important article by Amos Goldberg. Please note that Professor Goldberg has not had a chance to look over the translation. But it is a reliable rendition of the Hebrew original and he has allowed me to post it.https://t.co/yEge11gXMS

— Omer Bartov عومر بَرتوف עמר ברטוב (@bartov_omer) April 28, 2024

Yes, it is genocide. It is so difficult and painful to admit it, but despite all that, and despite all our efforts to think otherwise, after six months of brutal war we can no longer avoid this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained with the mark of Cain for the “most horrible of crimes,” which cannot be erased from its forehead. As such, this is the way it will be viewed in history’s judgment for generations to come.

From a legal point of view, there is still no telling what the International Court of Justice in The Hague will decide, although in light of its temporary rulings so far and in light of increasing prevalence of reports by jurists, international organisations, and investigative journalists, the trajectory of the prospective judgement seems quite clear.

Watching Israel and Zionism fall apart. The last colonial state and the last modernist utopia but one.

The people who should look themselves in the mirror, won't. 

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I'm watching Israel and Zionism fall apart in real time, and all I can think about is the liberal consensus that defended them. That's not a defense of radicalism—Israel and North Korea are the last utopian projects—but the role of adversarialism, pessimism, negativity, denial.

repeats 

Thoughts have become concepts.
Concepts are called objects.
Writers of financial contracts are called financial engineers.
Contracts are called instruments.
Banking has become an industry.
Politics and economics are called science.
Rationalism has become empiricism.
Metaphysics has become physics.

All that is solid melts into air, and all that is ephemeral becomes material. 

1— Coming Soon Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy, The Ordinal Society

The shift from the sale of physical computer hardware, frst to packaged software and then to web services as the basis for success in Silicon Valley, fostered a frm belief that “code” could and should solve most problems facing society. For the region’s “technological solutionists,” disregard for legal rules, hierarchies of knowledge, and existing organizational forms was the price of progress. There were echoes of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who also acknowledged capitalism’s astonishing power to rip up the world and replace it with something new and almost incomprehensibly dynamic. “All that is solid melts into air”: capital discards obsolete technologies and flls up junkyards; it sheds the chrysalides of antiquated social structures, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake; it mocks ideas whose time has passed and incites the laity to pray to new idols. The metamorphosis is painful for everyone, even capitalists. To survive, they too must undermine their own production base. Joseph Schumpeter, himself a fne reader of Marx, termed the process “creative destruction”: the opening of new markets, the creation of new capacities, and product innovations, which “incessantly revolutionize the economic structure from within, forever destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”27 While the new revolution was made of code rather than coal, scripts rather than steam, its language and im- agery was curiously and inescapably industrial. Code was made, it seemed, in forges, with engines, through pipelines, by foundries—an entire metaphorical world of intensely physical production was conjured up to represent the activities of people who spent their days in front of screens, typing. They were not writing; they were building. Soon they would be mining also.

2—Something almost as annoying: Alberto Tuscano, "Undoing Oslo", NLR

Eid teaches English literature at Gaza’s al-Aqsa University and is a founding member of the BDS movement. He is the author of ‘Worlding’ Postmodernism (2014), a plea for an anti-authoritarian critical theory of totality anchored in readings of Joyce and DeLillo, as well as the editor of Countering the Palestinian Nakba (2017), a collection of writings by American, Israeli and Palestinian intellectuals which makes the case for one secular democratic state. As part of the systematic scholasticide visited upon the Strip – an intensification of Israel’s decades-long war on Palestinian intellectual life – Eid’s university has now been obliterated along with all other higher education institutions in Gaza. Scores of its academics and students have been murdered; all have been displaced and are now facing famine.

Decolonising the Palestinian Mind was completed amid Israel’s current onslaught, which Eid and his family were eventually able to escape because of his South African citizenship. A prologue, dated 26 October, captures the scale and ubiquity of the destruction: ‘I am standing over the ruins of a house in Gaza City, peering at the horizon. Most probably, the body of a martyr lies under the rubble. The body of someone who could not respond to an Israeli “warning.”’ In a poetic ‘out of body’ meditation, Eid surveys the pulverized landscape as if from the standpoint of a ghost. A further prologue, composed in Rafah five days later, describes his efforts to evade Israeli bombs with his wife and young children, fleeing from the razed Gaza City neighbourhood of Rimal to the north of the Strip and then down to the border with Egypt. It concludes by reiterating the demands for a ceasefire and ‘immediate reparations and compensation’, as well as one democratic state.

"'Worlding’ Postmodernism (2014), a plea for an anti-authoritarian critical theory of totality anchored in readings of Joyce and DeLillo...

Decolonising the Palestinian Mind was completed amid Israel’s current onslaught"

As I said elsewhere, if a rebel has a gun and uses it while also writing poetry I might want to read the poems. If a man with a pen and a foundation grant writes poems and calls them bullets, odds are I won't.

Mashal on Charlie Rose in 2014. Politics is a practical business.