Maxwell Chomba

It's not the size of the dog in the fight that matters, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

[Julians Amboko @AmbokoJH]

Former National Treasury CS, Prof. Njuguna Ndung'u, says whereas institutions in Kenya have the capacity to do the right thing, "the current President overruns all the institutions and that is why everybody in those institutions will have to conform, for fear"

[Maxwell Chomba @MaxwellChomba]

@ESPNUK

[Daniel Regha @DanielRegha]

Argentina had won two World Cup (in 1978 and 1986) before Messi's debut, and had won about 14 Copa America titles. It took the national almost 40 years to win another trophy, fourty good years in 2022. Now despite all Messi's accomplishments since his debut, that is, 35 titles in 17 seasons, Messi also won his first major international title in 2021 which was the Copa America, taking 16 years into his career, and almost 17 years to add the World Cup trophy to his collection.

Now during his years of Int'l trophy drought he was heavily criticized even by Argentines, especially after missing the crucial PK in 2016.

Messi lost four international finals back to back, almost quit the team, and had to struggle to win his first Copa America and World Cup, but all of a sudden it was rigged for him? Be serious.

[Maxwell Chomba @MaxwellChomba]

@MrBeast 8,145,567

[Maxwell Chomba @MaxwellChomba]

https://t.co/cWRh0Est46

[Maxwell Chomba @MaxwellChomba]

https://t.co/cLjGP7Vont

[Typical African @Joe__Bassey]

“Instead of buying private jets, invest in building and industry for your community.” - Aliko Dangote

[Ihtesham Ali @ihteshamali]

A Persian scholar finished a single math book in 9th century Baghdad that quietly became the foundation for every line of code running on Earth today.

I started reading about him at midnight and could not believe how many things in my daily life trace back to one man.

His name was Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. The book is called The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing.

Every time you say the word algebra, you are saying his book title. Every time someone says the word algorithm, they are saying his name. Both English words come from him. Both are Latin transliterations of Arabic and of his own identity. The man did not just contribute to mathematics. He named it.

Here is the part almost nobody tells you.

Al-Khwarizmi was born around 780 CE in Khwarazm, in what is now Uzbekistan. He moved to Baghdad and worked at a research institution called the House of Wisdom, which during the Islamic Golden Age was the single most important center of learning on the planet. The caliph al-Mamun hired the best mathematicians, astronomers, and philosophers from across three continents and put them in one building with one job. Translate, study, and produce new knowledge.

Al-Khwarizmi finished his book on algebra around 820 CE. The Arabic title contained the word al-jabr, which referred to one of the two operations he used to solve equations. When the book was translated into Latin in the 12th century, the Latin world did not have a word for what he had built. So they kept his Arabic word. Al-jabr became algebra. The discipline was named after a single Arabic word in the title of a single book by a single man.

The deeper insight is what he actually changed about how humans think.

Before al-Khwarizmi, mathematical problems were solved geometrically. You drew shapes. You measured them. You compared areas. The Greeks had built an entire mathematical tradition on visual proofs and physical constructions. It was beautiful and limited. You could not solve a problem you could not draw.

Al-Khwarizmi did something nobody had done before him at this scale. He said you could solve any problem using abstract symbols and rules. You did not need a shape. You needed a procedure. You moved terms across the equation. You cancelled like terms on both sides. You isolated the unknown. He invented the idea that mathematics is a manipulation of symbols according to rules, not a study of physical figures.

That single shift made everything that came afterward possible. Calculus. Differential equations. Linear algebra. Quantum mechanics. None of it works if math is locked inside geometry. He pulled it out.

The second thing he did is the one that changed how the world counted forever. He took the Hindu numeral system from Indian mathematics, refined it, and wrote a book introducing it to the Arab world. That system included the concept of zero as a placeholder, and a positional notation where the value of a digit depends on its location. Roman numerals could not do complex calculation. Hindu-Arabic numerals could.

When his book on numerals was translated into Latin as Algoritmi de numero Indorum, the word Algoritmi was just the Latin spelling of his own name. Europeans started calling the new method "doing algorism," then "running an algorithm." The word for the most important concept in computer science is literally his name in Latin.

The third thing he did is the part that should haunt anyone who works in tech.

His method of solving problems was systematic. Step one, do this. Step two, check that. Step three, if condition A, then do X, otherwise do Y. He wrote down procedures that could be followed by anyone, anywhere, who knew how to read. The procedure did not depend on intuition or genius. It worked because the steps worked.

That is exactly what an algorithm is. A finite, deterministic procedure for solving a problem. He did not just give us the word. He gave us the entire concept of programming a thousand years before there was anything to program.

When Alan Turing built the first abstract model of computation in 1936, when John von Neumann designed the first stored-program computer in 1945, when every engineer at Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind writes code in 2026, they are working in a paradigm that started with one man in Baghdad twelve centuries ago.

The strangest part is what happens when you walk into any tech office in San Francisco or Bangalore or Lahore today. Engineers say the words algebra and algorithm hundreds of times a day. They do not know whose name they are saying. Almost nobody can spell al-Khwarizmi correctly on the first try.

His original Arabic manuscript is preserved at Oxford. His book on Hindu numerals survives only in Latin translation. The Latin version was the textbook that taught medieval Europe how to count.

The man who built the foundation of the AI revolution did not live to see a calculator. He died around 850 CE, a thousand years before the first electric current was sent through a wire. The civilization he built mathematics for collapsed. The library he wrote in burned. His own grave is unmarked.

But every algorithm running on every machine on Earth right now still answers to his name.

[Earth @earthcurated]

Life is short—live it boldly, love it deeply, and leave no room for regret.

[NASA @NASA]

LIVE: NASA leadership provide countdown status updates about our @NASAArtemis II mission around the Moon. https://t.co/2sKAdIHmTf

[All day Astronomy @forallcurious]

BREAKING🚨: Voyager 1 is reaching the distance of one-light day from Earth, NASA has officially confirmed

[Maxwell Chomba @MaxwellChomba]

https://t.co/CgOYNy4hvT

[Surveyor of Kenya @SurveyorOfKenya]

Kenya has ONLY 180 licensed land surveyors!
But, here’s what most people don’t know; 62 of the 180 are listed as NOT ACTIVE!
That means:
Only 118 surveyors are actively practicing nationwide.

Thread

[Netflix @netflix]

FLOYD MAYWEATHER vs. MANNY PACQUIAO

Two of the greatest icons in boxing history will meet again in the first-ever professional boxing match at Sphere in Las Vegas.

Saturday September 19
LIVE globally only on Netflix
#MayPac2

[Maxwell Chomba @MaxwellChomba]

A pirate should not be able to live without the reputation of a thief.

[Maxwell Chomba @MaxwellChomba]

@ZukuOfficial No Internet and TV on account 192427 kindly check and get back.

[Maxwell Chomba @MaxwellChomba]

https://t.co/SUGAmjpV4L

[Moe @moneyacademyKE]

Only 125 Kenyans have more wealth than the other 43 million Kenyans combined, according to a new report by Oxfam.

[The Age of Disclosure @ageofdisclosure]

Thank you for your support @jaketapper @CNN!

[Troll Football @TrollFootball]

North Korean players were punching Japanese players during their U17 World Cup game 😭