At the heart of resilience is a belief in oneself—yet also a belief in something larger than oneself. Resilient people do not let adversity define them. They move towards a goal beyond themselves, transcending pain and grief by perceiving bad times as a temporary state of affairs
Dear Christopher Nolan,
My name is Herod Priovolos and I want to tell you what #TheOdyssey truly means to me and to generations of Greeks who grew up with Homer’s story.
Homer did not sing of Odysseus simply to entertain us with ships, storms, gods and monsters. He told the story because he understood what war, time, distance and loss can do to the human soul.
Odysseus leaves Ithaca as a king, a husband and a father. He returns twenty years later alone, exhausted and disguised as a beggar, carrying the memory of every companion who never made it home.
The monsters are not merely creatures created for spectacle.
The Cyclops is power without justice. The Sirens are the beautiful voices that tempt a person to abandon their purpose. Circe represents the danger of losing our humanity. Calypso offers Odysseus immortality, but even eternal life becomes a prison when the price is forgetting his wife, his son, his homeland and his own identity.
And Ithaca is not merely an island.
Ithaca is the place that remembers you when the world no longer recognizes your face. It is the home that remains alive inside you after everything else has been taken away. It is Penelope growing older while she waits. It is Telemachus becoming a man without his father. It is Argos surviving long enough to recognize his master one final time.
Odysseus is not great simply because he defeats monsters. He is great because he is proud, frightened, wounded, clever, imperfect and deeply human. He loses his companions, his youth, his name and twenty years of his life, yet he refuses to forget who he is.
When he finally returns, Penelope does not recognize him through strength, glory or appearance. She tests him. Odysseus proves his identity by remembering the bed they built together around the roots of a living olive tree.
That is the heart of The Odyssey.
Not the battles. Not the ships. Not the monsters.
Two people standing before each other after twenty years, asking whether love, memory and identity can survive everything time has done to them.
That is why this poem has survived for almost 3,000 years. Every human being is trying to return to something: a home, a person, a lost part of themselves, or the life they had before the world changed them.
So use Homer’s seas, gods, heroes and monsters. But please understand what you are touching.
The Odyssey was never truly about how far a man could travel.
It was about how much the world could take from him before he stopped being himself, and whether, after losing almost everything, he could still find his way home.
I'm sorry, Real Oviedo, but I don't think you'll be keeping Haissem Hassan for much longer. He's destined for a bigger move. What a footballer. A sensational dribbler with outrageous close control, explosive acceleration, and the ability to eliminate defenders at will. Every time he receives the ball, he looks capable of shifting the momentum of a match with a single action. What a right winger, man. Proper game-breaker. Europe will be watching.
This is the first AI cut.
And it will send shockwaves.
Remember: Jack is one of the greatest founders of all time. He created this platform that we’re all on, and has been early to many technological shifts. And Block was doing very well as a business.
So, for him to cut 40% of headcount in this way is a signal to everyone in tech: get good now. Become indispensable. Work nights and weekends. Learn the AI tools and raise your game. Or you might not make the cut, as an employee or as a company.
I know. That sucks. But capitalism is natural selection. The market is unforgiving, because you are the market. After all, it’s not like you’re buying some random gallon of milk from the store; you’re always buying the best product at the best price.
So too for apps: your customers are always installing the best piece of code they can get. And because AI is going to create new winners, if you aren’t the best in your market, someone may become better with AI. Particularly with the new agentic workflows.
To be clear: Block’s severance is generous by any measure. 20 weeks of pay, six months of health insurance and vested equity, all of that goes far beyond any typical package. Jack did his level best to cushion the disruption. The laid off are a temporarily unfortunate class, as opposed to a permanent underclass.
But had he not leaned into the AI transition, he might have had to lay off more people, slowly, and over time, as faster competitors went after his market share.
How would they do that? Sure, AI isn’t a panacea by any means, but the closer you are to software engineering the more aggressively you need to embrace agentic workflows. The AI companies are already doing that, and places like Stripe, Shopify, Coinbase, and now Block are pushing hard on this area.
There will be overcorrection. But the fundamental technical innovation is real. And you need to either disrupt yourself or get disrupted.
🌀 يمكن يكون دا افضل رسم توضيحي يشرح فكرة ان عمرك ما وقفت في نفس المكان في الكون مرتين-
الرسم بيشرح
لإن الغالبية بتشرح جزء من الصورة وبس
ونقول الأرض بس هي اللي بتلف حوالين الشمس- بس الحقيقة ان دا جزء صغير اوي من الواقع الفلكي-
الشمس نفسها مش واقفة وأكيد الشمس مش شوية نار وواقفة مكانها- لأ لأن
الوصف الصح ان الشمس زي الرصاصة اللي طايرة بأقصى سرعة الشمس بتكون طايره جوا مجرتنا مجرة درب التبانة وبتكون طايرة بسرعة ٥٠٠ ألف ميل في الساعة وطبعا بتكون ساحبة معاها كوكبنا والكواكب بالجاذبية لحتة محدش يعرفها
الرسم دا هو اللي بيوضح الحركة دي:-
الشمس طايرة في المجرة بسرعة فظيعه- الأرض بتلف حواليها وهي بتجري ودا اللي بيخلينا ماشيين في الفضاء بحركة لولبية مش دايرة ثابتة زي ما كنا متخيلين
🎯 يعني كل ثانية إحنا في مكان جديد تماما في الكون مفيش لحظة اتكررت ولا هتتكرر
دا مش نظري لأن العلم أكد الكلام دا من قياسات مركبة Gaia اللي بتحسب حركة الشمس والنجوم بدقة عالية جدا.
الكون كله في حركة وإحنا جوه الرحلة دي
للتوضيح علشان التخيل:-
من اول السنة الميلادية يعني من يوم ميلاد المسيح لحد اليوم ٢٠٢٦- الشمس سحبتنا حوالي ١.٥ سنة ضوئية في الفضاء في مجرتنا
وكمان الشمس بتحتاج ٢٣٠ مليون سنة علشان تقدر تكمل لفة واحدة حوالين المجرة بتاعتنا وطبعا الحركة دي ملهاش نهاية طريق الحركة دي مستمرة طول عمر الشمس.
#الكون #الفلك
ما الذي يمنع الصين الآن من اختطاف الرئيس التايواني والسيطرة على تايوان عسكرياً والخروج في مؤتمر صحفي: سوف نحكمها!
لدى الصين من القدرات الاستخبارية والعسكرية ما يفي الغرض دون شك.
هذا عهد استعمار البلطجة!
Celebrating Excellence! 🎉 A huge shoutout to Mr. Mina Nagy our #StudyUKAlumniAwards Social Action category finalists in the UAE! 🌟 He is an alumnus of BAYES Business School – City University of London. Your achievements inspire us all!
@StudyUKBritish@minanagyz@bayesbschool
في كل حدث هائل تلاقي الأبنودي العظيم رحمه الله في سطر واحد :
" على قد فرحي الشديد على قد خوفي الشديد ، احمل إيماني الأكيد ، يحملني شكي الأكيد ، وقد ما قريب يا بكرة قد ما انت بعيد "
كأنك كتبته النهارده !
الله يرحمك يا عظيم .
#علمتني_الحياة … بأنه لا قيمة للمال إذا لم نجعله في سعادة وخدمة البشر .. ولا قيمة للوقت إذا لم نستثمره في عمل نافع.. ولا قيمة حقيقية للحياة اذا لم نسخرها لبناء إرث يدوم وينفع ويرفع غيرنا …
قيمة كل شيء تعتمد ما نفعله فيه.. حتى الوطن .. قيمة الوطن تعلو وترتفع بأعمالنا وتضحياتنا..
وكلنا مسؤول.. كلنا يستطيع أن يساهم في خلق قيمة أعلى وأسمى لأوطاننا .