AA

[Henry Winter @henrywinter]

If VAR had gone any further back in that Egyptian move Tutankhamun would be involved. How far do you go back? Probably right decision but what a pity, what a goal that would have been. 80 yards, majestic move, precise passing, would have been one of the goals of the tournament,

[AA @ahsanaawan]

@BWildeMTL Thanks Brian for your incisive insights throughout the season.

[leftpain @left_plain]

The literal first Red Guard (Zhang Chengzhi), writing in support of Gaza Solidarity Encampments in 2024, now available in English. Couldn't ask for a finer pedigree.
https://t.co/yYYNfNkJsj

[Dimi Reider | dimireider.substack.com @reider]

Gotta say, did not have "Greece sends warships to defend island from Persian attacks" on my bingo card for this millennium, yet here we are.

[Reuters @Reuters]

Officers from Thailand’s Metropolitan Police Bureau went undercover as a lion dance crew in order to catch a wanted burglar who had managed to evade arrest several times before

[Jonathan Head @pakhead]

Interesting perspective on. The Thai People’s Party’s challenges after its disappointing election performance. https://t.co/oEbvHvPrZX

[iffi @iffiViews]

Lahore 35 years ago when kite making was a proper industry

[Ali Minai @barbarikon]

During our recent visit to Lahore, my wife and I also visited the Lahore Museum. Shortly after entering and as we were debating where to start, we were approached by a youngish woman with a badge, informing us that she was a government appointed guide and asking if we wanted her to show us around. We agreed, and she gave us a tour of four of the rooms. She was very articulate (mostly in English), and though she made some glaring errors in history, we were extremely - and I mean extremely - impressed by her thorough knowledge of Buddhism, Hinduism, and the life of the Buddha. She was detailed and accurate, and genuinely excited about the subjects. I wondered briefly if she might be Hindu herself, but her name (which I can’t recall now) was very Islamic. What impressed me especially was that, as she went over the artifacts from the Indus Valley Civilization, Taxila, and the Gandhara art masterpieces, she always spoke in the first person plural, explaining what “we” were doing and making at various points in history. This explicit owning up to the obviously deep roots of contemporary Pakistani culture in thousands of years of continuous history is truly refreshing.

The more we learn - through archaeology, genetics, and historiography - the clearer it becomes that the primary story of civilization in this northwestern region of the Subcontinent is one of continuity, not fracture. Conquerors, religions, and natural calamities have come and gone, but the people and their ways have endured, absorbing the shocks, borrowing ideas and behaviors, evolving gradually as cultures are wont to do. There’s no need to look for where the Indus Valley people, or the Scythians, the Huns, the Greeks, the Buddhists, or any other historical people of the region went. We are still here. Ideological Pakistanis have manufactured a story of Arab, Persian, and Central Asian Muslims creating a brand new culture that found its apotheosis in the creation of Pakistan. Right-wing Indians have concocted a story of aliens invading and stealing parts of sacred Mother India. Both stories - which are really the same story - are nonsense. India - especially the northwest - has seen countless influxes, migrations, and invasions throughout history and earlier. What we have today is an intricate mosaic wrought by all this flux. Looking at a brief moment in this ongoing change and declaring it to be essential is ahistorical, dumb, and dangerous. If the history of the region has taught us anything, it is that borders and identities are transitory, the people are permanent.

[AA @ahsanaawan]

@HabsOnReddit Steve Bégin

[rants @rantspakistani]

who could have thought that pak army will be doing their real job on 9th May anniversary??

[Federico Italiano @FedeItaliano76]

Pyramids of Giza as captured by Egyptian photographer Karim Amr

[Ami Dar @AmiDar]

It’s very rare for a celebrity to speak at length about a complicated situation in another country and get it right. Javier Bardem does it here, and I hope you have a few minutes to listen to this. The Spanish is beautiful and the translation is good.

[Stephen Walt @stephenWalt]

This is pretty simple. If you don't want someone to do something, you don't give them the means to do it. One must therefore conclude the US government does not object to what Israel has been doing for the past year.

[AA @ahsanaawan]

@TheBigPharaoh Pakistan has plenty of Hindu and Sikh temples and has preserved significant Buddhist heritage sites.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is without a doubt one of the most important pieces of reporting on Gaza, and by far one of the most disturbing: https://t.co/C8ahv3cpbx

All by Israeli journalist @yuval_abraham based on whistleblower accounts from within the IDF and intelligence agencies.

Israel has developed an AI called "Lavender" to generate kill lists, with almost no human verification to double check the targets selected by the machine: only a a “rubber stamp” check of about “20 seconds” just to make sure the AI target is male.

Moreover, the Israeli army "systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity". In fact Israel developed another automated system called “Where’s Daddy?” used "specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences" 🤮

One of the intelligence officers who spoke to Abraham is quoted in the article: “We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity. On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”

In fact the article reveals a ratio, I think for the first time: "according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians... The sources added that, in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander."

A ratio of 20 civilians killed for one target works out to about 95% civilian deaths.

Please do read the whole article as it describes in details how the whole process works with the Lavender AI. It's industrialized extermination the likes of which we haven't seen since... you know when.

[Secunder Kermani @SecKermani]

Horrendous

Sources to Haaretz:

3 separate Israeli strikes on the World Central Kitchen convoy

Survivors fled their vehicle after being targeted, only to be struck again in another car - then in another

They even managed to alert colleagues they were hit but all were killed

[AA @ahsanaawan]

@faraz_lhr Ragip’s tweet is misleading. The land is not being sold. Emiratis will invest and develop a tourist hub along the Mediterranean coast which is currently a scattering of fancy housing compounds only populated during summer. https://t.co/rmu5R8c8cI

[Marcel Münch @_mm85]

Chinese long-term thinking demonstrated.

Like when they planted the seeds of the EV industry in 2010 and no one took note but everyone else thought its enough to start to compete in 2020.

Wild.

😂

[Mohammed Hanif @mohammedhanif]

In protest, returning my Sitara e Imtiaz, given to me by a state that continues to abduct and torture Baloch citizens. Journalists of my generation have seen @SammiBaluch and @MahrangBaloch_ grow up in protest camps. Ashamed to witness a new generation being denied basic dignity.

[Democracy Now! @democracynow]

“You can’t behold evil and then return and not speak on it.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks about how an experience in Palestine illuminated the connections between the African American and Palestinian liberation struggles, and the moral responsibility to speak out.