Ben Dabiri

I am not here for walnuts. I want the music they make when they hit

[Ben Dabiri @bendabir1]

Put on “Grave of the fireflies” thinking I was about to watch a fun, whimsical Ghibli movie - boy was I wrong…

[Troll Football @TrollFootball]

🚨 VAR team that disallowed Iran's goal

[Lord Bebo @MyLordBebo]

🇮🇷 Iranian super-heavyweight weightlifter, Ali Reza Yousefi sets the world record in the clean and jerk for the 110+ kg category

He lifted 261 kg

After beating the world's record, he showed a T-shirt honoring the "Martyrs of Minab Children" who died after US-Israeli attacks

[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.

[Ben Dabiri @bendabir1]

Iranians tarouf no matter the circumstances

[HatsOff @HatsOffff]

Elderly Iranian man offers fruit to a news crew that came to film his home after it was bombed by the Epstein coalition

[WANA Visuals @wana_visualss]

🇮🇷 Akhavan Historical House in Kashan, Isfahan Province, Iran

Photos by Abolfazl Sadr

[Iran Screenshot @iranscreenshot]

Renowned Iranian composer, Ali Ghamsari and tar virtuoso, announced he will stay at the Damavand Combined Cycle Power Plant.

His plan: Create music there as a symbolic effort to shield Iran's infrastructure from attack.

[Ben Dabiri @bendabir1]

In Iran we have a saying that’s over 400 years old “اصفهان نصف جهان” meaning “Isfahan is half of the world”

half of the world is burning rn at the hands of 2 countries whose combined age is younger than a simple idiomatic expression

[BRICS News @BRICSinfo]

JUST IN: 🇮🇷 Massive explosions in Isfahan, Iran following US-Israeli strikes.

[Bahman Kalbasi @BahmanKalbasi]

Nothing says “help is on the way” like telling the Iranian people you will cut off their electricity.

A nation of 90 million is now stuck between a regime that brutally suppresses them and US/Israel threatening to disrupt their very basic necessities of life.

[Taban @Tabantimes]

This particular Nowruz message from Hayedeh feels especially befitting this year

[Bilal R. Kaafarani @BilalRKaafarani]

I have been deliberately silent on social media for a while. I use all my social media platforms to promote education & make dreams come true for young minds. I rarely post anything about family or politics.
This morning, Israel demolished the building I have an apartment in. It took 22 years of my work here & 20 years of my wife’s work to own this apartment. This madness has to stop.

[Architectural Art (A-A) @4AAAAart]

Jahad Metro Plaza by KA Architecture Studio

Tehran, Iran 🇮🇷

[Itsuki Haru @ItsukiiHaru]

Persian architecture

[Scharo Bajalan @ScharoBajalan]

This is Teheran this morning - Yes, this morning.

Thick black clouds are covering the city - oil and ashes are raining down on the streets.

War is hell.

A PH test of the water in Teheran also shows that the water has become acidic- resulting from the oil and ashes leaking into the fresh water supply of the city.
The corrosion of the cities water and sewage pipes will become a problem for the city; a problem for the generations to come.

[Ben Dabiri @bendabir1]

خدایا، آسمان گریه می‌کنند Iشک های سر زمین مان

[Frederik Pleitgen @fpleitgenCNN]

It is raining oil in Tehran this morning after major airstrikes on oil facilities in the South and West of the Iranian capital. @CNN @cnni

[Living in Tehran (LiT) @LivinginTehran]

People of Iran ❤️

He sells potatoes on the back of his truck. His sign has won many hearts. It reads: "In a state of war, potatoes are free for those in need."
#peopleofiran

[Ben Dabiri @bendabir1]

I get all my news from a fat gay retarded comedian from Long Island

I’m an intellectual

[Tim Dillon @TimJDillon]

Emergency episode out now.

[Archaeology & Art @archaeologyart]

Each of the 24 fluted columns on the structure's exterior represents one of the 24 hours of the day. As the sun moved across the sky, the shadows cast on these columns told the people of that era the time down to the minute + this structure has stood in a seismic zone for 900 years. That's because its accordion-shaped architectural design was an engineering marvel that dampened seismic waves.

[WANA Visuals @wana_visualss]

🇮🇷 Just a few months ago in Iran

🎼 The beautiful music recital given by Iranian Tar artist Ali Ghamsari at the Mollabashi Historical House in Isfahan.