Safa Ahmad

observing | views my own

[Hasan Spiker @RealHasanSpiker]

Those who value "dignity" more than truth will end up losing their dignity.
And that just about sums up the problem of modern Muslim social relationships and the modern Muslim family, trapped between customary social conventions and blind modernisation, neither of which is Islam.

[Fred Björn @Jawnmard1]

One day after class, during a spiritual retreat in Turkey I attended in 2013, Shaykh Abdal Hakim patiently lined up behind his students to get some water. When he arrived at the water dispenser, instead of taking a new plastic cup,
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[Ahmed Askary @pashadelics]

This is the whole point. Iran’s leadership actively saw itself as an ideological vanguard and were willing to encourage their role as leaders of a “resistance” to a hegemon, which naturally attracted the hegemon’s ire. Iran’s people and the wider region became hostage to the fantasies of a group of philosophers at the helm of the Iranian Revolution. It didn’t have to go this way. Iran could have chosen eg the Turkiye path, and done much better for it.

[Jonathan AC Brown @JonathanACBrown]

I lived and traveled in Iran for months. In Tehran I lived with the family of a retired bank worker who saw me looking for housing. I roomed with his son for months, ate all my meals with them, and they never accepted any money. Once I was sick and throwing up and they all came into the bathroom and the dad stroked my head while I barfed and told me “Aybi nadare” (no shame, it’s ok). I traveled around most of the country by plane, train, bus, shared taxi, etc. Eventually I stopped booking hotels because I’d always meet people on the train, bus etc who’d insist I stay with them. The family of Iran/Iraq war vets from Yazd who took me to Taft for bbq in the mountains. The taxi driver from Rasht who made a bed for me on the floor of his tiny apartment because all the hotels were full. The only time a police officer talked to me was once to make sure I was ok. I never felt in any danger day or night. The land of Iran is as incredibly diverse as its people. There are mountainous rain forests and desert salt flats. I met among the most liberal and most conservative people there, and everything in between. Everyone was so kind it makes me cry with shame.

[Kasurian @KasurianMag]

How does a civilisation renew itself after catastrophic collapse?

In Syed Naquib Al-Attas & the Rectification of Names, Muhammad Bin Abdul Majid explores the life and work of the Malaysian aristocrat-philosopher, Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, his pursuit of civilisational revival, and the political and intellectual field in which Al-Attas navigated to operationalise his vision.

Al-Attas believed the answer lay not in political power or mass movements, but in language itself. His project was to rectify the very conceptual architecture that sustains thought and culture. Drawing on a genealogy spanning a millennium and an education that bridged traditional Islamic sciences with Western classics, Al-Attas understood that without precise vocabulary and the reinstatement of the proper hierarchy of knowledge, Muslims would remain trapped in confusion and paralysis.

So, in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, Al-Attas built the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (or ISTAC), a Moorish-style institute of education dedicated to restoring Islam's intellectual centre.

However, Al-Attas faced resistance. Intellectual competitors sought to "Islamise" textbooks rather than rebuild the foundations of thought through language itself. Then, political catastrophe intervened, with consequences that continue to cast their shadow over Malaysia to this day.

Yet Al-Attas' project shows one possible path forward for any serious attempt at civilisational revival in the 21st century, beginning with a 'Rectification of Names'.

Read more on Kasurian. Link below:

[Andrew Rose @__drewface]

do not grind, my friends, but partake! enjoy! gather for communion with the computer!

if you are grinding, you are doing yourself and your company a disservice right now. It is a time for creativity, wonder, joy, expression.

[Vince Buffalo @vsbuffalo]

Claude Code is amazing now — but it’s (unsurprisingly) no replacement for careful, skeptical scientific work. It helped me code a stats method up 10x faster; the performance was great.

But I didn’t buy it, CIs looked too narrow. Turns out it initialized using the true state 😱

[Julius . D @D_Julius0]

I’m not crying… you’re crying 😢

[Tina K. @TheEsteemedFox]

Remember this pensive 12th century Chinese general's poem the next time someone shits on small talk

[Nitya @nityasnotes]

You can understand more about how learning works from Ravi Vakils page for PhD students than 90% of writing on this topic

[Safa Ahmad @birdseye47]

@winnie4prez Sh Nizami runs his cool annual Quran program in Ramadan and is very accessible

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Something I told 13 yo: Neuroticism and imagination are closely related, if not identical. So if you're going to be imaginative you also have to be disciplined, in order to prevent bad kinds of imagination from bringing you down.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

All of nature is like this; we just have to appreciate it as such.

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

"It is one of the great experiences of our life to have you as a friend" -- Noam Chomsky to Jeffrey Epstein.

[Safa Ahmad @birdseye47]

Useful addendum, but Brad challenges the whole “not wanting children” sentiment regularly as well. I don’t know if it’s something one can decide (truly independently of cultural influence). Maybe you can.

[Anna Stansbury @annastansbury]

This is a perfect example of how to mislead with data.

A lot of 35y/o women who are childless don't want kids.

Among heterosexual couples trying for kids:
~80% of women aged 30-31 are pregnant within 12 mo ~60-70% of women aged 36-37 are pregnant within 12mo

[Anna Stansbury @annastansbury]

This is a perfect example of how to mislead with data.

A lot of 35y/o women who are childless don't want kids.

Among heterosexual couples trying for kids:
~80% of women aged 30-31 are pregnant within 12 mo ~60-70% of women aged 36-37 are pregnant within 12mo

[Jack Scannell @JackScannell13]

At last I understand why it costs 100x more to discover a drug today than in 1950. Our computers have slowed down.

[Basho Society @BashoSociety]

We read to survive the world as it is.
We read to imagine the world as it could be.
We read because language opens a house where the self returns to wholeness.

[Patrick Heizer @PatrickHeizer]

A new phase 3 trial showed that lung cancer patients who were treated with an immunotherapy in the morning had better overall survival than those who were treated in the afternoon.

Your immune system has a circadian rhythm.