Bsfarouq

NOW OR NEVER . . .

[Dr Joe Abah, OON @DrJoeAbah]

This is hilarious! 😂😂😂

[Ahmed XM @ahmedxm01]

Alhamdulillah.

We successfully renovated 2 schools in Northern Nigeria, restoring 4 blocks of classrooms, toilets and providing new chairs and books for the students.

Every child deserves a safe place to learn and dream. This is more than a renovation it’s an investment in the future.

May Allah accept it and make it beneficial for generations to come. Ameen.

XM Charity Foundation.

[Zeynep Koloğlu @zeynepkologluu]

Doğa mucizeler ve harikalarla doludur. Bir anne balina yavrusunu sütüyle besliyor ve süt su ile karışmıyor.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Dans le manifeste "techno-optimiste" de Marc Andreessen, il y a une phrase qui m'a marqué :

"Our enemies are not bad people – but rather bad ideas."

Nos ennemis ne sont pas des mauvaises personnes. Ce sont des mauvaises idées.

Prenons Jancovici. L'homme est brillant, sincère, travailleur. Il ne se lève pas le matin en se disant qu'il va nuire à l'humanité. Mais l'idée qu'il porte la décroissance, le rationnement, la frugalité érigée en horizon civilisationnel est une idée profondément destructrice. Elle prend des esprits brillants et les transforme en commissaires politiques d'un futur appauvri.

Et le plus fascinant, c'est ce que cette idée fait aux gens qui l'adoptent.

Dans mon entourage, une grosse partie de mes amis est sur cette ligne décroissantiste, avec tout le package qui va avec. L'argent c'est mal mais ils en veulent. Il faut moins prendre l'avion mais ils rêvent de voyager partout. Il faut consommer moins mais ils ne renoncent à rien de ce qu'ils aiment vraiment.

Et tous ont un point commun : ils sont déprimés. L'un d'eux m'a même confié qu'il était sous antidépresseurs.

Ce n'est pas un hasard. C'est mécanique.

Quand tu crois que ton désir de vivre, de créer, de t'élever est moralement suspect tu te détruis de l'intérieur. Tu passes ta vie à t'excuser d'exister. Tu vis dans la dissonance permanente entre ce que ton corps veut (plus, mieux, plus loin) et ce que ton idéologie t'ordonne (moins, sobre, immobile).

D'où ma théorie :

Quand on pense quelque chose de fondamentalement faux décroissance, communisme, extrémisme religieux (de tout ordre) ce n'est qu'une question de temps avant que ça devienne vraiment destructeur.

D'abord pour soi. Puis pour les autres.

Les mauvaises idées tuent. Lentement chez ceux qui y croient, brutalement chez ceux qui les subissent.

C'est pour ça que la bataille des idées n'est pas un luxe d'intellectuel. C'est la bataille la plus importante de notre époque.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Elon Musk avait dit un truc qui m'avait marqué sur l'allocation de ressources. En substance : passé un certain niveau de richesse, l'argent n'est plus de la consommation, c'est de l'allocation de capital.

Cette phrase change tout.

L'économie, dans le fond, c'est juste un problème d'allocation. Tu as des ressources finies et des usages infinis. Qui décide où va quoi ?

Imagine une cour de récré. 100 enfants, des paquets de cartes Pokémon distribués au hasard. Tu laisses faire. Très vite, un ordre émerge. Les bons joueurs accumulent les cartes rares, les collectionneurs trient, les négociateurs trouvent des deals. Personne n'a planifié. Et pourtant chaque carte finit dans les mains de celui qui en tire le plus de valeur. Le système maximise le bonheur total de la cour. C'est ça, la main invisible.

Maintenant fais entrer la maîtresse. Elle trouve ça injuste. Léo a 50 cartes, Tom en a 3. Elle confisque, redistribue, impose l'égalité. Trois effets immédiats. Les bons joueurs arrêtent de jouer, à quoi bon. Les mauvais n'ont plus de raison de progresser, ils auront leur part. Les échanges s'effondrent. La cour est égale, et morte. Elle a maximisé l'égalité, elle a détruit le bonheur.

Le problème de la maîtresse, c'est qu'elle ne peut pas avoir l'information que la cour avait collectivement. C'est le problème du calcul économique de Mises, formulé en 1920. L'URSS a essayé de le résoudre pendant 70 ans avec le Gosplan. Résultat : pénuries, queues, effondrement. Pas parce que les Soviétiques étaient bêtes, parce que le problème est mathématiquement insoluble en mode centralisé.

Quand Musk a 200 milliards, il ne les consomme pas, il les alloue. SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, xAI. Chaque dollar est un pari sur le futur. Et lui a un track record. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX. Il a démontré qu'il sait identifier des problèmes immenses et y allouer des ressources avec un rendement spectaculaire.

L'État aussi a un track record. Hôpitaux qui s'effondrent, éducation qui décline, dette qui explose, services publics qui se dégradent malgré des budgets en hausse constante. Le marché identifie les bons allocateurs, la politique identifie les bons communicants.

Le profit n'est pas une finalité, c'est un signal. Il dit : tu as alloué des ressources rares vers un usage que les gens valorisent suffisamment pour payer. Plus le profit est gros, plus la création de valeur est grande. Quand Starlink est rentable, ça veut dire que des millions de gens dans des zones rurales ont enfin internet. Quand un ministère est en déficit, ça veut dire qu'il consomme plus qu'il ne produit. L'un crée, l'autre détruit, et on appelle ça redistribution.

Dans nos sociétés il y a deux catégories d'acteurs. Les entrepreneurs et les bureaucrates. L'entrepreneur prend un risque personnel pour identifier un problème, mobiliser des ressources, créer une solution. S'il se trompe il perd. S'il a raison, ses clients gagnent, ses employés gagnent, ses fournisseurs gagnent, l'État collecte des impôts. Il est la cellule de base du progrès humain.

Le bureaucrate ne prend aucun risque personnel. Son salaire est garanti. Au mieux il maintient une rente existante. Au pire il la détruit par excès de réglementation, mauvaise allocation forcée, incitations perverses qui découragent ceux qui produisent. Mais dans aucun cas il ne crée.

Regarde les 50 dernières années. iPhone, internet civil, SpaceX, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Stripe, mRNA, ChatGPT. Toutes des inventions privées, portées par des entrepreneurs, financées par du capital risque. Pas un seul ministère n'a inventé quoi que ce soit qui ait changé ta vie au quotidien.

La France est devenue le laboratoire mondial de la dérive bureaucratique. 57% du PIB en dépenses publiques, record absolu. Une administration tentaculaire, une fiscalité qui pénalise la création de richesse. Résultat : décrochage face aux États-Unis, à l'Allemagne, à la Suisse. Fuite des cerveaux. Désindustrialisation. Dette qui explose.

Et le pire c'est que la mauvaise allocation s'auto-renforce. Plus l'État prélève, moins les entrepreneurs créent. Moins ils créent, moins il y a de base fiscale. Plus l'État s'endette et taxe. Boucle de rétroaction négative parfaite. La maîtresse pense qu'elle aide, et chaque année la cour produit moins.

Dans nos sociétés, ce sont les entrepreneurs, toujours, qui font avancer la civilisation. Les bureaucrates au mieux maintiennent une rente, au pire la détruisent. Aucune société n'a jamais progressé en taxant ses créateurs pour subventionner ses gestionnaires.

La question n'est jamais qui a combien. C'est qui alloue le mieux la prochaine unité de ressource pour maximiser le futur de l'humanité. La réponse depuis 200 ans n'a jamais changé. Ce ne sont pas les fonctionnaires.

[X Freeze @XFreeze]

The Sun is by far the biggest source of energy in our solar system

Even here on Earth, the Sun accounts for roughly 100% of all the energy we use - fossil fuels are just ancient sunlight stored in plants, while wind, hydro, biomass, and solar power are all driven by the Sun right now

Beyond Earth, the vast majority of spacecraft, satellites, and future Mars bases run entirely on solar energy

The Sun puts out 3.8 × 10²⁶ watts - more energy in a single second than all of humanity has ever used in its entire history

And just to put it in perspective: the Sun makes up 99.8% of the total mass of our entire solar system. Jupiter is only 0.1%. Everything else (Earth, Mars, asteroids, etc.) is basically miscellaneous

We’re finally learning how to use the only energy source that actually matters ☀️

[Duke Of Nigeria. @xagreat]

Everyone from Taraba have never witnessed good governance, it’s not surprising that you support incompetence.

[Jaynit @jaynitx]

In 2019, MIT professor Patrick Winston gave a legendary 1-hour lecture called “How to Speak.”

It has 18M+ views for a reason.

His frameworks:
• Your ideas are like your children
• The 5-minute rule for job talks
• Why jokes fail at the start

15 lessons on communication:

[Bashir El-Rufai @BashirElRufai]

There is always a tweet —— Part 2 Episode 3.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

I don't think people realize just how extraordinary what we're witnessing with Iran is.

I was arguing with a dear journalist friend of mine yesterday who was telling me that Iran was winning, yes, but only on the strategic level, not tactically.

The type of thing a skinny kid getting stuffed in lockers in highschool tells himself to make himself feel better: "These people will BEG to work for me in ten years. Everyone knows jocks peak in highschool. They'll literally beg." 😏

I think that's precisely wrong, and that's what makes the Iran war different. As of now, Iran is in fact holding its own tactically too.

Think about other U.S. wars of aggression these past few decades. Take Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Serbia, etc. (the list is unfortunately very long). The pattern was roughly always the same with an immense power differential between aggressor and victim. These wars were, by and large, imperial: the empire attempting to crush a much weaker people whose only realistic recourse was guerrilla resistance. And that is when they actually had the will to resist: some - like Libya - barely even bothered, just resigning themselves to their fate (despite being, at the time, the richest country in Africa).

As spectators of these wars, if you had any moral sense, the dominant emotion was a kind of helpless disgust: you were watching a giant stomp through someone else's house.

Sure, the U.S. actually lost many - if not most - of these wars, famously replacing the Taliban with the Taliban or being expelled with their tail between their legs from Vietnam, but the power differential was no less real for it.

It's just that power doesn't always guarantee victory: sometimes the giant can't kill everyone, and eventually tires of trying. But the “victories” won this way were always pyrrhic at best: the people endured, yes, but what they were left with was a country in ashes that takes decades to rebuild. Meanwhile, in the grand scheme of things, the giant walked away with little more than a bruised ego.

Iran is - remarkably - proving to be an entirely different beast: when others were merely surviving a giant, Iran appears to be able to compete with one.

What just happened over the past 48 hours is the best illustration of this. You had the President of the United States issue a formal ultimatum: reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours or we "obliterate" your power grid.

Iran's response was essentially: we dare you, if you do this we'll make all your Gulf allies uninhabitable within a week.

And, as we saw, Trump backed down: pretexting non-existent "VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS" with Iran, he said his ultimatum no-longer applied (or, rather, became 5 days). Adding he now envisaged the Strait of Hormuz being “jointly controlled by me and the Ayatollah.” To the amusement of Iran’s diplomacy (https://t.co/o4JnJJoAGS).

That, folks, is a textbook tactical victory. It is, remarkably, Iran demonstrating in this instance that it had escalation dominance over the United States of America. That is, the ability to credibly threaten consequences so severe that the US - for perhaps the first time since the Cold War - found it preferable to stand down.

That's no skinny kid being locked in a locker dreaming of revenge fantasies. That's the kid grabbing the bully's wrist mid-shove and watching his face change.

And it's not the only tactical victory in this war so far. Take the episode over the Israeli attack on Iran's South Pars gas facility. Iran had warned that if that happened U.S. allies in the region - including Israel - would face a symmetrical response.

And they delivered: famously devastating Qatar's Ras Laffan facility - which produced roughly 20% of global LNG supply - and leading, according to Qatar themselves, to a $20 billion loss of annual revenue for the next 5 years (https://t.co/Myd3QZDbYf).

Not only that but they also managed to hit Israel's Haifa refinery (https://t.co/XvFqewBZPZ), one of the country's most strategic and protected sites.

The result was Trump distancing himself from the South Pars attack, saying that Israel had "violently lashed out" unilaterally and that "NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field." Israel then said it wouldn't strike Iran energy sites anymore (https://t.co/tk0rA5NaWS).

From where I stand, that's another tactical victory. It is, at least, Iran demonstrating that is can fight back **symmetrically** against the U.S. and its allies. Not through asymmetric resistance with IEDs hidden in the roadside or traps hidden in the jungle, but eye for eye, and against some of the most heavily protected sites on the U.S.'s side.

That's qualitatively different from any other adversaries the U.S. has directly fought in recent wars.

There's plenty more, such as the pretty relevant fact that Iran has gained control of the single most strategic energy chokepoint on earth and the U.S. is finding it impossible to break that control.

To the point where Trump has been reduced to publicly begging China - of all countries - for help, which given Trump's ego mustn't have been easy to do. Only to be told no. By China. And by everyone else he asked.

This is the topic of my latest article: how this is, in fact, the first genuine "multipolar war."

First, in the narrow sense: because Iran is revealing itself to be a genuine pole of power - not a superpower, but an actor that cannot be submitted, which is all multipolarity is.

And second, because the war itself is accelerating multipolarity everywhere else: the U.S. has never been more isolated, never looked weaker and its security guarantees have never been more hollow.

In my article I lay out the full scoreboard - military, economic, political - and explain why this war has already changed the world, regardless of how it ends.

Enjoy the read here: https://t.co/FoB8dIKwTb

[Adam Muhammad Mukhtar @EngineerAdam123]

😭 👇

“Barrister, let me tell you something…

A few days ago, my mother called and asked me to help an elderly woman who needed surgery. They needed ₦80,000. I told her things were tight, but she insisted I should handle everything.

I said, ‘Umma, please, let me send ₦10,000 for now,’ but she refused. She said I should pay it all.

Honestly, I had the money at that time, but I had responsibilities. If I gave out ₦80,000, I didn’t know how we would survive. Still, she told me, ‘Allah will repay you.’

My heart became heavy, but I asked for the surgery date. She said it was on the 13th of Ramadan. When the day came, I sent the full ₦80,000.

Wallahi, after sending it, I had nothing left. I didn’t even know how my family would eat till Sallah. I have three children, and there was no talk of Sallah clothes.

Then something happened…

On the 20th of Ramadan, just 7 days later, my boss called me to Abuja for a job. A land deal for his company.

The next day, the transaction was completed… in billions.

Barrister, I walked away with ₦25 million.

Even my boss told me I might be relieved of my duties after Sallah.

The only thing on my mind was what my mother said: ‘Allah will repay you.’

I cried. I’ve never had ₦5 million at once in my life… talk less of ₦25 million.

After Sallah, I’m heading to Ka’abah for Umrah to show gratitude.”

I did the math…

₦80,000 turned into ₦25,000,000.

That’s over 300x.

Obey your parents.

Cc:
@Abdulhadi021

[Hon. Mohammed Bello El-Rufai @B_ELRUFAI]

‘Unless betrayed, our loyalty and fidelity to friends are permanent and pensionable. Unless reconciled, our opposition and enmity to traitors are permanent and pensionable.’ To all of you speaking out on behalf of Mallam, thank you. May God bless you all and may Nigeria thrive.

[🤍I’m Sanwo_Fatimah @ummuh_Zahra]

They said a house full of girls is empty… Today, mine is full of queens. 👑🤍

My husband looked at our four daughters and saw “liabilities.”
One day he left, took our savings and disappeared, chasing a life where he believed a son would complete him.

I was left with four little girls, including a 6-month-old. No support. No explanation.
I cried… but when my child asked, “Mummy, will we eat today?” something in me changed.

I did everything honest I could to survive, selling, carrying, washing—just to keep them fed and in school.
People talked. I stayed focused.

Years passed…
Today I stood at the airport watching my daughters chase their dreams abroad on scholarships.
And that baby he left behind? She’s becoming a lawyer.

As for him… life moved on.
But me?
I raised four strong, brilliant women—and that’s my pride.

To every mother raising daughters:
You’re not lacking anything. You’re raising greatness. 🤍

[Abu-Sadeeq @Dongarrus1]

First, they denied we exist. Then, they said we're paid to become Muslims. Now, they're claiming the rise of Igbo Muslims will bring Sharia law.

Which way my people