Iqra 012
Ramadan moments, Islamicate Cybernetics, the Tik-Tok ban, new Qawwam issue, open-source AI, lithium, the Albion's sorry post-imperial state and more
Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad returns this year with his Ramadan Moments - intriguing short snippets worth mulling over
Shaykh Salman Younas discussing the spiritual dimension of fasting
Shaykh Sohail Hanif on the Thinking Muslim's Guide to Ramadan
Thought provoking reading from Issue 4 of Qawwam - a genuinely independent space (created by brother @AvdullahYousef on twitter) for new Muslim voices going beyond the cliches of Dawah Inc. and mainstream state sponsored scholarly discourses
Worthwhile article, keeping an eye on the mammoth task that the Saudi investment fund faces
Insightful Disconnect piece that summarises the main dynamics and forces behind the US Tik-Tok ban
Simon Sarris channelling Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful in new directions - lots to mull over here and for Muslims to consider what this means in terms of Islam's legacy as an imperial faith
Burgess's American Purpose piece highlighting the growing recruitment crisis within the Empire's armies - a sign of the times apparent across its European vassals too
New Post Apathy piece about the Albion's sorry post imperial state - I disagree with the trajectory of British history presented and its future optimism but worth reading as a persuasive restatement of the Muradian Project
Very frank piece by Cleveland-Stout about the self-conscious militarisation of Silicon Valley, where new cyber-elites are jostling to have greater influence within the Empire
McDonald explores "impression management" and the social norms that govern the mundane in our everyday interactions
Prof St. Onge on the very curious death of American agriculture
A much needed antidote to the naive techno-optimism currently all the rage by Marcus who elaborates on the ensh*ttification of science courtesy of hallucinating and delusional LLMs
Novel and original piece focusing on monetary solutionism as a form of addiction - it echoes the arguments from Constant's 1819 lecture on the "liberty of the ancients compared with that of the moderns" - lots to think about here for those interested in the philosophical assumptions undergirding monetary systems
Jefferies making an impassioned plea to keep the future of AI genuinely open-source to protect from state and corporate cronyism - for me the real start of the LLM revolution will be when any individual can run these models independently, completely offline on simple mobile and computational devices without being subject to cloud feudalism or dreaded Musk-style subscription-ism - the road of regulatory capture often leads to greater tyranny
Moriarty shedding light on Pfizer's big move from vaccines to cancer drugs - sinister and damning
Nunes takes a critical look at China's Digital Silk Road initiative and the implications of its ascendancy and success
Keep an eye on lithium in the years to come as well as other precious metals that are critical to the supply chain of the "Fourth Industrial Revolution"
Interesting Odd Lots podcast from Ziad Daoud on the UAE's ambitious moves into Egypt - will have tremendous geopolitical consequences in the years to come. For me it signals an inflection point of an Islamicate Cybernetics that is being pioneered by the GCC and a damning resolution to the "Arab Spring" era