asayeed

asayeed, 9 days ago

@cstross bibi is part of the social circle of politicians and thinktankerati who brought us the Iraq war and its aftermath, and people somehow fail to realize that it's not an accident that the same thinking and behaviours are being repeated

asayeed, 10 days ago

@Alon food inflation is pretty out of control, btw I appreciate the gesture because the place is frequented by a lot of people who come from the ketchup-on-pasta countries and I sort of know the owners

asayeed, 10 days ago

@Alon this kind of meal was max 95 when I got here, in fact it was hard to find a dagens lunch above 105 in 2018

asayeed, 10 days ago

@Alon wasn't even in Sweden back then, did visit Lund in 2013 and found the lunches very expensive but I was comparing with the mensa in Saarland which is a whole other level

asayeed, 10 days ago

@Alon yes the institutional food is not great here but there are some good dagens lunch at private restaurants depending. Gothenburg is usually pretty good for food, IMO better than sthlm

asayeed, 10 days ago

@Alon SU Frescati and probably KTH are not great locations for eating out. GU Humanisten is much better located that way.

asayeed, 20 days ago

@interfluidity @Alon @BenRossTransit this is getting close to the heart of the matter, the nation-states of the Muslim world actually are artificial colonial constructs that have no natural clientèle outside of narrow elites and are deeply and inherently unstable for this reason

asayeed, 20 days ago

@interfluidity @Alon @BenRossTransit and pan-Islamism as the idea of Muslim political union/Muslim polity does have much bigger natural appeal than Sharia legalism

asayeed, 20 days ago

@interfluidity @Alon @BenRossTransit This has profound implications for Israel's long-term prospects as Israel's very purpose and existence is essentially predicated on the Middle East remaining the domain of nation-states that don't reflect grassroots identities and aspirations.

asayeed, 20 days ago

@interfluidity @Alon @BenRossTransit That means that complete Palestinian naturalization in other Arab states is actually a double-edged sword for the party that wants it most (that is, Israel) as it undermines the concept of national identity in these countries that is already fragile.

asayeed, 20 days ago

@interfluidity @Alon @BenRossTransit the problem is that even for those groups disinclined to support a pan-Islamic identity, the nation-state boundaries that exist are still a very fraught imposition over the highly interspersed ethnolinguistic, ideological, and confessional reality on the ground

asayeed, 20 days ago

@interfluidity @Alon @BenRossTransit The elites never succeeded in making the Egyptian state seem "real" in the way Italy possibly is.

asayeed, 19 days ago

@interfluidity @Alon @BenRossTransit Whatever it is, IMO it's kind of late for any stable transition. I agree with @shadihamid 's take which is basically that the path to stable democracy in the Muslim world runs through allowing destabilizing and illiberal elements to run their historical course, and the longer this is postponed, the worse the rebound will be. By that light, the Arab Spring was possibly the last opportunity for a manageable shift.

asayeed, 19 days ago

@interfluidity @Alon @BenRossTransit @shadihamid This is the theory behind the current lionization of the Gulf Arab states particularly UAE as the current paragons of modernity in the Arab world in particular. It depends on some very specific conditions that do not obtain overall, such as a sustainable form of industralization.

asayeed, 19 days ago

@Alon @interfluidity @BenRossTransit In fact, the example of Turkey and the Erdoğan phenomenon are the cautionary tale for allowing a well-off industrial elite to form who come from religiously traditional social classes.

asayeed, 19 days ago

@Alon @interfluidity @BenRossTransit (but the point is, you probably cannot expect anything better to form unless you allow the gradual rise of an Erdoğanist elite and then let them run the show illiberally for a few decades)

asayeed, 19 days ago

@Alon @interfluidity @BenRossTransit but bringing this back to Israel/Palestine, I am doubtful that there are scenarios of development in the Muslim world as a whole that aren't very high-risk for Israel, including the current trajectory. Israel's founders did not apparently leave behind a strategy for what happens when the Muslim world eventually returned to being a historical subject rather than an object.

asayeed, 19 days ago

@Alon @interfluidity @BenRossTransit The problem is that the long-run trajectory of most of the neighbouring states, probably Jordan also, is eventually crises of legitimacy and state failure in one form or another.

asayeed, 19 days ago

@interfluidity @BenRossTransit @Alon As I said earlier. I think (pessimistically) that the Arab Spring might have been the last opportunity to reconcile popular legitimacy in the Middle East with the present state system with low friction.

asayeed, 27 days ago

I've never visited Würzburg but if I ever do, remind me to shout "We're going to flavourtown!" as I approach the city limits.

asayeed, 26 days ago

@dnddeutsch Macht über Maggi ist Macht über's Essen

asayeed, 1 month ago

@kevin @aral it's the pro and other support level stuff I think

asayeed, 1 month ago

@kevin @aral There's always a tension between widespread acceptance and not replicating MS' flaws. My feeling is that the more Linux looks like MS in certain characteristics, the more hardware is supported out of the box. The biggest barrier to using Linux is still the driver/kernel shenanigans you have to do.