> I would not claim that Islam is monolithically malign, of course, but someone less constrained by their unconscious sense of ideological appropriateness would ask why interpretations of the faith lead people towards evangelistic violence and puritanical tyranny so much more than interpretations of other faiths.
After WWII and decolonisation, a new breed of educated, progressive and secular leaders arose across former colonial states. In the Middle East, this was characterised by the influence of Egypt's Nasser. These leaders weren't afraid to stand up to religious fundamentalism. Here is a 1966 video of Nasser making fun of the Muslim Brotherhood trying to force women to wear the hijab[0]. There were secular governments across the Middle East, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
However, these secular and socialist leaders were seen as too close to the Soviets by the US, despite many of them explicitly participating in the Non-Aligned movement, and America and its allies quickly acted to counter their influence and depose them when possible.
The major political opponent to anti-imperialist socialism across the Islamic world were the religious fundamentalists, so they were the ones who were backed by the West.
Western support for Saudi's and their Wahhabist ideology is well known. Indonesia's Sukarno was deposed in an American supported purge backed by Islamic fundamentalists, described by the CIA itself as "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century". Hamas was propped up in Palestine by the Israelis as a counter to Arafat's secular Fatah[1]. Western efforts to undermine Nasser and fund his political opponents(surprise... Islamic fundamentalists) are well documented. The crushing of Nasserism in the Arab world with the help of the Saudis and Israelis is regarded as one of the great triumphs of post WW2 American foreign policy. The groups that formed Al Qaeda and the Taliban were supported by Americans as counters to the Soviets in Afghanistan. There is also consistent American support for the Pakistani government, even in the face of genocide of millions[2], in an attempt to counter the spooky "socialist" and secular India.
And all that is discounting the reactionary sort of fundamentalism that might arise as a result of constant war and interventionism by the West in the Middle East.
It makes me sad when I see "westerners" criticizing Islamic extremism without recognizing their own culpability in the current state of affairs. It is short-sighted and illogical to divorce the political and social situation in the Islamic world from centuries of western foreign policy.
A very low-effort way to learn good Rust patterns is to put
#![warn(clippy::all)]
at the top of your crate’s entrypoint. This enables Rust’s default linter. It’s a lot more friendly and focused on good design than you might expect, often suggesting more elegant alternatives. Plus, many of its suggestions can be applied automatically in an environment like VS Code + rust-analyzer plugin.
It's physics, not perception. Just make your website fast.
Am currently consulting big ecommerce bussiness on how to improve page load. I made them this 'fastest page in the world' demo:
https://turboeshop.com/fastestpageintheworld/ - kindly please check it out. And here is fastest page with Google Analytics:
https://turboeshop.com/newstackonly/. 325 ms for fully loaded time CSS + images + HTML + JS + GA loaded + Measurement Protocol hits sent.
This is what fast website is: a) inline purged css; b) everything loaded from one domain, 100% cached. c)inlined js(vanilla + web component if you need one); d) inlined images up to 4kb; e) larger images loaded from cache from same domain. f) gtag.js and analytics.js -> from cache; g) Measurement protocol hits sent from async proxy on edge. h) 100% cloudflare cache hits; i) Cloudflare workers for dynamic bits; That's all what it takes. Don't read articles- just make it fast, it's really that simple :)
And as svelte was mentioned - if you want to improve a website that is bigger than your personal blog, you don't use svelte, react, gatsby or any other of that breed as it's impossible to do serious marketing with a website that's hydrated (svelte's web components is a wonderful thing though and is totally nice addition to marketing stack). I mean no insult to anyone with my strong opinions and would be glad to have discussions in comments.
UPD: Added note on Cloudflare & Cloudflare workers.
This guy has gone to the zoo and interviewed all the animals. The tiger says that the secret to success is to live alone, be well disguised, have sharp claws and know how to stalk. The snail says that the secret is to live inside a solid shell, stay small, hide under dead trees and move slowly around at night. The parrot says that success lies in eating fruit, being alert, packing light, moving fast by air when necessary, and always sticking by your friends.
His conclusion: These animals are giving contradictory advice! And that's because they're all "outliers".
But both of these points are subtly misleading. Yes, the advice is contradictory, but that's only a problem if you imagine that the animal kingdom is like a giant arena in which all the world's animals battle for the Animal Best Practices championship [1], after which all the losing animals will go extinct and the entire world will adopt the winning ways of the One True Best Animal. But, in fact, there are a hell of a lot of different ways to be a successful animal, and they coexist nicely. Indeed, they form an ecosystem in which all animals require other, much different animals to exist.
And it's insane to regard the tiger and the parrot and the snail as "outliers". Sure, they're unique, just as snowflakes are unique. But, in fact, there are a lot of different kinds of cats and birds and mollusks, not just these three. Indeed, there are creatures that employ some cat strategies and some bird strategies (lions: be a sharp-eyed predator with claws, but live in communal packs). The only way to argue that tigers and parrots and snails are "outliers" is to ignore the existence of all the other creatures in the world, the ones that bridge the gaps in animal-design space and that ultimately relate every known animal to every other known animal.
So, yes, it's insane to try to follow all the advice on the Internet simultaneously. But that doesn't mean it's insane to listen to 37signals advice, or Godin's advice, or some other company's advice. You just have to figure out which part of the animal kingdom you're in, and seek out the best practices which apply to creatures like you. If you want to be a stalker, you could do worse than to ask the tiger for some advice.
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[1] The ants are gonna win. Hölldobler and Wilson told me so.
I really enjoyed reading:
Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems
Book by Martin Kleppmann
Can't recommend it enough and it works through a lot of this talking exactly about twitter.
Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, aka Three Body Problem. Explored existential topics in a way I've never encountered anywhere else. I truly believe that decades from now this series will be viewed as the LOTR of our time.
I've recently been reading the Foundation series, and have found the concept of The Mule character to be incredibly eye opening. I can't say directly it's had a positive impact on my life but it's definitely changing my outlook and I feel its expanded my horizons.
