"Everyone was creative back then. We were all artists who painstakingly painted each individual low-res pixel in MS Paint, crafted clever arguments with the SmarterChild AIM bot, and customized our Neopets and Club Penguin avatars with panache and flair."

The prose is obviously comparable to Eve Babitz in this regard, speedy and desire-honest, but the content is even more so: phaidos.com/articles/ero...

The only thing I regret about my three years of MFA experience is getting involved in the unionizing effort, only to discover in the end that it was all to support this Zionist clown. I am truly ashamed of myself and sorry for anyone I deceived, but this is what Grad Students do.

Cheikh Anta Diop is one of the greatest American Hustlers. What kind of drugs was this dude on while writing all this bullshit about Egyptian and East African history? And why do we have to accept this black American imperial narrative?

There are no official numbers, no names of the dead or injured across the Gulf. But we know enough. They are mostly American soldiers and South Asian workers.

Abraham destroys his father Terah’s idols, Herlingen Haggadah, Vienna, 1725, f. 4v (detail).

Since the dawn of human civilization, some crazy men wanted others to believe they are gods. Throughout human history, many gods died and disappeared, only humans remain.

How to Live in Someone Else’s Body and full in love with the one who stole your body, on McElroy brilliant novel asnaje.substack.com/p/how-to-liv...

And gas costs $5.50 in Las Vegas.

For 2 weeks; @npr.org is speaking with a mysterious Iranian, on the border of Turkey, who is fleeing the war, but when they meet the pretty NPR correspbendint they speak enthusiastically about how happy they are that the USA is bombing their country 🤡 what is the fake clown propaganda guys

The Outrun review – Saoirse Ronan is remarkable in a sensitive recovery drama www.theguardian.com/film/2024/ja...

Cormac vs. Claude: The New York Times shared a quiz asking readers to identify passages from human writers, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Cormac McCarthy, and Hilary Mantel, against AI-written passages on similar themes. Substackers were unimpressed post.substack.com/p/i-just-kep...

The only people who benefit from positive attitudes in the cancer ward, says Ehrenreich, are the nurses and family members, who are worn down by sadness and death. grabthelapels.com/2015/09/21/b...

Benjamin Hale explains the process of turning a magazine article into a book.

More and more stories are focusing on Muslim Americans, often centering on men and men only. Without any Sharia law enforced by the government or authorities, Muslim women are experiencing an American version of Islam that restricting and undermining women’s rights.

Outside: Postapocalyptic Cosmic Horror Short Film seedandspark.com/fund/outside...

Before Sayyid Qutb became the figure people associate with political Islam, he was a poet and a secular intellectual. The Egyptian government sent him to the United States in 1948 to study education and learn how to modernize Egypt’s school system.

I am looking for books or works that criticize or deconstruct the Christian component in the American identity, starting from the Founding Fathers to the present. Share your recommnedation please

And The war didn't start yet

Collapse Without Liberation: The Structural Reordering of the Middle East ahmednaji.net/2026/03/01/c...

My grandmother’s home, the family home, the home I spent nearly every Sunday in for over 3 decades, the home I lived in as a teenager, that my grandparents bought in 1965 when Ghobeiri still had orchards, the house my aunt inherited & in which my cousins grew up, is gone. No one was home, thank god

More war and more anxious Gulf sheikhs have always been good for Egypt.

Sisi is in high spirits, hoping the war will drag on so they can replay the scenario of the Second Gulf War, when Egypt sent 40 soldiers and the Americans and Gulf states cleared all their debts and injected billions into the Egyptian economy.

Trump administration officials acknowledged in closed-door briefings with congressional staff that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack US forces first, two people familiar with the matter said reut.rs/46ybyTg

‘Beside the front door, next to my slippers and outside shoes, I keep a bag with my important documents. In the morning before going to work, people check their torch batteries rather than their emails.’ Raha Nik-Andish in Tehran, from the blog. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the Iranian government by force could trigger a new wave of cost-of-living pressures that embattled governments and central banks around the world will struggle to deal with

Why does the rest of the Middle East always suffer, so Parisians could enjoy their revenge dishes? What an emotionally reactive people, always choking on feelings they can’t name and convinced the world owes them an apology

Within a month, food and ammunition stockpiles will run out. Oil and gas prices will soar

We are in a slow moment of reconstruction. What is needed is a clear class-based political line against ruling elites, and reactionary narratives (Biblical and Islamic ones). ahmednaji.net/2026/03/01/c...

Collapse Without Liberation: The Structural Reordering of the Middle East ahmednaji.net/2026/03/01/c...

“In Egypt, when I was persecuted and imprisoned … exile was an option … But there is no such exit from the current U.S. regime’s reach. Its superpower ambition is global,” @ahmednaji.bsky.social writes in a powerful article for @zocalopublicsquare.bsky.social.

I don’t have a manual for resistance. But I know that the first step is re-owning the language www.zocalopublicsquare.org/when-the-sta...

The iron axe hangs from the neck of the god’s statue. The iron axe rises from the rubble of the past. One god, with an iron axe around his neck.

You have until the 27th to change the world. If you don't finish the job, the rest of your life will be adapting to the system. Success is when you become one of its guardians against your younger self.

Today I ran into another strange discovery about the school system at least here in Nevada, though I think it's the same in other states- which is; Students can graduate without ever reading poetry, or seeing apoem in their life!!

There’s this Arab American writer who won the most prestigious literary prize in the USA. He didn't speak a word about the genocide and cultural erasure happening, or the 100+ Arab writers who were killed, but he’ll write an article about the oppression of queer Arabs...

I’ve been living in the USA for 8 years now, and nothing makes me feel more ashamed than being stuck with the label “Arab American.” Just look at what they did over the last 2 years during the genocide -nothing- especially when compared to the bravery shown by other communities, like Jews for Peace.

Even if your name is Edward Said.

The Arab Americans are part of the empire, Don’t pretend to speak as the voice of a nation or of oppressed people. You benefit from the same structures of exploitation, and all that carefully staged rhetoric ends up serving your personal image—and the empire you help sustain with your taxes.

Most Arab American institutions or platforms are funded by the UAE or Saudi regimes. What’s often called the “Arab American” narrative is largely an echo of these regimes’ agendas, combined with the typical interests of the American empire.

Rather than hiding behind American race rhetoric and broad labels like “Arab” and “Black,” I want to see the same courage applied to naming the UAE leadership that is helping erase Sudan, even as it funds events and institutions in the United States that appropriate Arab American narratives.

Lately, it feels like every week I come across a speech or viral post by some young "Arab American" echoing rhetoric lifted from American discourse about Blackness and racial identity, projecting it onto the Arab world. Most of these Arab American voices are speaking on platforms funded by the UAE.

While Epstein’s victims endure the fallout of their photos and names being exposed in the Department of Justice’s latest tranche of files, investigators redacted the identity of the most famous portrait in the world.

They are the ants of the literary scene, they feed on the crumbs, and produce writing that is traditional, follows accepted rules, often emphasizing self-representation, victimization, moral idiolism, and aim to comfort the reader by avoiding any debatable topics... so they win the prizes

No one is running the world anymore, it's seating for shitting... The world is in a diarrhea session.

Billie Eilish: "No one is illegal on stolen land"