Ilhan Niaz
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ilhanniaz.bsky.social
Ilhan Niaz
@ilhanniaz.bsky.social
90 followers 37 following 220 posts
Writes history - books include Old World Empires, The State During the British Raj, The Culture of Power and Governance of Pakistan, Downfall: Lessons for our Final Century, and just about to drop, New World Empires. OUP/Routledge/CSCR.
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My next book, New World Empires, is set to be out from Routledge soon - with separate print editions in the pipeline for India and Pakistan. Its a history of how the state evolved in the Americas and the chapters on the USA are really relevant to understanding what’s happening these days.
@bsky.app - I wasted nearly half an hour on a thread of posts. The thing didn’t go through. It got stuck on photo upload. And then I had to restart the app and my phone - the thread didn’t save to drafts for some reason.
You are doing a lousy job.
I won’t wast time on posting a thread here again.
Aiza Azam in conversation with Victor Gao about Sino-US relations, India-Pakistan, and what lies ahead. Worth watching in full:
youtu.be/aWyYL_vmH4w
“Bridges, Not Barriers: Victor Gao on China’s Global Vision”
YouTube video by ISSRA Official
youtu.be
AI slop now accounts for a majority of the written content on the web.

There will be a niche market for “authentic free range human writing” while the bulk of a population increasingly unused to applying its own mind to anything make do with what AI produces.

www.pcmag.com/news/slop-ce...
Slop Central: More Than 50% of Articles Online Are Now AI-Generated
What will the future of the web look like?
www.pcmag.com
Zahra Naeem & Hussain Asad reveal how the installation of a coal power plant in Sahiwal has devastated the local community & environment - a shocking indictment of Pakistan’s government & bureaucracy: “Megawatts of Betrayal” - your must read for today:
www.dawn.com/news/amp/195...
SAHIWAL’S MEGAWATTS OF BETRAYAL
Promised as a beacon of progress and development, the decade-old Sahiwal coal-fired power plant was meant not just to address
www.dawn.com
Uzair Younus in conversation with the Hindustan Times on the improvement in Pakistan-US relations & the regional outlook. Worth watching in full:

youtu.be/vw1TProUzKQ?...
The Real Story Behind Trump’s Ties To Pakistan
YouTube video by Hindustan Times
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Could part of the problem with Pakistani schools be that they have too much curriculum? A very interesting and thoughtful conversation with Sabeena Abbasi:

youtu.be/qTxuVvIfvJM?...
Pakistan's Education Emergency | Teacher Training | Student Learning Outcomes | Sabeena Abbasi
YouTube video by The Dialectic Arc
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A superb conversation about Uzair Younus’s new book, Future Ready: Innovation, Abundance & the Global South.
Do watch the full thing - full of precise policy prescriptions that folks in government & the private sector can draw upon.
youtu.be/SKTswVV2dYY?...
How the Global South Can Be Future Ready | Uzair Younus on Innovation & Abundance
YouTube video by Parallel Learning Space
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Uzair Younus’s new book, Future Ready, challenges the reader to understand the non-linearity of development & provides lots of valuable insights - here is my review of the book, be sure to get it as it’s a fast-paced and engaging read:

www.dawn.com/news/1946735...
NON-FICTION: A GRAND STRATEGY FOR DEVELOPMENT
A new book offers sharp, engaging and valuable insights about developmental paths, and communicates complex ideas in an easily...
www.dawn.com
Two enterprising young scholars from 🇵🇰 have just launched a new podcast series - called the dialectic it covers a wide range of topics from geopolitics to personal development - please watch their launch video & like & subscribe to their channel to give them a warm welcome:
youtu.be/5NpIdVKOH6o?...
The mistake Democrats are making is that they think the current president cares about the administration that reports to him:

youtu.be/SoZwKjQ0c18?...
Shutdown Sparks Cringey Meme War & Trump Punishes Blue Cities | The Daily Show
YouTube video by The Daily Show
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In this article Ariba Shahid captures the the contradiction at the heart of ecocide & the ongoing collapse of industrial civilisation.

Solarisation is a good thing, but what happens when farmers use solar power to extract the last bits of underground 💧?
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
Solar-powered farming is digging Pakistan into a water catastrophe
Karamat Ali's cows and buffalos once provided his multi-generational family with milk. But earlier this year, the 61-year-old sold about a dozen bovine - and spent the proceeds on a set of solar panels.
www.reuters.com
Uzair Younus on the Grand Tamasha (a podcast from the Carnegie Endowment) on why the big story from Asia is the US-Pakistan reset & Pakistan’s breakthrough on the world stage after the 4 day conflict with India. Great convo. Listen & learn.

youtu.be/3l2DCQipv3c?...
Why Washington Is Wooing Pakistan
YouTube video by Carnegie Endowment
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Had a wide ranging discussion with Ejaz Haider on what lies ahead for world history - are we headed to a great unraveling? Where does China stand in all this? And then there’s the wrecking ball of climate change that no one is taking seriously. (English language)

youtu.be/CoFEGJLLmP0?...
InFocus With Ejaz Haider Ep75: Geopolitical Churns, Yesterday and Today
YouTube video by CSSPR
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Talked to the Mokalma folks about my 2022 book, Downfall: Lessons for our Final Century - marking the third anniversary of its publication. The book is free to download.

youtu.be/VtzCoDPH4b0?...
Muklama: Ilhan Niaz, The Process of Collapse (Revisiting “Downfall”)
YouTube video by Parallel Learning Space
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On the third anniversary of the publication of my 2022 book (Downfall: Lessons for our Final Century), I’ll be discussing the process of collapse (a real sunny topic 😃) thanks to the Parallel Learning Space. You can join on zoom by emailing below:
[email protected]
Pakistan’s constitutional order fractured in the 1950s, never to be healed & settled since. Asad Rahim Khan takes us back to how it happened & the role the judiciary played in legalising reversion to medieval norms of seizing power & arbitrary rule: 👍 👇
www.dawn.com/news/1943706...
Power to the people strongest: 70 years ago, the apex court sealed Pakistan’s fate. Its effects still echo today
When Justice Munir denied the existence of the assembly’s sovereignty, he destroyed the country’s existing constitutional basis. Sovereign power in Pakistan would become a prize, to be seized by the s...
www.dawn.com
Pakistan & Saudi Arabia have just signed a mutual defence agreement.

“The agreement states that any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both.”

www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...
www.reuters.com
NASA announces that it might have found bio-signatures of ancient microbial life on Mars. The samples were discovered a year ago and have been rigorously analysed since then. A lot more study needed, but it is a very important development:

www.nasa.gov/news-release...
NASA Says Mars Rover Discovered Potential Biosignature Last Year - NASA
A sample collected by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover from an ancient dry riverbed in Jezero Crater could preserve evidence of ancient microbial life. Taken
www.nasa.gov
“It's highly ironic that the crowd who spent their entire lives trashing art education and the humanities suddenly finds so much value in the art they "make" with robots.”
www.the-sentinel-intelligence.net/the/?ref=the...
The Biggest Problem with AI Art
And there's a lot...
www.the-sentinel-intelligence.net
Take 18 minutes & do watch this - it helps explain why poor leadership skills is rarely an obstacle to gaining leadership positions:

youtu.be/DU06c7f9fzc?...
Why do we celebrate incompetent leaders? | Martin Gutmann | TEDxBerlin
YouTube video by TEDx Talks
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My generation was there when Al Gore invented the Internet 😃- 1994 BBC program on the birth of the World Wide Web -

youtu.be/XpZ5STahhPE?...
1994: Are YOU Ready for the INTERNET? | Tomorrow's World | Retro Tech | BBC Archive
YouTube video by BBC Archive
youtu.be
The key question this talk concludes on is “Who does AI help when we depend on learning with it?”

Gedeon explains the ‘cognitive offloading’ effect of using AI so that by using it people lose or fail to acquire skills and learning.
Worth watching in full:

youtu.be/m8WomdCLBqE?...
Is AI making us dumber? Maybe. | Charlie Gedeon | TEDxSherbrooke Street West
YouTube video by TEDx Talks
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