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Rule of Law Within, Power Without
The rule of law functions inside states because it is enforced by sovereign authority. International order lacks such enforcement and has relied largely on American power since 1945. Critics of the Iran war must therefore choose: either the rules-based order requires enforcement, or the concept itself collapses into power politics.
Iran’s Real Transition Problem: The IRGC
Iran’s transition will hinge not on opposition leaders but on the fate of the IRGC. Dismantling it risks state collapse; preserving it risks regime continuity. Any post-regime stability depends on solving this institutional dilemma.
Wars of Today, Deaths of Tomorrow
A personal reflection on the moral weight of stopping a war versus allowing the conditions for future, larger wars to persist.
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Diaspora: You Are the Opposition Now. Act Like it.
The left now has a rare opportunity to redeem its historical misjudgment of 1979 by engaging constructively in shaping Iran’s pluralistic democratic transition.
Architecture Before Allegiance: Liberalism, Pluralism, and Iran’s Political Future
Elections alone are not enough. Liberal democracy requires institutional limits and protected pluralism.
Iran: The Road Ahead
Iran's Islamic regime is a post-ideological dictatorship approaching collapse — the question is no longer whether it will fall, but how much violence and state failure will accompany its end.
The forever wars of the Islamic Republic
The Israel-Iran war won't end with a ceasefire — it's rooted in the Islamic regime's ideology, and each round will further polarize Iranian society and destroy its infrastructure.
When Comedy is Not Funny
Late-night TV hosts who keep mocking Trump and the right are playing into the populists' hands, deepening political polarization instead of using their massive platforms to bridge the divide.
Startups and the expert opinion fallacy
Startups live in Extremistan where past events cannot predict the future — don't trust experts who weave retrospective narratives and claim they can forecast what's coming next.
How to waste $5M on containerized infrastructure
A 70,000-node Mesos cluster sat unused because containerization, unlike virtualization, requires developer buy-in and tools that bridge the gap between devs and ops.
SaaS economy in the age of containers
Containers and Kubernetes threaten to erode SaaS's key advantage — infrastructure arbitrage — by letting any company build highly available infrastructure at a fraction of the cost.
Saas · Infrastructure · Cloud
On cancer and startups
A near-death financial scare reveals that over-reliance on venture capital is the real cancer of startups — too much cash kills focus on what actually matters: building a profitable business.
Smart products, dumb designers
Daily inconveniences — not missing features — drive customer churn. Product designers must use their own products regularly to spot the friction they've become blind to.
Design · Technology · Startups
Party like it’s 1999
GitHub stars are the new dot-com eyeballs — startups releasing IP as open source without a monetization plan risk repeating the mistakes of 1999.
The startup pitch: It’s a short elevator ride
Elevator pitches fail for cutting-edge startups because they assume shared context — instead, find investors who already understand your field and don't waste time on priming.
Google's infrastructure for everyone else
Most startups aren't Google and shouldn't adopt Google-scale infrastructure tools like Kubernetes — premature optimization with oversized tools burdens your business unnecessarily.
Defining the 'open' in open source
Not all open source is equal — we should distinguish between genuine community-driven open source and vendor-controlled 'open trial' projects used as marketing tools.
Why tech journalism needs more tech experience
Tech journalists who can't code consistently miss industry trends — the software world needs more commentary from people who actually build and use the products they write about.
Europe’s Startup Groupies
A critique of the 'ecosystem builders' and 'community' people in Europe who exploit government grants and startup associations without ever building anything themselves.
Focus
Stop chasing VC metrics and growth hacks — the only thing that matters for a startup is a laser-sharp focus on building a great product.