One Species. Three Histories. One Unfinished Question. Human beings built the pyramids, organized Auschwitz, and reached the Moon. The same species. Extraordinary intelligence. Radically different purposes. What explains this?
By Khaled Salih 18 October 2026 Some books answer questions. Others make the questions harder to abandon. Michael Shermer’s Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters belongs to the second kind. It asks us to defend something both elementary and increasingly difficult: that
What connects Kurdish political freedom, religious certainty, institutional failure, rational criticism, and the open future? The books presented on OTHERWISE investigate how human beings create explanations, how some explanations become protected against criticism, and how knowledge and freedom can open possibilities that previously appeared closed. The library brings together five
Vad tror sig kommittén faktiskt belöna? Är priset ett erkännande av prestation eller ett försök att påverka framtiden? Publiserad 14 Oktober 2026 Jag blev arg när årets Nobels fredspris tillkännagavs. Men ilska är inget argument, så jag försökte i stället förstå vad jag egentligen reagerade på. Det handlade inte bara
Newsletter
On Stefano Bigliardi’s Islam and Pseudoscience
Newsletter
Arafat, Obama, Abiy, Pillay - and the Problem of Irreversible Moral Authority
Newsletter
From the Royal Air Force to the Home Office: a century of British double standards toward Kurdish political agency
One Species. Three Histories. One Unfinished Question. Human beings built the pyramids, organized Auschwitz, and reached the Moon. The same species. Extraordinary intelligence. Radically different purposes. What explains this?
What connects Kurdish political freedom, religious certainty, institutional failure, rational criticism, and the open future? The books presented on OTHERWISE investigate how human beings create explanations, how some explanations become protected against criticism, and how knowledge and freedom can open possibilities that previously appeared closed. The library brings together five
After October 7, anfāl, the Holocaust, Gaza - and the Limits of Backspace
Books, ideas, criticism, and open futures.
8 October 2026 Note I rarely find a political speech that makes me want to return to first principles. Marco Rubio’s recent speech beneath the Acropolis did. Then I listened to Susan Kokinda discussing it on Promethean Updates. She challenged her viewers with a deceptively simple question: “Do you
After October 7, anfāl, the Holocaust, Gaza - and the Limits of Backspace
Jag vill inte låta den 7 oktober förvandla varje palestinier till Hamas. Jag vill inte låta Gazas lidande göra antisemitismen osynlig.
The Third Essay in an October 7 Trilogy: Agency, Political Inaudibility, and Palestine’s Backspace Key
The American Departure and the Wrong Question About Iraq’s Future
Three Years After the Pogrom, a Personal Conjecture About Error, Agency, Memory—and the People Who Pay
Flight FZ1073, Invisible Explanations, and the Architecture of an Open Future
Explanation, Error, and the Possibility of an Open Future
A First Conjecture on Kurdistan After the American Withdrawal
A Philosophical Companion to Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Cauldron
Returning Political Principles to Their Speakers
How One UN Address Became a Conjecture About Kurdistan