Alas, the online algorithms favour bombastic extroverts, such that those humble voices of nuance and reason are perpetually drowned out. Who hears the quiet sage?
The modern world loves its labels and categories.
If the political alignment tools are to be believed, I’m simultaneously a Civic Pragmatist, situated on the Libertarian Left, with strongly globalist views and mildly conservative social leanings.
I’m apparently a Mediator personality type, and my economic positions lean decidedly left.
What interests me — and sometimes troubles me — is how these intersect with another core aspect of my identity: my Muslim faith.
Sometimes, I find myself questioning whether this combination makes me an outlier. The prevailing discourse often leaves me feeling like I’m caught between worlds, experiencing a kind of ideological schizophrenia.
Am I too progressive to be traditionally Muslim? Too religious to be properly progressive? What does it mean to inhabit these seemingly contradictory spaces?
When I look into Islamic history, I see glimpses of resolution to these questions — but also more questions. Yes, there were the Mu’tazilites championing reason and justice, but what does their eventual decline tell us? The Sufi traditions prioritised inner spirituality over rigid dogma, but how do we balance internal truth with communal practice?
Figures like Ali Shariati showed how Islamic principles could align with socialist economic ideas, but why do such perspectives often remain at the margins of contemporary Islamic discourse?
Some have suggested that my worldview makes me more akin to a Christian without the trinity, or a follower of early Judaic Christianity.
But to me, this is simply Islam, expressing itself through yet another individual’s wrestling with faith and modernity.
Perhaps the question isn’t what I am, but why we feel such a need to categorise and define these deeply personal spiritual and intellectual journeys?
The suit of contemporary Islamic identity often feels ill-fitting — but is it the suit that’s wrong, or the mirror we’re using to view it?
When I read about the Baghdad of the Abbasid Caliphate, about scholars debating everything from Aristotelian logic to economic theory in the House of Wisdom, I wonder: were they more certain of their place than I am of mine? Or were they too wrestling with questions of identity and belonging?
Maybe what I’m experiencing isn’t really a deviation from Islamic tradition, but rather a continuation of an age-old struggle to reconcile faith with contemporary reality.
Maybe the discomfort isn’t with the faith itself, but with how we’ve all been taught to think about it. Or could I just be trying to justify my own uncertain position?
I am what I am — but what exactly is that? A Muslim whose understanding of faith embraces reason, social justice, and open dialogue with the modern world?
Or simply another voice in a long conversation about what it means to believe and belong in an ever-changing environment?
Perhaps the real question isn’t whether I’m an outlier, but what it means to be an outlier in the first place. And maybe, just maybe, that uncertainty itself is part of the tradition I’m trying to understand.
Both sides say, “God will grant us victory!”
But, in truth, God will only grant victory to the just.
Those that mercilessly deploy indiscriminate violence against civilians — on both sides — will only bring about their own demise.
Who knows? Perhaps neither side will be granted victory, but will be replaced by another community altogether?
If mankind is unjust, we could quite easily be replaced by dense forests or ravaging sand dunes.
As the Quran says:
Have they not traveled through the earth and observed the end of those before them?
Lest we forget, this verse goes on to explain that those forgotten nations were also great in power and imagination. But all that remains of them are remnants of ancient buildings.
God would never have wronged any of them, the passage goes on, but they were intent in wronging themselves.
I pray that God grants victory to the ordinary folk striving their best striving for a just cause.
As for the propagandists on both sides, who have decided to dispense with God’s law, trampling its boundaries without remorse:
May God replace them with those capable of bringing about lasting peace, safety, and justice for all.
How ironic that it is so easy to start a costly war, when striving for peace should cost you nothing.
What sort of peace might 250 billion dollars have bought? We shall never know, for none of us have such imagination.
Indeed, God will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves. And when God intends ill for a people, there is no repelling it. And there is not for them besides Him any patron.
May God make us just, fair, and true, striving our utmost to build a safe society for all, free from harm, discrimination, and tyranny.
And may the peaceful live in peace.
I’ve spent nearly two decades working in the internet space, and there’s a troubling pattern I keep seeing: once promising products becoming the victims of their own success.
It’s like watching the same sad film over and over. A small team creates something genuinely useful, that makes you think “finally, someone gets it!” Then the venture capital folks show up with their chequebooks, or a big corporation swoops in for an acquisition. Before you know it, that elegant tool you loved has turned into a bloated mess that seems more interested in your wallet than solving your problems.
I’ve seen this happen countless times. Take Elementor, once the foremost page builder for WordPress, streamlined and simple to use, making the competition seem archaic by comparison. These days? Bloated, buggy, inconsistent and hard to use—the complete opposite of what once made it so successful.
The web hosting sector provides particularly stark examples of this trend. Tsohost and Dataflame, once highly regarded independent UK-based hosts, built their reputations on exceptional performance and personalised customer service. Following their acquisitions, however, these companies saw their distinctive qualities diluted by corporate structures that prioritised scale over customer experience.
This pattern has led to a growing wariness among users when selecting hosting providers. While some independent hosts like 34SP.com maintain their commitment to quality service and user-focused values, they often come at a premium that individual users find challenging to justify.
Budget hosting providers present their own set of concerns. Hostinger, for instance, has gained market share through competitive pricing, but their business practices raise serious questions. Their approach of disabling critical security features like automatic plugin updates in lower-tier plans, only to offer them as premium features, creates unnecessary security risks for users.
This strategy of withholding essential security features as premium upgrades represents a troubling trend in the industry. It forces users to choose between financial constraints and proper security measures—a choice they shouldn’t have to make.
Some hope remains in the form of indie and self-funded projects. Platforms like Brizy, ClassicPress (a WordPress fork), and GenerateBlocks demonstrate that user-focused development is still possible. However, these independent projects face their own challenges, constantly balancing the need for sustainable growth against maintaining their independence and user-first principles.
The cycle of acquisition and transformation in web services shows no signs of slowing. For users, this means carefully evaluating not just current features and pricing, but also considering the long-term stability and independence of their chosen platforms. While premium independent services might seem expensive initially, they often prove more reliable and cost-effective in the long run by maintaining consistent service quality and user-focused development.
The challenge for the industry moving forward will be finding sustainable business models that allow for growth without compromising the user experience that made these platforms successful in the first place. Until then, users must remain vigilant and prepared to adapt as their favourite services evolve—or potentially deteriorate—under new ownership.
This cycle isn’t likely to stop anytime soon. These days, when I’m choosing tools for a project, I find myself looking beyond the features and price tags. I’m asking questions like “How long until they sell out?” and “What’s their exit strategy?”
I keep hoping we’ll figure out a better way to grow tech companies without sacrificing what made them great in the first place. Until then, I suppose we’ll keep adapting as our favourite tools evolve — or sadly, watching them fade away under new management.
YouTube’s algorithm has decided I need to hear about the supposed victimisation of middle-class Britain. Despite never seeking out such content, my recommendations increasingly feature commentators telling me I should feel aggrieved about modern British society. It’s a curious assumption on the platform’s part, and one that reveals something about how online spaces amplify certain political narratives.
There’s something very peculiar about this strain of political thought. Its proponents—figures like Douglas Murray—paint a picture of middle-class Britain under siege, suggesting we’re being made to feel ashamed of our culture and civilisation.
Yet this narrative sits uneasily with reality. British culture remains everywhere celebrated, from our global cultural exports to our continuing diplomatic influence. Indeed, one need look no further than the rhetoric around the War on Terror to see how confidently British political figures assert their cultural values on the world stage.
This victim mentality among middle-class nationalists seems particularly melodramatic when you consider their actual position in society. These are often well-connected individuals with regular newspaper columns, television appearances, and substantial social media followings. Far from being silenced, they command significant platforms from which to broadcast their message of supposed marginalisation.
What’s particularly frustrating is how YouTube’s recommendation system amplifies these voices, creating an illusion of widespread support. Even without actively seeking such content, users find their feeds increasingly dominated by these perspectives. The platform’s preference for content that provokes strong reactions means that measured discussions often lose out to melodramatic predictions of cultural collapse.
Whether or not these commentators truly believe in the crisis they describe, they’ve certainly found a lucrative market. The formula is well-established:
First, present cultural change as catastrophic decline. Then, identify convenient scapegoats—usually some combination of immigrants, academics, or “woke” elites. Position yourself as the brave truth-teller whom the mainstream fears. Finally, keep your audience engaged with a steady stream of outrage and dire predictions.
Perhaps most concerning is how this algorithmic amplification shapes public perception. When certain viewpoints are repeatedly pushed to the fore, they can start to feel like the dominant perspective, regardless of their actual support in the wider population. The line between genuine popularity and artificial amplification becomes increasingly blurred.
It’s worth noting that this online prominence often fails to translate into real-world political success. Electoral results and opinion polls consistently show that these nationalist positions, while vocal, don’t command majority support. Most Britons maintain nuanced views on immigration and cultural change, even if these perspectives rarely trend on social media.
What does it say about our digital spaces when platforms automatically assume certain demographic characteristics or interests must correlate with nationalist grievance politics? The fact that these recommendations appear unbidden, even on work devices where we maintain strictly professional browsing habits, suggests something about the default assumptions built into these systems.
It raises questions about how these algorithms shape political discourse and whether they’re actively pushing users toward more extreme positions. While we can’t know for certain how much of the engagement with this content is organic versus manufactured, the persistent promotion of grievance politics to uninterested viewers hints at deeper biases within these recommendation systems.
Could I be the only person who does TOIL in reverse, working extra to make up for less than productive working hours?
Do you know, it’s possible to not be on either side.
Don’t ask me to take a stand. I don’t have to.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Waking from a night stifled by memories, I interrogate myself:
“How on earth did you arrive at such positive opinions of all involved?”
In truth, all that I subsequently imagined was quite preposterous.
But such is the heart, rendering us blind to what we do not wish to see.
Looking back, I now remember every unpleasant moment that undermined me.
It’s laughable that I responded to my eyes but disbelieved my ears.
What a joke I was then, and always, with that skeletal frame, arms sheeved, face of a nerd.
Of course, of course, I now see what everyone else saw. Which once again begs the question:
“How on earth did you arrive at such positive opinions of all involved?”
We walk similar paths.
Watch as the oligarchs strip out every safety net and protection for the poor while enriching themselves with government contracts, subsidies, and deregulation, which benefits them directly.
“We the people,” they chant, as they pull the rug out from under them.
Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor.
Today, I’ve been playing piggy in the middle.
Between the non-technical technical project manager in the technical team and the non-technical head of delivery with the supplier.
At the mention of our content security policy, both sides draw a blank. Perhaps it’s the first time any of the supplier’s customers have had one.
I’m the tech nerd in the middle, grasping for the ball flying backwards and forwards between us, awkwardly waving requirements in front of anyone who might listen.
It’s amusing that some senior bods might consider my role redundant, easily outsourced to some third-party supplier. Unfortunately, these senior folk don’t know what they don’t know.
It takes a tech nerd playing piggy in the middle to expose that.
