Sunday, August 23, 2026

23 August 2026 was, above all, a day on which the logic of economic and security pressure once again blurred the boundary between war and politics: the Islamic Republic, after nearly six months of war and while having effectively halted the passage of oil tankers through Hormuz, apparently ignored Washington’s threat of “the toughest sanctions in history” and put on a show of war; it is unclear how long the disruption of a waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil once passed will remain the Islamic Republic’s serious lever against U.S. pressure. At the same time, Syria and Israel, mediated by the United States, resumed high-level talks in Jordan to halt Israeli attacks and revive the security agreement, while two Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least two people, including a four-year-old child, and revealed the fragility of the ceasefire (presumably to those who thought it was not fragile). In Kazakhstan, early parliamentary elections produced a large majority for the newly established party supporting President Tokayev and further concentrated power after the constitutional redesign (Democracy’s prospects are looking bright!); in Ukraine, Zelenskyy said that holding elections under the fire of war would “destroy” the country. This, too, is a sign of the direct collision between democratic necessity and the logic of survival in war, in favor of a “democratic-looking rom-com dictator” who might perhaps be called a romcom-democtator in English. In France, Raphaël Glucksmann announced his candidacy for the 2027 presidential election, and the contest for the belated, last-minute reconfiguration of the center-left against the far right entered its official phase earlier.

Alibaba (which used to be a poor, honest woodcutter and has now exchanged its name for the Forty Thieves) also announced the sale of $10.2 billion in new shares in Hong Kong and said it would devote all net proceeds to full-stack artificial intelligence infrastructure and capabilities. In Beijing, humanoid robot competitions, after breaking speed-running records, are moving toward autonomous tests of cable connection, assembly, warehousing, and emergency response; the gap between physical display and real work has apparently become the main measure of progress in robotics. Elsewhere, in Congo, as Ebola deaths surpassed 2,500, warnings about the rapid spread of the Bundibugyo strain—which still has no approved vaccine or treatment—[1] recalled that weak infrastructure, war, and social distrust can spread a biological crisis faster than the capacity to contain it.

Whether we drew with my son today or I do not properly remember yesterday; but yesterday or today, I cannot tell you how valuable I consider the experience. I thought about the difficulty of my relationship with, and my pessimism toward, “Iranians,” and felt sorry and angry about the futile situation in which many of the so-called opposition forces are trapped. I thought about what a bad world this is and, at the same time, in our backyard, as Nina was opening the electric awning, I felt that the world’s stage curtains were rising and the blue sky and beautiful nature suddenly began their performance before me. I opened my arms and bowed before the world as a sign of respect. I had lunch with my wife and son at a good restaurant and somewhat eased the Migraine headache caused by the subject of an earlier conversation with a colleague and friend. At night, we watched a series and, despite my increased thirst to continue developing Leralink, did no “useful” work at all. We went to sleep late, dissatisfied, because we wished more wakefulness had been possible. The Instagram algorithm, which seems to have understood everything about what I mean, found several excellent organizations related to my work for me. Today I learned that sometimes a conversation of a few sentences—even in writing and on Telegram—is worth reading a book or seeing Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey film in an IMax cinema.