I gained a lot of followers in the past 2 weeks due to war related coverage. I wanted to give a brief introduction about myself & what I typically write about during 'normal' times. My name is Alireza Talakoubnejad. I have lived in both Iran and the United States in different.

ای اهل حرم میر و علمدار نیامد . .

One of my favorite old school nohes

For everyone who is participating in Tasooa/Ashura ceremonies, eltemase dua. Please forgive me if I've ever offended you. And if you're not into the whole Shiism thing I hope you have a wonderful Sunday. Except if you support Israel killing Iranians in which case I hate you.

It went down for an hour and then came back - calm down

RT @LivinginTehran: 🏴 Tasu'a (9th day of Muharram) mourning ceremonies held today at the Grand Bazaar's "Sadat Akhavi" Hosseiniyeh, a mourn….

Has the new Syrian government allowed Shias to hold Muharram ceremonies this year? Have there been any events in the shrine in Damascus?.

My feelings towards Ramin Rezaeian.

That's wonderful. But the point isn't to get a high score on some chart . the point is for this to help the standard of living. Which isn't at a 46 year high. If we can get the standard of living there, I will be the first person to give a standing ovation.

These guys are hyping this up so much but Pezeshkian doesn't tend to be a good public speaker, especially out of the Iranian cultural context, so it will probably end up being a repetition of the standard lines and in a really dry basic way. Though I hope I'm wrong.

If you think some random diaspora Iranians that can barely speak Persian anymore & haven't been back since the 80s are dramatic, you have no idea the mind games the guy that has been ruling with absolute power for 36 years is capable of. Literally running laps around you all.

<Disappears for a few weeks sparking rumors>. <Unexpectedly shows up to an event that he would have gone to anyway>. <Something entirely unremarkable turns into an international headline>. Congratulations you've all been played again. And it's maybe the fifth time he does this.

Ok I found him.

Excerpts taken from "Leaders Eat Last" by Simon Sinek.

And of course now it's even worse now with social media. Now there's literally 0 standards and some repulsive neckbeard with a half developed frontal cortex can just make up stuff 24/7 and have millions of people believe him & live in a parallel universe.

It's not like before the 80s the news was perfect and everyone was wonderfully informed (yes I've read Chomsky). But there was at least an intention to be about a noble pursuit, to be about some purpose beyond exclusively maximizing profit.

Reagan's FCC chairman saw the opportunity for a goldmine and systematically dismantled the most important regulations which were preventing the news from becoming pure adslop. Most importantly, taking off the Fairness Doctrine allowed stations to turn into hyperpartisan funnels

After the 1979 Iranian Revolution & hostage crisis, ABC news made a special series every night . & it was quite popular beyond what was expected. So the executives started to get interested in this whole news thing as a money maker rather than something for journalist nerds.

The original purpose of the news was for networks to give a "public service" to justify them getting a license to broadcast. The point wasn't to make money or get views or something . it was a community service thing that they did despite it having no benefit for the station.

Today while reading one of my books I found an interesting excerpt talking about a weird butterfly effect unintended impact of the Iranian Revolution on all of our lives 🧵.

You don't get credit for pausing a war if it starts again. Let's see if the peace lasts.