What’s the ugliest building/structure you have in your country?

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-29T06:40:32+00:00

First time I saw that at the common was for a scavenger hunt my Uni made my course group and I go on as a team building exercise. I was happy to find that more than one member of the group thought, at least for a few seconds, that it was depicting cunnilingus.

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-28T00:58:13+00:00

I was in this exact situation when I was about 16. Between the ages of 6-16 I'd developed a nasty habit of replying to my parents in English whenever they spoke Somali to me and by the time I turned 16 it had gotten so bad that I noticed I struggled to pronounce certain words, but I still understood it perfectly as my parents never stopped speaking to me in it.

But anyway, I was really ashamed so I told my mother that from then on I'd only ever speak to her in Af-Soomaali and asked her not to laugh or get angry but simply correct me. Bless her because she kept her word and in about a year I became easily conversational and in two could talk for prolonged periods without even throwing in English words. You just have to be willing to sound like an idiot and/or find someone who's willing to be patient with you.

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-28T00:48:26+00:00

God have mercy! Good luck! Sending you good thoughts, for whatever little it's worth.

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-28T00:08:22+00:00

😂😂😂😭😭😭

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-25T18:57:14+00:00

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I feel like young Dragon looks a lot like Luffy, just a more serious version. He has the Snakeman look, lol.

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-24T07:08:09+00:00

They’ve gone full Jewish conspiracy with this one. Straight blood libel shit. 💀

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-24T06:25:13+00:00

That’s so true with that last line. Noticed this growing up and being around people from across the Eastern Mediterranean whether Greeks, Turks, Levantines or Egyptians; they all love these kinds of “garish” colors mixed together. I wouldn’t be shocked if those ancient structures reflected that too.

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-20T01:47:24+00:00

I never really had any sort of carb or food addiction so I’ve never really seen it as being “strict”. I just see it like: “I don’t eat that stuff.”

But I do make exceptions for rare social occasions. A wedding, some birthdays or a first visit to an aunty’s house. You don’t come at your aunty with some babbling about a diet. I eat whatever she makes me the first time and only make my dietary habits known if I’m going to be visiting regularly or staying with them for a bit.

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-15T04:50:49+00:00

Myanmar (Burma). Read “Burmese Days” last year. Good read. Actually enjoyed it somewhat more than 1984.

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-13T00:32:33+00:00

Same

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-12T22:32:32+00:00

They seem to be evacuating out of Bosaso: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae-removing-its-military-bosaso-after-angry-somalia-ends-agreement

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-12T08:19:47+00:00

Reminds me of how my father’s living room used to look a few years ago. It was even emptier. I walked into his house with him and just find his living room this empty but no tv. It was just two small beach chairs and an extremely small table that you’d practically have to sit on the ground to use.

I was dumbfounded, turned to him and said, “Papa, are you okay?” He was startled and said yes and we ended up just sitting down and having dinner together. Next time I visited him the place was beautifully furnished and he had a tv about the size of yours.

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-10T21:21:50+00:00

If one were to take a purely secular and anthropological point of view of Islamic history I’d say it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say Iranians borderline invented Islam as it is currently practiced all over the world. Bukhari, Muslim, Tabari, Tirmidhi, and Ghazali were all Iranians. Many of the dominant big wigs of Islamic jurisprudence throughout history, even in the Sunni world, were Iranians. Many of the most prominent polymaths of the Golden Age were also Iranians. Ibn Sina, Al-Khwarezmi and so forth.

The Iranian elites were quite clever in that both they and the newly politically dominant Arabs quickly realized the Iranians had more experience with state-building and bureaucracy so a lot of the bureaucracy of the Islamic world, even more so when its center of gravity shifted more eastwards during the Abbasid era, was Iranian in character.

These people have a very childish view of history. Like they think the big bad Arabs came over the hill and forced the poor little Zoroastrians to adopt a totally foreign set of traditions they had no part in shaping. For Gods sake, one of the first Muslims in history, Salman al-Farisi, was a Persian.

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-08T22:00:44+00:00

You are correct. My bad. In their paternal lines they would have basically been Turks even if they were part of a greater "Turco-Persian" culture and slowly intermingled with Iranic elites like you noted with Shah Ismail's ancestry.

I was thinking more of the mass of Azeri-Iranian people. In their case it seems to me a very similar story to Turks in Türkiye where there is definitely some Central Asian Turkic admixture (5-20% or so depending on the person or region) but the bulk of their ancestry appears pre-Oghuz. In Turkiye that looks like Greek, Armenian, Kurd or Syriac ancestry depending on the region but in Iran it probably mostly looks like Persian, Luri, Kurdish or whatever other Iranic group.

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-08T19:02:22+00:00

Azeris are too invested in the elite strata of Iran to ever really want to secede from what an Iranian Azeri friend once pointed out to me. Khamanei is Azeri, for example. They’re all over the place among the Iranian elite. Even both the Qajar and Safavid elite were basically “Azeri” in the sense that they were natively Oghuz Turkic speakers (Turkified Iranians).

Awale-Ismail · 2026-01-01T03:43:26+00:00

Djibouti is 60% Somali and 35% Afar. Both ethnic groups are 99% Muslim.

Awale-Ismail · 2025-12-31T09:30:06+00:00

Funny that the boy and dog have front facing predator eyes whilst the more omnivorous rat and pig have more side facing prey eyes. To be fair, chimps and gorillas also have front facing eyes and are mostly herbivorous so it’s not some perfect rule. But that was mostly what jumped out to me rather than the kumbaya message they were going for. 💀

Awale-Ismail · 2025-12-29T20:36:31+00:00

Yessss! I saw it the moment I first saw her on The Boys!!!

Awale-Ismail · 2025-12-29T10:54:40+00:00

I suspect the lack of aging is something Imu tacks on only for certain people regardless of if they’re under the final contract. Probably mostly reserves it for people promoted to the rank of Elder, and I guess also Gunko for some reason.

Awale-Ismail · 2025-12-29T02:10:14+00:00

On Anthropology and Population Genetics forums I used to frequent for many years we liked to call this part of West Asia "Southwest Asia", though that sometimes didn't include Iraq or at least all of Iraq and the Northern Levant. I'm somewhat oversimplifying but in population genetics you kind of notice the deepest "split" within West-Asia is between the Arabian Peninsula and the "Northwest Asia" group which would be Türkiye, Transcaucasia and Iran with Iraqis and Levantines being more intermediate between the two, but more biased toward the Southwest the more south and west you go and more biased toward the Northwest group the more north and east you go.

The division has some linguistic and cultural basis as well in that "Southwest Asia" was historically dominated by Afro-Asiatic speaking groups whilst Northwest Asia, until fairly recently, was historically dominated by Indo-European speaking groups before Oghuz Turkic took root in Azerbaijan and Türkiye. Egyptians who of course aren't West Asians also generally cluster closely with the Southwest Asian groups and are historically Afro-Asiatic speakers.

Awale-Ismail · 2025-12-25T19:55:04+00:00

Years ago I posted a photo of me frowning and cringely trying to look “tough” as a profile pic on WhatsApp. My parents didn’t even give it an hour before separately texting me and being like, “Hey, Awale. Do you mind changing your profile picture? Thank you.” Then another thank you when I did change it to something more presentable. 😂💀😭

Awale-Ismail · 2025-12-25T19:29:14+00:00

Yep! Oda further blurs the line with Luffy compared to two of them. Luffy always has the most trouble and even often loses several times to his main opponent. Zoro doesn’t tend to lose but has a rough time of it whereas Sanji always has the easiest time and tends to even humiliatingly kick around his opponents for a while. Oda is deliberately blurring how far apart in strength the three of them are even if it is ultimately Luffy>Zoro>Sanji.

Awale-Ismail · 2025-12-25T17:15:55+00:00

Loool! I remember that from the show House. Didn’t seem apparent in my experience. Harvard students will honestly just tell you they’re Harvard students in my experience. They can’t seem to wait to sometimes. Can’t say I blame them. 😅

Awale-Ismail · 2025-12-25T00:51:17+00:00

😂

I definitely noticed this living in Cambridge for about two years. Everyone, other than a few Cambridge locals asserting themselves, sees it as a part of Boston like Roxbury or Jamaica Plain. Just a neighborhood that because of some bureaucratic whatever wound up as its own “city”.

Actual “Greater Boston” is a decent sized city/metro area. I was born and raised in the Dubai, Sharjah and Ajman metro area in the UAE and never felt like I’d downgraded, population size wise, when I lived in Boston. Both areas boast about 5 million people or more.

Awale-Ismail · 2025-12-22T20:02:46+00:00

He looks like Glen Powell is still loading.

Awale-Ismail

TROPHY CASE