Why ISIS hates the Sufis and blows up their shrines “As fundamentalists who seek to return Muslims to the basics of the faith as taught by Mohammad, they see Sufism as comprising doctrines that emerged at a later period than that of the Prophet and his first followers.”

The Death of the Most Generous Nation on Earth “The Swedes responded because they could not accept that outcome. They had no special obligation to act; they did so because they believed it was right. They had behaved admirably; even the hypocrisy of political correctness — their opinion corridor — may have been an indispensable […]

Why Big Companies Keep Failing: The Stack Fallacy “In a surprising way, it is far easier to innovate down the stack than up the stack. The reason for this is that you are yourself a natural customer of the lower layers. Apple knew what it wanted from an ideal future microprocessor. It did not have the skills necessary […]

One Weird Trick That Makes a Novel Addictive “This is the way adaptation plays out: Person A comprehends some information about person B’s nature from what B says or does, and that changes how A approaches her afterward. It sounds simple, but I think it’s very difficult to write and nearly impossible to write well. […]