This is so useful. Thank you @heartwon 🙏

Here is a special thread introducing our series on “The Making of the Islamic World.” It offers 10 episodes about the transformation of Islamicate societies between the 7th and 17th centuries. You can find the series page here: https://t.co/7mL9eWmMmz

This is Chris Gratien posting. I created this series during Fall 2020 for my students as asynchronous material supported by readings and discussion. This is going to be a long thread, but it will be a great shortcut for those looking to make similar use of these materials.

There are two items worth pointing out: 1. This is an overview of the political, social, and cultural history of Islamicate societies. It does not deal with the origins of Islam or many theological questions. It does discuss Islam’s spread and the transformation of Islamic law.

2. This is the first part of a two-part sequence that takes the history of the Islamic world into the present. It emphasizes developments and themes that have particular relevance for later periods.

This is really a multivocal narrative of Islamic history. We feature over 20 scholars from almost as many institutions. Many of those who worked on it, myself included, study the early modern and modern era but have teaching obligations that take us further back in history.

Most software founders, particularly in B2B, need to get radically better at sales. @Steli , who is the best person for explaining the scrappy stages in the beginning and then building out a team with scripts and processes, wrote a guide to:

For technical founders it is irrationally, obscenely hard to reverse years of programming (ba dum bum) that sales is a value-destroying activity. Sales is CLEARLY a value-creating activity, contingent on you have a value-creating product.

The world will not drop what they are doing to adopt your work. This is particularly true in B2B, where simply building a better mousetrap won't overcome the activation energy required to get people with additional non-mice problems to prioritize changing mousetraps today.

This is very non-obvious for founders because founders are not often people who *want* to be sold to. We often come from a background where trying out tools is a bit of a fun hobby. We like looking at all the options, making charts, and ripping out partially complete tests.

"This week I unsuccessfully trialed four software options for automating that thing that has been killing us. Our actual production process remains the same as last week. Don't worry; this was a great use of time." is not a thing you want to write in a progress report to manager.

SRI SWETHA VINAYAGAR, THIRUVALANCHUZHI, KUMBAKONAM
(TN)
#bharatmandir

While main deity is Shiva as Kapartheeswarar, the kshetram is famous for Ganesha, known as Swetha/Vellai Vinayagar (white Vinayak)

During samudra manthan, Vasuki snake (used as rope) started spewing venom.

Unable to bear the intense heat, Devas rushed to Siva. He told them that this was because the task was started without getting Ganesha’s approval.
So the Devas created a Ganesha murti from white sea foam and worshipped it.
It was later taken by Indra to Indralok.
@GunduHuDuGa

But once Indra had to come to Earth to pray to Shiva to seek relief from a curse inflicted on him. So he brought the murti of Ganesha with him. When he came here, he wanted to take bath before puja. So he gave the murti to a boy to hold for sometime. The boy was actually Shiva.

He kept the murti down and vanished. Indra could not lift it again and a divine voice told him to let Vinayagar stay there and visit every Ganesh Chaturthi to pray.
Since Vinayagar is made of foam, no abhishekam is done here. Only punugu is applied n camphor powder is sprinkled

The Straddle is my favorite trade these days. But more often than not, one needs to adjust to make a good return from it. There are many ways to do this depending on your view, psychology and imagination. Will discuss a few that I use

The Straddle is a delta neutral strategy and it is important to keep deltas in check during the course of the Trade and not let them run away from you. Of course Volatility is the elephant in the room- but not going there as that will require a separate discussion

The first and most common method is to go 'inverted.' That is to say to shift the untested side to generate additional Premium and increase the runway to Breakeven. So if you start with a Straddle at 700 and price goes to 740, you can move the PE up to say 720.

How much should you move the untested side? While again this is a matter of skill, experience and artistry, the rule of thumb is to cut deltas by half. Remember, prices will move and you have to allow sufficient room for them to fluctuate

The second method is to shift the entire Straddle in the direction of the move. So if you have a 700 Straddle and Price goes to 740, you can shift the Straddle to 720. If you time this right, it can generally be done at virtually no cost or minimal cost.

So, I want to talk about how sexual harassment and fair pay are linked at Google (and beyond), because I think that's an angle that isn't being highlighted enough in the coverage of these walk-outs. I'm going to frame it largely around my personal experience there. Thread.

When I was sexually harassed by the director of the area I was working in, I was afraid to report it because I was worried that "getting him in trouble" would result in the subtle retaliation of missed leadership opportunities.

I wanted to continue working on the team I was on, because I'd gained a lot of very deep knowledge and expertise in that area, as well as reputation and camaraderie with the other folks working in that area. I didn't want to make the situation more "difficult."

To get promoted at Google, several need to happen: 1. you need opportunities for ownership and leadership above your current level (basically, opportunities to show you're working at the next level you're trying to get promoted to). The work you're "assigned" has a big impact.

2. You need glowing reviews from peers, *at or particularly above the level you're hoping to get promoted to.* Basically, you need people a lot more senior than you to say you're doing awesome work.