🚨🚨 BREAKING: The US State Dept has published a major report to Congress on "Potential Areas for Improved United States Engagement with Somaliland." Congress is executing a massive legislative shift in the Horn of Africa. This is huge. 🧵👇

Every now and then, something happens that gives you a great insight into the collective psyche of Somalilanders. We are emotional people. The same emotional streak of 1960 is still very much present within many today. If you expected a State Department report to say, "The US recognises Somaliland, also F* Somalia," then obviously anything less feels like failure. But let's get serious, official recognition was always going to be a gradual process. Take emotions out of it. Take out the petty State Dept language (that they absolutely have to include as a basic legal formality). What do you see? The State Dept did not want to produce any reports on Somaliland in the first place. They are being dragged into this by Congress. The U.S. government machine is not a single monolith with a single voice. There are myriad competing viewpoints, branches, and objectives pushing against each other by various arms of the state. Watch the direction of travel. Watch the widening legislative divergence between how Washington treats Somaliland versus Somalia.

Some books from where I took ideas for this article: - The Wealth of Nations - Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance. - Jefferson’s bio & his writings. - Jeff Bezos’s shareholder letters. - The Origin of Species. - Notes from Underground. - Deep Simplicity. - Conditioned Reflexes. - Built from Scratch. - Fingerprints of the Gods. - Cicero’s speeches. - Snowball, Buffett’s bio. - Poor Charlie’s Almanack. - Ice Age. - The Principia. - Newton’s correspondence. - Darwin’s autobio. - Scale. - Michael Mauboussin’s articles. - Buffett’s shareholder letters. - Sam Walton’s autobio.

In traditional Somali rhetoric, one often concludes their remarks by saying “waan ka baxay” (lit. I exited), meaning “I now yield.” More poetic is “waan laayay” (lit. I’ve killed [the point]), implying that nothing further remains to be said. Isn't it a cool way to end an essay?

They built a home for 200 children in one of the hottest places on Earth and said no air conditioning. Here’s how the building solves that. Tadjourah sits on the Horn of Africa with temperatures that have broken world records. Urko Sanchez Architects didn’t respond with glass curtain walls and mechanical cooling. They looked at what the people of this region already knew worked. The Medina. A tight cluster of narrow alleyways that shade each other. Small squares that breathe. Wind catcher towers that rise above the roofline, catch whatever breeze exists, and funnel it down into the interiors below. The streets themselves are oriented as ventilation corridors, air accelerates through them. No doors on many of the openings. Musharabiyah screens instead, air passes through freely, direct sun doesn’t. Pale earthen cement on every surface to reflect heat rather than absorb it. Trees planted throughout to build a microclimate over time. Simple precast cement blocks. Reinforced concrete. Zero imported climate logic. This is what happens when the building is the climate system. Africa has been doing this for centuries. The question is why we stopped. SOS Children’s Village, Tadjourah, Djibouti. Urko Sanchez Architects. 📷 Javier Callejas

VANISHING CULTURE is out now! From Internet Archive, this book looks at what is disappearing online. 🌐 Websites vanish 🗞️ News archives go offline 🎮 Games become unplayable 📼 Personal media breaks & becomes unreadable It asks what it means when the record of ourselves starts to disappear 🕳️ 📖 Download & read: archive.org/details/vanishin… 🛒 Purchase in print: betterworldbooks.com/product… #VanishingCulture #DigitalMemory #InternetArchive #BookTwitter

The Paradox of Knowledge:

🚨 URGENT: A harrowing testimony posted on 1 May 2026 reveals the torture of Somalilander captives held by Somalia-supported SSC militia. Captives are experiencing disgusting levels of torture and mutilation. We call on the @ICRC and international observers to intervene and investigate these conditions immediately. @UNinSomalia @US2SOMALIA @UKinSomalia @ICRC_Africa @HeadBritOffice

The glowing #Jacaranda on the main road of Sheikh, Somaliland. After a rainy night in the highlands, it reveals the full height of its beauty. Truly breathtaking. 💜🌧️ #Somaliland #Sheikh @aiawaleh

Said: hiilpress.co/en/products/kaa…

Faiz: wp.me/p65l31-lS

I am proud to have been the first to translate both men into Somali: Edward Said’s Representations of the Intellectual and Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s The Artist’s Role in a Developing Country are now available in Somali.

There are people with habits, and then there is John Grisham. Read about the writing routine he started four decades ago as a young lawyer: on.wsj.com/4b1dHcS

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

“Ajal danbe” is my latest short story (in Somali) aragtixora.wordpress.com/202…

"In the second part of this volume, Jama Musse Jama offers a new and significant contribution to Cushitic linguistics, building on the remarkable results he himself achieved in the project to construct a corpus of the Saho language .." - Director RSE, Prof. Lusini. @UniOrientale

My latest piece is now live. Follow the link: open.substack.com/pub/amaguu… #Psychology

#Somaliland’s “sovereignty is not a legal inheritance from 1960.. Rather, its claim is empirical, built over three decades of relative peace, consistent democratic transitions and internal cohesion following a catastrophic civil war.” A must-read piece:👇 dailymaverick.co.za/article/…

Opinion | Breaking the Cycle of Foreign Assistance Enabling #Corruption somalilandchronicle.com/2026… via @SomalilandChro1 by Ambassador Michael C. Gonzales @usembassyzambia