Stoicism is a school of philosophy that hails from ancient Greece in Rome in the early parts of the 3rd century BC. A philosophy that was designed to maximize positive emotions and help individuals to hone their virtues. Stoicism provides a framework for living well. It offers practical strategies to get more of what is valuable. The Stoics provided compelling answers to anxiety, stress, fear, and troubling questions like “What do I want out of life?” and an operating system that dealt with the trials of the human conditions. The core of this philosophy is to live with virtue. The four virtuous of stoic philosophy are:

1- Wisdom - Seeing things for what they are, not what we wish them to be.

2- Courage - acting in the right way despite fear of reservation.

3- Justice - acting reasonably despite the pressure not to.

4- Temperance - acting with discipline and self-control despite the draws of passion and greed.

Marcus Aurelius wrote, “you should come across anything better than justice, truth, self-control, courage—it must be an extraordinary thing indeed.” Stoicism focuses more on inner peace and virtue. It believes that it is the only good. Externals such as money, fame, reputation and material things, etc., are neither good nor bad. They are simply indifferent. The goal of Stoicism is to attain inner peace by overcoming adversity, practicing self-control, being conscious of our impulses, and realizing our ephemeral nature.

A restorative practice is realizing what is in our control, what we influence over, and what we do not, a meeting is delayed because of traffic - no amount of yelling and cursing will fix the problem, and no amount of wishing can make you taller or born in a different country, always ask yourself what are the things that you can't control. Another way of practicing is Journaling, which is an essential practice in stoicism, one of the most influential figures in philosophy, Marcus Aurelius of the Roman empire, wrote a series of personal writings that are now turned into a book called Meditation.

The stoic philosopher Seneca proposes practicing misfortune, practicing what you fear, whether a simulation in your mind or real life. The downside is almost always reversible or transient. Emotions like anxiety and fear have their roots in uncertainty and rarely in experience, anyone who has made a big bet on themselves knows how much energy both states can consume, the solution is to do something about that state, make yourself familiar with the things, and the worst-case scenarios that you’re afraid of. Marcus often practiced an exercise referred to as “taking the view from above” or “Plato’s view.” It invites us to take a step back, zoom out and see life from a higher vantage point than our own, this envisions all the millions and millions of people, all the “armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths,” prompts us to take perspective and reminds us how small we are.

It reorients us, and as a Stoic scholar, Pierre Hadot, put it, “The view from above changes our value judgments on things: luxury, power, war…and the worries of everyday life become ridiculous.”. The great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would describe his formula for human greatness as Amor fati—a love of fate. “That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it but love it.” Amor Fati in stoicism is the practice of accepting and embracing everything that has happened, is happening, and is yet to happen. It is understanding that the nature of the universe is changing and that without it, we would not exist, we wouldn’t laugh, cry, love, create, or grow. Whether change is good, bad, enjoyment, suffering, or loss, it is essential. Billions of years of constant change, variation, mutation, and development have brought us to where we are right now.

The existence of ancient civilizations in the Middle East has always been a phenomenal discovery. Beyond the civilizations that kept their heritage and retained some level of influence from those antique periods, the ancient Egyptian civilization was always at the forefront. From the unification of the two kingdoms in the Early Dynastic Period up until the invasion of the Kingdom by the Persian Achaemenid Empire under Darius the third, we see how it echoes through time.

Important achievements of that period relied heavily on farming, architecture, mythology, military, language, and perhaps most importantly, art.

Ancient Egyptian art, which can showcase itself in various ways, captured the attention of a lot of people. From private patrons to museums, archeologists and historians rushed into Egypt to seek the wonderful civilization that once stretched the Nile.

But with such fame also came crime.

Antique smuggling refers to the illegal transportation of ancient artifacts for the purposes of profit making. Largely wealthy art collectors and national museums pay huge sums of money to collective groups, such as the Dib-Simonian network, who were found guilty of smuggling a rare Sarcophagus out of Egypt and sold for millions.

Fortunately, such rare ancient artifacts are currently being re-discovered and returned back to Egypt through large investigations by the US authorities with the Egyptian government.

Known as the “Green Coffin” the Sarcophagus was that of an ancient Egyptian priest named  Ankhenmaat. He was a priest of the late period of ancient Egypt from the reign of the last Pharoah all the way to the coming of Alexander the Great.

Renewable energy comes from natural sources that replace themselves more quickly than they are used up. Examples of such sources that are continuously replenished are the sun and the wind. There are many different types of renewable energy available to us.

On the other hand, non-renewable fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas require hundreds of millions of years to create. When fossil fuels are used to create energy, they emit dangerous greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide.

Now more than ever the Kurdistan region should prioritize using renewable energy, and get independent from solely using oil for electricity. Not only does the community suffer from shortage of electricity, but it is also very harmful to the environment and is outdated.

Electricity can be produced from renewable energy in various methods. One of the main ones is using solar energy, the radiation that comes from the sun. Kurdistan gets plenty of sunlight throughout the year, and it is possible to take advantage of it.

On a positive note, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) claimed that 20 percent of the electricity generated in the Kurdistan Region is clean and renewable, and that this percentage is expected to rise over the next ten years.

KRG’S Ministry of Electricity also asserted that it intended to double the Kurdistan Region's generation of renewable energy by 2028. It was stated that the "The Kurdistan Region will produce around 50% of its electricity through clean and renewable energy in the next six years."  Few months ago, Kurdistan Region's capital Erbil, saw the inauguration of a 200KW solar power installation on Sunday, with the United States Consul General in Erbil hailing it as a step toward the region's "safe energy future."

As such projects get more implemented, it helps the region to prosper  in terms of economy, environment, and health.

Carl Dweck’s work bridges developmental, social, and personality psychology. It examines people's self-conceptions to structure the self and guide their behavior. Her research examines the origins of these self-conceptions, their role in motivation and self-regulation, and their impact on achievement and interpersonal processes.

Based on research that started in the early 1970s- around 30 years ago, Carol Dweck and her colleagues became interested in students' attitudes about failure. They noticed that some students rebounded while others seemed devastated by even the smallest setbacks. After studying the behavior of thousands of children, Dr. Dweck coined the terms fixed mindset and growth mindset to describe the underlying beliefs people have about learning and intelligence.  Fixed mindset describes people who believe their intelligence, talents, and personalities are fixed traits that cannot grow.

They believe they are born with a certain level of ability and special skills that cannot be improved over time. While individuals with a growth mindset believe intelligence develops through effort, mistakes are seen as opportunities to learn and improve.  The study followed a nationally representative sample of 12,000 ninth-grade students from 65 U.S. schools. A group of students with intervention conditions participated in a session designed to foster a growth mindset and to oppose the belief that intelligence is fixed and that effort or mistakes indicate a lack of ability. In contrast, the second group was in a controlled condition, focusing more generally on brain function during learning and fixed mindset. The first group reported a reduction in fixed mindset beliefs compared to the second group.

This was also accompanied by an increase in GPA for lower achieving students of the first group and an increase in advanced math course enrollment in the following year across achievement levels.  Students with a growth mindset are three times more likely to score in the top 20% on the test, while students with a fixed mindset are four times more likely to score in the bottom 20%. It is possible to promote a growth mindset by teaching students about neuroscience evidence showing that the brain is malleable and gets stronger through effort, trying new strategies, and seeking help when necessary. A way to develop a growth mindset is to first become aware of your mindset and then reflect on the impact of fixed and growth mindsets, learn more about neuroscience and understand that growth mindset exists. Another way is to focus on the process and improve it to discover your ways of learning. By finding adversity when stepping out of comfort zone, we realize that everything requires effort, not simple talent.

Tigris and Euphrates rivers have been the most valuable resources in the Mesopotamian region for thousands of years. The countries that both rivers run through, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, benefit from them in various fields. With such a resource being shared between multiple countries, conflicts will undoubtedly arise and it will require cooperation and negotiations to reach a solution and prevent further trouble.

Before 1960, Turkey did not have any plans to take advantage of using the rivers, thus there were no disputes between Turkey, Syria and Iraq, but the initiation of unilateral irrigation plans that started in the 60s and the 70s changed that.

In the 70s, Turkey had a program called Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) that was intended to develop water solutions for the region located in the Euphrates-Tigris Basin and upper Mesopotamia plains and was planned to create 22 dams and 19 Hydro-Electric Powerplants HEPP, and irrigation investments that would have an installed capacity of 7,476 MW with annual energy production of 27 billion kilowatt-hours.

The master plan designed in 1988 turned GAP into a regional development project after envisaging investments in agriculture, industry, transportation, education, health, and rural-urban infrastructure.

One essential part of this project is the Ataturk Dam which is located on the Euphrates river in Bozova, Şanlıurfa, south-east Turkey. Its construction lasted from 1983 to 1990. This dam is considered one of the largest dams in the country and is ranked the sixth largest earth-and-rock fill embankment dam in the world with its power generation capacity of 2,400MW.

It is indicated that "GAP will double Turkey’s irrigation land and hydroelectricity production and also increase the per capita income in the region by 50%."

This project has received political dissatisfaction from Iraq and Syria for the large decrease in the flow of the Euphrates. The three countries even initiated talks to negotiate on a water institution for solving the issue of sharing the Euphates-Tigris water.

UN predicted that the decrease of the flow of Euphrates and Tigris to Syria and Iraq by 30% and 60% respectively until the end of the century will cause the amount of water flowing through both countries become scarcer.

An abode for professionalism in the field of illustration, ArtStation is defined worldwide as a hub for talented artists. Be it entertainment or video games, illustrators prove their passion for the designing of modules, shapes, and entire landscapes.

Their success is accompanied by a sense of belonging to a community and the chance to acquire a living, finding a middle point between taking fiscal responsibility for their craft and proving to the world that art is as useful as other fields in the world.

But lately, a few other challenges have erupted with regard to their work. But this time, it is not to do with a schedule or networking, but with a whole new era in experimentation with technological development: Artificial Intelligence (AI).

It was here that the hardworking talent of millions of illustrators came under a deep philosophical dilemma in which human labor and creativity are met with the growing dependence on AI by the public. For many businesses, dependence on AI was a matter of time.

AI is traditionally defined as the status in which intelligence is shown by machines and other designs made by humans as opposed to the ones shown by a human or an animal. It has received nothing but utter amazement and excitement for a new era in which development is synonymous with tasks easier done as opposed to human labor. But it has also taken shape as means to creatively come up with artistic expression using generated imagery and other ways such as music and the writing of paragraphs in multiple fields.

The growing success of its takeover is praised yet also harshly opposed. As of today, a large number of artists on platforms such as ArtStation and other publications criticized the way in which the website allows for new means of acquiring modules based on the notorious success. If AI proves to be an easier process for video game companies and individuals to task them as opposed to a hardworking artist, then a gradual decline would follow in which those who have depended on this way of gaining a living would soon be under immense challenge.

As millions look forward to expressing their thoughts and ideas through sketches, a vast amount of others turn towards AI, bringing human craft in the fields of the arts into question.

By: Birhat Atrushi