A thread on "The Radical Culture of Australia" by Richard Rosencrance from "The Founding of New Societies". An attempt to give an outline to our socio-political culture. 🧵

Prefer not to get on the soapbox, but when inner-circle establishment media figures who've largely made their careers off of "Counter-Jihad" like Piers Morgan are calling this out, they're smartly positioning themselves as they see the jig will soon be up. Ditto Epstein & MAGA.

Unlike other Balkanoids under Turkish rule, Bulgaria was too close to Ottoman capital for feasible armed revolt. Thus efforts at reasserting nationhood long focused on gaining religious autonomy. To this end an attempt at Catholic-Unionism was attempted, but soon ended in farce.

Good counterpoint. Underestimated how friendly on a personal level Israeli gov remains with Russia, even if they clash on MENA issues, they've always maintained an "understanding". Would be darkly hilarious for 🇺🇸🐘 if they had a full rapprochement if US ever withdrew support.

Was Alexander the Great really a Slav? A scholarly investigation...

"How can these people be eating our lunch, if they are so fundamentally less risk averse than us, on every level?"

Nemets' Canadian fulminations had me think of other "Spoiler Countries": States without an ethnicity/nation, which largely exist to spite another state from adding to its core population. Eg: 🇦🇹>🇩🇪, 🇽🇰>🇦🇱, 🇧🇪>🇫🇷/🇳🇱, 🇲🇦>🇪🇭. Though sometimes, spoiler states evolve real identies.

Around 25-50% of all pre-1945 films have been lost forever. Figures are much higher in Europe, still more in Japan, for obvious reasons.

Bulgaria under Zhivkov became so dependent on the USSR it made even the Communist military uncomfortable. Zhivkov went as far as twice asking that 🇧🇬 be fully annexed to the USSR as another Republic. Even unrecognised microstates like Abkhazia reject such security measures now.

Enjoyed rereading Badian's paper on the "Cold War" of Antiochus III & Rome over Greece. Thought of excerpts, but realised it's far too specialised, Hellenistic geopols was very complicated. But really highlights how Great Powers usually go to war by misunderstanding & accident.

Bevan's 1902 work remains the definitive narrative history of the Seleucids for those interested. Even thought they nearly ruled the whole Middle-East on Roman contact, Rome only fought a single major battle with them, instead being instrumental in destabilising them from within.

Dry title, but compelling story of how the monetisation of the Middle-East was driven by war. Alexander's successors feverishly minted coins as the only reliable method of raising troops: polities were too unstable to offer land-grants, & natives weren't trusted for conscription.

Matches my experience. When I've gone backpacking, travelled around campsites or hostels, the gender disparity is notable. Sometimes to such a degree that girls privately complain about the relative lack of guys around, something I hadn't previously thought was even possible.

Reminds me of Turnbull's notorious anthropology on the Ik of 🇺🇬/🇰🇪, asserts their language is likely the nearest living relative to ancient Nubian. Rest of the book describes their social collapse, he even concludes advocating ethnocide due to their level of moral degradation.

Came across this pic of an NT cop confiscating an octobong in 2003

Turkey gone full circle, from banning hijabs to prosecuting classical composers for "blasphemy", in this case quoting a medieval Persian poet in a twitter post got threat of 1+ year jail. The Kemalists & Algerians were right, allow Islam into politics, and this is the end result.

I wonder how many of my followers would pass this competition..

Ottoman troops had contempt for armour, with early janissaries doing away with it entirely, whilst the Turkish cavalry (Sipahi) collected deliberately mismatching pieces from fallen enemies, to emphasise it was all stolen. Posting a full Toynbee thread on devşırme tomorrow.