Even without a country, Wilhelm II was still conducting a comically bumbling foreign policy. Impressive commitment to the bit.

Otto von Habsburg was doing politics on easy mode

Wild that Austria built a whole nuclear power plant then voted to never turn it on

Breakout successes like Squid Game have created a false impression that Netflix is a platform for truly international cultural exchange. In reality, the data shows cultural flow is overwhelmingly one-way: American films and shows broadcast to a mostly foreign audience.🧵

The funniest thing about this is that Vorarlberg stopped Austria from having nuclear power. Should have let them join Switzerland.

The dichotomy of Western civic & Eastern ethnic nationalism is both influential and enduring. Its origin lies in a fundamental misreading of Central European history, as an attempt to understand how it resulted in the catastrophy of WWII. Me for Aeon Magazine aeon.co/essays/the-myt…

The Hans Kohn problem; Luka Ivan Jukic on how the influential scholar imposed a false distinction between the salubrious "civic" nationalism of Western Europe and the bad "ethnic" nationalisms of everywhere else aeon.co/essays/the-myt… via Aeon Magazine

This is a really good piece on how we oversimplify difference between North Atlantic seaboard and Eastern European nationalisms & forget that often, the NA seaboard just got “there” earlier, with pressured assimilation setting the stage for later civic nationalisms.

“[T]his geographic distinction between Western civic and non-Western (or ‘Eastern’) ethnic nationalism remains one of the most deeply engrained orthodoxies. The problem is it simply isn’t true” — a great read.