The new world order, explained
It is not great powers competing, it is Game of Thrones.
Society
Why does light exist?
Physics is cool.
The Moral Economy of the Shire
Even fiction can be grounded in economy. “our protagonists aren’t typical Hobbits. Bilbo, Frodo, Merry, and Pippin are all very clearly members of the landed gentry, the landowning class that controls most means of economic production and maintains social dominance… Read More »The Moral Economy of the Shire
Let’s save the human species!
World is changing rapidly and what is true today won’t be so in a few decades. “It’s difficult to state just how stark and catastrophic of a collapse this is. The number of births in China fell by 17% in… Read More »Let’s save the human species!
When we turned time into a line, we reimagined past and future | Aeon Essays
Time isinear because we decided it is, not because it is. “Humans perceive three spatial dimensions: length, width, and depth. But mathematicians have long theorised there were more. In the 1880s, the mathematician Charles Hinton popularised these ideas, and went… Read More »When we turned time into a line, we reimagined past and future | Aeon Essays
How Debt Bankrupted the British Empire — And Why America, the Second Rome, Is Walking the Same Path
New Rome is in trouble. “Empires do not end because they want to. They end because the numbers leave no alternative.” https://nitishastra.substack.com/p/how-debt-bankrupted-the-british-empire
Collections: How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part II: Government Without States
States are something different. “States tend to have a relatively rigidly defined territory, whereas non-state societies do not. States tend to have more complex social stratification with both a greater degree of labor specialization and a greater degree of social… Read More »Collections: How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part II: Government Without States
Talking With Friends
I like having a beer with one particular friend every month. We talk about life and I am free to talk aloud and think as I go. Every time I figure something new about myself or my situation and am… Read More »Talking With Friends
Collections: How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part I: Aristocrats, Retainers and Clients
How people get food dictates structure of a society in a major way. “one of the best ways to start thinking about any historical society is to begin with the subsistence foundation it is built on, because how people get… Read More »Collections: How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part I: Aristocrats, Retainers and Clients
What If You Keep Slowing Down?
Slow mo is cool not only on screen.