Wandering by starlight

History sideblog for seren-starlight

[that-starlit-wanderer]

This is a sideblog for that-starlight-prince, mostly focused on history and comments on what I'm currently reading (also mostly history). This has also turned into the blog where I do most of my politics posting, I'll mostly tag that with #politics quarantine if you don't care for it

Books I'm currently reading and/or have read recently:

Currently reading:

Timothy Brook, The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties

Jonathan Sumption, Triumph and Illusion: The Hundred Years War Vol. 5

Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution

Finished reading:

Antony Black, Political Thought in Europe 1250-1450 (1992).

Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity

J.W. Burrow, A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past.

Cicero, The Republic and The Laws, trans. Niall Rudd

Pieter Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History.

Mark Edward Lewis, China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty.

Mark Edward Lewis, China Between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties.

Mark Edward Lewis, The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han.

Anthony Pagden, Lords of all the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain, and France, c. 1500-c. 1800.

David Potter, ed. France in the Later Middle Ages, 1200-1500

Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Vol. 1: The Renaissance.

Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln.

[that-starlit-wanderer]

[that-starlit-wanderer]

Foresight

(on the other hand...the less said about Trudeau's contention that misery and famine were a thing of the past in Maoist China the better)

[that-starlit-wanderer]

[that-starlit-wanderer]

Return to Shanghai

[that-starlit-wanderer]

He's just like me fr

[that-starlit-wanderer]

Summary of all the political discourse you'll need for the 2026 US midterms:

If a progressive/DSA-aligned Democrat wins a general election, it's because more left-wing ideas were always popular and the corrupt DNC was standing in the way this entire time. If a progressive/DSA-aligned Democrat loses in the general election, it doesn't prove that the opposite is true; it could only happen because the corporate Dem establishment deliberately sabotaged their campaign

If a centrist Democrat wins a general election, it's because only moderate candidates who can appeal to swing voters and the five remaining never-Trump Republicans are capable of winning outside of places like NYC. If a centrist Democrat loses in a general election it doesn't prove that the opposite is true; it could only happen because left-wing progressives selfishly refused to vote blue no matter who

[that-starlit-wanderer]

[that-starlit-wanderer]

[that-starlit-wanderer]

[that-starlit-wanderer]

Wondering about the alternate universe where Pierre Trudeau becomes the leader of the NDP instead of the Liberals (the CCF was the forerunner of the NDP; the party changed its name in 1961)

[that-starlit-wanderer]

[that-starlit-wanderer]

There is an "enormous stock" of pictures of Pierre Trudeau in a "bikini-like" bathing suit

[that-starlit-wanderer]

That's a pretty remarkable change in just seven years.

For comparison, the growth of global internet users since the mid-1990s (from Wikipedia):

[that-starlit-wanderer]

Trudeau was decidedly not on board with the Cold War liberal consensus on relations with the Soviet Union and China, and this would continue when he eventually became prime minister (he apparently mused about withdrawing Canada from NATO in the 1970s)

[that-starlit-wanderer]

I haven't had the pleasure of living there myself but as far as being an exciting city goes I'm not sure Ottawa has improved very much

(I have a friend living there who insists it's not as boring as people think. But I used to hear people say things like that about Calgary too and it was always cope)

[that-starlit-wanderer]

[that-starlit-wanderer]

I haven't had the pleasure of living there myself but as far as being an exciting city goes I'm not sure Ottawa has improved very much

(I have a friend living there who insists it's not as boring as people think. But I used to hear people say things like that about Calgary too and it was always cope)