The Itinerant Appalachian

This is something of a hot take, so I might delete this later if it this escapes containment, but I think there's a big problem in post-colonial studies (or rather, the popularized version of post-colonial studies you see in social media discourse and activist communities) where there's this tunnel vision with settler colonialism that magnifies it into the only thing that matters. Because there is also non-settler colonialism, which is at the very least just as bad (if not more so, because you tend to get a higher rate of colonial extraction).

Moreover, when you bring post-colonialism into discussion with the history of the ancient world through to the early modern period, questions of settler vs. indigenous become really complicated. There are a lot of periods of history where population migrations overlapped with military and political transformations that are often described as conquest (both imperial and non-imperial), and those migrations and transformations included intermarriage and cultural change/exchange along a spectrum from voluntary to coercion.

Non-settler colonialism is parasitic. The point is extraction from a subject population, so it would plausibly have a higher rate of extraction. But the subject population remains in control of the land base, and, as we witnessed throughout much of the 20th century, can organize resistance to the extractive structures.

Similarly, I don't agree that the "end goal of settler colonialism is to remove the subject population from the land." That is certainly one option under settler colonialism, but an absolutely crucial part of the settler colonial project is the establishment of an unfree labor force, because settler colonialism tends to result in a political economy where land is cheap (because it's been stolen) but labor is expensive. Thus, there is a strong incentive to replace free migrant labor with unfree workers whenever possible, and the first targets for enslavement are always the native population.

This is something of a hot take, so I might delete this later if it this escapes containment, but I think there's a big problem in post-colonial studies (or rather, the popularized version of post-colonial studies you see in social media discourse and activist communities) where there's this tunnel vision with settler colonialism that magnifies it into the only thing that matters. Because there is also non-settler colonialism, which is at the very least just as bad (if not more so, because you tend to get a higher rate of colonial extraction).

Moreover, when you bring post-colonialism into discussion with the history of the ancient world through to the early modern period, questions of settler vs. indigenous become really complicated. There are a lot of periods of history where population migrations overlapped with military and political transformations that are often described as conquest (both imperial and non-imperial), and those migrations and transformations included intermarriage and cultural change/exchange along a spectrum from voluntary to coercion.

Non-settler colonialism is parasitic. The point is extraction from a subject population, so it would plausibly have a higher rate of extraction. But the subject population remains in control of the land base, and, as we witnessed throughout much of the 20th century, can organize resistance to the extractive structures.

The answer is that it depends, largely due to differing geographies and trade patterns and time periods. For example, the ruler of Portugal might well know who the Timurids were - if it was after Vasco de Gama's "discovery" of the Cape Route to the Indian Ocean, because it's just a quick jaunt up the Indian coast to get to the Persian Gulf.

I doubt the King of Portugal would have much to do with the Tsar of Russia, but Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth I of England definitely did - because the English government had chartered the Muscovy Company in 1555, which ferried diplomatic exchanges between Ivan IV and Elizabeth I along with the huge cargo of wool for fur and fur for wool.

And certainly the monarchs of western and central Europe would have been familiar with the kingdoms of eastern Europe, because they were all fucking inbred relations of each other.

For example, Louis the Great was King of Hungary, Croatia, and Poland, but he was also of the House of Anjou and his brother was the Duke of Calabria who married to the Queen of Naples, who also was the Countess of Provence and the Princess of Achaea. - and after his brother was assassinated, Louis invaded Naples and claimed the title of King of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem!

Similarly, Henry III of France was elected King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania in order to keep out the Hapsburgs, and Henry's mother was Catherine de Medici. So there was probably a lot of knowledge of different countries just from family letters...

As for Mali and Songhai, the Portuguese and the Dutch "traded" extensively with West Africa in the 15th-17th centuries. So they certainly would have traded with the Mali and then the Songhai Empires. But I doubt the Tsar of Russia would have known much about them, and so it goes...

Fun fact: The Kingdom of Kongo, located in northern Angola near the mouth of the Congo River, was actually ruled over by multiple dynasties of Christian kings who converted to a syncretic version of Catholicism shortly after encountering the Portuguese. Kongo's kings increasingly saw themselves as part of global Christendom, were included in European lists of Christian monarchs, and actively participated in Europe's great game, including by sending envoys to Europe (the color painting is of an envoy sent to The Netherlands) and playing the Portuguese and Dutch off one another.

Yeah, I was referring to the virgin birth and the midichlorians nonsense when I mentioned the prequels in my previous post. I said my piece about Anakin some time ago, but yeah, I think Anakin should be a nobody from a backwater planet - because, as with Rey and The Last Jedi, the point is that anyone can be a Jedi because...

I'm even fine with the prophecy about someone bringing balance to the Force (although maybe don't use the words "Chosen One" directly because you don't actually have to hit the audience in the head with a copy of Hero of a Thousand Faces). As I said in my post linked above, I think there's potential to do a neat reverse on the audience by questioning what "balance" means, because if you're going to rip off Taoism you really ought to follow through on it rather than reverting to a more Western Christian conception of good and evil. And you can build that into Vader's tragic arc and Luke/Rey's triumphal arcs.

Yes. I think it's better on democratic principles:

it allows the largest number of state residents (especially poorer and working-class residents) to directly lobby, petition, or protest their government in the same city where they live - rather than having to take a long trip.

likewise, when it comes to state legislators, it hopefully allows the largest number to come from the ranks of the poor and the working-class, because they don't have to bear the increased burdens of commuting or establishing two residences.

similarly, even for voters and legislators who come from outside the city, choosing the largest city for the capital generally means better transportation network connections, which makes for an easier commute.

finally, it hopefully means that by making the problems of the biggest city the problems of the state government when it comes to stuff like transportation, housing, education, public utilities and services, public safety, etc. that there's more of an incentive to do something about them.

So I started off by finding the latitude/longitude position of each state’s center of population as determined by the 2020 US Census. I then used an online tool determined the distance between each state’s center of population and its capital and largest city (an important caveat, I was unable to find a ready list of each state’s largest MSA, and so had to do with Wikipedia’s list of largest cities by state, which could affect results). Here’s my findings:

Of the 50 states, 17 (marked in yellow) have their capital sited in their largest city, while 33 have them sited in two separate locations. Of those 33 that have them sited in two separate locations, 11 (marked in red) have their capitals sited further away from their CoP than their largest city, arguably making their largest city a better site than their current capital. As you can see, Alaska is the biggest outlier, with its CoP over 500 miles closer to Anchorage than Juneau. Without going into a complicated statistical breakdown, these states appear to be more populous, urbanized, or have a reputation for being dominated by their largest cities.

On the other hand, 22 of the 33 states that have different capitals and largest cities have their capitals closer to their CoP than their largest city, arguably making their current capital site a better choice. Missouri leads, with its capital Jefferson City position smack dab between the relatively equally-sized St. Louis and Kansas City making its capital city 140 miles closer to its CoP than its largest city, a dynamic we may also see in states like Pennsylvania (Harrisburg btwn Philadelphia and Pittsburgh), Virginia (Richmond between Virginia Beach and NoVa) Texas (with Austin centrally located between several metro areas. In more rural states like Montana, South Carolina, and North Dakota, this may also be a sign of just a generally more dispersed population. 

Comparing the 33 states that have different capitals and largest cities with the 17 that have their capitals sited in their largest cities also shows us some interesting trends. In terms of mean, the different cities states have, on average, capital cities 72 miles away from their CoP, almost twice as much distance compared to the 39 miles of the same cities states, although a lot of that is due to the outlier Alaska. If Alaska is removed, the mean distance for the different cities states comes down to about 58 miles. The two are more evenly-matched in terms of median though, with same cities states just barely edging out the different cities states 34.72 to 35.4 (edit: the screenshot says 26 to 34, but the excel function messed up).

All told, I think this data tells us a couple interesting things. Despite the majority of different city states having capitals closer to their CoP than their largest cities, the fact the overall mean distance for different cities states is higher shows that a few key states have capitals pretty far removed from their populations, and looking at them, these states seem to be more populous, urbanized, and populated by persons of color.

Yes. I think it's better on democratic principles:

it allows the largest number of state residents (especially poorer and working-class residents) to directly lobby, petition, or protest their government in the same city where they live - rather than having to take a long trip.

likewise, when it comes to state legislators, it hopefully allows the largest number to come from the ranks of the poor and the working-class, because they don't have to bear the increased burdens of commuting or establishing two residences.

similarly, even for voters and legislators who come from outside the city, choosing the largest city for the capital generally means better transportation network connections, which makes for an easier commute.

finally, it hopefully means that by making the problems of the biggest city the problems of the state government when it comes to stuff like transportation, housing, education, public utilities and services, public safety, etc. that there's more of an incentive to do something about them.

When they made Columbus the capital in 1812, most of the population was concentrated in the Ohio Valley but there was an understanding that was going to change with increased settlement and it was viewed as more fair to everyone to literally pick a nowhere site in the middle of the state and build a new capital there. Columbus was a relative backwater for most of Ohio's history between Cleveland and Cincinnati, has only recently kind of become a force on its own

Charleston only became the permanent capital of West Virginia after a long, drawn-out battle between Wheeling (the original capital, representing the more Ohio-Pennsylvania oriented industrialized north) and Charleston, which was the core of a more Virginia-oriented base in the Kanawha Valley

I need to read more about other states, but I get the feeling a bunch of states tried the Ohio model:

-Pennsylvania (siting at the more centrally-located Harrisburg to mediate between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh)

-North and South Carolina (picking centrally-located capitals to mediate between the lowland east and the upland west)

-Illinois and Indiana (between the initially dominant southern parts of those states along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and the Great Lakes)

The raven post system is a fascinating topic, and one I've written a bit about.

To answer your questions:

Does every castle have a raven for every other castle?

It seems unlikely that every castle has a raven for every other castle - there are a lot of castles in Westeros (196, just counting the named ones) and any given lord probably doesn't need to communicate with most of them, which would make maintaining ravens who can't be used for any other purpose pointless. My expectation is that a lord would have/want at the very least:

ravens for their liege lord and the Lord Paramount (depending on whether they're a principal house or a vassal house, this could be one or two ravens) and probably a raven for King's Landing - in order to communicate with their higher-ups in the feudal hierarchy. Similarly, they'd have ravens for their vassal houses, if they had them, in order to communicate with those lower down in the feudal hierarchy.

ravens for their neighbors, the principal houses of their kingdom, and their relatives and in-laws - for day-to-day communications and to participate in the political and cultural world of their peers.

a raven for the Citadel - this one is probably more for the maester than the lord, but they probably need to be able to communicate with the Citadel in order to keep up with scholarly discourse, to request specialized resources and personnel, and to communicate about important issues like epidemics or the seasons or the like.

Are there nodes and relays?

On the one hand, this would massively improve the efficacy and efficiency of the raven post system, by allowing castles that don't have ravens trained to fly to a particular castle to send one to a nearby castle or a more important castle that has a wider communications network (and thus is more likely to have a raven for that specific castle) and have them pass on the message.

On the other hand, nodes and relays bring up the inescapable problem of message security. No matter how ironclad the maester's oath of neutrality might be, there would always be the fear that the intermediary castle had opened and read the message. Now, we know from the example of Catelyn and Lysa Tully that some Westerosi nobility create cyphers and codes to encrypt their communications, but it doesn't seem to be very common.

So if there are nodes and relays, I think it would only be for messages that were either encrypted or for less vital messages that the writer didn't mind other people possibly knowing about.

Do Ravens Only Travel One Way?

Here, I think the text is a little ambiguous. Surprisingly, the first mention of this basic question about the system comes in a preview Winds of Winter chapter:

"Both." Stannis snapped the word out. "A maester's raven flies to one place, and one place only. Is that correct?" The maester mopped sweat from his brow with his sleeve. "N-not entirely, Your Grace. Most, yes. Some few can be taught to fly between two castles. Such birds are greatly prized. And once in a very great while, we find a raven who can learn the names of three or four or five castles, and fly to each upon command. Birds as clever as that come along only once in a hundred years."

Now, the plain reading of "some few can be taught to fly between two castles" is that most ravens are one-way, and that only "some few" can do a round-trip. On the other hand, that's not how it works for ravens who can do 3 to 5 castles, so maybe the maester means flying to two castles and home?

The reason why I'm skeptical about the plain reading is that this would seem to make the raven network substantially worse (and by extension the maesters surprisingly dim) than the historical system of carrier pigeons. Putting a pigeon's food in one place and their home in another to activate the homing instinct and allow for round-trip communication is pretty basic as experimentation goes, so you think that someone would have thought of it after several thousand years.

So the average scenario would be:

A maester continuously raises ravens trained to their castle, sells them to raven merchants for income

The merchant, most likely based in a nearby city or town, keeps a ready built up pool of ravens they know will be in local demand that the lords can purchase as necessary

A network of raven merchants purchase or swap longer range, more expensive ravens to sell in their local markets. So obviously King's Landing and Oldtown would be in really high demand. A merchant in White Harbor could keep a Lannisport merchant stocked with Winterfell ravens in return for Casterly Rock ravens, and both make a profit by selling to their local lords.

However, there is a tendency among some commentators to take things too far the other direction by stating Islamic political theory unites politics and religion into a single person. There were periods where that was more the case with the caliphate, but especially after the unity of the caliphate started to break down, you did see the emergence of a distinct class of scholars who rulers needed to court to receive religious legitimacy, and Islamic studies scholars do talk about a "state-ulama alliance" to explain politics during this period, IIRC after the 11th century CE but check me on that.

However, there is a tendency among some commentators to take things too far the other direction by stating Islamic political theory unites politics and religion into a single person. There were periods where that was more the case with the caliphate, but especially after the unity of the caliphate started to break down, you did see the emergence of a distinct class of scholars who rulers needed to court to receive religious legitimacy, and Islamic studies scholars do talk about a "state-ulama alliance" to explain politics during this period, IIRC after the 11th century CE but check me on that.

I think Bouteflika will win re-election, protests will continue and increase as the economy goes down the tubes, and eventually Bouteflika’s poor health will leave a strongman government who cracks down intensely on protests as a means of papering over their perceived illegitimacy. That’s the common story with the collapse of cult of personality strongman dictator types.

That cult of personality is a big reason why they remain. Lieutenants in that form of government are not picked for competence, but for loyalty and the inability to threaten the ruler, hence why family is so popular. Any ambitious lieutenant is seen as a threat and executed on real or trumped-up charges. Working against the regime means working against the toadies and the cult of personality, which is a tough sell and risks remnant elements restoring the precious, cult of personality strongman. Succession means keeping that element on the ruling side, increasing legitimacy. That’s why Maduro still has his supporters, he can tale advantage of Chavez’s propaganda as the heir apparent. It’s also why Mugabe’s change to the succession in favor of Grace Mugabe was what got him put under house arrest by the Mnangagwa faction, when the policy holders fear not inherit their power, action is taken.

Thanks for the question, Necro.

I think it tends to be a convenient backstop when you have agricultural societies (where land = wealth + status) but a weak central government that can’t efficiently tax their population or pay a professional army. 

I’ve never read the Thrawn trilogy, but I take Ender’s Game to be largely metaphorical, the advent of maneuver warfare over attrition warfare. Ender’s brilliance is in recognizing the proper path of force and applying it. Rackham killed the queen, and Ender destroyed the planet with the Molecular Disintegration Device, identifying what the enemy was protecting and making that the focal point of their tactical orientation. The inflexible meat grinders of Battle School produce stalemates, definitely a losing strategy against an enemy who can breed faster and expend hive-minded troops.

Well, there’s also a lot of other themes in the book, like hiding the truth from Ender so he sacrifices flesh-and-blood people and commits planetary extermination and genocide as a metaphor for command willfully blinding themselves to the costs of their own actions, but that’s beyond the scope of the question you were asking.

Honestly, the physics of real-time tactical warfare in space itself would be dull. Astronomical mathematics, relativistic weaponry, etc. would make it less like the daring sci-fi dogfights of games like Freespace 2 and more like watching computers derive firing solutions. More interesting might be seeing different alien species and their technological growth as it applies to the military sciences, but that runs the risk of anthropomorphizing them to make them understandable to the average reader. 

More interesting might be the logistical dimensions of an early interstellar empire, waging war at a variety of different technological levels as transit technology and the vast distances of space hamper development. The interactions of a core world recent academy graduate with textbook knowledge confronted with a scrappy planetary rebellion dealing with infrequent resupply, and the ingenuity needed to prosecute that war, might make for a more interesting novel, in my point of view.

But my experience colors my view, and if there’s one thing that seemed constant to me, it’s that you’re always short of something.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

Realized after the fact that Mearsheimer plausibly argued that the US hasn’t truly achieved hegemony as defined in IR at any point; “strategic situation in the middle east” may be more accurate, if worded like shit

I think what’s going on in Yemen is already a black eye, it’s another messy proxy war. Iran and Saudi Arabia are conducting a brutal form of war. The Cold War mentality still dominates in the Middle East. 

Thanks for the question, TBH.