Carthage is most often thought of in the context of Rome; “Carthage must be destroyed!” …

Note: This was originally published in Worldbuilding Magazine. Check out the rest of the articles by downloading the complete volume 5, issue 4: Social Etiquette & Expectations on their website. “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is a common platitude with a long history, but personally, I prefer to…

A little over a year ago, I downloaded Obsidian.md because I wanted a desktop app to help me manage my worldbuilding notes, instead of the wikis and subscription software I had tried in the past. This morning, I decided it was time for a little reflection about how it’s changed…

Classification is difficult. Identity is complicated. Questions about whether the Irish are British (or at what point Irish-Americans are distinct from mainland Irish or Americans), or what “Jewishness” “really means” are fraught and complicated and for my own sanity I generally avoid thinking about it as much as possible. Which…

Let’s say you’re taking your first steps into the wide world of learning stuff independently, and are being inundated with all sorts of “fake news” and propaganda, questionably accurate pop-sci books and outright lies, clickbait headlines and the inevitable result of memetic games of telephone played out on social media…

One of the things that I like best about the Traitor Son Cycle by Miles Cameron is that it does a truly phenomenal job of making it clear that the role of women in medieval society was in fact an important role. …

The idea of a Resonance Calendar seems to have come from the community surrounding the notetaking app Notion, but I’ve adapted it for how I use obsidian.md and I’ve found it really useful as a practice. The idea is to keep track of and reflect on the various things that…

Feminist History is Real History — In the time of Hammurabi, there lived a Princess named Kirum, daughter of Zumri-Lim (king of a Semitic city-state in modern-day Syria). She eventually grew up and married her brother-in-law, Hays-Samu, because her sister had betrayed their father by failing to act properly as his “agent” in the foreign court…

My New Year’s Resolution for this year was to try and keep better track of what I read in a sort of modified resonance calendar and I thought it might be nice to share some of my January highlights, since I was going back over them as part of a…