Jeremy Salkeld
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enclavedmicrostate.bsky.social
Jeremy Salkeld
@enclavedmicrostate.bsky.social
🇭🇰🇬🇧 Historian, wargamer, nerd. PhD student at GWU studying the afterlife of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
That's a sentence you don't read every day.
Went looking for the little blue mascot from back then to confirm its name, but the website where I came across a wiki page for it is some kind of weird gladiator-transformers-crossover universe fan fiction page?
November 18, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
I’m not exactly anti-borders, as I recognise there is a theoretical point where immigration numbers present a logistical challenge, but I straight up do not understand the mindset that doesn’t take pride in people choosing to live in your country
November 15, 2025 at 9:52 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
This week on the blog: Hoplites! We're taking a crack at explaining the long-running debate over the nature and significance of the ancient Greek heavy infantryman, the hoplite, and the phalanx in which he (mostly) fought.

acoup.blog/2025/11/14/c...
Collections: Hoplite Wars, Part I: The Othismos over Othismos
This week (and next) we’re looking at hoplites, the heavy infantry of the ancient Greek poleis in the (early? mid? late?) Archaic and Classical periods, into the Hellenistic. In particular, I…
acoup.blog
November 15, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
I mean, no one should be doing this in general, but doing this in the current environment in the US once again shows Beijing truly does not give a shit about its own nationals or diaspora
November 9, 2025 at 1:22 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
“woke” is when you acknowledge that black people have contributed to the united states
Two panels commemorating the contribution of Black American soldiers towards the liberation of the Netherlands in World War Two have been quietly removed from a cemetery in Limburg. It follows a complaint by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission.
nrc.nl NRC @nrc.nl · 12d
Op Margraten zijn twee panelen over zwarte Amerikaanse bevrijders van Nederland opeens weg. ‘Past bij beleid van de regering-Trump’
November 8, 2025 at 9:01 PM
As the person who wrote the original takedown of Tartaria some five years ago (www.reddit.com/r/badhistory...), what has always amused me is just how *flexible* the Tartaria conspiracy is, bringing together tendentious readings of Early Modern texts + maps with early 20thC photography.
November 6, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
This is 1) basically how a lot of people think socialism works 2) something that is impossible to argue with said people about
Tax policy on the British left is pure "anti-bedtime left". Bizarre idea that you can have a big social democratic welfare state without everyone contributing properly www.economist.com/britain/2025...
November 6, 2025 at 12:31 PM
The demise of Wade-Giles has been an unmitigated disaster for Mandarin phonology in Anglophone speech.
Note to the universe of cable news people reporting right now on Trump/Xi Jinping.

For last name of PRC leader, just say SHE. As in "he and she."

That's close enough for English speakers.

(Not "gee" or "ji" or 'zhi' or something seemingly more 'foreign' sounding.)
October 30, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
🚨 🆕 analysis w/ @turnbulldugarte.com: most British young men reject the far right @ukandeu.bsky.social Despite media claims, 71% of young men & 75% of young women say they’d never vote Reform UK. The gender gap exists, but it’s steady across ages—not youth-driven.
🔗 ukandeu.ac.uk/most-british...
Most British young men reject the far right - UK in a changing Europe
Emilia Belknap and Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte explain their analysis on the demographics of Reform UK voters in the UK. They argue that while the dominant narrative is that young men are the most likely ...
ukandeu.ac.uk
October 30, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
At a broader level I can't think of anything more humiliating than your fake apology being made national news
Two professors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign said they grew suspicious after receiving identical apologies from dozens of students they had accused of academic dishonesty. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/u...
Their Professors Caught Them Cheating. They Used A.I. to Apologize.
www.nytimes.com
October 30, 2025 at 11:25 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
We're gonna need a complete teardown of the media, same as with the ballroom. And I say this as someone who has been part of that machine for many years. It's moldy all the way through. We have some wonderful independent pubs doing real work but everyone else needs to be tossed in the fucking bin
I’m sorry, why are we using “critics accuse” language here? These are factually, unambiguously, extrajudicial killings. It’s not an opinion. It’s not a disputed or disputable claim.
October 25, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
This is important to remember in terms of upcoming by-elections. Even in Reform-facing seats, Labour's losses to progressive parties are now much more electorally costly than losses to Reform. In the May locals, this was additionally compounded by lower turnout among Labour's now don't knows.
Even in Labour vs Reform contests, where the nature of swing means Labour to Reform defections count double, the electoral strength/cost of losses to LDs and Grns is now ~66% higher than that of losses to Reform.
October 21, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
That scene of the Welsh BBC correspondent being the only person interviewing Caerphilly's new Plaid AM while the rest of the media interviewed Reform's loser in the background was far too on the nose.
October 24, 2025 at 1:34 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
Correct, fun to read, and hey look, advice that Labour should follow like right now if they want to continue to exist as anything other than a sick joke about UK elections.
October 24, 2025 at 8:01 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
The thing about the dissolution of Britain is that it is entirely the fault of English politics and politicians and I cannot be mad at Welsh and Scottish voters for making their choices but I am extremely bitter at an identity I still feel an intense affinity towards dying from lack of interest.
October 24, 2025 at 8:26 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
Deliberate starvation is a war crime. Ecocide is genocide.

Please stop coming into my mentions telling me how how every subatomic particle in Gaza is Hamas. It's tired, it's evil, and it's pointless. I'm not going to argue with you. You're just wrong.
More than 95 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land unusable, UN warns
Israeli attacks on land, wells and greenhouses exacerbating the already critical risk of famine in Gaza, the FAO says.
www.aljazeera.com
October 23, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
It is actually fairly unhinged that this is happening in the UK. We are such freaks, like it’s actually embarrassing
October 23, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
You might ask why he joined, and I don’t doubt I differ from Watson on many things, but I applaud his principled stand, recognition of the toxic direction of travel, and genuine commitment to multi-faith tolerance. We need more people today to be able to say ‘I was wrong to align myself with this’.
Local Reform chair Neville Watson quits party. An evangelical Christian who was seeking to diversify the party,he was uncomfortable at party language on immigration, support for Tommy Robinson among activists & he felt a weaponisation of Christianity against Islam
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Reform’s only Black branch chair quits over ‘harmful’ migration debate
Exclusive: Neville Watson leaves amid concerns about weaponisation of religion and erosion of community relations
www.theguardian.com
October 23, 2025 at 5:28 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
"The idea of deporting people with settled status is disgusting, and anyone proposing it should be immediately drummed out of polite society. Breaking promises made in good faith to our friends and neighbours is racist, extremist and immoral."

I'm basically shouting at the sky here, but still.
It’s racist, it’s extremist and it’s immoral
The right is still calling for deportations, and the government is still being cowardly about it. Also: London’s first green belt; some notes on a shark; and some news, on my next book.
jonn.substack.com
October 22, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Nothing could have disappointed me more today than discovering a) that there was an official SEAC newspaper based out of Calcutta, b) that the National Library of Singapore holds copies, but c) that it only does so in microfilm.

eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/b...
NewspaperSG - SEAC : Daily Newspaper Of South East Asia Command
NewspaperSG is an online resource of over 200 Singapore and Malaya newspapers published since 1831, or find information on over 200.
eresources.nlb.gov.sg
October 22, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
A lot of things click into place when you realise that, as much as people try to pretend otherwise, reducing immigration in the age of Ryanair is a significant spending commitment and therefore demands for lowering immigration or reducing migrants' rights are demands for a luxury good
October 15, 2025 at 10:19 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
Just a reminder that Trump & Musk have committed an atrocity, the effect of which won’t be seen for months.
The tiny African nation of Lesotho had victories in its HIV fight. Then, the US aid cuts came. Now Lesotho’s care system is crumbling. Clinics shut down, workers were let go, and patients stopped treatment. Experts are sounding alarms.
In Lesotho, US aid cuts leave people living with HIV in limbo
Lesotho, once with the world’s second-highest HIV rate, faces a health crisis as U.S. aid cuts dismantle vital HIV treatment programs, leaving patients without care.
bit.ly
October 16, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
'race debates'
October 14, 2025 at 6:50 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
hair-shirt isolationism doesn't actually do anyone any good, *especially* if the left practices it while the right happily takes up the authoritarian internationale cause. "actually liberals should refuse to exercise power" is just a kind of moral cowardice--a refusal to take up the burden.
October 14, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Salkeld
It cannot be made clearer.

If you continue to support the Harry Potter franchise in any way, you are directly funding the removal of trans people's human rights in the UK.
October 9, 2025 at 10:14 AM