Alex West
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ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West
@ajw87.bsky.social
770 followers 670 following 1.2K posts
Interested in the Columbian exchange. Philology. Manuscripts. Plants. #OldSundanese #MedievalIndonesia #TupianLanguages Old site: https://indomedieval.medium.com/ New site: https://medium.com/@WestsWorld he/him
Book: https://brill.com/display/title/68202
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ajw87.bsky.social
The meme has to come out again, I'm afraid
A meme showing a cartoon American man dressed in a star-spangled banner with a McDonald's cup in one hand and some fries in his mouth, standing in front of a McDonald's restaurant. His other hand is pointing towards you and the caption says: "LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT YOUR COUNTRY"
November 21, 2025 at 10:30 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
This is an entirely ridiculous view of the US military and of US power overseas.
Tables from Wikipedia showing a list of countries by military expenditure, with the US at number one with a military budget of $997 billion and China in distant second with $314 billion. Adding up the total budgets of the remaining countries in the top ten would still add to less than the US budget.
November 21, 2025 at 9:04 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
"Why doesn't the EU just become one country? It would solve a lot of problems"

I'm sorry. Sometimes this meme is appropriate. 🤷
A meme showing a cartoon American man dressed in a star-spangled banner with a McDonald's cup in one hand and some fries in his mouth, standing in front of a McDonald's restaurant. His other hand is pointing towards you and the caption says: "LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT YOUR COUNTRY"
November 21, 2025 at 8:40 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
Don't make me tap the sign

(the sign: Wikipedia's list of countries by Human Development Index)
The table of countries ranked by HDI in ascending order, with Iceland at number one. The United Kingdom is in thirteenth place, tied with Singapore and above the USA (joint seventeenth, with New Zealand) and Canada (sixteenth).
November 18, 2025 at 9:01 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
Edward Conze seems to have been an interesting character.

(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_...)
Text from the Wikipedia article on German-British scholar of Buddhism Edward Conze: "A midlife crisis in 1937 saw him adopt Buddhism as his religion, having previously been influenced by Theosophy and astrology. He spent a brief period in the New Forest pursuing meditation and an ascetic lifestyle (during which he developed scurvy). At the end of this period he moved to Oxford where he began to work on Sanskrit texts from the Prajñāpāramitā tradition. He continued to work on these texts for the rest of his life."
November 14, 2025 at 11:04 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
I live fairly near the Assembleia da República, the Portuguese Parliament, and went past it yesterday. Facing the building, there was a huge billboard bearing the words "ISTO NÃO É O BANGLADESH" ('this is not Bangladesh') next to André Ventura's face.
A billboard with trees and buildings in the background. In large blue capital letters, it says: "ISTO NÃO É O BANGLADESH". A photograph of the upper body, arms, and bearded face of right-wing politician André Ventura, Portugal's Nigel Farage, makes up the left-hand side of the billboard.
November 9, 2025 at 1:12 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
Having said that, this is probably the best response to this sort of thing
Text from the BBC News story on Zohran Mamdani's election as Mayor of New York: "Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, adopted a different tone. Asked by Sky News whether she liked Mamdani, she replied: “I’ll be honest, I don’t follow American politics especially closely”."
November 5, 2025 at 11:56 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
Yesterday I suddenly got hundreds and hundreds of views, but almost no reads, on my old blog (indomedieval.medium.com). This has happened a few times in the last months. Not sure what's going on with it.
A line graph displaying the number of viewers and readers of the Medieval Indonesia blog. It shows a perfect triangle, with a dark green line at the base (representing the very small number of people who have read articles all the way through) and a light green line peaking on the 2nd of November (representing a little under a thousand views).
November 2, 2025 at 12:19 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
It's a film about sociopathic gym bros. Couldn't be more pertinent. We're all living in their world now.

It's that thing Werner Herzog said about WrestleMania: You have to know in which world you are living. You can't avert your eyes.
A screencap of a video of Bavarian film director Werner Herzog saying "the poet must not close his eyes".
October 31, 2025 at 8:26 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
When the British empire collapsed, life got *better* at home. Living standards and life expectancy all went up in Britain over the last half of the twentieth century. It's still one of the most developed countries in the world.
A list of countries ordered by HDI (Human Development Index). Iceland's at number one, with the highest human development in the world (with an HDI value of 0.972), followed by Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Australia, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Belgium, and Finland; Singapore and the United Kingdom are tied in 13th place, ahead of the UAE, Canada, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, and the United States.
October 28, 2025 at 10:04 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
An image displaying the cover of a fake book: "Did I Just Argue With a Joke?" "Part of a Bluesky Educational Series"
October 26, 2025 at 8:59 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
Graduated from my MA eight years ago. Time's still flying.
Two people, a man with a moustache and a blonde woman in glasses, standing in an airy brick-walled room with copper alloy plaques on the walls. The man (me) is holding a folder with a degree certificate inside. The folder bears a photograph of a wax seal.
October 20, 2025 at 7:45 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
If I ever did something as strange and embarrassing as that, you'd never hear from me again. Even if I *were* a world leader. I'd be in a cave somewhere. In a hole in the ground.
Diagram and map of Saddam Hussein's hiding place in a small human body-sized ventilated hole six-to-eight feet in the ground.
October 19, 2025 at 9:35 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
I'm not one to draw lines in the sand, but if you've never eaten a curry of any kind then you aren't British. Simple as that.
A tweet: Jess Gill @jessgillO3 I've never had curry or a kabab and don't intend to. British food is the best. English breakfasts, Sunday roasts, fish and chips, pies, pasties, scones. Also, our national dish isn't a chicken tikka masala we only think that because a Labour MP said it decades ago to push multiculturalism. 15:31·17 Oct 25-78K Views
October 18, 2025 at 10:51 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
The opinion-submitter submitted a British opinion to a British account and included a reference to a British thing. The subject might be relevant to other countries but so what? What's there to complain about there?
A meme, originally a tweet from birdsrightsactivist. The tweet says: "I am uncomfortable when we are not about me?"
October 9, 2025 at 8:56 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
Bought this today as a workout for both my Latin and my Portuguese
The cover of a book - a bilingual Latin-and-Portuguese edition of Vergil's Eclogues, or Bucólicas in Portuguese, translated with commentary by Frederico Lourenço. The cover is the colour of ochre with text in black and white. The publisher is Quetzal.
August 19, 2025 at 4:07 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
Gibraltar

luv me rock
luv me steak bake
luv me timothy taylor
simple as
A view of the Rock of Gibraltar from the terrace at the airport there, with the runway in between. In the foreground there's a tray with two English bottled beers on it and a Greggs steak bake next to them. The sun is shining and the sky is blue.
August 14, 2025 at 10:56 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
Just for reference, Sumatra is the big island here in the eastern Indian Ocean

(I feel "Sumatra" is like "Timbuktu" in that it has an exotic aura and a lot of people have heard of it but they'd struggle to place it on a map)
A map centred on the Indian Ocean at the Equator with a big purple arrow pointing to Sumatra, a large island straddling the Equator not too far east of India and Sri Lanka, on the eastern side of the Ocean.
August 9, 2025 at 8:11 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
Can you imagine a world without the United States of America
A still from The Simpsons in which lawyer Lionel Hutz imagines a world without lawyers: People of all races dancing hand in hand on green hills with the sun smiling in the clear sky and a rainbow in the distance.
July 21, 2025 at 9:47 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
But only one man on the Wikipedia list of prominent Wesleys is English, and personally I've never met anyone from the UK named Wesley (or Westley).

What's going on there?
A list of people with the given name "Wesley" from Wikipedia. All the names on the list are American, Canadian, Filipino, Dutch, or Brazilian. There have been at least 15 Brazilian football players named Wesley. Only one Englishman appears on the list and he's 27 years old, so the name might be becoming more popular in the UK. A continuation of the list of Wesleys. There are 50 names in total.
July 21, 2025 at 8:36 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
I can't stress enough that the island of Java isn't a small place isolated from the outside world. It's literally the third-most populous contiguous landmass on planet Earth after Afro-Eurasia and the Americas. It's an interesting place!
Text from the above blogpost. It says: "This may seem like a niche topic. In fact, Sundanese is spoken to this day by about 36 million people in West Java and surrounding provinces. The island of Java is home to more people than Russia or Japan, as well as the world’s second-largest urban centre (Greater Jakarta), which was founded as a port in the Kingdom of Sunda. If you find this topic ‘niche’, you may want to ask yourself why that is."
July 11, 2025 at 9:45 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
Watching this. It's good.
Poster for Danish film "Bastarden", known in English as The Promised Land. It's set in 18th-century Denmark and stars Mads Mikkelsen as a former army officer who intends to settle and civilise a dangerous heath. The poster shows his face prominently with the heath on fire at the bottom.
June 25, 2025 at 8:14 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
Okay, well, I did it anyway. Just ten rad flicks that came to mind
A New York Times 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century Reader's Choice Ballot representing my choices for the ten best movies of the century. On the list: Hero, Children of Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Triangle of Sadness, Silence, Zama, Embrace of the Serpent, Brokeback Mountain, Beau Travail, and In the Mood for Love.
June 25, 2025 at 11:12 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
"globally"
Blurb for a book from the publisher's website. The text says: "This is the first book to cover medieval travel writing globally from Iceland to Indonesia". I have highlighted the words "medieval travel writing globally from Iceland to Indonesia". A screenshot from Google Earth showing the Americas and the Pacific Ocean.
June 6, 2025 at 9:07 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
I actually stopped drinking (alcohol) last year. And I'm lactose intolerant!

Cycling's pretty much impossible in Lisbon outside of the Baixa. The only people you see cycling here are Dutch tourists and people delivering food.
A map of Lisbon from Google Maps, showing the terrain of the city, which is hilly and steep outside of a small patch in the city centre.
May 23, 2025 at 7:35 AM