jāna ᠶᠠᠨᠠ retweeted
rant: Right out of college I befriended a retired White Russian emigre born in Latin America. We met at a bar and he ordered pisco sours and told me how his family ended up in Argentina. He spoke flawless English, Russian, and Spanish, showing his respect for every language. Everything about him was elegant, from his posture to his suit — something from a 1950s Hollywood film or a pre-revolutionary picture of Russian aristocracy. By day he was an executive at a consulting firm and on the weekends ran a small publishing house.
He told me that in every nation, there's a minority that carries on the traditions of the people, i.e. those who truly represent their ancestors — and everyone else, well they're just consuming, idly floating by:
"they just happened to be born in that particular country. This is where their ties to that nation begin and end," he said.
Since that meeting I've always analyzed people to see if they carry the wisdom of their elders. Every civilization has these types. In America, you can meet people who revere the constitution and have an excellent knowledge of the Civil War and their rights as citizens and that frontier spirit. Then there are others who just eat and drink extra large and eat again and fart and repeat.
In every nation this is the case, and if those who carry on traditions wither away, so does the entire nation.
jāna ᠶᠠᠨᠠ retweeted
“the subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth”
jāna ᠶᠠᠨᠠ retweeted
Can the family behind Türkiye’s drone revolution engineer a culture of innovation?
In Kasurian’s latest Autumn 2026 essay, The Bayraktar Complex, Selim Baş explores the family whose ambitions now extend from military aircraft to the institutions shaping Türkiye’s technological future.
Raised on the workshop floor by an engineer father and a computer-programmer mother, the Bayraktar brothers inherited a conviction that technical competence was essential to national sovereignty. Their outlook grew in an Anatolian Muslim milieu where faith, industrial production, and political independence were closely intertwined.
Baykar’s drones would make that ambition tangible. From Ukraine to Karabakh, their battlefield performance brought the family international recognition and helped transform Türkiye from a buyer of foreign weapons into a major supplier.
The family is now attempting to give the education they inherited an institutional form. Through schools, science centres, investment funds, and the vast Teknofest competitions, the Bayraktars are creating opportunities for young people to build, experiment, and enter technical professions.
Their ambition reaches beyond training engineers. It seeks to make technological achievement part of Türkiye’s public culture, giving scientific and industrial work a place in the country’s understanding of its future.
Whether this project succeeds will depend on the institutions it builds: their ability to cultivate talent, sustain technical judgement, and turn one family's achievements into opportunities for a wider society.
Read more on Kasurian. Link in reply below:
ALT Kasurian, Autumn 2026. The Bayraktar Complex. Words by Selim Baş. After making Türkiye a drone superpower, the Bayraktar family is building institutions to engineer a culture of innovation. Ahmet Faruk Yılmaz’s ink illustration shows Baykar aircraft above Istanbul and a factory, with a crescent, star and floral motifs on a cream background.
jāna ᠶᠠᠨᠠ retweeted
“Shaganeh, my divine Shaganeh!
It’s the North, I suppose, that inspires me,
And to talk of our fields never tires me,
Of the rye where the moon shadows play.
Shaganeh, my divine Shaganeh!
It’s the North, I suppose, that inspires me.
Can your moon with our huge moon compare?
Be Shiraz city ever so fair,
It’s Ryazan’s rolling plains that delight me,
It’s the North, I suppose, that inspires me.
And to talk of our fields never tires me,
And I took my fair locks from the rye.
Take a lock round your finger to tie —
No ruffling will pain or surprise me,
And to talk of our fields never tires me.
Of the rye where the moon shadows play
In my curls you will find a suggestion.
O my darling, keep smiling and jesting,
Only never remind me, I pray,
Of the rye where the moon shadows play.
Shaganeh, my divine Shaganeh!
In the North is a girl who is waiting
And your likeness to her is amazing,
And it may be she murmurs my name...
Shaganeh, my divine Shaganeh.”
— Sergei Yesenin, translated by Peter Tempest
jāna ᠶᠠᠨᠠ retweeted
What I have been reading:
I just discovered the articles of the Public Domain Review and I'm loving them. Very eclectic selection of essays. Apparently it's an online magazine that specializes on arcane and very specialized subjects + primary sources illustrations.
jāna ᠶᠠᠨᠠ retweeted
Estonya’dan birisi bu YouTube kanalında SSCB döneminde Sovyet ve doğu blok ülkelerindeki caz, funk, disko, psikedelik, surf, swing, big band, elektronika albüm ve şarkılarını toplamış. Derya deniz bir arşiv.
youtube.com/@mishapanfilov?s…
jāna ᠶᠠᠨᠠ retweeted
Sleep After Toyle: The Three Lives of Joseph Conrad
Exile, sailor, novelist: Conrad foresaw the 20th century—and still helps us understand our own.
kasurian.com/sleep-after-toy…
jāna ᠶᠠᠨᠠ retweeted
Why should we still read Joseph Conrad?
In Sleep After Toyle: The Three Lives of Joseph Conrad, Burak Ömer follows the exile, sailor, and novelist whose fiction foresaw 20th-century upheavals—and still helps us understand our own.
Born into a Polish family driven into exile by the Russian Empire, Conrad left for the sea at 16. Two decades of voyages carried him from Marseille to the Malay Archipelago and the Congo. When he settled ashore, those experiences became the material of a literary career conducted in his third language: English.
The sea gave Conrad an exacting understanding of duty, courage, and responsibility. His characters discover how fragile those commitments become when the institutions and conventions that sustain them fall away.
In Lord Jim, a sailor’s abandonment of his ship becomes a question of shame that follows him long after the passengers are safe. Conrad brought the same scrutiny to the promises of progress in Heart of Darkness and Nostromo, where commerce and civilisation conceal exploitation, vanity, and the pursuit of power.
He also turned his attention to the forces gathering within Europe. The Secret Agent follows a terrorist plot against London’s Greenwich Observatory; Under Western Eyes explores revolution, betrayal, and the desire for a quiet life under autocracy.
Across these works, Conrad asks what remains of a person when the reassuring account they give of themselves can no longer survive their actions.
A century after his death, the question remains open.
Read more on Kasurian. Link in reply below:
jāna ᠶᠠᠨᠠ retweeted
I do this periodically because it's so much fun
Noooooo
🚨🇷🇺 Un bébé mammouth a été découvert presque INTACT dans le permafrost en Sibérie. Son nom : Yana.
Âgée d’environ 1 an lorsqu’elle est morte, Yana serait restée prisonnière de la glace pendant près de 50 000 ans.
Sa tête, sa trompe, ses oreilles et sa bouche sont encore parfaitement visibles, offrant aux scientifiques un rare aperçu des mammouths de l’ère glaciaire.
(Le Parisien)
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Ce post relaie une découverte de l'été 2024 présentée en décembre 2024. L'âge initialement estimé à ~50 000 ans a été révisé à plus de 130 000 ans.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…
sciencealert.com/dissection-of-…
theguardian.com/science/2024/d…
jāna ᠶᠠᠨᠠ retweeted
This kind of advice is everywhere for women & it may be well meaning but it does not really serve you. It is like a parent who has lived life, grew thick with experience (even if heavy, is ultimately fulfilled) but tells you to stay in the tower. You can’t win it you don’t play.
