Alex West
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ajw87.bsky.social
Alex West
@ajw87.bsky.social
800 followers 710 following 1.5K 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
aahahahahahahahaahah
A tweet from disgraced academic Dr Naomi Wolf: "I got pretty far along in the hiring process for a wonderful position teaching at a NY state university before a dean in the department told me I couldn't go any further because I was white."
December 19, 2025 at 12:00 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
I received a notification that I'd been blocked by this account (which I'm sure I've never engaged with) so I went to ClearSky to check out what they were all about and
A post from BlueSky from user purevandanasastri.bsky.social: "For 2026, Mahayana Buddhists must be unapologetic, unabashed, and indomitable in their positions as to why the Great Vehicle is superior. Do not engage with Hinayanikas, unless they engage or mention our Holy Path first, then give them no rest and make their lives a living hell."
December 19, 2025 at 8:02 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
More charming Lisbon graffiti, this time from the walls of the international school in my neighbourhood
Black graffiti on a pale wall, saying GO HOME Black graffiti on a pale wall, saying FALEM PORTUGUÊUS "speak Portuguese!" (misspelled, as bigoted graffiti often is).
December 14, 2025 at 4:29 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
I was curious as to whether Harold's eye-skewering was described in non-Tapestry sources and apparently it is. Fascinating.
Text from the Wikipedia entry on Harold Godwinson: "The widely held belief that Harold died by an arrow to the eye is a subject of much scholarly debate. A Norman account of the battle, Carmen de Hastingae Proelio ("Song of the Battle of Hastings"), said to have been written shortly after the battle by Guy, Bishop of Amiens, says that Harold was lanced and his body dismembered by four knights, probably including Duke William. Twelfth-century Anglo-Norman histories, such as William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum Anglorum and Henry of Huntingdon's Historia Anglorum, recount that Harold died by an arrow wound to his head. An earlier source, Amatus of Montecassino's L'Ystoire de li Normant ("History of the Normans"), written only twenty years after the battle of Hastings, contains a report of Harold being shot in the eye with an arrow, but this may be an early fourteenth-century addition. The sources for how Harold met his death are contradictory, thus modern historians have not been able to produce a definitive story without finding something that will compromise any hypothesis."
December 12, 2025 at 8:56 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
A four-panel cartoon. First panel: text, "Vlad the Impaler discovers marshmallows". Second panel: no text, Vlad the Impaler, with moustache, hat, and fur coat, ponders a marshmallow which he holds in his hand. Third panel: no text. Vlad has pierced the marshmallow with a skewer. Fourth panel: The marshmallow now skewered, Vlad looks at it, expression unchanged, and says: "WELL THESE ARE FUCKING GREAT"
December 12, 2025 at 8:24 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
This video is unintentionally hilarious.
A thumbnail for a YouTube video by Phil Edwards: "British Accents for Ignorant Americans". Posted 15 hours ago, 51,000 views.
December 8, 2025 at 11:03 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
Went for a walk up to the Sé the other day and came across this antisemitic graffiti on one of the walls
A close-up of a medieval stone wall at night with the words "JUDEUS ASSASSINO[S]" crudely written on the surface.
December 8, 2025 at 9:41 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
Don't think that's true. A lot of EU initiatives were British ideas, including the Single Market. Britain had a lot of carve-outs but it wasn't any more disruptive to the workings of the EU than any other member state.
Text from the Wikipedia entry on the European Single Market: "In the 1980s, when the economy of the EEC began to lag behind the rest of the developed world, Margaret Thatcher sent Lord Cockfield to the Delors Commission to take the initiative to attempt to relaunch the common market. Cockfield wrote and published a White Paper in 1985 identifying 300 measures to be addressed in order to complete a single market. The White Paper was well received and led to the adoption of the Single European Act, a treaty which reformed the decision-making mechanisms of the EEC and set a deadline of 31 December 1992 for the completion of a single market. In the end, it was launched on 1 January 1993."
December 7, 2025 at 2:23 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
Hell yeah, looking very nice indeed
The sickos meme: a man with stubble and big eyebrows in a black shirt labelled "sickos" looks through a window and says "YES... HA HA HA... YES!"
November 27, 2025 at 4:49 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
I've been working with this book recently and I've found it fairly useful. It isn't perfect—there are a few flubs with the pinyin and Sanskrit, and I think it needed more decisive input from an editor—but the selection of texts is good and I've learned a lot so far.
The cover of Chinese Buddhist Texts: An Introductory Reader, by Graham Lock and Gary Linebarger, published by Routledge.
November 27, 2025 at 10:24 AM
ajw87.bsky.social
[small hillock of beige glop and turkey breast appears on my tl]

me:
Homer Simpson drooling in bed
November 24, 2025 at 9:36 PM
ajw87.bsky.social
Post a film set where you're from
Poster of the animated film Watership Down, with a silhouette of a toothy rabbit on a grassy hill with a twilight sky in the background. There's some text saying "A Film by Martin Rosen. Watership Down".
November 23, 2025 at 8:59 PM
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