Iran struck the US-Saudi contingency pipeline meant to offset the Hormuz closure. The East-West Crude Oil Pipeline reportedly lost 700,000 barrels a day, and strikes on Saudi Arabia's Manifa, Khurais, and Shaybah oil fields compromised roughly 1.6 million barrels a day combined, with at least half of these attacks reportedly occurring after the ceasefire.
He argues Iran faces no retaliation and is deliberately trading economic damage for political leverage. With the IRGC no longer able to sustain military resistance, he says Iran is betting that a battered US economy produces a "blue wave" in the midterms that benefits Iran's position.
Paper oil prices around $100 a barrel diverged sharply from an actual $125-145 range. He calls this gap dangerous and reports monthly inflation jumped to 3.3%, which he attributes to tariffs amplified by the war, expecting further increases as the conflict continues.
India's RBI escalated from routine FX intervention to an outright NDF ban within one week in early April 2026, an unusually aggressive sequence even for an emerging-market central bank, which the author reads as evidence the pressure on the rupee (falling to a record ₹95.22) reflects deeper structural problems the interventions can't actually fix.
The RBI has built a roughly $100 billion "off-balance-sheet" liability by selling dollars forward to defend the rupee without touching headline reserves. Official data showed a $77.67 billion net short as of February, with analysts estimating over $100 billion by March; netted against reserves, that leaves India covering closer to 9.4 months of imports rather than the headline 11, and the liability keeps growing as long as oil stays elevated.
The real driver is India's multi-alignment strategy trying to hold three incompatible goals simultaneously, the author argues: needing steady dollar inflows from Western investors, needing cheap discounted energy from sanctioned Russia and Iran (roughly 85% of energy is imported), and pursuing BRICS ties with China and Russia — each goal undermining the others whenever a shock like the Iran war hits.
A prolonged Indian currency crisis carries direct U.S. stakes on three fronts, the author argues: it would make U.S. sanctions enforcement look toothless if India ramps up sanctioned-oil buying, it exposes the asymmetry of dollar-reserve-currency status that incentivizes BRICS de-dollarization efforts, and it risks pushing India toward Chinese currency swap lines and liquidity support, eroding India's role as a U.S. counterweight to China.
It took Hungary 16 years and a record 79.6% voter turnout to unseat Viktor Orbán, whose "illiberal democratic model" — forced early retirement of judges, captured universities, and media consolidation under KESMA (470+ outlets, ~80% of the market) — the author frames as the direct template MAGA later drew on in America.
Bulgaria's outcome is far murkier than Hungary's clean opposition win. Rumen Radev's party ousted a corrupt, pro-EU government that had landed Bulgaria on the FATF grey list for money-laundering deficiencies, but Radev himself has opposed Russia sanctions and called Crimea Russian territory just days before the election — meaning his anti-corruption rhetoric may not translate into actually prosecuting the money laundering tied to Russian capital.
The author identifies a repeatable four-step pattern behind democratic backsliding: manufactured economic anxiety, a charismatic leader blaming "elite" institutions, systematic undermining of courts/media/universities to centralize power, followed by the irony of new oligarchic networks replacing the old ones — citing Orbán's childhood friends in Hungary, organized crime in Bulgaria, and the Thiel/Kushner network in the U.S. as parallel examples.
Despite the damage, the author argues illiberalism has a structural ceiling because it eventually hurts ordinary people's pocketbooks. Hungarian wages average roughly €1,769/month versus an EU average of about €3,200, and Orbán's graceful concession — contrasted favorably with January 6th — suggests illiberal grips on power aren't permanent even when the electoral rules are rigged in the incumbent's favor.
The author argues the "is Radev Bulgaria's Orbán" framing misses the actual stakes of the election. The measurable question is whether the next government can prosecute high-level financial crime and get Bulgaria off the FATF grey list, where it's sat since 2023 despite completing most required action-plan items — the remaining deficiency being political will to investigate organized crime, not paperwork.
Radev's anti-corruption platform sits uneasily alongside his opposition to the Russia sanctions regime that the author says perpetuates the beneficial-ownership evasion driving Bulgaria's money laundering problem, having observed firsthand in Bansko how sanctioned Russian capital moves through ski-resort real estate and shell companies in an area of weak enforcement.
Two concrete, apolitical indicators will reveal the real trajectory in the first 100 days, the author argues: whether the new parliament finally moves on the long-vacant Prosecutor General appointment, and whether FATF schedules the on-site assessment visit that formally precedes grey-list removal — not campaign rhetoric or diplomatic gestures toward Brussels.
British drone maker Skycutter topped a 25-firm Pentagon competition, scoring 99.3 of 100. Its fiber-optic Shrike 10, co-developed with Ukraine's Skyfall, beat runner-up Neros (87.5) and cost as little as $300-1,500 per unit against the Pentagon's $2,000 target.
The Pentagon initially funded 30,000 units at roughly $5,000 each under a $150 million award. Army, Marine Corps, and Special Operations personnel needed only two hours of training to operate the Shrike 10, a factor he credits for its top score.
Skycutter is reportedly considering leaving the UK despite the acclaim. Operations director Vince Gardner told the BBC that UK procurement moves too slowly with no clear path from innovation to state purchase; with a Pentagon contract already worth up to $200 million, he suggests the US could become Skycutter's dominant buyer and draw the business away from Britain.
GeoHussarMea Culpa on my post about ghost murmur. #geopolitics #quantum #pilot #accountability #Tech
He retracts a claim that "ghost murmur" quantum tech located a missing pilot 40 miles away. Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder and a Scientific American survey of skeptical physicists say quantum magnetometry can measure fields precisely but not over that kind of distance.
He credits creator Torin Russell, an ex-intelligence analyst, with correcting both this and an earlier claim. Russell had also rebutted his prior assertion that the US would fare better than any rival in a nuclear war due to missile defense, pointing out the nuclear winter effect.
He attributes the error to letting enthusiasm for quantum science override verification. He says he shared the claim without asking AI tools, searching further, or consulting physicist contacts, and commits to more scrutiny given the size of his platform.
GeoHussarThings are going to get very bad if not much worse for the IRGC. Even though the US is likely to uph
He predicts the US will honor the ceasefire only to use the pause for regrouping. He expects the full two-week window to be spent gathering intelligence on Iranian forces and terrain, resupplying two aircraft carriers, and arranging a coalition or backroom deals to force the Strait of Hormuz back open.
Iran has not reopened the strait as the ceasefire's 10-point plan required, he reports. Iran continues drone and missile strikes on Gulf states, especially Bahrain, pushing WTI back toward $100 a barrel, while he speculates Russia and China may be resupplying the IRGC during the pause.
He argues the administration cannot politically afford to look weak after Iran's violations. Facing higher fuel prices and economic damage, he predicts the administration needs a decisive win before the midterms or risks losing both the midterms and the 2028 presidency.
GeoHussarChina’s massive hack and quantum communication #china #quantum #communication
A hack breached a Chinese supercomputer, reportedly exposing bomb and missile renderings. The intrusion, attributed to hackers under an alias resembling "Flaming China," also reportedly accessed advanced simulations and other sensitive defense and aviation data.
He argues frequent hacking is likely why China built the world's most advanced quantum communication network. Distinct from quantum computing, this network secures encryption keys using physical laws rather than mathematical difficulty, protecting sensitive military and financial data.
Any interception attempt destroys the key and alerts the network, per his explainer. Because observing a qubit's superposition collapses its quantum state, intercepting a quantum-encrypted key both destroys its usefulness and signals the breach, while intercepted messages stay unreadable without a working key unless future quantum computers grow powerful enough to decrypt them directly.
China leads in quantum research volume, but he argues the US leads in real capability. China has published more quantum papers since 2022 and files 60% of global quantum patent applications, yet he says the US holds 45.7% of actual quantum-computing patents versus China's roughly 25%, arguing paper volume doesn't equal capability.
A qubit's superposition lets it represent many states at once, unlike a binary bit. A classical bit is either 0 or 1, while a qubit occupies a continuous range of probabilities simultaneously, meaning roughly 100 qubits can match calculations that would otherwise require billions or trillions of classical bits.
He cites Caltech's ~6,100-qubit neutral-atom array and Google's 105-qubit Willow chip as the field's leading edge. Willow is considered the most advanced quantum computer currently; qubits are physical quantum states, such as electrons or atoms, that require extreme cold and isolation from outside interference to remain stable.
GeoHussarChina Tiangong Space Station versus the ISS #spacetok #spacestation #Tech #china
China's Tiangong station took 1.5 years and $8-20 billion, versus the ISS's 13 years and $150 billion. Tiangong also uses ion propulsion for orbit maintenance, while the ISS relies on chemical propulsion.
The ISS dwarfs Tiangong in scale and international scope. The ISS has 16 modules, 1,000 cubic meters of volume, and room for 11 people, built through a 15-plus nation partnership including Russia, the US, Canada, Japan, and European countries, versus Tiangong's 3 modules, 340 cubic meters, 6-person capacity, and near-total reliance on Chinese-only development.
He argues Tiangong's design likely borrows from Russian technology via the ISS's Zvezda module. He notes reports that Tiangong's core Tianhe module resembles Zvezda in layout, attributing this to China's reliance on Russian tech-sharing after the 2011 Wolf Act barred any US-China space station cooperation; he judges Tiangong newer and cheaper but still rates the ISS the better station overall.
Iran had completed only step 4 of an 11-step path to a nuclear weapon, he argues. That step was reaching 60% uranium enrichment; Iran had not begun fissile core fabrication, the process of converting enriched uranium hexafluoride gas back into a precisely shaped solid metal core.
A working device also needs explosive lenses and a neutron initiator, per his explainer. The lenses focus multiple simultaneous detonations inward onto the uranium pit, while the initiator injects fast neutrons to guarantee a full chain reaction, since compression and heat alone can cause some fission but not detonation.
He concludes Iran was "nowhere near close" to an actual weapon. Having achieved only the enrichment step despite reaching weapons-grade-adjacent 60% purity, he argues the broader weaponization process remained largely untouched.
Sound can't travel in a vacuum because it needs a medium like air, he explains. Without air, kinetic energy from an action instead dissipates as vibration and eventually heat and infrared radiation within the object itself, rather than propagating outward as sound.
He applies this to debunk the moon-landing flag-waving claim. The flag was extended by a horizontal rod, and with no air resistance, the kinetic energy from astronauts moving it had nowhere to dissipate quickly, causing prolonged movement rather than the instant stillness deniers expect; lower lunar gravity, one-sixth of Earth's, plays a minor supporting role.
He corrects the common attribution of the conservation-of-energy law to Einstein. He argues the principle — that energy changes form but is never destroyed — may instead originate with Joule in the 1840s.
Aluminum's strength-to-weight ratio let Apollo capsules carry thick shielding without adding launch weight. He presents this as the key reason astronauts crossing the Van Allen belts came back with low radiation doses, since thick aluminum alloy shielding could surround the capsule.
Aluminum's light nucleus kept secondary radiation low. With only 13 protons and 14 neutrons, aluminum mostly produces x-rays rather than the gamma rays and loose neutrons a heavier shielding material would generate when struck by the belts' protons and electrons — a secondary effect he identifies as Bremsstrahlung radiation.
He frames this as the answer to moon-landing skeptics who doubt astronauts could survive the belts. The Van Allen belts' inner zone of fast protons and outer zone of fast electrons are ionizing radiation capable of damaging DNA, but he argues aluminum shielding absorbed the brunt of the impacts.
GeoHussarThe IRGC has more to show for this war than the United States by far #war #f15 #a10 #iran #economy
Every day the IRGC survives while keeping the Strait of Hormuz shut counts as a win for Iran, he argues, at direct US expense. He cites Brent crude at $106 and WTI at $103, with the "real" price closer to $141/barrel — the highest since the 2008 financial crisis — as evidence of the war's economic toll on the US.
He reads the same-day loss of a US F-15E and an A-10 as a sign of Russian-assisted Iranian targeting, not coincidence. One F-15E crew ejected, with the weapons system officer still missing and a bounty on him, while an A-10 crashed under unclear circumstances; he notes Russia is reportedly sharing intelligence with Iran on hitting American targets.
He frames Trump's threat to exit NATO and reluctance to commit to toppling the IRGC as abandoning Gulf allies who begged the US to finish the war. He also points to rising US debt-interest costs despite wartime "safe haven" expectations as a sign markets are reading the war as destabilizing rather than reassuring.
Republican silence on the Pope attack tests the party's limits. He reports that Trump posted a long attack calling the Pope weak, saying nobody had heard of him and that he was chosen only because Trump is president, then posted an image of himself as Jesus Christ. As of filming, four or five hours later, he had heard nothing from any Republican.
Staying quiet trades short-term safety for lasting loss of credibility. He argues the party's religious brand is foundational with Catholics and evangelicals, and that a party which won't defend a religious figure when inconvenient is "selectively faithful when it aligns with power" — which he says he always believed it was.
Republicans have little left to protect by deferring to Trump. In his reading, loyalty to Trump has already cost them: he expects them to lose the House definitely and the Senate most likely, so Trump cannot do them more damage than he already has.
Faith voters will leave quietly rather than loudly. He expects suburban Catholics and older churchgoers who stay off social media but vote to drift away slowly, and warns that normalizing this out of fear makes it hard to draw any line later.
Any pushback will be strategized, not spontaneous. He predicts the leadership will clear only safe-seat or retiring members to object while those in tight races are told to stay quiet, with reluctance to criticize a president in wartime as a further brake.
GeoHussarThere are over 10,000 starlink satellites in orbit right now.. #space #starlink #satellite #inte
SpaceX's Starlink constellation of over 10,000 satellites accounts for 65% of everything in Earth orbit, dwarfing every state-run program combined. The closest rival, Europe's OneWeb, has only about 600 satellites; Russia, China, Japan, and India have nothing comparable.
Starlink has become integral to the Ukrainian military, while Russia's access has been fully cut off for about a month. SpaceX sent thousands of terminals to Ukraine after the 2022 invasion; Russia, never officially granted access, relied on smuggled terminals for drone coordination before losing even non-military access.
He calls extending global broadband access, including to Iranian protesters who used smuggled terminals in January, one of the most consequential projects underway. He estimates 40,000–50,000 satellites would be needed to fully serve the roughly 2.2 billion people currently without connectivity.
Ukraine has paired sea drones with fiber-optic drones as motherships, extending jam-resistant strikes far beyond their normal range. Standard fiber-optic drones trail cables 30–50 km long and can't be jammed since they aren't radio-controlled, but Ukraine's naval drones can carry that tether dozens, even up to 100 km, further out before launching.
He argues this opens the entire Russian-held Sea of Azov coastline, including Crimea, to Ukrainian strikes. Ukraine has also used sea drones to sink or disable a Russian submarine, and while Russia has nearly caught up on land-based fiber-optic drones, it has not matched the sea-drone-mothership approach.
He is skeptical of Russian claims to already have an equivalent fiber-optic sea drone. He compares it to earlier Kremlin media claims that the Kinzhal missile was hypersonic, noting every missile becomes hypersonic during its terminal phase regardless.
The 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing was a direct response to the 1957 Sputnik launch, not a standalone goal. Sputnik's October 4, 1957 launch triggered the space race; the US didn't answer with its own satellite, Explorer 1, until January 31, 1958, and the Soviets pulled further ahead with Yuri Gagarin's 1961 orbital flight and Gherman Titov's 25-hour flight.
Kennedy's 1961 pitch to Congress aimed to overtake a Soviet Union that was outright winning the space race, not merely competing. The Soviets targeted a crewed moon landing by 1967–68 but were stalled by repeated N-1 rocket failures, managing only a robotic lunar landing in 1966.
The roughly $300 billion, ten-mission Apollo program wound down once Soviet lunar competition ended. NASA then consumed about 4% of the federal budget; all missions after Apollo 11 landed successfully except Apollo 13, which had to abort, and NASA's budget was cut afterward as its role seemed less urgent.
GeoHussarA walk-through as to how close Iran was to having a nuke #ScienceExplained #chemistry #uranium #n
He describes uranium enrichment as a long industrial chain Iran controls end to end, from its own domestic ore deposits to centrifuge cascades. Mined ore is milled into yellowcake (80% uranium oxide), converted to a gas with fluorine, and spun through thousands of centrifuges to progressively concentrate uranium-235 over repeated cycles.
Enrichment past 20% is unambiguously weapons-grade territory, and 60% is a short step from bomb-usable material. Civilian power only requires 5% enrichment; he states Iran held 440 kg of uranium enriched to 60% even before Operation Midnight Hammer in 2025, and reaching 90% from 60% is comparatively quick and easy.
He frames having enriched uranium as only one of several remaining steps toward a usable weapon, and offers to cover those additional steps in a follow-up video depending on interest.
Senior MAGA officials openly campaigned for Orbán days before Hungary's election, with JD Vance in Budapest calling him "one of the only true statesmen in Europe" and stating "I did want to send a signal" — reflecting, the author argues, that MAGA sees an Orbán loss as a direct threat to its own domestic playbook.
A documented institutional pipeline — The Danube Institute, CPAC Hungary, and figures like Christopher Rufo — carried Orbán's model into American conservatism. The Danube Institute has paid American influencers for favorable coverage and has ties to Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, and the author argues its central lesson was reorienting U.S. conservatives from limiting state power to using it as a tool.
Challenger Peter Magyar is a flawed democratic alternative, not a clean reformer, the author cautions: a former Fidesz insider whose party's voting record resembles Orbán's on Ukraine and migration, and who voted against the EU's main rule-of-law enforcement tool — meaning a win would prove the illiberal playbook beatable without guaranteeing genuine institutional repair.
The post-ceasefire oil drop happened on paper, not in physical crude. He says futures fell hard on the ceasefire announcement while physical prices held: cargoes did not collapse, differentials did not blow out and refiners kept buying, because the word "ceasefire" added no supply and resolved no disruption.
The selloff was a crowded long unwinding, which he calls manipulation. In his reading, Trump's post threatening to level Iran was the bait that drew funds heavily long on geopolitical risk; when the ceasefire headline hit, positions unwound violently with no change in fundamentals, and he sees the administration's announcements as repeated "rug pulls".
The futures-physical gap must close, but administration signals keep it open. Either physical weakens or futures recover; historically futures tend to follow strong physical prices. He adds that Polymarket froze winnings from new accounts that bet heavily on a ceasefire in the hours before the announcement, suspecting fraud, and expects years of insider-trading investigations.
Prices will not return to normal when the conflict ends. He puts the world hundreds of millions of barrels short and says the shortfall could reach a billion barrels; a two-week opening of Hormuz, with Iran admitting only a limited number of tankers, is not even enough time for tankers to return and reload.
Iran achieved a de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz through economics, not military force or legal authority. War risk insurance premiums spiked 4-6x within days of fighting starting, adding roughly $1.5 million per voyage on a typical $150 million LNG carrier hull, triggering suspensions from shippers like Maersk — all without mines or a naval blockade.
International maritime law (UNCLOS Article 38) guarantees transit passage as a right, but the author argues a right without enforcement means nothing. Iran couldn't legally close the Strait, so instead it used drone and missile strikes near shipping lanes to trigger an insurance exodus that achieves the same practical effect while nominally keeping the Strait "open."
The insurance pullback cascaded from reinsurers withdrawing coverage upstream, not individual insurers independently declining risk, and even where hull war-risk coverage remained available, ship masters and owners separately judged the danger to crews too high to sail — meaning two independent private-market forces, not one, closed the Strait commercially.
Iran is attempting to rewrite freedom of navigation as a bilateral privilege rather than the universal right it's been since WWII, selectively permitting Chinese and "neutral" vessels through — a strategy the author says could undermine a future U.S. naval blockade of China, since drone economics can defeat even the most sophisticated navy by making defense disproportionately expensive.
A CSIS paper he cites links space-program leadership to broader military and technological supremacy. He references Strategic Trajectories: Assessing China's Space Rise and the Risks to US Leadership; the US still spends more overall ($46.3B vs. $29.8B, 2014–2022), but China has closed the STEM gap, producing 51,000 PhD grads by 2022 versus just over 30,000 in the US, up from 7,500 vs. 17,800 in 2000.
He cites the US canceling missions to study Earth's magnetic field while China continues them as a sign of diverging trajectories. The US is also cutting budgets for exoplanet and universe-exploration missions while China's space budget keeps expanding.
The US still operates far more satellites than China, but he argues that lead isn't guaranteed to hold. He puts the US at roughly 8,000–11,000 satellites versus China's 800 to just over 1,000 and Russia's 1,500 (mostly older), and warns the US must keep investing rather than "rest on our laurels."
GeoHussarHelen Keller: the definition of perseverance #empowering #womenshistory #helenkeller #learning
Helen Keller became fluent in five languages despite losing sight and hearing at 18 months old. Born in 1880, she couldn't speak until age six; tutor Anne Sullivan, aided by family friend Alexander Graham Bell, opened her ability to communicate and learn English, French, German, Greek, and Latin.
Mark Twain was so impressed by her intellect that he personally arranged funding for her Radcliffe College education. She met him at 14, graduated Radcliffe cum laude, and at 21 wrote The Story of My Life, which became an international bestseller.
She used her platform for activism well beyond disability advocacy, meeting every US president from 1900 to 1968 and lecturing across 35 countries. She was active in suffrage, civil rights, and labor movements, raised millions for the American Foundation for the Blind, and won an Academy Award for a documentary about her life before dying in 1968.
Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire, was killed after ignoring a direct warning from Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae. After conquering the Medes, Babylonians, and Lydians starting in the 530s BC, Cyrus sought the widowed Tomyris's hand in marriage to extend his rule; when she refused, he invaded her territory.
Tomyris's forces first won a battle by luring a Persian detachment, including her own son, into a wine trap they weren't prepared for. Accustomed to fermented mare's milk rather than wine, the drunken Massagetae soldiers were slaughtered by the main Persian force; her son was captured, released, and then took his own life rather than return home in dishonor.
In the decisive second battle Cyrus was killed, and Herodotus's account has Tomyris dipping his severed head in a bucket of blood in retribution. He notes some ancient accounts dispute this detail, but frames the story as a cautionary tale about hubris.
GeoHussarAmerican oil now settling over $100 a barrel #todayilearned #oil #gulf #inflation
US oil closed above $100/barrel for the first time since 2022, and he argues this may be the new normal rather than a spike. Brent briefly topped $112 before pulling back to the upper $70s, then climbed into the upper $90s as the war and the Strait of Hormuz closure continued, dipping only briefly on since-disproven presidential claims of progress in Iran negotiations.
He argues the US has a stake in the Strait of Hormuz closure despite not directly importing that oil, because oil trades on a single world market. The strait carries 20% of world oil exports, 80% of it bound for Asia (China, India, Japan, South Korea); a global shortage still bids up demand, and price, for American oil.
He dismisses Venezuela as a viable substitute supply source. He cites its corroded oil infrastructure now producing only a fraction of past output, its extra-heavy-sour crude versus the Strait's medium-sour grade, and the added cost of transporting it all the way to Asia.
GeoHussarCleopatra the Economist?? #tiktokcampaign #ancienthistory #herstory #cleopatra #egypt
Cleopatra was ethnically Macedonian Greek, not Egyptian, descended from Ptolemy I, one of Alexander the Great's generals. She spoke nine languages, unusual for her dynasty which generally refused to learn Egyptian, and lived from 69 BC to 30 BC.
She stabilized Egypt's debased currency by introducing bronze coins valued by fiat stamp rather than metal weight. This addressed a crisis in which Egypt's silver coinage had been losing its purity, and it also benefited Rome, Egypt's largest trading partner, by tying Egyptian coinage to the value of the Roman denarius.
Her monetary reforms angered her brother and the Egyptian aristocracy enough that she had to flee to Syria before allying with Julius Caesar. After Caesar's assassination she later allied with Mark Antony, had three children with him, and lost everything after their defeat by Octavian.
GeoHussarThe strait of Hormuz has a long and ancient history #historyfacts #hormuz #persia #worldhistory
Trade through the Strait of Hormuz dates back roughly 4,600 years, well before oil ever mattered. Sumerians traded copper, teak wood, and lapis lazuli with the Indus Valley civilization there around 2600 BC, and the region — called Hormozia, later Ormus — kept a similar name through Achaemenid, Rashidun, Umayyad, and Abbasid rule.
The strait peaked as a global trade hub, which he calls "the Silk Road of the maritime world," under the Abbasid Caliphate's golden age after 750 AD. Ships arrived from China, India, and Africa; when Abbasid central power declined in the 11th–12th centuries, a local dynasty of Omani-origin princes formed the Kingdom of Ormus, which survived the 13th-century Mongol invasions relatively unscathed beyond taxation.
European colonial power first seized the strait in 1507, when Portugal conquered Ormus, provoking a failed Ottoman attempt to retake it. Portuguese control lasted until 1622, when Persia and England allied to expel them.
GeoHussarAda Lovelace, the worlds first programmer #hiddenhistory #WomensHistoryMonth #programming
Harriet Tubman personally rescued over 70 enslaved people through repeated trips back into slave territory after her own 1849 escape. Born enslaved in Maryland in 1822, she fled to Philadelphia at 27; returning to free others was itself a crime until slavery's abolition in 1863, since freed people were legally still someone's property.
Despite being illiterate, she served the Union as a scout and spy and led a military raid that freed over 700 people in a single day. She committed all navigation and intelligence to memory; the raid at the Combahee Ferry earned her the nickname "General Tubman" from abolitionist John Brown.
She spent her later life in the women's suffrage movement but died in 1913, at 91, penniless after being repeatedly swindled. She was frequently helped by community members and politicians who stepped in to keep her from destitution.
GeoHussarHarriet Tubman: A National Hero #BlackHistory #WomensHistoryMonth #DidYouKnow #harriettubman
Harriet Tubman personally rescued over 70 enslaved people through repeated trips back into slave territory after her own 1849 escape. Born enslaved in Maryland in 1822, she fled to Philadelphia at 27; returning to free others was itself a crime until slavery's abolition in 1863, since freed people were legally still someone's property.
Despite being illiterate, she served the Union as a scout and spy and led a military raid that freed over 700 people in a single day. She committed all navigation and intelligence to memory; the raid at the Combahee Ferry earned her the nickname "General Tubman" from abolitionist John Brown.
She spent her later life in the women's suffrage movement but died in 1913, at 91, penniless after being repeatedly swindled. She was frequently helped by community members and politicians who stepped in to keep her from destitution.
GeoHussarBoudicca: the Bane Of Roman Britain #WomenInHistory #ancienthistory
Boudica's rebellion began after Roman officials disregarded her dead husband's will, seized the Iceni kingdom, and publicly flogged her while assaulting her daughters. Her husband Prasutagus had tried to split rule between his daughters and Emperor Nero to preserve the tribe's autonomy; Boudica was born around 30 AD and died around 61 AD.
Her coalition destroyed Roman Colchester, London, and Verulamium (St. Albans), defeating the Roman Ninth Legion along the way, in what he calls a war of extermination rather than mere resistance. Accounts vary widely on troop numbers — the Ninth Legion at 2,500–5,000 and Boudica's forces at 20,000–100,000.
Her rebellion ended in a decisive defeat when a Roman force of at most 13,000, using superior tactics and choosing the terrain, crushed her far larger army. She died shortly after, by poison or illness according to different accounts, ending organized British resistance to Rome.
GeoHussarSophie Magdalena Scholl and the white Rose movement in Germany #History #germany
Sophie Scholl moved from youthful Nazi enthusiasm to underground resistance after her brothers' 1937 arrest and their 1941 posting to the Eastern Front. Born in 1921, she had joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls) as a teenager before what she came to describe as the regime's true darkness was revealed to her.
Starting in 1942, she and her brothers distributed six rounds of anti-Nazi leaflets around Munich as the White Rose movement. Her sixth distribution, thrown from the top of the University of Munich stairs, got her caught by a pro-fascist janitor.
She was executed in 1943 after a mock trial, refusing to recant. The piece quotes her final statement: "I am now, as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct."
GeoHussarThe conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan #baloch #pakistan #geopolitics #afghan
He argues the Pakistan-Afghanistan conflict, driven by Pakistan targeting terror cells it says Afghanistan hosts, risks spreading instability into the Iran war and China's regional strategy. Pakistan launched large-scale strikes into Afghan territory, paused, then resumed, with Afghanistan striking back.
He predicts a Balochistan insurgency is increasingly likely, most probably erupting in Iran given its degraded military infrastructure. Baloch militants operate across Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, and he expects Pakistan to be drawn into striking Iran under a mutual defense pact if Saudi Arabia formally declares war on Iran.
He frames China's heavy investment in Pakistan, despite over $40 billion in defaulted debt it keeps rolling over, as a bet on Pakistan checking India's rise. A Pakistan strained by conflict on two fronts undermines that strategy, though he concludes a wider war would still remain regional rather than a world war.
The US built a drone by reverse-engineering and upgrading Iranian Shahed 136s it had bought to study, adding jam resistance, mid-flight retasking, and swarm coordination. Unit cost is cited at $35,000, versus the Shahed's original $20,000–$50,000 range; the design details are credited to reporting by Alex Hollings.
He says the drones have been actively deployed in the Iran war, though the specific targets struck are unknown. They're launched from aircraft carriers, giving them reach across all of Iran despite shorter range than the Shahed or Russia's Geran, and are typically paired with a longer-range weapon like a Tomahawk.
He argues the risk of Iran, Russia, or China reverse-engineering a captured drone is low because the sensitive part is the encrypted software, not the hardware. He notes the irony that the drone's underlying design is itself reverse-engineered from Russian and Iranian technology.
GeoHussarMarie Curie set so many medical and scientific foundations #learnfromme #mariecurie #radiation
Marie Curie discovered radium and polonium by processing tons of pitchblende by hand alongside her husband Pierre, extracting perhaps a single gram of radium from that effort. Born Maria Skłodowska in Russian-occupied Warsaw in 1867, she graduated first in her class in chemistry from the Sorbonne in 1893.
Her finding that radioactivity was an atomic property, not a chemical reaction, laid groundwork later built on by Einstein's E=mc² and the fields of radiochemistry, nuclear medicine, and particle physics. She won Nobel Prizes in physics (1903) and chemistry (1910).
During World War I she invented portable, car-mounted x-ray units and personally trained over 150 women to drive them to wounded soldiers. She died in 1934 from her radiation exposure and, per the piece, had to be buried in a lead-lined coffin because her remains stayed radioactive.
Julie d'Aubigny won a sword duel against a nobleman who mistook her for a man, then fell in love with him after nursing him back to health. Born in 1673 and dead by 1707 at 34, she later performed at the Paris Opera under the stage name Mademoiselle Maupin, or La Maupin.
She broke a female lover out of a convent by posing as a nun, allegedly faking the woman's death with a corpse and burning the building down to cover it, before securing a royal pardon through earlier connections. She was on the run for three months before returning the woman to her parents.
At the Paris Opera, she defeated three noblemen in duels after kissing a woman she wasn't supposed to at a 1695 royal ball at Versailles. Her 1690 stage debut as Pallas Athena had already made her an immediate sensation for both her voice and her reputation.