Astral Codex Ten

Islam

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Islam

Article

Islam is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 11 times across 11 issues between March 18, 2021 and August 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “He saw Islam - the religion of the old Ottoman Empire - as a roadblock”; “It’s easy to imagine … Islam as a unifying force”; “due to Christianity and Islam both having a horror of the misleading power of representational art”. It most often appears alongside Christianity, China, Judaism.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 11
  • Issue count: 11
  • First seen: March 18, 2021
  • Last seen: August 16, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: The New Sultan
March 18, 2021 · Original source
Medieval Turkey was dominated by the Ottoman Empire, officially an Islamic caliphate though in practice only inconsistently religious, ruled by autocratic sultans and a dizzying series of provincial governors. As time passed, they fell further and further behind Western Europe; by World War I, they were a mess. As the stress of the war caused the empire to fracture, General Mustafa Kemal seized power, reorganized the scraps of Ottoman Anatolia into modern Turkey, and was renamed ATATURK, meaning "Father of Turks".
Ataturk was born in Ottoman-controlled Greece, and was typical of a class of military officers at the time who were well-educated and "Europeanized". He wanted to turn backwards Turkey into an advanced Western country - and Western countries were mostly secular. He saw Islam - the religion of the old Ottoman Empire - as a roadblock, and passed various laws meant to relegate it to the margins of public life.
The Turkish Armed Forces were Ataturk's power base, and was mostly made of well-educated Europhiles like himself. When he moved Turkey toward democracy, he charged the military with ensuring it never deviated too far from his original vision. But Turkey was demographically dominated by poor Muslim peasants and naturally tended towards Communism or Islamism. So the cadence of Turkish democracy was a gradual drift towards one of these extremes, followed by the military staging a coup to undo the damage and restore secular cosmopolitan liberalism. There were four such coups between 1960 and 2000 - including "coups by memo", where the military would say "let's pretend we just held a coup" and the civilian government, unwilling to risk a real coup, would resign en masse.
Your Book Review: Humankind
May 28, 2021 · Original source
Bregman blames the shift from groups of 150 to nation states on the invention of God. If you're trying to get a people group the size of a nation state to work together to win a war, or build a pyramid, then personal relationships are not going to do it. What you want is some omnipresent Big Brother who brings everyone together, and keeps everyone in line. How does this idea stack up historically? It's easy to imagine Christianity or Islam as a unifying force, but they didn't turn up until countries and even empires were already old hat. Judaism is the only similar religion that could date to pre-civilisation, and it's not a promising candidate. At best it touched a Palestinian backwater, and by the Jews’ own account they only lastingly unified under a king when they saw all the nations around them doing it (1 Samuel 8:5 - the temporary alliance of the tribes under Moses and Joshua is hardly sufficient for Bregman's purposes). All the other candidates for primeval religion are polytheisms which are not designed for pushing unification. Explaining religion as invented to forge nations is like saying the horse was invented for ploughing. Armed with a horse collar it is possible to harness a horse for ploughing, but as an explanation for the horse it leaves a lot to be desired.
Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture
October 04, 2021 · Original source
- The representational art of Western Europe, starting with Constantine, and throughout the Middle Ages (with the exception of the Frankish court and some Byzantine art), up until nearly 1300 AD, seems to have been very deliberately bad, and in many times and places it was banned entirely. This was probably due to Christianity and Islam both having a horror of the misleading power of representational art (which fear came straight out of Plato). Note much medieval art was also Cubist.
Highlights From The Comments On Criticism Of Criticism Of Criticism
July 28, 2022 · Original source
1) The Ba'hai believe that Abrahamic religion is still evolving, and has not yet reached its perfect form. So Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and maybe even the Ba'hai faith itself, are true, but incomplete. In this sense the religion very much shares a good quality with EA: it is not settled, may never be settled, and is open to change and improvement.
From Nostradamus To Fukuyama
September 28, 2022 · Original source
But I don’t think Fukuyama feels like someone who’s gotten a C-. There is a steady drip of “this proves Fukuyama was more wrong than anyone has been before” takes, which show no sign of running out. The worst was just after 9-11, during the War On Terror, when people were panicking about “the rise of Islamofascism”. See for instance The End Of The End Of History, From The End Of History To The Clash Of Civilizations, The War On Terror: The Retreat Of Liberal Democracy, and many more. Fukuyama himself wrote in October 2001 that “A stream of commentators have been asserting that the tragedy of September 11 proves that I was utterly wrong to have said more than a decade ago that we had reached the end of history”.
Inline links: The End Of The End Of History, From The End Of History To The Clash Of Civilizations, The War On Terror: The Retreat Of Liberal Democracy
With the benefit of hindsight, everything about 9/11 and the War On Terror was a random blip in history with no broader implications. There was not a rising Islamofascism, there was not a clash of civilizations. There were a few guys in some caves doing terrorism, they got lucky once, the US got angry and invaded a few countries, and then everything continued as before. If people were ranking threats to the world order now, Islam and terrorism wouldn’t make the top twenty.
Universe-Hopping Through Substack
September 29, 2022 · Original source
After several weeks, the mad scientist has used shared understanding of mathematical constants to start to learn the universe’s language, and here is what he pieces together: There was a sex tape of Kim Kardashian. Most people think Kim’s ex Ray released it without her consent and she was a victim. But the people of this universe believe that Kim and someone else named Kris released it on purpose for PR reasons. The people of this parallel universe believe this story very strongly, the same way people in our universe have religions like Christianity or Islam.
Highlights From The Comments On Columbus Day
October 10, 2022 · Original source
Jesus died two days before Passover, but Passover is linked to the Hebrew calendar and can fall on a variety of Roman calendar days. So the main remaining degree of freedom is how the early Christians translated from the (Biblically fixed) Hebrew date to the (not very clear) Roman date. This seems to have been calculated by someone named Hippolytus in the 3rd century, but his calculations were wrong - March 25 did not fall on a Friday (cf. Good Friday) on any of the plausible crucifixion years. Also, as far as I can tell, the relevant Jewish tradition is that prophets die on the same day they are born, not the same day they are conceived. For example, Moses was born on, and died on, the 7th of Adar (is it worth objecting that it should be the same date on the Hebrew calendar and not the Roman?) Maybe this tradition was different in Jesus’ time? But it must be older than the split between Judaism and Islam - the Muslims also believe Mohammed died on his birth date.
Inline links: Hippolytus, Moses, Mohammed
So if you have God who is God and alone, and then the special intermediary who is not (fully) God or a created (g)od, then you have the door into things like Islam - where Jesus is a great and venerated prophet, but not the Messiah or son of God, and Mohammed is the greatest and final revelation, or Unitarianism, or Mormonism (this is the really big deal about why Mormons are not considered Christians even though they say they follow Christ and accept the Bible and all the rest of it).
Why I'm Less Than Infinitely Hostile To Cryptocurrency
December 08, 2022 · Original source
If the government hates Islam, it’s hard from a legal and PR perspective to imprison imams or ban the Koran. But it’s easy to subtly convey to banks that it will regulate them out of existence unless they ban transactions to imams, or to any bookstores that carry Korans. And this has pretty much the same effect.
Galton, Ehrlich, Buck
May 15, 2023 · Original source
Beroe: Eugenics inspired the Nazis (and 1920s Americans) to do very evil things. But Islam inspired Osama bin Laden to do very evil things, and we rightly believe that it’s fine to practice Islam as long as you don’t use it as an excuse to do evil things. Islam isn’t bad, flying planes into buildings is bad. Likewise, eugenics isn’t bad, involuntarily sterilizing people, or sending them to gas chambers, is bad. What’s the argument against forms of eugenics that don’t do this?
Beroe: If I understand you right, you’re saying that some things are so bad that we must ban not only the bad thing, but also innocent things that bad people could use to promote the bad thing. This seems to grant you, as arbiter of which things are too close for comfort to other things, an extraordinary amount of power. As I said before, Islam has been used by bad people to promote bad things. Some people would be very happy if we banned Islam. Should we?
Adraste: You seek hard-and-fast rules, but these will always elude you. You can’t escape adding up the costs and benefits and having a specific object-level opinion. Banning Islam has few benefits and many costs. It violates religious freedom. It perpetuates racist stereotypes. You couldn’t do it if you tried, plus a billion people would declare jihad on you. And the overwhelming majority of Muslims don’t commit terrorist acts anyway. Banning eugenics is very easy. We already did it; the victory requires minimal effort to maintain. Rolling it back has many costs and few benefits. I say keep it banned.
Links For February 2024
February 29, 2024 · Original source
26: Did you know: lots of religions have their own version of LEGO, usually with sets depicting their mythology or temples. Islam has Muslim Blocks, Hinduism has Indic Bricks, and Judaism has Binyan Blocks. But my favorite is Mormonism with - wait for it - Brick’em Young (h/t @seanw_m)
Inline links: Muslim Blocks, Indic Bricks, Binyan Blocks, Brick’em Young, @seanw_m
(also, no offense to Islam, but the Kaaba is the most boring possible building to make a LEGO set for, sorry)
Inline links: the Kaaba is the most boring possible building
39: Claim (h/t @NiohBerg, @eigenrobot): “Islam is dying in Iran”
Inline links: “Islam is dying in Iran”
Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics
August 16, 2024 · Original source
Given Marvel Comics, why Silver Age (1961-1965)? I.a. Why Superhero Comic Books? The winner of last year’s Astral Codex Ten book review contest was Brandon Hendrickson. Brandon wrote about Kieran Egan’s The Educated Mind. One of the foundations of Egan’s educational philosophy is that people learn through stories. He believes early education should focus on teaching lessons through myths and legends. This matches my experience. My kids’ favorite podcast is Greeking Out – a very well produced, very entertaining, National Geographic podcast about Greek Legends. Aside #1: When my oldest daughter was three years old she would ask everyone she met “Do you know any myths? Can you tell me a myth?” She especially liked asking people from different places to get myths from their local cultures. Once, she asked the question to a friend of mine who grew up in South Africa, “Can you tell me any South African myths?” He struggled for a minute and then said, “Okay! I have one! Bread never falls butter side down!”. That was not the type of myth she was looking for; nor the type of myth we will be discussing in this review. Every culture has foundational myths. These stories are entertaining and engaging, but they also teach valuable lessons about both what is important in that culture, and how people in that culture are expected to behave (or at least the Platonic Ideal of how they should behave). In the modern, Western world, we have assimilated many of these foundational stories, particularly the Greek myths. My kids definitely know the Greek myths, but they also know elements of Norse mythology, Egyptian myths, stories about Anasi from West Africa and more. More fundamentally my wife and I, while not religious ourselves, have made a point of exposing the kids to the stories from the Bible. It is not politically correct to call Biblical stories “myths”, but they serve the same purpose – shared cultural understanding of the way the world works. My wife grew up without any religion, and when she was in high school, she struggled with the metaphors and religious allegories that were omnipresent in most of the Western canon. In our culture, familiarity with the Bible is important for an educated person – whether they are religious or not – because it is the foundation of so much of the rest of our culture. I believe the other set of mythological stories that are foundational to our culture are – and by this point I am sure you see where I am going here – comic book superheroes. If true, then having more than a surface-level understanding of the most important superhero stories is important in a similar way to that knowing the Bible stories is important. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is an important idea to understand. So is, “With great power comes great responsibility”. I.b. Why Marvel? While there are many independent superheroes that are not owned by major conglomerates, the superheroes who have built our modern foundational myths are currently owned by two corporations. Warner Bros. Discover owns the DC library of superheroes including Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. In 2009 Disney purchased Marvel Comics and took ownership of their characters, including Spiderman, X-men and the Avengers. Aside #2: Marvel has sold temporary film rights to many of their characters over the years. The most relevant sales started in 1994 when Marvel sold the film rights of X-men and mutants to 20th century Fox, then in 1996, when Marvel went bankrupt, Fox picked up the rights to the Fantastic Four (and New Line picked up Blade). In 1999 Marvel sold the film rights (and live action TV, and animated TV longer than 44 minutes) of Spider-man and related characters to Columbia Pictures (part of Sony) for $7MM. Marvel actually attempted to sell ALL of their remaining Marvel IP film rights to Sony for $25MM, but the top management at Sony was not interested. Sony’s management allegedly told their chief negotiator “Nobody gives a shi*t about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal for only Spider-Man). Disney acquired Marvel in 2009, and then Fox in 2019, bringing the two separated packages of characters all back together under one roof (Blade reverted back to Marvel in 2012). Sony still owns the rights to Spider-man but has made a deal with Disney to include some of his films within the Marvel-Disney universe. Marvel sold the film rights of The Hulk to Universal in 1990 and the current status of that agreement is complicated (the consensus is that Marvel now controls the film rights to the character, but Universal owns distribution rights to any stand-alone Hulk film, which could be why Disney let's Hulk co-star in Thor movies, but not vice versa). In the early aughts Marvel wanted to build their own film franchise, but were limited to only using their remaining “B-list” characters – Spider-man, X-men, and the Fantastic Four were all off limits. Fortunately, Kevin Feige, president of production for Marvel at the time, saw a way forward. He convinced Ike Perlmutter, Marvel CEO, to allow for the production of a series of films with the remaining characters begining with Iron Man (2008). Jon Favreau directed and cast Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. The film blew away expectations. Kevin’s plan of a series of movies where the characters would interconnect was suddenly feasible. Iron Man was followed by The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. None managed the box office magic of Iron Man, but all were successful enough that the plan stayed on track. In 2012 the characters were all brought together in the first Avengers film, which opened to over $200MM domestically and went on to gross more than $1.5B (which made it the 3rd highest grossing film of all time). Marvel became the first studio to take the interconnected world of their comic books and make the model work on the big screen (for a much larger audience). Once the model was proven to work, other studios tried to duplicate it. Aside #3: Warner Bros’ stumbles with the DC shared universe of Batman, Superman and the Justice League are well known, but that was actually their SECOND attempt at a shared universe. Their first attempt tried to copy the Marvel method more closely. They chose their own B-list hero and set up his first film to allow for a wider mythology. Alas Green Lantern (2011) failed at the box office and we never got stand-alone films about Sinestro (Yellow Lantern), Carol Ferris (Star Sapphire, the Violet Lantern), John Stewart (African American Green Lantern), Kyle Rayner (1990s Green Lantern), Alan Scott (original Green Lantern), or the Blue, Red, and Orange Lantern Corps. At least so far, no studio has successfully created anything with close to the traction obtained by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Warner’s DC Extended universe (DCEU) had trifling success, but is being shelved and rebooted for a fresh attempt next year. Universal’s attempt at a “Dark Universe” kicked off with Tom Cruise in The Mummy (2017), but was dead on arrival. Paramount’s attempt to link the Transformers Universe to GI Joe at the end of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has been appropriately mocked. Sony’s Spider-man films linked to the MCU have been very successful, but their attempt at a stand-alone non-MCU Spider-man universe using Spider-man’s villains as anti-heroes has floundered (mostly succeeding only as a source of memes). Next Mattel will be attempting to build a universe off the success of last year’s Barbie and may include Polly Pocket, American Girl, Hot Wheels, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (no word yet on Thomas the Tank Engine, View Master and the Magic-8 Ball, but all are apparently in development). To date, only Marvel has successfully built a “Cinematic Universe”. One potential reason for the MCU’s success is that Kevin Feige built his cinematic universe on the back of the existing interconnected universe of the comics. But those comics were not the first interconnected universe of stories. For that we would need to go back to our foundational myths. The Bible stories mostly interconnect. Adam and Eve flows into Cain and Abel. David and Goliath leads to the Wisdom of Solomon. Greek Myths DEFINITELY interconnect. Supporting characters in one Greek myth have starring roles in their own stories. The Greek pantheon of tales even have their own version of the Avengers. In the Quest for the Golden Fleece, Jason brings together the Argonauts, who included in their number Theseus (who defeated the Minotaur), Orpheus (who braved the underworld) and Hercules himself – all A-list stars in their own “franchises”. Stand alone stories that exist within an interconnected universe are rare in modern media but were common in the ancient myths that have stood the test of time. Only Marvel has successfully created a shared universe that follows the pattern of ancient myths. Only Marvel films have stand-alone stories and protagonists who exist together in an interconnected world. Something about that method of storytelling is deeply pleasing for humans across many cultures. Marvel films are the first and most successful modern version of the mythological universe, and that it is worth spending more time exploring Marvel’s underlying mythology and where it came from. I.c. Why 1961? The origins of Christianity and Judaism (and Buddhism and Hinduism) are very murky. Even Islam is far enough in the past that we only have a very rough understanding of how it came to exist. When scholars want to understand in detail how a new religion is born they are far better to look at Mormonism or, if you accept it as a religion, Dianetics. Similarly, we have versions of Greek myths that have been passed down to us, but we can never know how those myths changed from their first telling to their “final” versions. Were the stories once unrelated, and only later became crafted into a single “universe”? Or were the stories built off each other one by one (“Dad that Golden Fleece story was amazing! Do you know any other stories about the Hercules guy?”)? Or was it something in between? Perhaps the stories all existed independently, but were later crafted together (“Remember that 12-labors story I told you? Actually that was the same guy who was on the Argo!”) Unlike Greek legends, we can know the origin of the Marvel Universe. We can see how it was constructed step-by-step. The people who did it (most importantly Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko) are dead now, but they have not been dead for long. We can read the original work, see how it changed over the last 60 years, and we can ask the creators “what were you thinking at the time” (or at least read their answers from old interviews). We can’t always trust what Stan Lee says, but at least we can hear his point of view. No one has a transcript of an interview with Homer, or knows exactly what he was thinking when he called it the “wine-dark sea”. Tl;dr: Why read about Marvel Comic superheroes 1961-1965? Because interconnected mythological stories are very important to cultures, Marvel is the leading contender of the most recent modern mythology, and it originated in the first half-decade of the 1960s. II. How did Marvel Superhero Comics happen? Timely Comics published their first comic book in 1939 and called it “Marvel Comics”. Their most popular World War II comics included Captain America, the Human Torch (an android unrelated to the modern Human Torch except in powers, appearance and name), and Namor, the Submariner. In the early 1950s superheroes became less popular, so Timely changed its name to Atlas Comics and focused on humor, western, horror, war and science fiction stories. But in 1956 DC Comics began re-introducing their Golden Age superheroes and, in the second half of the 1950s, the genre took off again – particularly Superman, whose title, Action Comics, became the number one selling comic in America. Stan Lee, editor and chief at Atlas at the time, wanted to get in on the superhero action. Unfortunately in 1957 Atlas lost its distributor and the company had to rely on “Independent News” to get its comics on newsstands. The complication was that Independent News was owned by “National Periodical Publications”, who also owned DC-comics and did not want Atlas to introduce superheroes to compete with Superman, Green Lantern and the Flash. Independent News agreed to distribute Atlas comics but limited the publisher to eight titles per month, and only in non-super hero genres (like horror, romance and science fiction). Blocked from creating and launching new superhero titles, Stan Lee got creative, and in August 1961 Atlas Comics published Fantastic Four #1. Aside #4: Fantastic Four #1 was on newsstands in August 8th, 1961, but the date on the cover was November 1961. The convention at the time was that the cover date was not the “publication date” but rather the “pull date”. The pull date was the time when the retailer could send back unsold copies back to the publisher for a refund. In fact the retailer did not need to send the entire issue back, just the cover, as it was assumed that comic books could not be sold without the cover, and it saved on postage. This was only relevant because it was great for my dad who was a child at the time. My dad was friends with the kid whose father owed the local pharmacy which meant he had access to every comic book published in the late 1950s as long as he was willing to wait a few months and read it without a cover. Going forward in this essay I will always use the pull dates rather than the publication dates for individual comic book issues as they are far easier to source. If you want to convert pull dates back into publication dates you can subtract roughly two months, but it is inconsistent and sometimes longer, as was the case with Fantastic Four #1. Check out the cover of Fantastic Four #1: To the modern eye this certainly looks like a superhero comic. Four heroes with super powers fighting a giant monster. But in the eyes of publishers in 1961 this looked more like a science fiction adventure comic than something that would go head to head with Superman. Here are the covers of Action Comics (the best selling superhero comic at the time) from the three months leading up to Fantastic Four #1: Notice what they have in common? “Super Rivals”, “Super revenge”, “Super Substitutes”. And all include Superman in his blue and red tights. Fantastic Four’s cover featured super powers, but never used the word “super” and no one was wearing superhero costumes. Fantastic Four, as a superhero story, slipped under the radar because it wasn’t really a superhero story at all. It was a story about four close friends who attempted to fly into space, but then something goes wrong and they crash back to Earth. The experience changes them and they decide they now need to use their new abilities to help the rest of humanity – specifically against monsters who are invading from under the Earth. It is a fantastical science fiction story – not a superhero story. Later in his career Jack Kirby, the illustrator of the issue and co-creator of the Fantastic Four, was asked about his inspiration for the Fantastic Four heroes. He did NOT say Superman – or any superhero. He said Challengers of the Unknown. Challengers of the Unknown was an adventure story co-created by Kirby in Showcase #6 in February 1957. Here is how Wikipedia describes the Challengers origin: When acquaintances miraculously survive a plane crash unscathed, they conclude that since they are "living on borrowed time" they should band together for hazardous adventures. The four—pilot Kyle "Ace" Morgan, daredevil Matthew "Red" Ryan, strong and slow-witted Leslie "Rocky" Davis, and scientist Walter Mark "Prof" Haley—became the Challengers of the Unknown. Showcase #6, and the first appearance of the Challengers of the Unknown, by Jack Kirby Visually the Challengers and the Fantastic Four were similar. Both wore skin tight uniforms with belts and minimal decoration. The Fantastic Four’s relatively simple characterizations were practically pulled from Challengers. Reed takes on the traits of both Kyle, the leader, and Walter, the scientist. Johnny, the Human Torch is the daredevil. The Thing is “strong and slow-witted”. Sue, the only woman on the team, seems like a new addition, but is likely based on June Robbins who joined the Challengers team in Showcase #7, as an “honorary” or “girl-Challenger”. After surviving their respective “miraculous” crashes, both the Challengers and the Fantastic Four band together to help the world. They both travel through space and other dimensions, fighting mad scientists and monsters. The Fantastic Four’s early antagonists were not traditional super villains. In the first few issues they fight monsters from under the Earth (Issue #1), shape changing aliens (#2), and a charlatan who uses hypnotism to steal from his audience (#3). In issue #4 Kirby and Lee re-introduce Namor, the Submariner, one of Marvel’s top IP from the 1940s, and have him kidnap Sue. Only in Issue #5 and #6 (June and August 1962) and do we get a more standard-supervillain when Dr Doom attempts to steal the Fantastic Four headquarters and throw it into space. The next superhero Lee created was even less heroic than the Fantastic Four. In April 1962 (pull date), Marvel published The Incredible Hulk. If it was even a superhero story in disguise it was a very good disguise. The story was a scientific-filtered version of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. It was a pure monster-story with nothing very super about it. Nothing on the cover suggests this has anything to do with superheroes: It is not clear if even Lee at the time thought the Hulk would be a superhero. In Fantastic Four #5 Johnny is reading a “great new comic mag” and mocks the Thing by comparing him to the Hulk. It seems pretty clear at this point that in the Fantastic Four’s world, the Hulk is just a fictional comic book, like in ours (more on that later): The other two superheroes the Marvel introduces in this period have even more subtle introductions. At the time Marvel had a number of generic-sounding titles and told science fiction and fantasy stand-alone stories: Tales to Astonish
Inline links: The Educated Mind, Greeking Out, Nobody gives a shi*t about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal for only Spider-Man, Dark Universe, appropriately mocked, memes, attempting to build a universe, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!MbHP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63b4711e-2248-4120-897e-bba8a595a28b_405x616.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OCj5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9afeb585-b58b-4932-8702-153b4fdf135d_619x305.png, Wikipedia, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OzTl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F49fd3582-b5bd-4567-b5e9-cca46c1f1c49_425x615.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!lfiM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc23c3ad1-5fed-4063-8ac2-d9d89e69bee6_252x398.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oV4t!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F346f85d9-580b-4eb2-b91c-3422003613d5_591x572.png