Astral Codex Ten

Western Europe

5 min read

Western Europe

Article

Western Europe is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 7 times across 7 issues between March 18, 2021 and December 31, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “they fell further and further behind Western Europe”; ""The USA and most of Western Europe tried this in the early 1800s""; “The representational art of Western Europe, starting with Constantine”. It most often appears alongside China, Germany, UK.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 7
  • Issue count: 7
  • First seen: March 18, 2021
  • Last seen: December 31, 2025

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".
Book Review: Global Economic History
April 21, 2021 · Original source
The USA and most of Western Europe tried this in the early 1800s, and it went pretty well. By the late 1800s, these countries were competitive with Britain, and the US had surpassed it (Allen attributes US ascendancy to the American frontier; US bosses had to offer good wages to keep factory workers from going West and becoming pioneer farmers instead; unusually high American wages meant unusually strong American pressure to industrialize). All of this was nice and straightforward and lulled everyone else into a false sense of security.
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.
CORENTIN: Absolutely not – quite the contrary! Western Europe, and France in particular, has spearheaded this systematic destruction of all artistic tradition, of any style that could be related to the past. The conservatories have been forced to practice a clean slate policy. This undermining action, well supervised by the institutions and the media, has had the disastrous result that, for several decades, composition – in the original sense of the word – is no longer taught in the conservatories. I did all my musical courses at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique (CNSM) of Paris. I obtained five Prizes … but I was not able to attempt the “Composition” Prize since this Prize is only for composers of so-called “contemporary” music, that is to say “experimental”.
Highlights From The Comments On Orban
November 11, 2021 · Original source
I think the main difference is that there isn't a 3rd country at the USA-Mexico border and USA is the target country for immigrants anyway. Hungary is just one of a several countries on a route from Middle East to Western Europe, so if they make their wall slighly more inconvenient than the neighboring countries that's enough to sway the torrent of immigrants another way.
Meetups Everywhere 2022 - Call For Organizers
August 16, 2022 · Original source
Meetups Czar Mingyuan is hoping to visit some meetups as well; she’ll be in Western Europe in September, so if you volunteer to host something around there, she might get in contact with you.
Links For February 2024
February 29, 2024 · Original source
Almost all countries in Africa have higher death rates from obesity than in Western Europe and the USA
Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession
December 31, 2025 · Original source
The OECD also produces consumer confidence surveys and the US is pretty middle of the pack compared to other advanced countries for the last three years - US, Australia, western europe, UK, japan, are all in the -1 to -1.5 z score range historically. China is the worst, around -2 z scores. Interestingly, Mexico is one of the few places with high consumer confidence right now.