As a teenager reading about the decline of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, I couldn't understand why they mostl…

As a teenager reading about the decline of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, I couldn't understand why they mostly just let it happen. Why not reform urgently, slash the bureaucracy, race to adopt the new technologies? Much less confused th
Ranked #64 on backlist 2026-06-27 (27 Jun 2026 UTC) · by (Henry Shevlin) ·

How it ranks: Backlist reads my Twitter/X timeline, scores every tweet for substance with an LLM rubric (not engagement), and publishes the daily top picks with a one-line takeaway. Curated by Surya Dantuluri.