History

What are five topics you can talk about for 30 minutes with zero prep?

Mine:

1. Practical CSS Golfing
2. The Two Things You Need to Know to Photoshop
3. Exploiting Physics (in Super Smash Bros.)
4. Personal Finance: Doing All the Things I Don't
5. Why You Should Play Monopoly Deal, Even Just Once

What are five topics you can talk about for 30 minutes with zero prep?

1. French Revolution leading into Napoleonic Wars
2. First and Second Punic Wars
3. The Peloponnesian War, The Syracusian Expedition 
4. The Gaelic Wars
5. The Meiji Restoration, subsequent reform of Tokugawa Shogunate into Meiji Era Modernized

creating and destroying; built flying cars & autonomous vehicles, now building roc.camera, writings: july.rocks

co-founder @spire / X: CoffeeTimesTW.twitter / a16z CSX24

Agreed. Some of my other favs:

Oguri Tadamasa - On the Tokugawa Bakufu side, but was very forward looking and forward thinking, helped build the foundations of what is the naval shipyards in Yokosuka Shipyards today but contracting the French Govt to build ships (while Choshu and Satsuma sided with the English)

Also Nariakira Shimazu（島津斉彬）was low key goated - setup the Satsuma Domain for the next 50 years to become the powerhouse that it eventually became, and set the tone for the Restoration

Shoin Yoshida: led a tragically short life, taught great revolutionaries like Hirobumi Ito（伊藤博文） Shinsaku Takasugi（高杉晋作） etc who went on to do great things at Shukasonjuku (松下村塾）

Was jailed after he tried to board Perry's black ship when it came back in 1854, died years later in jail