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EARLY EPISODE: The Istanbul Snowball fight
🕑 Added 2025-11-16 19:55:57 +0000 UTCIn the early days of English ambassadorships to the Ottoman Empire, an increasingly petty collection of grievances among European envoys and Ottoman dignitaries set the conditions for a single errant snowball to incite an anti-English riot. Witness the story of the snowball that got a bunch of English guys' beaten with oblong objects.
Research: Dr Joel Butler
Reources:
Public Records Office, The National Archives, Kew, London: SP 97/3; SP 97/4.
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‘Journalist Nuh Köklü murdered for playing snowball’, Agos (18 February 2015).
‘Life in prison for man who stabbed Turkish journalist over snowball fight’, Hürriyet Daily News (5 June 2015).
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Comments
Mackenzie Toscan
Is this ottomonth
Elsie Hupp
Hot take: hats are fine actually. The reason people stopped wearing structured hats in much of the world is that structured hats don’t work well with automobiles. The problem with the “milady” meme guy isn’t that he’s wearing a hat; the problem is that he’s wearing the *wrong* hat. If you have broad shoulders, you can wear a fedora. If you have narrow shoulders, you can wear a trilby. This skews towards fedoras being masculine and trilbies being feminine, but that’s only due to body proportions. If you’re AMAB and not trans, and you want to avoid having people stereotype you as a “fedora guy”… just get a hat that’s neither a fedora nor a trilby. Also, if you don’t have a strong sense of personal preference with regard to hats, go hat shopping with a person of the gender you are attracted to, so that they can tell you which hat looks best on you based on what their demographic thinks looks nice. If you don’t have a demographically appropriate shopping partner, your options include (1) going a store with actual sales staff who will help you decide what to buy (albeit probably for a significant premium) and (2) taking a bunch of selfies with different hats at the store and posting them on a fashion-advice subreddit specific to your gender and sexual orientation. This is me pre-transition wearing a beret from H&M: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0e41NL83m5KWg6b4fglAJQSGQ This is me pre-transition wearing a Fidel Castro hat (that was way too small for me) from some random mall store: https://share.icloud.com/photos/066xpx6VgWAWWQVmDb_NmsE8w This is me pre-transition wearing a tweed trilby from Target: https://share.icloud.com/photos/078BJc7iIZl6nZhbKDnGdGytA This is me pre-transition wearing a straw trilby from H&M: https://share.icloud.com/photos/012lM4tn9SU8JWAlLY4U6pM1g Same straw trilby: https://share.icloud.com/photos/07ba3cZFKHvf6YwpSelFWfl1Q This is me at Coachella in 2012 wearing a straw trilby I bought from a vendor there: https://share.icloud.com/photos/021E16nd74YnqxGNlbd_TSLBg (Coachella was a lot better back when they had shit cell service, so you couldn’t use Instagram on-premises, or, better, before Instagram existed yet.) This is me pre-transition wearing a Worth & Worth bowler I got on clearance at John Varvatos: https://share.icloud.com/photos/044LOnAflL9KKYijL03Yhj3ow This is me pre-transition wearing an inexpensive straw porkpie (?) I got at a random hat shop: https://share.icloud.com/photos/056amJG1dHherNFQfhpSLl-og This is me pre-transition wearing the same porkpie (?) while running my errands, photographed by a fashion blogger (because “blogs” were a thing back then): https://share.icloud.com/photos/0aaot8X9lrdr10MxkWmKNwc6A This is me early-transition wearing the same porkpie: https://share.icloud.com/photos/00fA0T4PS8mvX0xGRW5lnGdQQ (IIRC I still have this porkpie; I just haven’t worn it in a really long time.) This is me at Worth & Worth with a bespoke “Marfa” straw wide-brim fedora with pencil curl (?): https://share.icloud.com/photos/015SsuX3sH2eWdAz8chGGs5Vg This is me wearing a fascinator I got for fifteen bucks on Amazon: https://share.icloud.com/photos/059B6Yzu7dVegC757OMSQ-WJw This is me wearing the Worth & Worth bowler (having gotten it resized by the atelier so it would actually fit me): https://share.icloud.com/photos/075o11m-FzVAmBNNmy2-a9m9w Same bowler: https://share.icloud.com/photos/07dDWM51rRMJvqLwIzKIlIVTQ Same straw fedora: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0b3bmXHWJ0ighyEKs7ulhUpgw This is me wearing a secondhand Missoni beret (my go-to cold-weather hat): https://share.icloud.com/photos/01d5XAvAHcB4ZXS1KVXAqRR9A Same straw fedora: https://share.icloud.com/photos/04euJgXOZjwuqpwLFyJLiaoFw Same straw fedora: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0a6q0Xx6iof-Ob4mw76ZIje5w Same fascinator: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0d5_wPa36t_P0MCUyOw6tYEsg My partner trying on a (much, much, much more expensive) fedora at Worth & Worth: https://share.icloud.com/photos/099vd1knOCi_vuLL2MIKBLl0Q My partner trying on a (relatively inexpensive) fedora at REI: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0f2mJylQ6NXchwUW-HVFLiftQ AFAIK my partner still has yet to buy a structured hat despite using the picture of him at Worth & Worth as his profile photo on social media. Anyway the point I’m trying to convey is structured hats are fine actually. Also if you have a big noggin like I do FYI it’s worth it to get hats that actually fit you (and they don’t have to be silly expensive if you don’t want them to be). Oh, and a few weeks ago I saw a (boy) Gen-Z kid on the subway wearing a trilby, and my thought was “ooh, it’s 2009 again?!?”. It’s worth mentioning the guy wearing the trilby was skinny, so a trilby was a correct choice for his body proportions.
