Kongo - Afonso I Mvemba a Nzinga - first Catholic monarch of Kongo

Songhai - Askia the Great - zenith of Songhai’s power

Adal - Abū Bakr ibn Muhammad - founded city of Harar

For context in 1525:

King of England: Henry VIII (with all the wives)

King of France: Francis I (with all the fighting the Holy Roman Empire and Pope)

King of Spain: Charles V (with all the being Holy Roman Emperor and inbreeding)

Emperor of China: Jiajing (with all the torturing and murdering dissenters)

Edit: I chose these 4 because between them they were monarchs of the 4 most powerful countries in the world at the time, especially Charles of Spain and Jiajing of China but France and England were soon poised to eclipse the others.

I’m just glad no-one said hockey in here, if you find hockey boring there’s no saving you.

Found Megan Markle’s Lemmy account

And underrated genre classic Lawnmower Man

One of my all time favourite movie watching experiences was me and my brother watching Robocop (the original) which we taped off ITV, must have been 9 or 10.

All the gratuitous violence was still entirely in place, but all the swear words were dubbed into more palatable versions. Strangest was that we specifically recorded it when it aired at about midnight anyway so way past the time the swearing was usually considered OK.

Me and my brother still call each other “buddy funkster” all the time.

The idea is called Hypernormalisation. Everyone knows what they’re being told is a lie, most don’t care, some do but a powerless to do anything about it, the rest are actively perpetuating the lie.

Excellent documentary about it by Adam Curtis which is watchable here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM

Moominmamma