Daniel Ruminski
I'm Daniel, the founder of Orbis. I'm German, and I studied mathematics. During the pandemic I taught myself to code, and after that I worked as a software engineer in London. I have always been passionate about history and politics.
Why I built Orbis
Geopolitics is one of the most important subjects there is, yet almost nobody learns it in school. Most people read the news without the context that explains it. If you want to go deeper, you have two options. You can read Wikipedia and books, or you can watch YouTube videos that run for hours. There was nothing in between.
I built Orbis to be that middle ground: short, fun lessons that explain how the world works. It feels more urgent every year. The war in Ukraine and the Iran war have made the world riskier, and more people should understand what is happening and why.
So I quit my job in London to build Orbis full time. Since then I have worked on it from Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea and Japan.
Latest articles
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Why was it called the Holy Roman Empire?
Voltaire called it "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." But the name was not always a joke. Each word was a political claim, added one at a time.
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Why is Taiwan called the Republic of China?
Taiwan's official name is the Republic of China, a government founded in 1912 on the mainland. The name followed the losers of a civil war across the strait.
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Why did the Roman Republic fall?
Rome governed itself for five centuries. Then, in a single hundred-year stretch, its own success destroyed the system. Four forces killed it.
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Why did the Qing dynasty fall?
The Qing dynasty ruled China for 268 years and built the largest Chinese empire in history. It collapsed in four months.
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Why did the Mongols destroy Baghdad?
In 1258, Mongol armies destroyed Baghdad, the intellectual capital of Islam, in less than two weeks. The city's caliph had a choice. He made the wrong one.
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How did the British Empire get so big?
A small, wet island off the coast of Europe built the largest empire in history. It took sea power, an industrial revolution, and a corporation with its own army.