Awaiting news from #Iran, you might want to delve into Persian poetry.. Before the latest mass protests began, #TheGlobalJigsaw looked into how the leaders of Iran, Tajikistan & Afghanistan are leaning on poetry in politics Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbor... audio: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w...

Am 10. Januar 1927 wurde der Film Metropolis im Ufa-Palast am Zoo uraufgeführt. "In Metropolis schien das gelähmte Kollektivbewusstsein mit ungewöhnlicher Klarheit im Schlaf zu reden." Siegfried Kracauer, Von Caligari zu Hitler, 1947. 🧵

“Write it down on real paper with a real pencil, with real intent, and watch it get real. Spelling is a Spell." — Erykah Badu

Gerry Gable, architect of modern British anti-fascism. The death of Searchlight’s founder Gerry Gable at the age of 88 marks the passing of a man without whom modern British anti-fascism would scarcely be recognisable. Read Searchlight's obituary and tribute here:

Wenn dein „linker Protest“ so aussieht wie ein russischer Kriegsakt, solltest du vielleicht noch einmal ganz tief in dich gehen

Stromness this afternoon. The sun sets as another snow shower arrives.

From the Library of Congress Geography & Map Division: The first full moon of the new year calls for a look at the beautiful lunar maps created long before satellite images became available. 🌕✨⬇️ https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2020/03/going-to-the-moon-early-cartography-of-the-lunar-surface/?loclr=blsky

Everybody read Victor Klemperer again

putin’s notion that we are a great powerful civilization but also we are constantly helplessly victimized by the west -- it’s the same combination of entitlement plus victimhood that you find in the US far-right. No wonder they like him

Who is writing or asking questions about the new locus of American diplomacy & deal making i.e. a private Miami club? It always strikes me that an entire shift has taken place from DC, including new location, personnel & security arrangements, and I just don't see it thematised. Just wondering.

You may have heard about his sociology, but did you know about his talent at graphic design? publicdomainreview.org/collection/w...

Just the usual welsh singing, festive undead horse

A decade of chemical and biological disinformation, mapped buff.ly/qcTCI5N

Today @time.com named the "Architects of AI" as 2025's "Person of the Year." Just hours later, it announced its new Global AI Literacy partnership with OpenAI. Yes: Time's Man of the Year award is now sponcon. I knew it was a ghost brand, but this seems a new low. time.com/7340010/time...

Roman shears (2ndC CE): "Whoever created the design clearly had a sense of humor; when the shears are closed, the top register brings a dog face-to-face 🐕 with a cat 🐈 on one side and a lion on the other." ✂️ www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

attention tankies! www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft...

The Hybrid War Tracking project took a mega-leap forward! 1. Live BETA --> hwt.lv/admin/events 2. Front End/Backend of database 3 Processing of data. 1142 records now. 4. A Brief History of the project. 5. Status of the project. 6. OSINT: Please join us. fundrazr.com/stories/aMohpa

Hannah Arendt in Syria, by the great Yassin al-Haj Saleh, has been published in German. It would be amazing if there was an English edition. www.matthes-seitz-berlin.de/produkt/hann...

My home away from home. Budapest at night, as seen from the International Space Station. "The core of the city is divided by the Danube River, the two sides, Buda and Pest, connected by the seven bridges visible near the city center." 🙏🏼🌍🕊️ 📷 NASA©️

⚡️Widow of Chornobyl's first victim killed by Russian attack on Kyiv 39 years later. Natalia Khodymchuk, widow of Valerii Khodymchuk, the first victim of the 1986 Chornobyl disaster, died in Kyiv after suffering severe injuries in a mass overnight Russian attack on Nov. 14–15.

BiH’s oldest daily publishes excerpts of its reporting from April 1995 which appear to provide concurrent evidence of “sniper safaris,” during which wealthy “war tourists” were given the opportunity to shoot at civilians in besieged Sarajevo. www.oslobodjenje.ba/vijesti/bih/...

as a bosnian, i cannot accept this depoliticization of the mass murder that was directed against us. to brazenly claim that the violence has "no political or religious motivation" is beneath common sense. it harms any understanding of what happened in sarajevo and bosnia

Today, on World Digital Preservation Day, the USAGM terminated the funding of Szabad Európa, the Hungarian-language service at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. As the keeper of the RFE/RL Research Institute's historical archives, we highlight the role of digital preservation: tinyurl.com/bdd9pudu

I have a lot of narrative details from the archives. Isn’t that enough?

“[Reform] hadn’t counted on the fightback from members of the Caerphilly Ukrainian community” as well as many other good people! Chwarae teg

Gute Wahl www.rbb24.de/kultur/beitr...

Curious peace of news to take our minds off current events a bit. Two predators were captured in a single frame in the Chornobyl Radiation and Ecological Biosphere Reserve in the Kyiv region.

Sticker in the toilet of a Czech/ Hungarian train from Budapest to Berlin

Best description ever

Machine learning is a neat tool, but clearly companies are desperate to give “AI” credit for what human scholars accomplish in part because companies have bet the farm on the idea that human ingenuity is expendable. This historian is extraordinary and deserves the real credit.

The digital age threatens our cultural memory. Can libraries, archives & museums create a just, sustainable future? 📖 Learn how in the #booktalk for AFTER DISRUPTION with Trevor Owens & Shannon Mattern. 📅 Thurs Sept 25 🕖 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET 📍 ONLINE 🎟️ www.eventbrite.com/e/1633230118...

mood

Wessel could be a good parallel (let’s wait for the song) or maybe Ernst Thälmann? Posthumous lionisation by a movement that is secretly pleased these guys are no longer around?

What struck me was the 3 protagonists' apparently total ineptitude to overcome their own rants in relation to the world beyond them. Astonishing emotional and cognitive isolation. That's not to say I was overcome with empathy for these lonely unhappy mofos balkaninsight.com/2025/09/15/c...

An unbearable loss. Jó utat Feri archivum.org/news/ferenc-...

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Composition (2025)

If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.

Only reminds me of Western liberal prof who tried and failed to stop the forced removal of the Central European University from Budapest. The opponents (then Fidesz) are not gentlemen, they rewrite the rules at whim. Tactics and strategy need ethics & muscle or at least willingness to land a punch

Unermüdlich gehen Studierende & die Zivilgesellschaft in Serbien protestieren. Unermüdlich lässt uns @mihajlovicfreiburg.com daran teilhaben, berichtet von der Beharrlichkeit und den Zielen der Bewegung. Mit ihm habe ich über den Ursprung der Proteste, Präsident Vučić und die Rolle der EU gesprochen

Tapestries are a really neat, user- and reader-friendly contribution to the world of online presentation, & a project of the Internet Archive tapestries.media/t/dfc73e6e-9...

Imagine the complicated and precious genius of the girl who made this embroidery sampler in 1811 The Solar System, sampler, unknown maker, 1811, England. Museum no. T.92-1939. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

"Chop off your shoulder-length hair, wrap it around your decommissioned womb, and return it to the heavens inside a paper lantern."

Sadly no 🦓 in this clip but largely the same Fidesz aesthetic of imposing rigorous order and right angles on anything green. Trees enclosed in case they get any funny ideas and start causing havoc. Cf. Városliget

The silhouette! Plane belongs to the ecosystem built around a right-wing AI chatbot who hallucinates all the most painful parts of modern Hungarian history

A massive attack on several humanities units (Arabic Studies, Judaic Studies, Holocaust Studies, Classics, Religion, German & Scandinavian, Russian/East European/Eurasian Studies) *and* tenure now unfolding at the University of Oregon (a blue state!). Closure of units and faculty layoffs threatened.

Public Service Announcement: if what's happening in Alaska makes you sick, a donation to Ukraine would improve your health

When Putin visited Budapest in 2014 the entire city was shut down and we all followed his planes fly around but not over 🇺🇦 It was spooky and the actual 56ers were dumbfounded. My colleague said it's like the Master and Margarita round here. That was a very long time ago.

Later in London exile, Moholy-Nagy left a party thanking his prominent socialite hostess "thank you very much for your hostilities." I'm fully convinced he knew exactly what he was saying

Why I love radio and The Global Jigsaw in particular, cont.