history department happy hour once the europeanists have had a few pilsner urquells:

The Royal Thai Navy has recovered weapons from abandoned Cambodian forward outposts, among them an MBV-78A2 antipersonnel landmine—illegal under the Ottawa Convention. Yesterday another Thai soldier suffered injuries from stepping on antipersonnel landmine. www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/gen....

Thailand really had a Condorcet paradox of an election: - absolute majority for conservatives via constituency votes (Bhumjaithai + Kla Tham) - popularity win for progressives and liberals via party-list votes (People's Party + Democrats) - clear majority in favor of constitutional reform (65-35)

Some people are saying this is a polling miss, but really NIDA did a pretty good job reflecting the party-list shares. Everyone knew the conservative parties were going to outperform in constituency votes, but I think Bhumjaithai managed to exceed that somehow. Absolute majority for the right.

we have never been more back in a very long time

If you are getting bored during the Parade of Nations, I highly recommend you catch up on your Olympics history reading through this thread compiled by @hdhudson.bsky.social!

After years of discourse on the decline of the LDP, turns out Takaichi is about to receive the Mandate of Heaven this Sunday. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

Hey friends @chapelhillgov.bsky.social, do y’all happen to know if neighbors and businesses are responsible for clearing their sidewalks of ice? There are quite a few dangerous blocks still along Rosemary Ave towards the @carrboronc.bsky.social border as well as on Cameron Ave in front of Granville.

this is what I call football eritage

and manchester united fans have never been more willing to spend money on merch in years

Mark Carney’s speech at Davos is worth reading for many reasons, but the way he invoked Václav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless is especially compelling. The greengrocer remains a timeless metaphor. www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/spee...

Not the Japanese PM stealing the Asian elections news cycle from Thailand by calling for snap elections on the very same day… www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

"[T]he Cambodian side had contacted a Thai military unit and claimed "there was no intention to fire into Thai territory," adding "the incident was caused by an operational error by Cambodian personnel."" An "explosive" pile of garbage led to a mortar fire, apparently. www.lemonde.fr/en/internati...

Well this seems a bit inconvenient for the budding peace process. Between the land mine incident and now this, the Thai armed forces are exercising quite some restraint by not retaliating. Border clashes resuming could provide quite the wildcard for the elections. www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/gen...

Obligatory “there is, just very difficult to enforce,” but this can get quite slippery: should we also say that there is no such thing as domestic law? You can make the very same argument with the federal judiciary now stuck relying on an executive that will not enforce rulings that go against them.

I’m proud to be able to say I’ve already been a Yannick Nézet-Séguin fan before today and that I knew he was going to do a revolutionary job—after all, he has an amazing taste in US college basketball. #neujahrskonzert #goheels

I did not have Yannick Nézet-Séguin going rogue and roaming the hall during the Radetzky March on my 2026 New Years' Concert bingo card, but that was amazing. #neujahrskonzert

This has been the best New Years Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic in a while. Turns out we do need more Québec in classical music. #neujahrskonzert

As expected with the restrained Thai response through the Foreign Ministry, Thailand has now released the 18 Cambodian soldiers, fulfilling its end of the ceasefire agreement. Perhaps we will indeed leave all this behind in 2025 and move forward into a more peaceful 2026. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Yup—multipolarity by itself does not really mean anything without considering the actual foreign policy orientation of those poles. People forget that the original model for postwar liberal internationalism was also a multipolar one i.e. Roosevelt’s “Four Policemen”—US, UK, Soviet Union, and China.

A few interesting aspects from the Yunnan China-Cambodia-Thailand trilateral meeting press release: "China will continue to play a constructive role in facilitating the rebuilding of trust and achieving lasting peace between Cambodia and Thailand in the Asian way." 1/n www.mfa.go.th/en/content/p...

China hosting this trilat with Thailand and Cambodia in Yunnan i.e. China’s southern border with Southeast Asia also sends another message: unlike a distant US, this is China’s backyard and through brokering peace it demonstrates its influence as the region’s superpower. www.scmp.com/news/china/d...

If you eat Pop-Tarts for winning the Pop-Tarts Bowl, do you file a Form 1040 for winning the TaxSlayer bowl? #gohoos

Really hoping that this ceasefire will last without any additional incursions. Notable that the agreement calls for a maintenance of the military status quo, return to the KL framework + ASEAN, but no mention whatsoever of US role in KL framework or the ceasefire. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

And this reading, analyzing, and writing takes a lot of time! Not to say that quantitative fields have it easier (it is a different kind of hard work), but in our discipline we have no formula or model to stick our sources into—so much of this just happens in the black box process of human thinking.

Apropos absolutely nothing: "the total budget for UNC football balloons last year? $48,733."

UNC should maintain these centers because it is the right thing to do, but historians will also note that these centers across the US were founded for national security reasons in order to produce scholars, officers, and policymakers knowledgeable about the world. They weakened a country today.

CSEEES feels so much like a home that I regularly attend their events and seminars even though I do not speak a Slavic language nor does my research directly focus on the region, but in doing so I got to learn so much from everyone in that community and they have broadened my intellectual horizons.

This is absolutely catastrophic for research in the humanities and social sciences. Not only are these centers crucial sources of the limited research funding we have as grad students, but they have been interdisciplinary intellectual homes for so many of us at UNC. dailytarheel.com/article/a4ee...

I have long found it interesting that my Europeanist friends seem to all be familiar with Thongchai Winichakul's Siam Mapped (1994) as a major contribution to the history of maps and nationalism and yet the book (as far as I am aware) is known in Thailand at best as an obscure academic text.

This is just the end of the loan period, so the pandas going back is not a diplomatic sanction, but China is about to get the best bargaining chip in its negotiations with Japan amidst the worsening of bilateral ties: want new pandas? Better tone down your rhetoric! asia.nikkei.com/life-arts/li...

All aboard the Democrat comeback train! 🚂

With the discourse about the US National Security Strategy this morning, I figured I should familiarize myself with Thailand's National Security Strategy if I want to be able to come up with some educated commentary. Friends, it is 169 pages long... and yet somehow there is no strategy to show for!

Interesting that the new US NSS talks of "denying aggression" in the First Island Chain instead of explicit commitments to "defend" it. Treaty allies mentioned only to demand for more defense spending without assurances. Can you blame Japan or South Korea if they seriously consider nuclearization?

Xi invoking US-China cooperation during WW2 to make a point about Taiwan is really salient here especially after he recognized an ROC/KMT veteran at the 80th Anniversary of Victory over Japan celebrations earlier this year. Memory about the War continues to play a big role in East Asian geopolitics.

Hey @wmatagm.bsky.social, I appreciate @wmata.com opening early for the marathon today, but the crowd situation needs to be managed better. We had an overflowing platform at Pentagon this morning and now at Rosslyn post-race no one can get into the station, leaving runners standing on tired legs.

Here’s to the past eighty years of the hot mess doing its best and perhaps—if we are lucky enough—another eighty more! 🥳🥂🇺🇳

Always worth remembering that Thomas Jefferson chose to have these three of his accomplishments listed on his gravestone: - a list of grievances and declaration of war against a King - this quoted statute of religious freedom - the founding of a public, politically independent, secular university

I am glad today turned out to be a day that I can proudly say, "I have worn the honors of Honor. I graduated from Virginia."

We should start a club of people with easy phonetic yet slightly “ethnic” last names that scare the living daylight out of the WASPs somehow. I learned how to pronounce Worcestershire.

And just as I thought this whole business could not get any sillier…

have people already forgotten about korea this past winter? fun policing was definitely not part of it

the triangle’s blog blog of record

PSA: dog owners, if walking/running with your animal in public please hold the leash tightly enough so that it does not dash across you such that the leash threatens to trip an innocent runner just trying to get a workout in not sprain his hamstring three weeks out from a marathon.

respect for ranked virginia

official review: all bangers no skips album of the decade goodnight

ladies and gentlemen taylor swift has done it again

calling out drinking matcha and listening to laufey as “performative male” traits reflect a perverse normalization of anti-asian hate in the online progressive discourse, in this essay I will