Hip-hop group Kneecap played a secret show in Berlin this week, their first-ever concert in Germany. The group have seen other concerts cancelled over their vehement pro-Palestinian stance. There's an interview and feature in @heistberlin.bsky.social: www.heistberlin.com/kneecap-berl...

It's time. "On a sunny summer day at noon, only about 10% of Spain’s electricity comes from fossil fuels; around half comes from solar. Portugal does just as well, and France better still."

The German conundrum: The World Cup is on, but it's a Sunday. Can the neighbors call the police if you cheer too loud?

[email protected] rounded us up to taste all the special-edition "World Cup"-themed chip flavors we could find in Berlin. Many are genuine marvels of modern flavor engineering. But find out in @heistberlin.bsky.social if any were actually, y'know, good. www.heistberlin.com/lays-potato-...

Washington (AFP) — Rarely a week goes by without US President Donald Trump lavishing praise on the bodies of men he meets: fawning over "the muscles on this guy" or an athlete's "tree trunk" legs or a UFC fighter who is "too good looking" to be in the ring. www.yahoo.com/news/politic...

City Chicken vs City Chicken: Berlin's brutal and bloody rotisserie feud that's spawned lawsuits, criminal investigations and landed one chicken tycoon in prison for torture... www.heistberlin.com/news/nhas-ci...

This is the ideal male body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like

Innsbruck (APA)--Mann in Tirol schoss sich selbst in den Fuß

"That sentence alone is enough to send indie Berliners of a certain age into a spell of Sebaldian melancholy so extreme it can only be resolved by a twenty-minute angry nap." Read @ajbwells.bsky.social's piece to find out what the sentence was! open.substack.com/pub/theaufla...

"Johann had taken issue with the use of the word murdered. Johann—a theologian—who loathes violence in all its forms! I voiced my surprise. I was not the only one. What could be so wrong with saying murdered?" A thoughtful short story about teaching in Germany, translated by @ajbwells.bsky.social.

maybe the most just outcome is that that one guy gets banished from journalism for the plagiarism and the other guy gets banished from journalism for the overwrought kicker

gotta wonder what this means for guys who write reviews of dad books... www.wsj.com/business/med...

A tiger was shot dead by German police on Sunday after escaping from a private enclosure outside of Leipzig owned by a controversial tiger trainer who calls herself the "Tiger Queen" and attacking one of the animal keepers... www.rte.ie/news/europe/...

"Not everyone in Buruma’s Berlin is out for their own survival, but there are also vanishingly few saints untainted by compromise or selfishness." @brynstole.bsky.social reviews a new history of Berlin during World War II:

In Ian Buruma’s telling, Berlin during World War II was a time of contradictions: hedonism, escapism, heroism, and compromise. @brynstole.bsky.social: 'Dancing on a Volcano'

this is a wildddd story

considering that there's astoundingly little evidence this is actually happening at all this is ... quite the sweeping take !

"From the Vietnam war in the 1960s to the Iraq war this side of the millennium, the slur of 'appeaser' has been used to hush dissenters against foreign interventions. This would be easier to take if the hawks occasionally emulated the Allies by winning." www.ft.com/content/50a5...

"Turning points are usually only clear in retrospect, but Iran and the Greenland crisis may prove to be the turning points that confirmed what negotiations over Ukraine merely suggested: This [US], far from being an ally of Europe, acts against Europe." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/o...

In the AUFLAUF review mail this month: - Karaoke - Fascist afterlives - Very good literature - Pick-me-girls - Books cost 20c a page now??? - Finally the truth about the Limerick Writers Center theauflauf.substack.com/p/may-books-...

Interesting statistic in this article by Jon 'Into Thin Air' Krakauer. www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...

Some great reviews this month: @brynstole.bsky.social on Wolfgang Koeppen's post-war trilogy, @return2sanders.bsky.social on Paul Celan's still-mesmerising ephemera, and myself on Polly Barton's novel of expat life and karaoke and translation:

I read a bunch of Wolfgang Koeppen and—you know what?—it was really good. Lots more here in the latest issue of our freshly baked literary casserole.

i got to write about ian buruma’s new book on life in nazi wartime berlin for this month’s books issue of the wonderful @commonwealmagazine.org www.commonwealmagazine.org/dancing-volc...

Gallery Weekend Berlin starts tomorrow. Here’s where to go. www.heistberlin.com/art-heist-gu...

"that's why X is the future. It's citizen journalism, where you hear from the people."

Revolutionary May 1 Queerfeminist marches, a rave against the Görli fence, far-right counter-demos, and a 10,000-strong march through Neukölln. www.heistberlin.com/news/may-day...

Good long read on Europe’s reactions to German rearmament. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Germany re-arms: what does it mean for Europe?

In Berlin, you can take a dip in the Spree right on Museum Island on the 20th of every month (to protest against Berlin's otherwise strict swimming ban in most of the urban river). My dispatch @heistberlin.bsky.social: www.heistberlin.com/swimming-in-...

I too miss the days when what was on the front page of a printed newspaper really mattered. Somewhat ironically, the New York Times might be the only newspaper in the world that doesn't really miss those days.

“They’re grabbing as much as they can - because now is the time when no one is stopping them.” Oct. 7 propelled Israel’s radical settlers from the political fringes to the mainstream. With Trump and Netanyahu in office, they hope to settle Gaza and southern Lebanon next. My report

A stunning piece about people who've disappeared into addiction in Boston; those searching for them; the shame of being found; and the heartbreak waiting either way. From @annalisaquinn.bsky.social: www.bostonglobe.com/2026/04/22/m...

“They love it, they’ll tell me, ‘Dad, tell us a story from your phone!’”

local expat berlin magazine put out their list of the twenty greatest "berliners" of all time and what a truly bizarre document that is.

a while ago i back-of-the-enveloped out the cost of "high-quality text" based on some of the figures openai was offering publishers and came to conclusion that licensed high-quality text is worth somewhere between one-tenth of a cent and one cent per word

“Netanyahu has made the bed that he may yet have to lie in. When Emanuel was Barack Obama’s chief of staff in 2009, Netanyahu reportedly called him a ‘self-hating Jew’. Emanuel’s sin was to have opposed new Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.” www.ft.com/content/353e...

An Ecuadorian fishing crew describe their ordeal as victims of Trump’s purported war on ‘narcoterrorists’

KHAN YUNIS, Palestinian Territories (AFP)—As springtime temperatures rise in Gaza, a surge in rats, fleas and other pests has compounded the misery of hundreds of thousands of displaced people still living in tents after more than two years of war. www.straitstimes.com/world/rats-f...

Somewhere Bismarck is looking down in confusion as Germany projects power by sending 4,000 pensioners, 12 buffet stations and a TUI loyalty program through the Strait of Hormuz

Moscow (AFP)—Russia said Monday it had arrested a German woman found with a homemade bomb in her backpack in what it alleged was a Ukrainian-hatched plot to blow up a security services facility in the south.

"Orbán sold those anglophone conservatives who supped at his banquet a vision of his country as Brideshead on the Danube [...] a glittering façade of think tanks, conferences, and podcasts on a brittle framework of prefab ideas and exorbitant contractors’ fees" www.jaccusepaper.co.uk/p/the-strang...

A pretty remarkable account of America's wartime president: vacillating, unprepared, distracted and without a clear plan. www.wsj.com/politics/nat...

Tehran (AFP)—Strait of Hormuz 'completely open' for rest of ceasefire: Iran FM

Quite the story from @thediasporist.bsky.social, and a real window into the strangely (& uniquely) German discourse on Israel, Palestine, racism and antisemitism.

Vor dem Amtsgericht Halle soll nächste Woche geklärt werden, wer Opfer einer Campusattacke war. Der Fall zeigt wie stark Antisemitismus-Diskurs in Deutschland politisiert wird – mitunter durch staatlich geförderte Organisationen wie RIAS @thediasporist.bsky.social thediasporist.de/de/ein-abend...

apparently a huge deal that the mecca of drunk german tourists—the “bierkönig” bar on the spanish island of mallorca—is going to have krombacher pils on tap, after three decades of serving könig pilsner (honestly all sausage to me, as the germans say). m.bild.de/news/ausland...

Finland's president on military conscription: "I’m not going to give advice to any European countries, but in terms of civic education, national identity and national unity, there is probably nothing better than compulsory military service." www.wsj.com/world/europe...

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, newspaper threatened with imminent closure after a bruising yearslong labor battle, will be bought by the Baltimore Banner's nonprofit owner: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/b...

Reading between the lines, seems like it still means defeat for the Post-Gazette's unions: "Because the Venetoulis Institute is buying only the assets of the paper, it is not required to assume the contracts of Block Communications."

Hungary's communist leaders organized competitive elections in 1990, lost decisively, and then peacefully conceded and handed over power. Does that prove that the Hungarian People's Republic was democratic?