Berlin (AFP)—Germany deported a man to Syria for the first time since the civil war began in that country in 2011, the interior ministry in Berlin announced on Tuesday.

lovely essay on the new edition of the merriam-webster dictionary, and why there's (for the moment anyways) still life in a big heavy hard-copy reference book. www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

Good @esotericcd.bsky.social on Trump & the midterms: "[G]iven the president’s current political priorities and his preferred method of acting on them, a Republican Congress serves one purpose alone: to keep the president from being impeached for a third time." www.nationalreview.com/magazine/202...

"Militarily, the US could seize Venezuelan territory rapidly. However, politically, it could find itself trapped in a multi-year stabilization operation resembling a hybrid of its role in post-invasion Iraq and Colombia..." warontherocks.com/2025/12/weak...

sounds like a terrible "a night at the roxbury" remake. variety.com/2025/film/ne...

Jared Taylor, a prominent white nationalist whose annual American Renaissance conference serves as a "who's who" for the international white supremacist movement, was among those who attended the New York Young Republican Club gathering this weekend. www.politico.com/news/2025/12...

My novel is coming out with Melville House next year and I’m very excited to share it with you!

a beautiful essay www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/m...

"Every media era gets the fabulists it deserves. If Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair (...) were looking for the prestige and power that came w/ journalism in that moment, then this generation’s internet scammers are scavenging in the wreckage..." thelocal.to/investigatin...

Nordic skiing star Jessie Diggins, the most accomplished xc skier in American history and the reigning World Cup overall champion, announces plans to retire at the end of this season. www.nytimes.com/athletic/677...

Paris (AFP) – France Tuesday promoted Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army captain wrongly convicted of treason in 1894, to the rank of brigadier general as an act of reparation in a notorious case of antisemitism that has caused outrage for generations.

Berlin (AFP) – Two long-lost organ pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach were unveiled and performed in Germany on Monday after new research proved they were written by the German composer when he was a teenager.

Verdun memorial mass honoring Vichy French leader Philippe Petain – a WWI hero disgraced for his collaboration with the Nazis – raises a "revisionist" storm in France, with officials promising legal action. www.france24.com/en/live-news...

The final ever US penny was struck at the Philadelphia Mint on Wednesday. The United States is scrapping the iconic one-cent coins that have circulated since 1793. apnews.com/article/us-m...

so you're telling me that millions of (former) customers are abandoning the news media and the industry is rapidly contracting. yes, wow, def a sure-fire business opportunity.

Algiers (AFP) – Algeria has accepted a German proposal to pardon French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, the presidency said Wednesday, adding that he was being transferred to Germany for medical treatment after a year in detention.

It also underlines the point that the #Greens should have played the most brutal hardball with the incoming #Merz government on the investment fund, but the pressure on them was too high.

The wider context is that Merz has 100s of billions to spend to plug holes, and *still* has a fiscal problem. The previous oh-so-awful 🚦 government had none of this, and was supposed to govern Germany smoothly. www.ft.com/content/3d1c...

HE'S A BOY DETECTIVE?! www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

Politics as spectacle: Zohran Mandami's win in NYC mayoral election getting huge play in German media today ... with "is he Trump's prime adversary?" as the dominant angle.

"His own official spoken remarks so defy syntactical analysis as to suggest that his only intention in speaking is to further obscure what he thinks." Joan Didion on Dick Cheney in the NRYB. www.nybooks.com/articles/200...

Washington (AFP) – Dick Cheney, who became one of the most powerful vice presidents in US history as George W. Bush’s number two during 9/11 and catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, died Monday. He was 84. www.france24.com/en/live-news...

Conservative Berlin politicians steered millions into favored cultural projects aimed at fighting antisemitism, incl. for "The Nova Exhibition." In clear violation of budget laws, according to opposition lawmakers. www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/auf-d...

Vanished!: Munich's famous "Eisbachwell" wave, a beloved surfing destination on a stream in the city, has disappeared after work to clear debris and sediment from the streambed. www.stern.de/news/surferw...

Madrid (AFP) – Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday said his leftist government would accelerate steps to try and dissolve the Francisco Franco Foundation, in a speech a few weeks before the 50th anniversary of the dictator's death. www.barrons.com/news/spain-s...

London (AFP) – Once dubbed "Randy Andy" by the British tabloids, Andrew, the former prince, has hit a new low: the disgraced royal has been stripped of his cherished titles and exiled to rural England. www.france24.com/en/live-news...

Bloomberg reports the EU is weighing a new trade measure that would require some Chinese exporters to supply critical raw materials to the bloc’s stockpiles when shipping certain goods into the EU.

Fringe far-right German influencer Naomi Seibt is reportedly trying to claim asylum in the United States. www.spiegel.de/ausland/naom...

US revokes visa of famed Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka and bans him from the country, presumably over the 91-year-old Nobel laureate's vociferous criticism of Trump. www.bbc.com/news/article...

I have a number of questions about this episode. But one of them is this: how much work does a Bill de Blasio impersonator find for himself these days? www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/bill-d...

Chotiner interview w/ former Biden press sec Karine Jean-Pierre struck me as extremely revealing of a certain strand of Dem Party establishment thinking over the past decade (obviously not in a flattering way). www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

these are, uhh, pretty egregious errors for grokipedia

Chinese carmakers will end up as “saviours” of European factories and jobs, in a creeping takeover that will hasten the demise of some western manufacturers, the former head of Peugeot and Jeep maker Stellantis Carlos Tavares has warned.  www.ft.com/content/5...

Awful news. Olena Hubanova and Yevhen Karmazin, Ukrainian journalists working for TV channel Freedom, were killed in a Russian Lancet drone attack in Kramatorsk, according to the city’s mayor and local media reports. This makes three deaths of journalists in eastern Ukraine just this month.

Crazy days... who would have thought that there would be a day when I mention Tuffi, the circus elephant who famously jumped out of Wuppertal's suspension monorail in 1950 when a PR stunt went wrong, and roman emperor Nero in the very same FT article? www.ft.com/content/0400...

Good 🧵 on cars here.

"an investigation by Spiegel, a rival German news outlet, (...) debunked BILD’s claim that Fteiha had staged photos of food distribution in Gaza." theintercept.com/2025/10/22/g...

13. By 2030 most countries will have spot power prices of zero in sunny hours. This will be passed on to end consumers, to encourage them to shift power demand to sunny periods by electric vehicle and battery charging, preheating, precooling, etc.

An amazing story of this decade was the ADL turning all its fire on Israel critics while tech companies dismantled their censors and Hitler-lovers came roaring back.

the "taz" newspaper (whose name means "the daily newspaper") is no longer a daily! the print edition now comes out only on saturdays. print cutbacks, long a fixture of the beleaguered u.s. newspaper biz, starting to bite in germany as well. www.deutschlandfunk.de/nur-noch-dig...

Kyiv (AFP) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Norway on Wednesday, the first leg of a European tour aimed at shoring up support for Kyiv amid a string of deadly Russian attacks. uk.news.yahoo.com/russian-stri...

Spain will publish list of symbols of General Francisco Franco's dictatorship slated for removal next month, marking 50 years since the fascist leader's death www.barrons.com/news/spain-t...

Can Syrian shawarma overtake döner kebab, the original Turkish-German fusion fare? Nice @smithsonianmag.bsky.social story on the spread of Syrian street food: www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-s...

Kampfner quotes David Chipperfield, the Berlin-based British architect who has recreated the city’s iconic museum sites: “Berlin is not really there. It’s an idea.” www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/7109...

Trafalgar Day. The most interesting bit of Trafalgar isn’t the battle, it’s the preceding cross-Atlantic chase.

Bodenheim, Germany (AFP) – Wine harvest in Germany set to be the smallest since 2010, but the quality from this year's vintage forecast to be "exceptionally good." www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/inhalt.weinb...

Munich (Germany) (AFP) – Many of the world's best biathletes swapped skis for skates at an exhibition event in Munich on the weekend, offering a glimpse into the future of winter sports in a warming world. www.france24.com/en/live-news...