I self-Googled. Got a hit for "Rick Perlstein or Julia Orringer." I was intrigued; we both wrote books called "The Invisible Bridge" Clicking yielded a comment thread without those words, so I Googled us together, and learned...this. I have never met her Our elites are staking our future on AI.

the e.p. my band — possum — recorded back in 2009 (!!) is now out on cassette tape and also online, woohoo: possumisourname.bandcamp.com/album/jims-f...

my brilliant friend jeanie wrote a really lovely essay about new orleans, katrina, family, love and loss and it’s really really worth a read www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

american soft power persists (grocery store, berlin)

also: pleased to report that the authorities have dropped the allegations of illegal bathing against me and my fellow spree swimmers, and are no longer seeking to fine us for our (alleged) misdeeds.

Reviewed the new translation of brilliant German writer Judith Hermann's memior (...or is it?...), "We’d Have Told Each Other Everything" a lil while back, which is very much worth a read (and then you should go back and devour her short stories too). www.the-berliner.com/books/wed-ha...

earlier this summer, i dove into the spree river in berlin (and was detained by the police on suspicion of illegal bathing) for this story on whether berlin might bring (legal) swimming back to the city center. www.the-berliner.com/berlin/swimm...

earlier this summer, i dove into the spree river in berlin (and was detained by the police on suspicion of illegal bathing) for this story on whether berlin might bring (legal) swimming back to the city center. www.the-berliner.com/berlin/swimm...

@brynstole.bsky.social‬ in The Berliner on August Endell’s The Beauty of the Metropolis (trans. me, pub. ‪@uoftpress.bsky.social‬): “a meditation on aesthetics, shot through with musings and engaged in turn-of-the-century debates” www.the-berliner.com/books/the-be...

VdL’s “deal” on tariffs “is the almost inevitable outcome of a declining great power placing its faith in an economically illiterate, mendacious, image-obsessed narcissist – and then asking that person to negotiate with Donald Trump.” www.euractiv.com/section/poli...

On a Weimar Republic-simulating video game, by @brynstole.bsky.social

Horned-up OnlyFans zombies, human and bovine athletes, Paul von Hindenburg, cow colostrum, and “severe nausea” — read five new Mentions from @devintoshea.bsky.social‬, Sydney Allen-Ash, @brynstole.bsky.social‬, Juliana Adelman, and @return2sanders.bsky.social www.thedriftmag.com/mention/issu...

I reviewed Giorgia Meloni's weird, weird autobiography and struggled to decide what to make of it: www.thenewworld.co.uk/marie-le-con...

what a cool and unique career!

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, whose multimillion-dollar ministry and huge audience dwindled following his prostitution scandals, has died. He was 90. apnews.com/article/jimm...

published alongside this inspiring blurb about the rotting corpse of the newspaper that once made me fall in love with newspapers.

was twitchingly addicted to this for like two months

late to post this but i was very excited to write a lil mention in the latest issue of @thedrift-mag.bsky.social !!! www.thedriftmag.com/mention/issu...

late to post this but i was very excited to write a lil mention in the latest issue of @thedrift-mag.bsky.social !!! www.thedriftmag.com/mention/issu...

iran is more populous than iraq and afghanistan put together. at least for americans of my age felt worth noting.

Smart piece on the civil war within Germany's car industry over whether to fight net-zero and rally to save the internal combustion engine. www.euractiv.com/section/eet/...

I thought that Leif Randt's novel "Allegro Pastel" was really electrifying and fascinating—uncanny hypercontemporarity!—when I first read it. Imho the sparkling new English translation will be a big hit & you should read it. My review for @exberliner.bsky.social www.the-berliner.com/books/allegr...

"In the old days, that might have been cause for a corruption investigation. In the modern era, it’s just another Thursday." www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/u...

California shows how batteries can supply significant share of power in electrical grid • Batteries charge in afternoon when solar power is cheap and release energy in evenings • At daily peak around 8pm (when people get home), batteries provide up to 30% of state’s electricity supply

remain astounded that, despite all the discourse about the reliability of political campaign polls over the past decade, a lot of the same people forge ahead with big sweeping definitive takes based on some exit poll crosstabs.

So he raised the tariffs, paused that raise, paused that pause, then paused that pause of the pause. And no-one knows if it'll be paused again (and if such a pause will be unpaused) or what happens when (or if) the pause whose pause was paused concludes.

what a world we live in

Want your US news through a Berlin lens? Radio this morning says Trump has international students at Harvard "auf dem Kieker" then interviews a Viennese psychoanalyst with a Freud accent about the US president's "narcissistic personality disorder" (he recommends flattery before taking a stand...)

Scoop alert: on.ft.com/43pOp30 Merz backs Nord Stream ban to prevent US and Russia restarting gas link

this was a pretty stupid time in america.

This is my favorite kind of AI take: phrased as a dunk but immediately grants the central complaint that most people are actually making about LLMs, which is that they do not and cannot do the thing they’re widely marketed to do

A good line: “Up until around 2016, social media feeds (…) were relatively uncomplicated chronological affairs. Now they are governed by opaque and mutable algorithms, and the experience of being online increasingly induces paranoia.” www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

An interesting thought experiment on what it might cost to replace US military capabilities in Europe. But the IISS study also makes some (imho) dubious like-for-like assumptions (e.g.: why would Europe need multiple new aircraft carriers?) www.politico.eu/article/unit...

Finally saw "CONCLAVE": beautiful movie, nice acting but also felt like Aaron Sorkin does Catholicism.

Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi went to a consulate in Istanbul to get a document he needed to get married. Instead, he was murdered and dismembered on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, now a close pal of Donald Trump.

This new Times piece on the last month of American bombing of Yemen has some insane details. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/u...

Set out to report this story & truly didn’t expect Kremlin’s militarization of education to be as intense as reported. But it was quite shocking to see it first-hand My latest fr @washingtonpost.com on how classrooms & libraries are becoming training grounds www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has been locked in bloody conflict with Turkey for more than four decades, will disband and end its armed struggle, group members and Turkish leaders said on Monday. www.reuters.com/world/middle...

some generations are born cool, some generations achieve coolness, and some generations remain cool through the nursing home and into the grave.

Germany actually surrendered in Reims on May 7, 1945 – 80 years and a day ago today. AP’s Ed Kennedy broke the news despite an embargo. “The absurdity of attempting to bottle up news of such magnitude was too apparent,” he said. But it cost him his job at AP. apimagesblog.com/historical/2...

why not just read the local news and commission some opinion polls? it's not like this is a hostile, closed-off place.

the christian democrats learning to live with die linke

Interesting that the DAX nosedived after Merz failed to secure confirmation in the first vote – dragged down by defence stocks. It shows how much of the German stock market boom hinges on hopes for policy improvement – and how vulnerable it is to political instability.

having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little

bf just turned to me after a long silence during pre-bed phone time and said “the napoleonic wars were WAY crazier than i thought”

I love my job

wrote a piece about the clubs and the kids in berlin, and about generations, gentrification, etc. amp.cnn.com/cnn/travel/b...

Markets are Discovering the Real Trump Trade is 'Sell America': GIFT LINK. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

"The cup was donated to Worcester College in 1946 by a former student, George Pitt-Rivers, whose name is inscribed on its silver rim. A eugenicist, he was interned by the British government during [WWII] due to his support for the fascist leader Oswald Mosley." www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Could Germany's suddenly booming defense industry pick up the slack in the declining auto sector? And they shall beat their Volkswagens into tanks, and their Opels into artillery pieces -- interesting piece from NZZ: www.nzz.ch/english/germ...