the strange lives of europe’s lesser fascists

"It doesn’t earn him any technical points. It puts his whole body at catastrophic risk...But now this one act of pure showmanship has become the electrifying coda of Malinin’s programs as he stakes his claim as the greatest figure skater of all time." www.wsj.com/sports/olymp...

Europe faces a “geopolitical and geo-economic state of emergency” Macron told us, and will be “swept aside” if it does not reform. After its “Greenland moment”, Europe can’t go on as before. The US is “openly hostile” to Europe and wants it “dismembered” economist.com/europe/2026/...

i mean, if only the story gave some sense of what even a minor respiratory infection could do to a nordic skier.

is it a scandal that the **norwegian** olympic team outfits are made by a **swedish** sportswear brand?

Sleuth @ruthbetold.bsky.social was hot on the potato trail around Berlin in search of free spuds amid the great glut. Really delightful dispatch in the FT magazine. www.ft.com/content/1554...

I'll say more before too long, but for now: Thanks to anyone who has ever read and supported the Post's books coverage.

i am so incredibly depressed by the news.

there isn’t a better Books desk in the country than the one at the Washington Post. I’m not really sure there’s anything else to say

i know that this is an unpopular take, but everyone starting their own newsletter as a revenue stream is not a sustainable model for writing and reporting or for people who love and want to pay for media.

Shutting down (the stellar) books coverage at WaPo is a real telling move when your owner is literally Jeff Bezos

Rheinmetall is pushing into a dizzying array of technologies and geographies as boss Armin Papperger seeks to turn the German firm into a multi-domain group akin to big US defence contractors www.ft.com/content/a326...

The Auflauf, a new newsletter for Berlin books, is here! Fresh out the oven: book reviews from me, @return2sanders.bsky.social and @brynstole.bsky.social; not to mention some hot literary gossip... Interviews and more to come!

concerning

Check out The Auflauf, a new substack of Berlin books. Our first course: @mathildegm.bsky.social on Reimann, @brynstole.bsky.social on Clark, & me on Maci. @ajbwells.bsky.social is in the kitchen too helping cook and dish up lit crit, goss & conversations: theauflauf.substack.com

On American vs. French nukes -- "Many in Germany 'buy the French argument…that the French offer is heavier on credibility', because of its proximity 'even if it’s lower on capability'." www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

Sleuth @ruthbetold.bsky.social was hot on the potato trail around Berlin in search of free spuds amid the great glut. Really delightful dispatch in the FT magazine. www.ft.com/content/1554...

Sleuth @_ruthbetold hot on the potato trail around Berlin in search of free spuds amid the glut. Really delightful dispatch in @FTMag www.ft.com/content/1554...

German breweries saw sales plummet in 2025, down 6%, and the worst year for German beer drinking on record (these stats on reunified Germany's beer consumption only go back to 1993). www.bild.de/geld/wirtsch...

“Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars” www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

gotta hand it to the filmmakers for reaching their core audience

that's german comedy for you www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/29/greenland-nuuk-comedian-flag-stunt-mayor

the news hits on the berliner's website seem to never cite a source anymore, and sure read like they're just german news copy run through google translate and posted without credit or attribution. e.g.: www.the-berliner.com/english-news... vs.: www.zdfheute.de/wirtschaft/b...

Population ageing places pressure on public finances, squeezing out funding for long-term endeavours • Spending on seniors' health and pensions is rising across developed economies • In turn, low productivity growth and decaying infrastructure fuel popular dissatisfaction www.ft.com/content/b4d2...

In another era, Germany would be certain the US would shield a refinery supplying *90%* of greater Berlin's petrol needs from sanctions. But this is the Trump era - Gov is reviewing nationalisation (expropriation of Rosneft) as back-up plan - My dispatch: www.ft.com/content/9515...

i’m a huge fan of the washington post—styles, politics, sports, international, all of it—& contributing occasional reviews to their excellent books section has been such a huge thrill for me. a great institution. can only hope reports of devastating imminent cuts are wrong.

This is an extraordinarily good piece of journalism: www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

this is often true, which is why it's such a shame that fewer and fewer magazines seem interested in publishing long nonfiction reportage (fewer magazines survive, and a hard shift toward essays in many of those that remain).

Attn news commentators: Trump saying he could use force to obtain Greenland but won’t is not Trump saying he won’t use force to obtain Greenland. It is Trump using force as a threat to obtain Greenland. That is why he mentions it.

they're thinking about thinking about it.

Newly available videos and existing footage synchronized and assessed by The New York Times provide a millisecond-by-millisecond look at the killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis. Watch our visual investigation.

This should go over well in Iceland. Via Politico this morning -

Full 2025 Chinese trade data now out. Headline is clearly a historical global record $1.2 trillion surplus with the world What of Europe? 📈China's trade surplus with the EU: +18.1% 📈 with Germany: +108% 📈 with France: +23.9% 📈 with Italy: +32.6% 📈 with Netherlands: +1.4%

A few months ago, ICE hired me I didn't sign and submit any paperwork. I almost certainly failed the drug test. I'm real outspoken about my opposition to the Trump administration, and I am extremely googlable And yet, there it was, in plain English. "Welcome to ICE!" My latest for Slate

everyone's getting paxton pilled www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/o...

“I don't want to die like the woman who was shot in the face or the pastor who had a gun put to his face,” Bryan said. “I don't understand what is going on.” www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

NY Times: "But our analysis of bystander footage, filmed from different angles, appears to show the agent was not in the path of the victim's SUV when he fired three shots at close range."

Mr. Trump did not give a precise time range for how long the United States would remain Venezuela’s political overlord. Would it be three months? Six months? A year? Longer? “I would say much longer,” the president replied. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/u...

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...

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.