Our upcoming seminar in the Global Histories of Knowledge series. The link to the meeting will be on the website: www.staff.universiteitleiden.nl/events/2025/...

Nederland geeft fossielen Dubois-collectie terug aan Indonesië. Statement en meer informatie te vinden op www.naturalis.nl/persberichte...

Breaking news: Netherlands to return the Dubois collection of fossils to Indonesia

Important news. www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/m...

I hope it is not Mads Mikkelsen. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

If we are undoing what the Dutch did to the world, I could suggest a few more things www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

like, sorry, daddy feyerabend said "anything goes" but most people aren't good at it as galileo

Final ms ready for submission:

Stockholm is the city the Prussians would have built if they wanted a San Francisco of their own. After having drank too much Scotch.

On my way to #ESEH2025 in Uppsala. Happy to chair two sessions and present on history of German weather & climate science. Took the train via Hamburg/Copenhagen, and very happy that I had time to do slow travel. A bit sad because the train before us hit an elk.😭 #envhis #hisstm

Our colonial history project of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and Arts @knaw-nl.bsky.social made it into the @timeshighered.bsky.social l! #highered #academicsky #hisstm #colonialhistory www.timeshighereducation.com/news/dutch-p...

Goed wetenschapshistorisch zomernieuws! Ons onderzoeksconsortium mag het koloniale verleden van de Akademie onderzoeken! #hisstm #historici www.knaw.nl/nieuws/knaw-...

"Life is like a sewer--what you get out of it depends on what you put into it." Tom Lehrer, mathematician & #ColdWar satirist, has passed away. His albums warped my comedic & political sensibilities at a young age, and I'm pleased to report that I've never fully recovered. #RIP #TomLehrer #comedy

Kennis die knecht, verschijnt a.s. oktober:

hope.

Link here: amocscenarios.org?lat=-53&lon=... Credits to van Westen’s research group for releasing this as part of their knowledge mobilization work.

Very happy to read about the Erasmus Prize for Donna Haraway! erasmusprijs.org/en/laureates...

in Germany gen Z climate activists call themselves 'the last generation'. I think they have given up. Let us all dress as if we are retired, mow our gardens (not on Sunday) and watch the world burn with a glass of beer in our hands.

80 years after the liberation, we still know little about science during the German occupation. Wonderkamer now devotes a special to this history. Pre-order the new issue until 26 May at a reduced price of 10 euros by sending an email to [email protected] (ovv "Wonderkamer 11")!

Very happy with today's presentations until sofar, excited about giving mine later today, hopefully warming up the audience for @naomioreskes.bsky.social keynote in the Institution's famous theatre! Thanks @katysduncan.bsky.social and @miguelohn.bsky.social for organizing this!

It is easy to mix up Leo and Louis. I pity the poor students taking history exams in the future, mixing up popes and French kings. 'Leo the Fourteenth? Ah, you mean that guy from 'L'Eglise, c'est moi'? Did you know he inherited a lot of benefices from Francis I?'

Young pope, old name. The last Leo modernized the Church, published the Rerum Novarum, had to deal with Bismarck and capitalism, and became one of the longest sitting popes. They have voted in office a US pope who will be there for a while, saying hi to one American president after another.

When I feel like I need energy to teach, I will use Wagner's opening of Das Rheingold, but instead of having the sopranos sing I immediately skip to this song by David Bowie, here performed live: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuDJ...

NSC is zoveel meer dan alleen Pieter Omtzigt, het is óók een verzameling opportunistische conservatieve Kamerleden zonder duidelijk plan.

Climate TRACE shows you where and when greenhouse gas emissions are occurring.

Yes yes yes, madman Realpolitik always works very well in... [reads hastily written notes of online course International Relations 101] eh... economically dominating the world system.

Rutte's NATO is changing climate into 'operational environment'. That sounds like using 'special operation' instead of war. Importantly, this does NOT mean they deny climate change. It means what was public becomes a military secret. Climate change becomes privileged knowledge for armies.

Historians of science were brutally treated in the 1970s, never forget. #historySTM #historyofscience #historyofmeteorology

Yup. We are him at the end of the video.

Actually, this is a refreshing analogy.

*Job Claxon*: we're hiring a Postdoc to research the Colonial History of the Botanic Gardens at Universiteit Utrecht. www.uu.nl/en/organisat... #skystorians #jobs #histofscience #colonialhistory #botanicalgardens

This was 1778 and King Louis XIV was much more gracious to his guest than the American King Kong this evening was. I hope that this time it does not take 11 years for the people to come to their senses.

Western Civ 2.0: from broligarchs misreading Plato to the destruction of NATO

Dutch people selling books in Frankfurt: why are you looking at me with forks and knives in your hands... (from: Daniel Stolzenberg, 'The Holy Office in the Republic of Letters', Isis (2019))

Sigh. Fear and loathing in clickbait tv and newspaper land. Foreigners are over represented in the German news when it comes to violent crime. Luckily there are no vital elections coming, where say, climate, democracy and war in Ukraine demand protective policies.

Sometimes you have to harmonize to keep from crying. 😓🎶 Original song by @agiftfromtodd.bsky.social

This.

A bunch of needs in labcoats: "If we comply with the fascists demands they'll surely let us keep up our research" Those same scientists months or years before: "Eh, I'll skip history class. I wanna be a scientists. Not a historian lol"

Inventing a sci fi world where one political party's program can be described as: 'give us four years to try to repair the chaos created by the right, and if that underwhelms, sure bring in/back the entropic fascists, because they kill your loved ones but at least they accomplish what they promise.'

Perhaps because many free speech liberals were not even liberals to begin with

It is not a good thing for a historian of German science in the 1930s to have an Aha-erlebnis all the time. Or perhaps more a 'Oh nein'-erlebnis. Anyone interested in asking for a grant for historical research into German university laws after 1933?

My timeline is filled with people tagging the @royalsociety.org to protest their continuing endorsement of Elon Musk, FRS. Good. More people should do it. A vid I took when I got to handle the incredible Fellows’ Book and read all those inspirational scientists’ names alongside a businessman’s

When we were grad students in the hist. of science, Roger Turner developed a concept that we need: a category of science called “infrastructural sciences” They’re operated by the state, and since the administration is working to break as many as possible, we should think about what they are. 🧵

Infrastructural sciences are “culturally modest” sciences, usually bent on day-to-day practices like, testing and forecasting rather than discovery, invisibly making possible industrial lifeways. Think weather forecasting and water testing and aviation safety testing. Some examples:

Pankaj Mishra. Worth reading.

Weerbedrijven klagen KNMI aan om oneerlijke concurrentie. Ze willen geld blijven verdienen aan data die ze gratis hebben gekregen van KNMI. Verdienmodel o.a. Buienradar: advertenties/verkoop persoons- en locatiegegevens, aldus VK. Huiswerk: Michael Lewis, Fifth Risk. www.volkskrant.nl/cs-bf742c17/

First history, then farce, and now we have farce squared

Perfect dialectical scheme we can also use for other historical events/periods. It shows how different kinds of narratives develop afterwards, first the heroic actors, then the critical structuralists, and finally tenured academic empaths like us saying 'ah yes, but we should not forget about'...