Excellent new article on labour history & (pre) colonial Samoa. "The Bankruptcy of the ‘South Sea Kings’: Plantation Business, Labour Recruitment and German Politics in the Western Pacific, 1870s and 1880s" www.tandfonline.com/doi/ref/10.1...

„Returning to Samoa – The Appropriation and Restitution of a Samoan Prow: Germany, Colonialism and the Current Restitution Debate“ @kilderbenhauser.bsky.social journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/tr...

This chart shows complete failure.

We are horrified and shaken in the wake of the mass shooting at a Chanukah event in Bondi this evening, which has left at least ten people dead and injured many more. This is the first night of Chanukah when we gather with loved ones and friends to light the Chanukiah. 1/4

Shattering. Horrific. Despicable.

An academic disliked an Oxford Very Short Introduction (145 pages) in his field so much that he wrote a 200 page book review attacking it. www.pierre-legrand.com/ewExternalFi...

Just brushing up on the latest definitions of piracy in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

‘I would hope governments to come will see the error of that & take it away. Labor has talked a lot about how bad it is, but hasn’t done anything about it.’ Gonski calls for some govt (🤔 how about the Albo Govt?) to dump Morrison’s noxious Jobs Ready Graduates scheme. www.smh.com.au/national/as-...

UTS staff vote no confidence in their embattled vice-chancellor Andrew Parfitt www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12...

"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more." This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular. pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...

it intensely angers me every time I open a book PDF in Acrobat and the software reminds me that I’m reading a Long Document and gee, wouldn’t I prefer a summary instead I am not a first grade child who requires the easy-reader version of big kid books, demon machine

“A Ceasefire in Name Only” — @scotnational.bsky.social is not afraid to call out Israel's continued attacks on Gaza

My review of “Der Prophet des Staatsgedankens”: Hans Delbrück und die “Preußischen Jahrbücher” (1883–1919), by Jonas Klein. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Preaching to the choir here, but it’s worth getting all the arguments lined up.

Back in the day it was my then 12 year old son who walked me through using a VPN. Let's see what happens.

Check out the new book Empires of Violence contributed by #hcnswmember University of Newcastle researchers Philip Dwyer & Lyndall Ryan This is a first-of-its-kind study comparing the violence committed against Indigenous peoples in Australia to that in Africa, USA & Europe buff.ly/DKmgJEH

A few shots from the small but interesting exhibit on Chinese contract labour in German Samoa at the Samoan National Gallery.

German colonial remnants in Apia, Samoa.

Good luck to everyone who applies! Great opportunities in a great institution. www.ghi-dc.org/news-show/tw...

Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea

Quite the quote on #COP30, by Professor Michael Jacobs of the think tank ODI Global and the University of Sheffield. Source: ‚Backchannel‘

To “my students and to anyone who might listen, I say: Don’t surrender to AI your ability to read, write and think when others once risked their lives and died for the freedom to do so.” www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...

How can European history be integrated into global history? This is the question at the heart of „Globalizing Europe“ edited by @davidmotadel.bsky.social. Here is my review.

Dekolonial Erinnern in Deutschland: Neues Heft von Geo-Epoche „Die deutschen Kolonien“, parallel zum Dezember-Heft von GEO mit Interview zum deutschen Kolonialismus. Mit DVD Film „Das leere Grab“. @sharondoduaotoo.bsky.social @kilderbenhauser.bsky.social @he-mel.bsky.social @goldmatt.bsky.social

In the archives some days not much emerges. But sometimes an entire journal article falls into place with about an hour's reading. Today was the latter. 🤓

“CSIRO has announced it will slash up to 350 jobs as the national science agency grapples with long-term financial challenges … with current funding failing to keep pace with the rising costs of running a modern science agency.” Not “challenges”. They’re choices. 😡

Imagine coming to a country after fleeing war, miserable and impoverished, possibly traumatised. All you have is some family jewellery, maybe your dead mother's necklace. And then they take it away. Cruelty beyond belief. What is the UK doing?!?!

I'm giving a talk on Monday in Berlin for those around. **** Global History Colloquium: Matt Fitzpatrick (Flinders University) on "The Diplomacy of Colonial Cruelty: German Samoa and the Treatment of Chinese Labourers" *** share.google/s7sxXYD6xJmm...

Why low-flying German military planes are in New Zealand skies: “The joint exercise- Tūhono Rangi - involves German military aircraft doing formation and low-altitude flights and deploying parachutists and cargo around the country.”

Mein Kommentar zum Kolonialismus-Rollback von Wolfram Weimer www.sueddeutsche.de/meinung/deut...

I was just sounding off about psychohistory the other day, and here we are. Remember that terrible book "The Psychopathic God"? It's back, only stupider.

Was für eine Schande für Europa. Die kürzlich erst beschlossene Lieferkettenrichtlinie sollte Konzerne zur Verantwortung ziehen für Menschenrechtsverletzungen und Umweltschäden im Ausland. Um die Regeln zu verwässern, wie Friedrich Merz es gefordert hatte, stimmen Konservative mit Rechtsextremen.

Kolonien hießen "Deutsch Südwestafrika" und "Deutsch Ostafrika", und die "Hottentottenwahl" war zum Reichstag. Eine offizielle Forderung der "Heim ins Reich" Ideologie war betitelt mit "Auch hier liegt deutsches Land". Vielleicht sollte der Kulturstaatsminister deutsche Geschichte besser kennen?

Wie sich die Deutsche Erinnerungspolitik selbst "dekolonisiert" @jhaentzschel.bsky.social in der SZ (Abo oder Onleihe) www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/wolfr...

Looking forward to having you with us tonight! For anyone interested in joining Matt's talk via WebEx, just send a quick email ([email protected]) or DM to me, and I'll forward the link. We'll start at 12:15pm EST/ 3:45am ACDT (sorry Australia).

More evidence for the coming reckoning on the Gaza genocide

If you happen to be in Erfurt tomorrow, I will be there too, speaking at the university about the Germans in Siam before WWI. And if you're in Berlin, I'll be at the FU discussing the fate of Chinese contract labourers in German Samoa.

Sie hat so viel Wichtiges geleistet. Möge sie nun in Frieden ruhen. Gisela Bock, 1942-2025.

Chuck Schumer Helps Pull Democrats Back From Brink Of Courage

Italian journalist Gabriele Nunziati was fired after asking the European Commission whether Israel should pay to rebuild Gaza, just as the EU says Russia must rebuild Ukraine. His outlet, Agenzia Nova, dismissed him weeks later, calling the question “out of place.” Today, Euronews’ Vincenzo...

“The fedora, angled just so, is his homage to French Resistance hero Jean Moulin.”

There were ample laws to prevent this or shut it down. The NSW Police just didn’t want to.

"Das Problem war doch nicht etwa, was unsere Feinde taten, sondern was unsere Freunde taten."

Something I've really noticed among institutional "responses" to generative technologies is that "DO NOT USE THIS TOOL, IT'S COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE" is fudamentally erased from any possibility of ever being an option Often paired with fatalist stuff like "this isn't going away"

My annual post about how the Morning Star reported the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 hatfulofhistory.com/2014/11/07/h...

Watched a BBC debate about misinformation and AI yesterday and a view emerged that if only an unbiased ur-source for AI's information could be created, its problems of misinformation would be solved. Found myself giving the implacable TV a rather loud "all knowledge is positioned" tutorial.

A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death. Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written." Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating. 🧪🧬🧫

I really don't like psychohistory as a methodology, but one day someone will investigate Elon's pivot to building armies of robots as a reflection of his subconscious recognition that he has been utterly rejected by his own species. The same of his impulse to go to Mars.

The man who has caused this will now be a trillionaire. 600.000 deaths, two thirds of them children.

A campus novel/speculative fiction about a university whose computer systems become so hopelessly infected by viruses that the school returns to paper. Strangely, everyone becomes smarter and happier until they are eaten by wolves.