Sorry to no longer be teaching a module on Spanish Civil War historiography, because this review would be an incredibly fun text to unpack with students. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Got an exceptionally rare google notification for my own name, and it turned out to be a photo credit for an article about Budapest Pride.

As an Australian who lived in the UK for too long, this looks brutal - the high baseline humidity and inadequate built environment makes this kind of weather utterly draining and impossible to escape. Unless you're coming from Darwin in wet season, you aren't prepared for what low 30s means there.

The Neflixification of life continues, with a full season of summer just dumped on us all at once without any fanfare or lead in. What happened to pacing weather out smdh

Ah yes, migrating to *checks notes* Sydney for the affordable housing. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Every damn year

It's not about politics, it's just ensuring that the opposing party doesn't win and that our stated policy agenda is implemented.

The US Democrats could do a hell of a lot worse than just wholesale hiring everyone who worked comms and technical support for Tisza this year.

Happy to announce the publication of my article on international volunteers in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War @euroreviewhistory.bsky.social. Thanks to @sdanisimova.bsky.social & Robert Gerwarth for their support and to the reviewers for their advice. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Curious about AskHistorians, Reddit, and digital public history? I recently spoke to UNC Press about that! Read more here! @askhistorians.bsky.social

Vacancy for a three-year post-doc position at the Universiteit van Amsterdam! This postdoc position, part of the European Research Council (ERC)-sponsored 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐊𝐀𝐃𝐄 project, seeks to understand the long legacies of blockades on the post-war order.

SHE 2027. Vienna. CFP. Emotions in Adversity.

A sign of the political times - Tisza signs are being sold on Hungarian Vinted, this one with a c. 70 euro asking price.

Choosing to believe that the convenience store is being supremely passive aggressive here

For centuries, Americans have avoided robbing banks. Bonnie and Clyde are taking a different approach.

Should probably read "*even* less busy than usual" tbh

For years, but especially in the last few months, I have been trying hard to imagine what it will feel like seeing Orban decisively defeated. I just couldn't. And yet here we are: it is truly and well over. I have more reservations about Peter Magyar than I could say in 300 characters or a thread...

If god and Caesar are the same person, think of how much rendering time you can save.

Saw a young man on the bus home wearing a corduroy jacket and a neckerchief. I choose to believe that he left home in an Adidas tracksuit and was transformed by the political moment. Never has the victory of the cultural left felt so complete.

The vibes in Budapest are currently "Latin American country wins football world cup" tier

Found a great spot to watch Orban concede

The Hungarian youth are thirsting for change

Currently skeeting from Bambi Eszpresszó, one of the last communist era cafes in central Budapest, just down the road from the Tissza election rally and it is *vibing* right now.

!!!!

Ooooooh it's still swinging they might just make it

It seems not unlikely that the far-far right will hold the balance of power when it comes to the supermajority in Hungary, which would be... interesting

They've shut down a major road along the Danube so that TV reporting can have a dramatic backdrop

A moderate amount of tinfoil here but if I had to bet, the last sane analyst at the State Department finally managed to explain why petrodollars were so important, and Trump has of course chosen the stupidest way to protect the system.

Ngl vibes in Budapest are a little weird - like the whole city is holding its breath. Polling places seem a little busier than last election, but not seen any lines etc.

Nice little surprise in the mail today - the new edition of "Quando vient la nuit", featuring a new chapter by me back on my old Scottish International Brigade nonsense.

Noticed an (anecdotal) uptick in the kinds of assignments that boil down to 'find an expert on X and ask them 3-4 questions about it'. I can see why this might look like a good idea, but it hinges entirely on academics' time and altruism that has been massively eroded by sector working conditions.

📣 Save the date! The next conference of the Society for the History of War will take place at the University of Limerick, Ireland 🇮🇪 🗓 26–27 November 2026 Historians of war, conflict, and violence - mark your calendars!! 📄 Call for Papers coming soon!

One of the weirder but probably predictable effects of letting the kind of people with Knight Templar profile pics get high-level government positions is that Trump now thinks that the masses (heh) yearn for an antipope.

The person who started this classroom roleplay exercise about the international dynamics of July 1914 needs to wrap it up now, please.

Increasingly sympathetic to the view that the "war crimes" lens is insufficient, that creating the legalistic distinction acts to legitimise a broad swathe of "legal" excessive violence AND is not at all constraining to immoral actors who don't care about committing crimes.

On the plus side, future generations of history lecturers won't be plagued by the whole "but when did Hitler actually say he intended to wipe out the Jews" thing.

JD Vance arriving in Budapest today to bolster Fidesz's campaign against being beholden to evil foreign politicians.

Sort of a joint query by both of us – the focus is on Britain but I'd be curious if anyone's written anything on Christian socialisms in Australia, particularly if something of the sort existed in the 1850s.

"Matthew Goodwin has been paid a salary of up to €10,000 a month [from Hungary's state-funded MCC], according to leaked documents obtained by Hungarian investigative journalists Direkt36 and reported by the Good Law Project" That could all end if Orbán loses... open.substack.com/pub/democrac...

Does anyone have any readings they'd suggest on 19th century Christian socialisms?

The inclusion of 'praise be to Allah' is the best sign yet Trump is still alive; no social media intern would ever think to drop that in of their own accord.

they're all good fridays, brent

Just had "duck" autocorrected to "fuck", and if someone has deliberately reversed that little predictive text algorithm for April Fools then we're dealing with an absolute master of the game.

We've had one trans day of visibility, yes. But what about second trans day of visibility?

Having one of my regular 'getting absolutely frothing mad about Brexit' days.

Little snapshot of Budapest - a slightly battered but ornate entryway leading to a secluded little courtyard, home to what I can only assume is the finest erotic shop in all the land.

I guess we're all going to have to owe the accelerationists an apology if this turns out to be the shove needed to rapidly decarbonise the global economy.

Was reading a completely unrelated discussion, and realised that one of the defining characteristics of empire is the charade - the pretence of being too powerful to be worth resisting, even if widespread resistance or friction would make everything untenable.

Call for Papers New Left Histories and Historiographies: Mapping a Renewed Research Field Workshop to assess the current state of research on the New Left. Cfp for an event to be held in November at QMUL. Info here www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event... @bbkhistorical.bsky.social @qmul.bsky.social

As someone who came of age in the context of 2000s-era Australian foreign policy, it is very, very funny that Australia is just about the only country with a navy who isn't getting pressured to sail it into the Strait of Hormuz. John Howard must be fuming.