Journalistic malpractice: constant complaints about the extra $3.3 trillion (over 10 years) from the new tax bill; failure to point out that deficits were _already_ going to total $21.1 trillion over the same interval. Reckless fiscal policies driving the US off a cliff. www.cbo.gov/publication/...

Three equal branches! #NoKingsDay

Summertime — when there are actually seats available in the best campus reading rooms!

L'historien et éditeur Pierre Nora, membre de l'Académie française, est mort lundi à l'âge de 93 ans, a annoncé sa famille à l'AFP.

When your letterhead carries an amazing font, every letter commands attention. (Admittedly, the drawing is kind of cheesy.)

This week's new archive was the Archiv Grünes Gedächtnis (Archive of Green Memory) in Berlin-Friedrichshain. They're only open a few days per week but they're very nice and have an enormous collection on the environmental movement, as one would expect!

Second archive last week: the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich (built 1972 – was that peak brutalism?).

Today’s archive visit took me to the Deutsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt. The mother ship of German capitalism called me home.

Sunday @ the St Louis Zoo

Hearty congrats to Stefano Palermo, who successfully defended his Purdue dissertation prospectus – "Business Europe: A History of the European Round Table of Industrialists." Shaping up to be a landmark study on 🇪🇺 integration! @rkpejsova.bsky.social @drdaveatkinson.bsky.social @palstef.bsky.social

Expressen: US abandons planning of new military exercises in Europe US has notified its allies that it intends to stop its participation in planning for upcoming military exercises in Europe. Already scheduled ones for 2025 are not (so far) affected www.expressen.se/nyheter/varl...

State capacity. Institutional memory. How can we preserve these things in the wake of mass firings and – perhaps even worse – several years of Trumpian cluelessness? Perhaps @historians.org is already at work on this, but anxiety over this woke me up last night. Some thoughts: 1/

So I’m curious, if the US invades Canada would that falsify the democratic peace theory or prove the US is no longer a democracy?

On his public journey to embracing Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Elon Musk has frequently amplified the online content of one young supporter of the party - climate change and COVID-19 lockdown sceptic Naomi Seibt reut.rs/405LtXL 1/8

Not what I thought I'd be writing about when I picked the name Torched. Thanks to everyone for checking in. We're fine. Many of our friends are not fine. I tried my best to describe what's happening with the fires and what LA needs to do now www.torched.la/zero-percent...

Forthcoming from @stanfordpress.bsky.social, a fascinating study on the Banat by Tim Olin! Proud of the great history scholarship coming out of Purdue's Ph. D. program. Discount code in the flyer.

New article alert! Did not expect this to come out before the New Year, but here we are. Thanks to Felix Jiménez Botta for editing the special issue - it's a nice set of essays on human rights in West Germany! doi.org/10.1177/0022...

Feels like old news now, but it takes a while for book reviews to hit the journals. Gratifying to see Christoph Laucht's review of TRADING POWER in the current issue of CENTRAL EUROPEAN HISTORY! He's right, I shoulda spent more time in 🇫🇷... www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Glad to see that my review of Hesse's _Exportweltmeister_ is out! The book is a "must" for folks interested in German political economy. @quinnslobodian.com

Now Cambridge UP has approached me regarding using my book as training data for AIs. (They do offer a royalty of 20%, though it's unclear 20% of what exactly, and how much that would be in real numbers.) I'm curious: what do colleagues think about this?

This is bad, folks. Without Gallium and Germanium we’ve already lost half of Western Europe!

New doorbell! But you need to click on the picture to see the design — I don’t know how to control the format otherwise.

Mood is _always_ better on a day like today, with 500+ words down on paper (metaphorically speaking). Why can't I get myself to do this every single day?! It only takes a few hours of good concentration to redeem this tab.

Got an indirect sense today of what the Ukraine conversation on the left wing of the SPD might sound like. (1) Ukrainians are starting to favor peace with partitions because they've lost so many loved ones. (2) Zelensky just escalated the war with long-range missiles. // Both wrong-headed!

This by CS Lewis hits.

Thinking about images I encountered two years back while writing on "West Germans and the Building of Brasília." Mary Vieira, a sculptor active in 🇨🇭, designed a vivid trilogy of posters in the mid-1950s: "Brasilien baut," "Panair do Brasil," and "Brasilien baut Brasilia." Such colors!

Clowngarden

Trying to make time on the weekends to enjoy my collection of coffee-table books. Today's entry: _Creating French Culture_, a 1995 volume accompanying an exhibit co-curated by the Library of Congress & the BN. Wonderful cultural snapshots from the medieval & early modern eras.

Can’t say enough about the amazing work ethic of Purdue students. It’s Day 2 of classes, and the main reading room in WALC is completely full. Likewise the open space one floor below. And the lecture hall. #HireaBoilermaker

The problem of community-thinking in a world of nation states - a thread: In the US context, I read that many Muslims (or Arab Americans... terms vary) won't vote for Biden because they have to watch him supporting the "violent annihilation of their communities," or some other phrasing. 1/X

Easily the most extensive and worthwhile thread I’ve seen on Bluesky to date. Davies offers concise answers to questions many historians have about the use of the term Holodomor.

Folks, I just made my annual donation to Wikipedia (in fact, I switched it to monthly). Please consider doing the same. If you're teaching history, you probably use the service constantly to double-check factual information. Be part of the 2% of users who help to fund this vital resource!

Teaching the First World War feels very different now with two major wars raging overseas.

Even after two and a half decades of grading papers, I still see new and amusing slips. In place of "monograph," one student wrote "monologue." Not completely wrong, I guess?

Grateful to KU News for writing up this nice little piece on my book. If you're interested in the Cold War, poverty & development, or postwar liberalism, I wrote this book for you! 🗃️

Blue sky, green grass. Do we want kids and cats on this site? Just on weekends?

Twenty-four years in the college classroom, and yet I'd never delivered a lecture on German submarine warfare in WW I. It's a new day.

Sharing flash news items on Bsky is still a little wobbly, but as a heads up — Poland has just pulled a massive U-turn on arms to Ukraine. Looks like a big failure for EU diplomacy (has to do with grain exports/imports).

You call this site what you want, it amuses me to make it rhyme with “Brewski”

The new kitty is named Minerva, so we've been playing with that quote a lot lately. As for Duolingo: its standards for the "night owl" bonus are amazingly lax. Completing a lesson at 8:30 pm should not qualify!

Marvelous book! My students in “Trans-Atlantic Capitalism” are reading excerpts this week. Particularly fun for me since I got to visit Ellicott City, MD back in June — the first waystation on the B & O Railroad and the oldest surviving station in the US.