BBC are starting to detail their process for verifying images in their reports now. I fear we have truly entered the age of 'AI until proven innocent'.

From a lovely colleague on LinkedIn -- and now I'm also intrigued. Does anyone know? #BookHistory gang? <puppy eyes @svanimpe.bsky.social, for instance>

Cover reveal. It's about how & why colonies/states controlled international & domestic migration until 1888, why in the late 19th c the feds took over, & what it was like for politically disfavored groups to live under that arrangement of power. You can't understand voluntary migration history 1/

Vervanger van Yermak? BREAKING: Zelensky picks Military Intelligence Head Budanov as his new chief of staff kyivindependent.com/breaking-ukr...

In 1958, the Canadians mentioned the possibility of Soviet nuclear submarines operating in Hudson Bay. I wonder if any study beyond this paragraph was ever undertaken on this. It's quite the notion.

The best kind of rock-paper-scissors is when you can get laid. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/s...

Do other countries have this weird notion that you’re not a “real” representative of the nation if you live in an urban center? Like do the French say Parisians aren’t really French? Are you considered not a real German if you live in Berlin? Or is this mainly a weird American thing?

When I ran across interesting classification markings and caveats at the other site I used to post them. Think I'll resume that here. Here it's mostly just the purple ink that I like. CIA, June, 1953.

Please do get in touch with your ideas! This is an excellent opportunity for you to get out in front of a (a very friendly) crowd. No qualifications required, just passion and a good story. Please do share with anyone you think might be a good fit! @fwwsoc.bsky.social @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social

Last day of the @nationalobserver.com fundraiser! We're $27,000 short of our goal for the Climate Solutions Reporting Project. If you've been thinking about donating, today's the day. Help us get this across the finish line: www.canadahelps.org/en/dn/124263

Can #booksky explain something to me? I’ve got two copies of the “The Secrets of the German War Office.” Same publisher, same city, both twelfth printing in 1917. But different sizes! How can this be?

Iran lists Canada's navy as terrorist organization in response to move by Ottawa - huh? www.msn.com/en-ca/news/c...

2025 FOIA Files Recap: It's been a devastating year for the #FOIA. Agencies gutted or eviscerated their FOIA offices & fired staff. But thanks to the incredibly hard work of FOIA officers across the govt I managed to pry loose some important docs. Here are the highlights. Thank you FOIA officers! 🧵

“The job of running the British Secret Service has changed enormously since Cumming’s day, but there are also elements of what sits in Metreweli’s overflowing in-tray that the first Chief would still have recognised.” Great essay by @gordoncorera.bsky.social: engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the...

I feel like we haven’t fully reckoned with the with the implications of the reality that in the past generation, many have lost the ability to concentrate long enough to read a book.

USPS quietly changed its postmark rules — mail is no longer dated when you drop it off. The “official” date is when it hits automated sorting — sometimes days later Which could have major implications for mail in voting — it’s a clever way to disenfranchise voters that’s going largely overlooked

Exclusive: The CIA carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a port facility in Venezuela, sources told CNN, marking the first known US attack on a target inside that country. This is the attack Trump has repeatedly alluded to in recent days. www.cnn.com/2025/12/29/p...

🖼️ Sally Swannell

Listen to the virologist.

New research challenges the long-held view that Assyria invented cavalry warfare. Evidence now points to Aramean and Luwian states of the Syrian-Anatolian world developing true cavalry by the 10th century BCE, reshaping how we understand ancient military innovation. #AncientHistory

Post-doc positions: "Academic freedom is under pressure today. This requires rescue havens of free research. ... [we] invite early career researchers, whose work is restricted due to political pressure in the USA..." uni-freiburg.de/frias/call-f...

It was a pleasure to review Jeffrey Rogg's book "The Spy and the State: The History of American Intelligence" for @lawfaremedia.org. There is much in it to chew on and debate and the topic, civil-intelligence relations, is of great and growing importance. #intelligence #intelhist

Denmark lost more troops per capita in the post 9/11 war on Afghanistan. Saying they “are not a good ally” because they won’t surrender their territories to the US is lunacy. We are betraying our allies to satisfy the whims of a would-be Emperor for whom the US is not enough.

Make a Bond movie academic For Your Eyes Only: paywalled journals and global scientific inequity

Make a Bond movie academic: No Time To Grade

Looking for a Christmas miracle for a kitty (aging parent situation) for Baltimore pals: (1/2) ""My mom can no longer keep Angelo (alas!!!) and we are looking to rehome him. Angelo is a total sweetheart. He is 6 years old, gentle, playful, friendly, and a lovebug."

Can we fill the TL with suggestions of untapped archives/collections? That would be a lot of fun! I think there's quite a bit of material in the Gregory Bateson papers at UCSC Special Collections that has yet to be written about.

Make a Bond movie academic. Moonraker: Reconsidering Wiltshire Folkloric Traditions.

New: Read the translated KGB training manual on how the Soviets categorized white Westerners they looked to recruit, according to four basic personality types. Some unintentionally hilarious stuff in here, all analyzed by Mike Miller, a recent retiree from the CIA and a cognitive psychologist.

A Christmas week legal miracle--one that those of all faiths can enjoy: Trump's targeting of our client @markzaidesq.bsky.social incl pulling his security clearance was enjoined as unconstitutional retaliation A great win for him, for us @democracydefendersfund.org & for the superstar legal team👇

"This very readable book discusses numerous pathologies that have afflicted the relationships between American intelligence agencies and the president, the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the American people." @markstout.bsky.social reviews "The Spy and the State" by Jeffrey P. Rogg.

This top secret document of #KGB's 7th Department (surveillance) in Kaunas, Lithuania explains how they disguised a photo camera in a handbag. The document is not dated but, based on its position in the file, I suspect that it was written in 1956.

The book thefts of 2022 in European libraries. news.err.ee/1609888729/i...

I did not understand this: one of the five Europeans the US has barred from traveling to the United States...is a permanent resident who lives with his family in the US. Now he is worried about being arrested and deported for the crime of monitoring online hate. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/u...

Canada isn’t really reacting to Trump's Greenland grab. The U.S. is actively eroding international norms that have held the global order since WWII. We're reacting to that. 1/5

What the AZ GOP is trying to do here smacks of what the Soviet Union did during the 1970s: start treating dissent as a mental health problem. Many dissidents ended up in psychiatric hospitals.

I've made it. I've been quoted in a History .com article. And it's an excellent one on the FBI's investigatory interest in It's a Wonderful Life (1946)!

For a Christmas miracle, you guys could help me get a more respectable number of followers. I post about historical memory of George Washington and slavery and various museum/public history topics. Some of the posts are good.

New addition Journal article: Collaborating with the East German Secret Police by Alison Lewis (published 13-11-2025) https://brill.com/view/journals/eceu/52/2-3/article-p191_003.xml

Turkey arrests 115 IS suspects 'planning New Year's attacks' www.bbc.com/news/article...

Merry Christmas to all who seek peace, joy and love.

Court orders whistleblower attorney Mark Zaid’s clearances reinstated. READ: ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

Axios has the SCOOP that Bari Weiss is planning to overhaul the standards and practices unit at CBS News -- which is something I reported last month. www.the-independent.com/news/world/a...

I hope someone is saving copies of all of these incorrectly redacted Epstein documents because you have to know that DOJ is going to undo this Tuesday AM if they're not at work on it already.

Does anyone have a sense of whether Trump’s battleship is an idea the Navy had genuinely been working on for a while? Or is this just a PowerPoint deck somebody threw together late last week after a couple beers?

Trump is reportedly designing the look of the new ships himself. Anyhow, the Vasa Museum is pretty cool if you’re ever in Stockholm

2nd wild story from the French National Archives, CARAN reading room, ca 1980s/1990s. A shriek from the far end of the room. A reader had found a large, dead, decomposing rat in her archival box. Of course, many of us rushed to see it, till the présidente de salle grabbed the box & shooed us away.

BREAKING: WATCH the full 60 Minutes CECOT segment here. This was sent to me anonymously. It appears to be the segment CBS' Bari Weiss killed. www.muellershewrote.com/p/watch-the-...

Now seems like a swell time to point out that Frontline just released this excellent 11-minute mini-documentary about what happened inside CECOT.