Been a busy few months

Is there any way of archiving a public Facebook page? Not a personal profile, but a public-facing portfolio page, such as a public official might maintain?

It's a brave new world for Orban-supporting online publication Patriota, polling their readers on whether they'd be minded to crowdfund them "Important question! Would you be willing to support Patriota with a subscription?"

What a day! Did we mention that today was the day we removed invites from Eurosky accounts? Anyone can create an account straight away.

TAPS *prints of this and other comics in my shop, link in bio 😘

always "guys. GUYS. it is CRAZY how good these tools are getting. you have NO idea. they are so good i am SCARED and QUAKING like a little baby goat. i actually NEED someone to come here and HOLD me" and if you talk like that but things seem to get no better, or even worse, ppl are going to wonder

#actually it was only a monastery for a couple of decades. For the other 300-odd years it was the Castle Theatre #hillsIwillDieON www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

#actually it was only a Carmelite Monastery for the first few decades of 300 years history; Orban's Carmelite Monastery office was in fact a theatre. Either way, likely to be a museum from now on: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I’m very struck by how many people are posting that that their main feeling on Sunday’s vote is grief remembering the people who didn’t live to see the end of the Orban system, because of disastrous healthcare or the mental health toll the system took.

🇪🇺🇬🇧EU and UK cooperation moves forward. Today the legal texts bringing the UK formally into Erasmus+in 2027 were signed. The 🇬🇧 association to Erasmus in 2027 will open thousands of opportunities for students, staff and youth to learn, travel and thrive across the EU and the UK.

Hungary's state radio was a must-listen for the first time in a long while this morning. Our media critic Zoltan Simon was on the case www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Looking at a certain analyst's tweet on Hungary from a few days ago, there is a structural issue in social media land in that almost everyone with relevant expertise is professionally bound to be polite even in the face of total ignorance; because of course it's hard not to take offence

Orban was so busy buying himself a global stage he didn't realise the platform he was actually standing on was crumbling beneath his feeet, I mused www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

*HUNGARY'S MAGYAR SAYS SZIJJARTO SHREDDING DOCS ON EU SANCTIONS

Quite a mood here

With two hours before polls close, turnout in Hungary's election has already exceeded the highest full-time number ever reached, when Orban lost the election in 2002 (73.5% then, 74.2% now)

Tens of thousands chant “Russians, go home!” at tonight’s anti-Orbán concert in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square ahead of Sunday’s Hungarian election.

Pope to Olympic Athletes: “It is possible to win without humiliating. One can lose without losing oneself. And this also applies beyond sport. It applies in social life, in politics, in relationships between peoples, because sport, if lived well, becomes a workshop for a reconciled humanity.”

Viktor Orban, who often calls himself a streetfighter, offered the Hungarian "mouse"'s assistance to the Russian "lion" in a call with Putin. “In any matter where I can be of assistance, I am at your service," he told the Russian leader www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Remember a Greek classmate who was raving about how two thirds of the then Greek cabinet had graduated from the (back then fees-free) LSE. That's soft power

We need international students - or more accurately, we need their money - but we also hate and resent them for being human. You couldn’t wish for a better encapsulation of the brutal, self-harming, arse-about-face nature of what passes for immigration policy in the UK

Civil nuclear power is the quintessential example of state planning - so much so that I think it's probably the easiest proxy you could use for this. Case in point - you could literally pinpoint when an anti-state planning government was in office in the UK by looking at new nuclear plant dev.

Exclusive: Vaccine makers Pfizer and BioNTech halted recruitment for a large US trial of their updated COVID-19 vaccine in healthy adults aged 50 to 64, saying enrollment in the trials had been too low to generate the needed data reut.rs/4bKFONR

Very good point: I beg to move that we subsitute “single-sourced light-roast drinking”

Kind of mesmerizing watching the crowdfunder tick up for the Hungarian policeman who quit rather than carry out what he said was a politically motivated investigation into the opposition party. Barely a few hours old and well on the way to a third of a million.

This was a great listen. Take an hour of your day to put this on. There is a profound historical precedent for librarians and archivists being among the very first people targeted by authoritarians. Librarians are the keepers of collective knowledge. It's a sacred responsibility.

Excellent thread

So it turns out Reform are laundering their donations through crypto, before converting them into cash, hiding the original source of the money. So who is really funding Nigel Farage and Reform UK? observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

New 📖: James Morris, Revolution and Counterrevolution on the Russian–Ottoman Border: Wallachia in 1848 @oxfordunipress.bsky.social academic.oup.com/book/62436

public service announcement to the hustlers

Henceforth all content to be presented thus this is cat account

It checks out...

This was a truly gross event. Centrist intellectuals featuring as audience to legitimate an anti-democratic grifter in the service of entertaining the ultra-rich reactionary class. Can’t capture the “heterodoxy” movement better than this. One big grift, ultimately only helping the far right!

It is already dark when Krastev sighs over the phone in his quiet, sad voice: "I’m not on social media." 🤔🤨 archive.md/5OVYj

heute im jahr 44 bc machte julius cäsar die zutiefst menschliche erfahrung wie es ist herauszufinden dass die boys einen gruppenchat ohne dich gemacht haben

Russia is widely seen to be backing Victor Orban’s reelection efforts, with videos of ethnic Hungarian prisoners of war, with videos of ethnic Hungarian prisoners (🎁) Via @thomas.escritt.eu

This stuff by the way is of a fascist blood and soil character that is insane if you look at it even a bit

Here is my best Habermas story. I am grad student waiting in LONG line for Habermas talk. There is a tall man waiting in front of me. Line moves so we are eventually visible to organizers, a woman looks over & makes horrified face. Runs out: "Prof Habermas! You don't have to wait in line!"

Jürgen Habermas ist heute im Alter von 96 Jahren in Starnberg verstorben.

Sometimes spotting election interference takes detailed counting of Facebook likes and narrative codings. Sometimes PoWs get plucked out of captivity and delivered home to Hungary in time to star in a party campaign rally. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

A German politician of Muslim background stands before a church congregation in Switzerland and delivers a musical and poetic reflection on a cantata by a founding saint of Lutheranism, finding in its text “Fürchte dich nicht” an exhortation to recommit to liberal democracy youtu.be/fafJ_wN2jVY?...

Insanity from multiple angles

and this time we don’t even have Bernard Lewis

ulf poschardt's telegraph is going to be LIT

We are the nation of wood paneling, or we are nothing.

I hated it when Cameron brought in the practice of speaking in front of a flag. It seemed so small-country insecure.

Pretty clear theme here: spouses and parents who give good advice are about the most important thing you can ever have www.science.org/content/arti...

Publication of the day is a comic book from a mysterious independent civil society initiative depicting Peter Magyar, Orban's rival, as the puppet of Shell, Big Oil Rig, "Bank", VdL and someone called Manfred Weber. Yours for 2,500 ft in all MCC-owned bookshops.