I listen to a load of interviewing history podcasts, and have grown cynical about them. They're so obviously part of the marketing round. Softball questions, leading to a lack of useful information to the listener. This is exceptional. Searching questions, and the interviewee isn't pushing his book!

He got many things right. His rejection of Imperial Preference; his recognition that the Asquith/Lloyd Geroge split meant that the liberals were finished; his recognition that Hitler couldn't be appeased. He got big things wrong. But many of the above were against the majority opinion in his party.

I've been following the tortuous and time-consuming ceasefire negotiations in 1950-1 at @TheKoreanWarbyIndyNeidell on youtube for a while. Diplomacy-wise, public posturing and maximalist positions can take a long time to soften. We could be here for a year, easily. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Very much enjoyed this post by the cynical, hardboiled but seemingly well-connected @peterzeihan.bsky.social (but he's inactive here) on the constraints on Trump's cabinet hires-and-fires. tl;dr if you think it's bad now, just wait. www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4ku...

The math of complex negotiations is that the more important the issues on the table are, the more the parties need some combination of: a) Trust b) Enforcement More trust might make someone willing to live with less enforcement. More enforcement might make someone tolerate a trust deficit.

I think this is from @bretdevereaux.bsky.social . It's all 40-year-old-obvious in one sense (Everyone knew Iran would close the strait, and has known for 40 years). But maps out the strategic errors and implications very well. tl_dr: no easy way out for USA, Israel or Iran from this.

Ontology, in laymans terms

This is wonderful. Thanks to HistoryofEnglishPodcast and also browsing videos and an old English reader from the Author (Colin Gorrie) I can just about do it back to 1100 or so. www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

A thing I'm proud of: the peaceful, constant, effective agitation for further civil rights by nonconformist and catholic christians, 1660-1837. Emancipation extended to Jews in 1858. Access to university for non-Anglicans 1871. It was mostly Christians who drove that on. Because they valued it.

The Luther Random Insult Generator was, as ever, a hit in my Reformation class this morning. ergofabulous.org/luther/?

You should read this piece. Adam is right: the core theory behind the anti-ICE mobilization here in Minneapolis isn’t really a political ideology, but that neighbors are neighbors and must be protected.

Wow, this year's Munich Security Conference is going to be interesting.

"The wall looks permanent until the day it comes down." data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-wall-l... Several people I know have used the word "beautiful" for this piece, and that's exactly right. A beautifully phrased essay on the bind we're in— until we aren't. Recommended, in an extreme way.

In the words of Brenda from Bristol. "Oh no! Not another one". www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

As the British Covid Judicial Inquiry released its report, the German Parliamentary Commission into it starts. Its first important witness, Christian Drosten. Who recommends Germany gets itself a transparent scientific advice body "like the UK's" (SAGE, I guess). www.tagesschau.de/video/video-...

I've been unsuccessfully looking for a book that covers the Irish Confederacy Wars (1641-1653: basically the Irish strand of the War of the 3 Kingdoms). And instead, I found a podcast, @paxbritannicapod.bsky.social , whose series 2 and 3 covers the period in a lot of detail ).

I know you don't like your followers posting replies that you alread know, but maybe you could have mercy on us by not posting questions whose answers all start with "duh! nicotine dependency!"

www.facebook.com/share/p/19C1... My friend Mark Mardell was chucked off his Turkish Airlines flight at the weekend because he had Parkinson’s and his son had asked for assistance for him. (He’s written about it as a public post on Facebook but the link is proving hard to share outside,)

asylum in the UK is just an endless succession of expensive, inefficient bodges eg: Scabies shd be picked up at initial screening. Hotels shd only ever have been a temporary stopgap. Wd be far cheaper to custom-build or renovate to allow separation eg of genders.

The cynical words of an old law professor seem again apt, sadly. Domestic law is a matter of law. Foreign laws are a matter of expert evidence. International law is a matter of fiction.

Merkel's record on this is mixed. It isn't that she deliberately provoked the surge of asylum-seekers in 2015. Rather it was accidental, plus being bounced into it by Orban. She did, however, call in a lot of favours to get the EU-Turkey repatration deal agreed, which did help to reduce the flow.

Working title. "Lawyer on the edge of a nervous breakdown".

Implement a 100% tariff and ruin a movie To kill 2 Mockingbirds

Vorfreude. "Anticipatory happiness" or similar

"Deshalb ist es so wichtig, zwischen dem, was real ist, wie dieser dumme Zollkrieg, den er angezettelt hat, und dem, was er sagt, weil er weiß, dass sich alle darüber aufregen, zu unterscheiden". 9 kommas! #DE_ENRealSentences

So, today I tripled my numbers of blocks, and number of times I've been blocked. And this is something that I worry about. It kicked off with this story, widely shared over the past 24 hours from Quakers in Britain (BYM) 1/ bsky.app/profile/quak...

Honey, I shrunk the island!

My God. "Adolescence" just wrings you out and leaves you crumpled on the floor. And after all that still keeps you thinking. How does the UK still produce this level of acting quality? A stunning mini-series if you have netflix. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

This was a beautiful, inspiring read. But I want to make a different, nerdy point: It popped up a comprehensible explanation of cookie usage. 1st time! I hate the standard cookie selection popups with a passion. (WTF is "legitimate use" anyway?) Why don't more websites customise their explanation?

ok, no need to stay up late on sunday night, as this thread basically tells you what the pundits are going to say. update: die Linke up to 7.5% in latest polls, FDP and BSW both below the 5% threshold

Is there nothing that's *below* this guy's pay-grade? You're the President of the global top nation, for god's sake!

A very good speech. But also good expectation management. Something Trump (who appears to believe that foreign governments pay the cost of tariffs) hasn't done for his own citizens. And he's either going to back down quickly, or learn that to his cost.

Rudakubana sentencing in UK in parallel with ongoing political reactions to attack in Aschaffenburg (2 dead, perp a mentally disturbed Afghani). A long time since the Syrian refugees were welcomed by enthusiastic helpers and applauded at Munich Hauptbahnhof, in 2015. Right to asylum: can it last?

Psychic hygiene, my subjective take. Right now it's unfollowing people (even interesting, well-informed people) who mostly post on US politics. I'm rationing my attention and my emotion. That's also why I left X.

I'm not intending to post much. I mostly reply