Swietna nowa ksiazka mlodego polskiego badacza o Uniwersytecie Oksfordzkim: polecam! us.edu.pl/wydawnictwo/...

Just finished the final draft of my latest book chapter: "Haredi Geographies: Jewish Cemeteries in Poland and Czechoslovakia" It's for an edited volume that I'm putting together with @rkpejsova.bsky.social on Jewish contact across Cold War boundaries. (Purdue, forthcoming).

Trump’s just trolling Vance now, right?

New Fukuyama just dropped

Manulife Centre at Toronto, Canada r/brutalism

My plans for the afternoon this holy Sunday 👇

My evening plans for tonight 👇

I recommend this 👇 place wholeheartadely. It's away from Florence city centre, but it's 5 minutes on foot from the tram 2 stop on Piazza della Libertà or from the Parterre final stop of C1 bus you can catch in the city centre. Food & service are excellent. Bonus for (Fiorentina) soccer fans

been rereading Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism and this would fit in well with early 20s Italy www.amny.com/news/brad-la...

As the warning signs of U.S. fiscal instability multiply, the question is no longer if the U.S. dollar’s privileged position will end, but how—through careful preparation or catastrophic crisis? Nicholas Creel (@prof-peacock.bsky.social‬) writes:

A viral account on X tracking pizza shop activity around the Pentagon predicted something was underway before Israel attacked Iran.

🔺 EXCLUSIVE: The peer whose report recommends a public inquiry into grooming gangs says nobody is learning the lessons of the scandal

Ok, Caffé Lietta, where negroni was invented, is a really nice place on Piazza della Libertà in Florence, but you have to be willing to experience Hitchcock's Birds LIVE

I will repeat myself: there is a persistent belief that popular government should be based on convincing people by argumentative debate, when its true basis is the negotiation of rational compromises between people of different beliefs.

From a new interview with @chenoweth.bsky.social, who coined the "3.5% rule": "Most of the movements in our database never got to that threshold and still won with like 1.8% or something like that." podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

New story this morning from me and Sara Randazzo @wsj.com

This trope about stern patriarchal parenting is absolutely central to the religious culture that Hegseth comes from.

“There ain’t no devil—there’s just God when he’s drunk.”

The abusive aspect is text, not subtext.

Daddy is home drunk and angry

In other words, as always with Trump (but not just), it's always gender overlaid with race, or race overlaid with gender.

But Hegseth and Trump's obsession with lethality must be seen more broadly as a disavowal of soft power in favor of hard power. And that in turn can be seen as a critique of a purportedly laxist style of parenting coded as feminine, in favor of a more disciplinarian approach, i.e., daddy is home.

Peeling this one off to a new thread. This also underscores how disconnected Hegseth's fixation on "lethality" is from the political, socio-cultural and societal roles that militaries have played throughout history. Case in point: If your only objective is lethality, why hold a parade? 🧵

A product of a cult of special operations that led to a basic misunderstanding of how US military power is anchored on logistics systems and a global network of bases that allow the US to move what it needs when it needs it to where it is needed America used to master the boring shit that wins wars

You could say the same for Iran

Led by a President experiencing severe mental decline, the United States ceased to be a functioning geopolitical actor

The most consequential Speaker in state history.

The owner of Twitter sends out 100 right wing propaganda tweets every single day and the algorithm is set up so that every single person on Twitter has to see every single one of these tweets. Now here’s another piece about Blue Sky’s ideological diversity problem.

Juan Linz was right (about the perils of presidentialism), exhibit I don't know which one

The @thefreebookbus.bsky.social, a beautiful bus of free books !!! thoughtfully curated so that every child/family/culture can see themselves reflected, lost a substantial donor because they carry books about LGBTQ folks. Go to this link & find a couple of ways to donate linktr.ee/freebookbus

My favorite sign from the No Kings Day protest. What was yours?

A leader of the MN House Democrats is murdered by a Republican pro-life activist. Rather than condemning political murder of his opponents, Elon Musk spreads the conspiracy theory that it was done by Democrats. Journalists don’t need to use any social media site. But they really shouldn’t use X.

How to cultivate collective intellectual humility Being smart is knowing what you don’t know. From work meetings to book clubs, use these tips to boost your group’s thinking psyche.co/guides/how-t... via Liz Krumrei-Mancuso & @markalfano.bsky.social

Yesterday’s demonstrations across the nation in favor of democracy and against Trump’s dictatorship revealed the power of the people. Millions reasserted the “We” in “We the people.” Some thoughts... https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-thought-5b2

Some stray thoughts on the third day of this new stage of the war. 1. Last night Israelis got their first taste of the war. Two direct hits by Iranian missiles, one wiped out a family of Palestinian Israeli citizens in Tamra and the other to a building in the coastal city of Bat Yam. 1/

See @paulinakewes.bsky.social what I found earlier today just in front of the SMN Railway Station in Florence I didn't know he wrote it here

Extra points for "boffin".

For some reason there is an article in The Daily Star about my appearance on the @historyextra.bsky.social podcast… #slownewsday www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-n...

"personal economic pessimism and concerns about having a good relationship in the future are associated with greater importance of avoiding a pregnancy in the short term" (controlling for economic and relationship status, etc) @karenguzzo.bsky.social, Belykh, @wendymanning.bsky.social , & Roza

I was like, "battering ram?!" what's with the hyperbole? And then I remembered I said basically this same thing in an op-ed four years ago:

Our indifference to the suffering of others is a battering ram, so of course people put off having kids when they're less sure they'll be able to buffer that battering ram's effects. Great work from great family demographers!

I run into a lot of American tourists in London as my flat is close to a lot of hotels and Airbnb properties

I'll miss my sabbatical @eui-eu.bsky.social @eui-sps.bsky.social

CARTOON OF THE DAY (From @dccartoonist.bsky.social )

I co-sign this from @markjacob.bsky.social. I'd add that the industry's shame goes beyond political reporters to everyone who sits in an anchor chair, writes a headline and especially sits in the C-suite.

As a four-decade veteran of the daily journalism business, let me tell you: Every competent political reporter in this country knows that Trump is trying to establish a dictatorship. The industry's shame is that so few journalists will say so, and the ones who do lose their jobs.