It is impossible to explain US politics in 2025 without knowledge about Video Games and Instagram.

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“Amid the clash of arms, the laws are silent”

Ok it has now stopped to be funny.

Amateur view. AI bubble shows that there is too much money chasing too few opportunities for genuine innovation. The solution is to take a medium/long view and put much more funding into basic science in universities rather than cutting as is happening now. (But I would say that wouldn’t I?)

Quick: Let us send every general off to lose 30 pounds. There is nothing else going on in the world they need to pay attention to.

This is embarassing.

I am not in the Labour Party. Or in England. I am still very surprised.

This is all so very weird.

Deleted last tweet because of too many deranged responses. I am afraid I don’t have that kind of time.

Call for applications! 📣 The German Historical Institute London is seeking a Research Associate with a particular research interest in medieval history (with a focus on late medieval English history) for a part-time project position to start on 1 February 2026. 🤝 1/3

This is my regular reminder to everyone that jstor is open to the general public now; a free account there will give you access to 100 papers a year.

The AfD qualified for three mayoral run-offs in cities in North Rhine-Westphalia today, and lost all by big margins. The lesson is not that we have overdone the AfD's rise, but that we do perhaps sometimes underestimate the counter-mobilisation effects - including in east Germany, incidentally.

Children and young adults in London are being recruited by hostile states such as Russia and Iran to carry out sabotage and other crimes, the Metropolitan Police has said. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Everyone on Social Media should read this. @radiofreetom.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

If you're starting a postgraduate course in History this autumn, please do consider joining the Royal Historical Society bit.ly/41mTuck Postgraduate Membership brings access to research funding, events, publications and networks. You'll join an international community of more than 6500 historians.

Genuine questions: When exactly did "immigrants" become "migrants" in British discourse and why? I think it sounds awful. Am I overthinking this?

Worth reading. And deeply concerning.

I visited an asylum centre (AZC) in south Holland today and honestly, it was the loveliest experience. Friendly staff; nice facilities; cheerful young residents from Eritrea, Somalia, Syria making guests injera, baklava and coffee. Just as far as you can imagine from stereotypes of violent thuggery.

The former Welsh leader of Nigel Farage’s right-wing party Reform UK, Nathan Gill, has admitted to taking bribes in exchange for making pro-Russia statements while a member of the European Parliament. www.politico.eu/article/uk-e...

This made me laugh out loud, forget my worries for ten minutes, and want to have lunch with @janinegibson.ft.com in a garden center. As for Tom Holland, good actor, weird man.

How is this not front page news? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A lot of migration is driven by network effects too. Helene's right that we shouldn't assume past patterns will continue.

Can confirm

I would also point out that the world is currently changing in pretty dramatic ways so this isn‘t about going back to the early 2000s, it is about thinking ahead.

this is an extraordinary canary in the coal mine

An exceptionally tasteless headline from a publication that should really know better, especially at a time like this. But I suppose it resonates with a sensationalist Anglo crowd and their deeply rooted prejudices.

This thread is worth reading to the end

So, to be clear, Reform UK want a state strong enough to carry out mass deportations but identity cards would be a step too far in terms of state power?

Actually a British woman I know told me she did not like that Movie because after all, the victims of the Stasi in it were quite "privileged“ so their situation could not have been as bad as all that.

Exactly. It is tasteless beyond belief.

This other foreigner is equally perplexed.

The sheer parochialism of a tabloid newspaper pretending that ID cards would turn Britain into the GDR AT A TIME when a Russian dictator is trying to destroy the post-Soviet order of 1990 in Europe, and the USA is flirting with authoritarianism, is something to behold.

I tell you now, if things go on like this, you'll have to get a little book encoded with biometric data just to cross the UK border, and then where will we be? East Germany, that's where we will be.

2. “It’s too complicated, government will screw it up, it can’t work”. This kind of thing irritates me. Almost every country in Europe has a universal ID. It is clearly not beyond the wit of man. Govts exist to do things. “They might screw it up” is an arg against everything & therefore nothing.

This is not going to change until those who make the weather in SW1 stop using X. And that really does mean everyone.

Keir Starmer writes in the Telegraph (where else!?) that Labour “did shy away from people’s concerns around illegal immigration.” Perhaps I was living in a parallel universe when I wrote this for @politicalquarterly.bsky.social in 2014? (Free to read version here: qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/bitstr...)

Does anybody else wake up now and then and wonder for the first two minutes of being awake if all of 2025 has just been a big misunderstanding?

I just read two different articles trying to explain the foreign policy of the Trump Administration in completely different ways. Both presuppose that there is such a thing as a coherent strategy. What if there is not. And we bend over backwards to find a rational explanation when there is none.

look at that

Last time I looked Robert Jenrick was not leading the Conservative Party

The IHR Black British History seminar series is now on BlueSky! Follow us for updates and keep your eyes peeled for information about our upcoming seminars 👀 @ihr.bsky.social #BlackBritishHistory #historians #academia

A close ally of Nigel Farage has said Bolshevik revolutionaries who killed Russian intellectuals “had a point”, called for the abolition of several UK regulators, and defended Liz Truss’s chaotic “mini” Budget www.ft.com/content/76a4...

I don’t think that this is just labour people, but, researching attitudes towards minorities for the book I am currently writing, I was surprised how deeply engrained the conviction is among experts & politicians that things could never take a very ugly turn in the UK. A perilous form of certainty.

Interesting. How, exactly?

I am getting sick. I have no time to be sick. 🤧

This makes me very happy

The point is we cannot be sure. Also, Putin cannot be sure. Which automatically means more instability. Because we are more afraid, and might overreact or be paralysed if tested. And because Putin might just roll the dice.

Wonderful! A true hero in the fight against the Nazi occupiers (as well as a great historian and the author of 'L'Étrange Défaite', which remains a must-read on the failure of France's high command in 1940)

Well.