this is the simple answer to people who keep saying NATO expansion matters. Sure, it matters because it presented an obstacle to Russian imperial ambitions. Putin didn't invade because he hated NATO expansion, he hated NATO expansion because he wanted to invade

On the Nazi plunder of church bells and the 'sonic gap' left in the postwar period #postwar www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/a...

[screaming at the top of my lungs, once again] the fundamental technology of humanity is care

Wie man promovieren sollte, kann man bei Stefan Zweig nachlesen.

Dear friends from the U.S.: Is this how your generation wants to be seen in the world? This will have long lasting consequences for transatlantic relations. Far longer than any presidential term. 🤯

another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls

«Venezuela has been commandeered by a group of criminals masquerading as a government.» I wonder if there are any other countries in the Western Hemisphere of which you could say the same?

Defeating smallpox, ozone layer depletion, HIV/AIDS and hunger - humankind *is* good at solving problems collectively. Gaining control of climate change, via renewables, is next. Noteworthy that 🇨🇳 and 🇪🇺 take the driver‘s seat.

Kann jemand entziffern, um wen es sich bei der unterstrichenen (und fantastisch gekleideten) Person handelt?

As a terminally earnest journalist and critter, I think about this often:

This is a turning point. We Europeans have the power to push X into irrelevance across our continent. Freeze or delete your accounts now. Media, it’s time to stop citing X. Dozens of universities are leading the way. Let’s limit Elon Musk’s influence in 🇪🇺. #eXit #SciXit #Democracy

Was für ein Signal der Solidarität: 100.000 Menschen haben sich innerhalb weniger Stunden hinter Anna-Lena von Hodenberg und Josephine Ballon von HateAid gestellt. Und verteidigen den Digital Services Act der EU gegen Trump und die Tech-Konzerne. #WirSindHateAid weact.campact.de/petitions/so...

Innerhalb weniger Tage kündigen Sparkasse Göttingen und GLS-Bank alle Konten der Rote Hilfe e.V. Der Grund: US-Druck über SWIFT. Auch DKP, ABC und weitere linke Organisationen sind betroffen. Das ist kein Einzelfall. Das ist politisch. Jetzt ist Solidarität gefragt. rote-hilfe.de/meldungen/ko...

🚨 Vacancies at Maastricht in research programme "Europe: Society, Politics and Global Order" (do share!) - Assistant Prof Political Philosophy in Euro Democracy - Assistant Prof Euro Political History - PostDoc Disinformation and Euro Democracy vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/search/?crea...

When you’ve gone to this place, it’s time to just admit your only interest in antisemitism is claiming it doesn’t exist

Falls ihr es nicht ohnehin schon tut, folgt bitte @hateaid.org, liked und teilt die Beiträge, unterschreibt Petitionen. Wenn ihr noch mehr Kapazitäten habt, schreibt Briefe an die Abgeordneten in euren Wahlkreisen. Es ist mitnichten so, dass wir gar nichts tun können! #EmpathischeSolidarität ✊

Im Mai 2023 stellte uns Anna-Lena von Hodenberg auf unserer Tagung "Mit Algorithmen (ge)denken" das Engagement von @hateaid.org gegen Antisemitismus vor. Wir schätzen sie und ihre Kolleg*innen als zivilgesellschaftliche Partner*innen, damals, heute und in Zukunft. Volle Solidarität.

1927 kam die Fotografin Grete Stern (9. Mai 1904 - 24. Dezember 1999) nach Berlin, unterbrochen von Aufenthalten in Wuppertal und am Bauhaus Dessau. In den frühen 1930er Jahren gründete sie gemeinsam mit Ellen Rosenberg (später Auerbach) das Berliner Fotostudio ringl + pit. 🧵

Post your work on here, even stuff from a few years ago! Not even just to promote it – reading about someone's creative work beats watching yet another post about the US descent into fascism...

Here comes the statement by the European Commission (not attributed to a single person, which means @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu shying away from her responsibilities, but she and @thierrybreton.bsky.social had a difficult relationship)

For anyone who would like to know more about my new chair in the Cultural History of the Body, see: www.uu.nl/en/news/from... If you are interested in working together, do get in touch!

derweil werden andere fragen beantwortet. www.wsj.com/world/middle...

This left wing political correctness is getting out of control bsky.app/profile/kate...

Very proud to report the publication of my first article in Dutch! It is a review article covering recent work by Dutch historians on the Weimar Republic: www.aup-online.com/content/jour...

A nice one from the festive archives about how my family used to spend Christmas at a psychiatric hospital www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Alle maskers vallen af. De EU moet kapot, vindt Trump-trouwe Denktank. Waarom? Omdat de EU als enige nog een vuist maakt in de westerse wereld tegen de techgiganten en Amerikaanse monopoliehouders. Als dat geen schallend compliment voor de kracht van de EU is! nos.nl/l/2595747

If, one day, AI kills us all, it's not because it became sentient and conscious or whatever, but because some private contract says the server park has dibs on the last remaining water supply. This is all completely rational in the infinitely wise calculating machine that is the capitalist market.

Radical bearded cleric issues new fatwa -->

Can anyone recommend Viennese archives which have a collection of Jewish (and "Jewish") ego-documents? I've got the VWI, IKG, DOEW, anything else?

I got to briefly meet Mikhail Gorbachev at the British Library in 1984 (months before Chernenko’s death and Gorbachev’s final ascent to power).

It. Doesn't. Actually. Understand. A. Single. Word. Of. What. It. Is. Fed. It just chops up sentences and calculates how often words follow each other. That's it. Nothing more. It can't summarize material for you because it doesn't understand that material.

Not just a national asset but an international asset. Trashed, ignored, diminished.

The UK will celebrate net emigration and depopulation come 2027. And by 2028 it will start to realise, with an ageing society and low growth, what a really silly thing it has done. The right will go "pro-natalist", the centre-left will be completely stuck.

Das ist das Standard-Framing von Konservativen, Wirtschaftsliberalen & Wirtschaftslobby, um massiv Arbeitnehmerschutzrechte wie Kündigungsschutz, Maximal-Arbeitszeit pro Tag & Woche, Rentenhöhe & -eintrittsalter, bezahlter Krankenstand abgebaut zu kriegen & natürlich um das Drücken der Löhne. Bitte

Middendorf sagt die NS-Terrorherrschaft endet in Sobibor und Treblinka - Orte, die man nicht mehr mit dem kolonialen Kontext nicht mehr greifen kann. Aber die SED-Diktatur und sog. 3te Welt haben Verbindungen und das Koloniale spielt "eine Rolle" (?) Darauf folgt Prof. Dr. Michael Wildts Beitrag ⬇️

This is the kind of thing that makes you realise how easy it must be to sell half-baked trainings to businesses

"I'm politically homeless" The politically homeless encampment

Story time. A grad student (not in history, not at my uni) wanted me to be on their committee as an external reader. They send their proposal. I read it, it's sort of oddly written and poorly argued, but maybe we can work with that I think. I turn to the citations. I see an article by a scholar

I feel like I'm going to get a lot of use out of this Pluribus screencap

One of many things the pro-AI crowd doesn't seem to understand is the very important distinction between academic scholarship and the production of papers. Of course they can be related but they're not necessarily the same thing

The first generation of fascists saw their buddies get machine gunned in half at Verdun. These idiots are raging because they took the racist cartoon off marmalade jars, and fired that crackpot out of the Star Wars show.

It's remarkable how perfectly this awful story is similar to The Dreyfuss Affair, from the banishment to a cruel tropical prison to the world's worst and stupidest people refusing to let it go even for decades after he was freed.

It’s also…their imaginations are just so small. I work in the environmental humanities. People will write about a tree. Like, a specific tree, that exists somewhere (and has a name and all that). Isn’t that beautiful and wonderful and amazing! But also, that tree’s not in the stupid little LLMs!

Also I don’t need to read every book and article, discerning whats important for my research and what isn’t is a really important skill. And what I also do is collaborate with other researchers, organise conferences, edit books, review others‘ work. I don’t need a machine, I have a community

UK not the only ones to self-harm just as the US is creating a new market for foreign students: dub.uu.nl/en/news/econ...

I wish we pushed for research on the political economy of academia more. It's what takes us beyond "oh why did this one person cite a fake journal article?" into "why do we have a system that rewards people who do not engage with prior research and simply churn out pubs?"

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it). But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

14 two-year postdocs for academics of any nationality who cannot continue their research due to US politics. Do share if you know of such.

From a focus group of Gen Z Republicans. (www.city-journal.org/article/manh...) Tell me again about how Zohran Mamdani is the big threat to Jewish thriving in the US today.