I'm not gonna debate you kitty, I'm not gonna DEBATE

Celebrate the solstice with the amazingly (in the future) star-studded cast of 1968's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Judi Dench as Titania! Ian Richardson as Oberon! Ian Holm as Puck! Helen Mirren as Hermia! David Warner as Lysander! Diana Rigg as Helena! www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9Ry...

"Germany's bench emptied after Deniz Undav scored the winner in the 94th minute. For the first time since they won the World Cup in 2014, Germany are headed to the knockouts. Moments like this make it easy to believe that something special is happening with this team." www.dw.com/en/undav-her...

A real humdinger of a thunderstorm blowing into town right now

"If we shadows have offended, Think but this and all is mended: That you have but slumbered here While these visions did appear." www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/m...

One thing I really loathe about soccer (other than the insane corruption) is how players constantly engage in obvious injury playacting. No other legitimate sport has that, only WWE and UFC, which are obvious scams.

"As you can see, the straits are now open and everyone is having a wonderful time."

Berlin's Sommerbad am Insulaner is offering special solstice hours, from (yes) 4:30am to 9:30pm, sunrise to sunset. From 4pm there are even performances by the Berlin Shakespeare Company (alas, not their wonderful Sommernachtraum, whose production is retired). www.berlinerbaeder.de/events/detai...

Disgusting. A genocidal rant so extreme it violated even a far-right website's few remaining content standards. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Minister for National Security of Israel and special advisor to the Prime Minister. Ask yourselves now who the real Middle East terrorists are.

Your Arcane Fact of the Day: the granddaughter of the last German Kaiser spent her adult life as a housewife in ... Amarillo, Texas! She married one of the famous "Monuments Men" who took her to his Texas hometown where he set up shop as a designer.

Ugh. Wasn't paying attention and put one event in the wrong place by accident even though I knew the date. Boo! Wow who knew the U.S. nearly nuked North Carolina by accident? I didn't. Flashback for June 20, 2026 25 points 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟥🟩🟩 Play here: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Where everybody knows your name Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/19/a...

but it's got electrolytes

Berlin hit 95F/35C today, same high temperature as in Palma de Mallorca. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

It is hotter than an Alabama henhouse here in Berlin, so Kittenz and I have the fans blasting and the curtains drawn watching Fried Green Tomatoes. Who would have thought that a movie about a (barely concealed) lesbian couple taking on the Klan in the 1930s South would become the hit movie of 1991?

When I was a kid, Juneteenth was a very popular local regional holiday (the order was announced in 1865 in Galveston, not far from the town I grew up in). Never imagined it would become an actual Federal holiday that everybody knows about now (as well they should). texashighways.com/travel-news/...

Hot jambalaya! 🌞🌞 34C/93F possible today as the European heat wave finally hits the Berlin region. A blast of literal Saharan heat coming up from North Africa and continuing through the weekend. The canopy is all the way out, windows and curtains and closed, heat will continue through the weekend.

"The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves." -Proclaimed at Galveston, June Nineteenth, 1865.

What a surprise--the 'German World Cup tourist' loving those free refills, all you can eat buffets, and giant gas stations is really an American guy in Chicago. Most of the rest are not what they seem either ( World Cup tourism posts from trips taken months ago etc). www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/d...

Eurocity services from Berlin to Poland now start at Gesundbrunnen station, as the central railway line (the Stadtbahn) will be closed for repair work until the end of the year. How I would love to hop on this train to Gdánsk and tuck in for some pierogi and a cold freshly poured Zywiec. Smacznego!

"Inside the lavish performance hall, I sat next to Zavqiya, 17, a high school student from Tashkent with a lot of questions about what I was doing there. 'How did you even hear about Uzbekistan?' she asked me, in English, while we waited for the show to start." www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/t...

First of all, great meme, second of all, imagine having made a movie *in your 20s* in which practically every line and scene is still an iconic cultural reference half a century later.

There is a myth that adding cocaine to your pancake batter will make it less lumpy, but it will just give your whole family the jitters. cooking.nytimes.com/article/panc...

Sittin' on the dock of the Spree...

"The skills of a ballet performer whose character had recently expired were put severely to the test in Turkey last week when an orange cat wandered onstage during a performance of the “Romeo and Juliet” ballet by Prokofiev." www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/a...

My Southeast Texas hometown working the World Cup connection just down the road pretty hard! Told my students today how I grew up just down the road (by Texas standards) from where the Germany debut game took place.

Take a ride on Berlin's newest (and shortest) commuter rail line, which connects the central railway station to the northern half of the Ring Railway. It passes right by my old office on the way to Gesundbrunnen.

No, this is not the Berlin metro station with the longest name, it is a World Cup shoutout ("Tor" means both "gate" and "goal" in German).

Today is the MRI for my herniated disc that has left me hobbling for the last two months. It's gotten a lot better but still far from normal life. Am dreading it but the practice tells me it is "wide bore" so not as scary as it was, and with a lumbar scan my head may be outside the machine (maybe?).

So the national anthem of Curacao is played with a kazoo, good on them...

Germany isn't really going to take the field with those razzle-dazzle jerseys, are they?

It goes loose! Germany vs Curacao in Houston, Texas. Sodapop is panicking because her famous chili still needs to simmer, but the pregame show has already started. Poor kitty!

Let's do this.

Kickoff for the Germany World Cup opener in Houston (close to my U.S. hometown) is just a few hours away, so Sodapop is making her famous "Cajun Chili", which, scandal of scandals, includes not just beans, but she serves it over rice! Somebody call the Ordnungsamt! Crazy kitty!

Curacao, which is a constituent part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, may be the tiniest nation ever to appear in the World Cup but its players are all (but one) from the European Netherlands born and raised, and many of whom (including the coach) have played or worked for German Bundesliga teams.

Stormy weathurrr...

So one advantage of teaching at a Berufsschule is that I no longer have to supervise kids at the annual end of school rite in Germany known as the Federal Youth Games, where the class troublemakers always got to enjoy a brief moment of accomplishment before ending up in prison or on the dole.

Did you know that Germany has a "Phone Booth Graveyard" and that is finally closing up shop. 4000 rusting phone booths sit in a field outside Berlin, many have been auctioned off to the public as a sort of creative home shelving or garden planters. Their era peaked in 1997 with over 160,000 booths.

Chongqing, China's metro area is the same size as *all of Austria* and has three times as many people (30 million compared to 10 million). So there's that.

Damn (not so ancient) Greeks messed me up again at the end. Flashback for June 13, 2026 25 points 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟥 Play here: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

I gotta say it is going to be trippy seeing my hometown stadium on German TV tomorrow for the World Cup. I marched in band contest at the old Astrodome next door in high school (along with a million football games). www.dfb.de/news/wm-star...

The Bahn giveth, and the Bahn taketh away: on Sunday, trains will be running again on the renovated Berlin-Hamburg railway, after a nearly year-long closure. At the same time, long-distance and regional trains will stop running on the Stadtbahn railway for the rest of the year (S-Bahn service only).

I really wish I had experienced this travel era (though admittedly I could not have afforded it, before deregulation fares could be almost literally stratospheric, thus airlines could indulge in the luxury of these piano lounges etc in the upper deck).

It is quite the soggy Saturday today, so why not spend it doing some comparative southeastern European linguistics? I already discovered that the otherwise only extremely distantly related Slovenian and Kosovar Albanian both start questions with an "if" particle "A". Sprachbund, baby!

The Berlin-Hamburg HSR will reopen this Sunday after being closed for almost a year, though speed limitations will be in place until the end of June. www.rbb24.de/panorama/bei...

RIP David Hockney, 9 July 1937 – 11 June 2026.

Zehlendorf, Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, Spandau

"Perhaps it will be remembered as a testament to excess. Or maybe the fights will become a historical curiosity that’s remembered only by the fighters, their broken bones and bloodied noses souvenirs of the night they did battle in a cage outside the White House." www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Your Berlin Baby Hippo timeline cleanse.