Sarah's old dog, her old friend in racing down the mountains, is old and getting older. Sarah, why you gotta make me cry like this? www.lastwordonnothing.com/2025/09/24/t...

NEW: Ten years after the Islamic State group executed Khaled al-Asaad, the “father of Palmyra,” his family recalls the man who gave his life to protect Syria’s greatest archaeological treasure. Cian Ward reports for @newlinesmag.bsky.social. newlinesmag.com/spotlight/sy...

"Why is Berlin SO BORING!?" complained my 11-y-old child, upon receiving a photo of a funny-looking cloud from a cousin in Wisconsin.

So often I went from Berlin to #GöbekliTepe in the past 20 years or so - but finally the Tepe is coming to Berlin! 😉 🏺 www.trtworld.com/article/a7e6...

German evening news broadcast called @jimmykimmel.com a "Talkmaster," which is a great vocabulary word I am going to use all the time now. #kimmel

I love the idea of Robert Redford going for a ride with Edward "Monkeywrench Gang" Abbey and writing about it for National Geographic. Those were the days, man.

Considering a thread of "famous Currys to whom I am not related," starting with this guy: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_...

big part of this is because they sent the health reporters, not the political reporters

hell yes

So sweet to see all the people limping around Berlin wearing their commemorative marathon medals today. Good job, runners!

Your astonishing artifact this week is a bronze statuette of a Roman actor pretending to fart. 🎭💨🏺

Also, if you see a post about video game fascists getting punched and immediately take real-life personal offense, it's pretty clear where you stand politically.

Really interesting story on how satellites (and chemistry) could be used to locate cartel victims:

Housing crisis solution incoming

You can spot 4 emblems - some modified - directly under the coat of arms of the city. The blank space in one of them might already be a strong clue to some.... 4/9

Where the separate divisions of ANTIFA landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944:

Knock on the door, 10:30 PM last night. It's a police officer, evacuating the building: WWII bomb found in the river 200m away. - "I'll wake everyone up and get our stuff. When do we have to be out?" - "You have to come with me, right now. You're the last people in the neighborhood." Long night.

These are precedented times and the precedent is a loud ass warning www.nytimes.com/1939/02/04/a...

A free and democratic society cannot silence comedians because the President doesn’t like what they say. This is an attack on free speech and cannot be allowed to stand. All elected officials need to speak up and push back on this undemocratic act.

Germany's journalist's union head today calling on the US media to "not cave in to MAGA cult": "We are observing a rapid erosion of freedom of the press and freedom of expression in the US... Their servility toward Trump will not bring them peace, but will result in further pressure."

Surely a candidate for one of the best corrections ever?

Oh, hell no

Obama on Charlie Kirk:

Watching Gregor Gysi (Left) and Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (CSU) -- arguably opposite ends of the political spectrum -- have a civil and intelligent debate on a prime time German TV talk show (Maischberger) makes me sad for America, because my main reaction is "this could never happen back home."

Imagine learning that Concentration Camps in Germany were ordered to remove signs and other exhibits documenting the suffering and hardships of Jewish prisoners. That's what we are talking about when it comes to the tory of slavery at Harpers Ferry. #NationalParks www.wlbt.com/video/2025/0...

Haunting image of three southern slaveholders, c. 1850. The banal face of evil. Original daguerreotype in the Metropolitan Museum, colorized and restored by Frank Hellsten

When John Yoo says you are doing something that seems like a war crime, my friend, you are doing war crimes.

wait, but I thought crime was totally out of control in cities?

I saw this headline this morning and thought, "this is an insane thing to do," but then of course remembered it's very much part of an ideologically motivated plan to whitewash and deny America's history.

If you're an early-career journalist, consider applying for @theopennotebook.bsky.social's paid, mentored fellowship and follow in the footsteps of @katherinejwu.com, @janehu.bsky.social, @sciwriabdul.bsky.social, @1juliarosen.bsky.social, @celiaford.bsky.social and many more! Deadline: 10/31.

Calling all early-career journalists (and graduating seniors or MA students): Apply for a Fulbright! The Berlin Capital Program is designed to give young reporters international experience:

I feel like I make this point every few weeks, but driving is the single riskiest thing most Americans do each day.

I kinda knew about the cows and livestock feed, but this is a surprising amount of land for horses and golf and airports. And Weyerhaeuser.

shoutout to tumblr user kleinergeist for this post which is going straight into my powerpoint for Grendel day in my monster class this week

The @nytimes.com has rarely felt as hopelessly out of its depth as in the past two days or so. There is still much I admire, many journalists I respect and trust, but on the Charlie Kirk assassination it simply hasn’t been very informative - not to mention some atrocious opinion “journalism”.

doubt it convinces anyone but i like the pro-solar framing that it's better at converting energy than corn. fuck corn, we're kicking corn's ass now

Things have come a long way since the "gunpowder archaeology" days...

The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest ended #OnThisDay in AD 9, after Germanic tribes led by Arminius, who was a #Roman citizen, ambushed and destroyed three Roman legions, establishing the Rhine as the border between the Empire and 'barbarians'. 1/2 🏺 #Archaeology

My parents took me out of a country where this was the norm and where it led to the execution and imprisonment of millions of innocent people. They brought me here, to America, believing that it would not happen here. And yet here we are.

Paging @maartenlarmuseau.bsky.social www.science.org/content/arti...

“The government sometimes makes brief, investigative stops to check the immigration status of those who gather in locations where people are hired for day jobs such as construction, landscaping, agriculture or car washes…and who do not speak much if any English.” -Justice Kavanaugh

Random woman watching 35+ cyclists roll up to a stoplight in Berlin this morning at 8:55 AM (it was the tail end of the early-morning group ride): "Don't you people have jobs?"

At a breakneck speed of 0.008 knots (or 25cm/min), the Oseberg ship is once again on the move today, for the first time in almost a century.

Wrenching and enraging. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

For those of you who find cycling doesn't offer enough stimulation or fresh air, this suite of handlebar electronics comes complete with TWO cell phones and an electric fan. (Spotted at Berlin's consumer electronics trade fair.)

There are 408,000 schoolkids in Berlin. That's so many.

Buried at the bottom of the "what happened over the summer" letter from kid's school: "Phosphorus bomb located and professionally removed from the long jump sand pit on Aug. 28." For more on why Berliners are cool as ice when it comes to this stuff, a piece I wrote for @atlasobscura.com in 2020:

p.s. The great transit solution is great public transit and urban design that makes it make sense. Here's a German response to the Economist piece praising driverless cars as the future: bsky.app/profile/momm...

One thing I like about this fine graphic is the way that it captures some of the nuances of vaccines and history. Not all vaccines were instantly 100% effective disease-killers--look at the mumps chart. But they are overall a fantastically valuable weapon in the fight against infectious disease.