I'm just wondering here, but, you know, maybe the presence of the 20th SS Division might have contributed to this destruction. But maybe I'm imagining it.

This is just such a great piece of analysis with photos that take you right into the heart of the action. Incredible work from @anahlcq.bsky.social and @cmluttun.bsky.social!

My article about the implications of the war for Area Studies made it into the top ten list of highest Altmetric Attention Score across all T&F journals over the last week. The article has been made free to access until 31st March. [link in next post]

The “good enough” attitude —valuing productivity for its own sake, pursuing quantity over quality, and generally having low intellectual standards — has long been a path to academic success. AI merely supercharges this. Amazing to see people so openly proud of their own mediocrity though.

It’s fantastically British that Lloyds of London is seemingly instrumental to the likely impending closure of tanker shipments out of the Gulf but that the UK closed down its only gas storage site at Rough in 2021. Two of our six remaining oil refineries also closed last year.

the week's russia unfiltered with @jeremymorris.bsky.social is very good and i still surprised that, as the oldest member--i think--it is _he_ of all people on the new microblog hotness, an the rest are nowhere to be found well, quite possibly na telege but goddamn do i hate telegram's UX

Just want to re-emphasise that despite appearances there are many Goodwins still in academia who love to punch down and love to paint themselves as victims of progress 'gone too far'. They routinely make sexist, racist and classist comments openly, because they know they can.

reupping this take on the perils of historical comparison pertaining to the war. A bit of 'it's the economy stupid', and a review of my successful - if cringe - predictions from January 2022.

A new post summing up what I got wrong and right, four years into the Russian war on Ukraine. Some musings on the problem of prediction, on main problems of not taking economic forces seriously enough, and lots more. postsocialism.org/2026/02/25/a...

Well, this review of my book in Mobilizations journal has made my day.

Shaun Walker's piece in Graun is good, actually. Hate to admit, US and UK intel was right on the money www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

ministerial cats. Grigorii and Filimon.

The dark mirror of Russians deciding - in less than a decade - that they hate Europe and 'we have never been European' even while values-orientations make clear they are the more European than ever. The answer: ignore the presentism of attitude polls.

Good to see Jacobin give space to this very wide-ranging Radical Democracy Network conference on Russia. (there's some quotes of me earlier in the article). Link in next post.

I signed up to the class action against Anthropic as one of my books was used for training. Now I'm imagining how they destroyed it after scanning it; the publisher did not provide author copies because we were too many editors so I have never even owned a physical copy and had to obtain the ebook.

When I suggested we should do this months ago I didn’t believe it was possible tbh. Creative resistance looks like this. Guerrilla looks like this. A revolution doesn’t need blood, it needs courage.

My review essay on "The Work That Never Ends" has been published open access in @conteurohistory.bsky.social. It reviews an edited volume on #emotions and #work, two books on #NS concepts of work and a monograpgh on a #GDR enterprise. Check it out here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #skystorians

bit of fieldwork

In which @tompepinsky.com suggests that #genAI may have is uses for social scientists (and social science?) after all

Interesting discussion with Harvard senior editor in *the other place*. Pitch v. patronage in academic publishing. Reminds me of my mild expose of the scam in a post two years ago: postsocialism.org/2024/05/17/t...

Speaking of which, Reviewer 2 complains my abstract doesn't align at all with my article's argument. Gonna tell him a "big AI did it and ran away".

So my interview with Die Zeit is out. Instead of a snippet of the content - here's some comments. Really not had this level of constructive engagement from readers ever before in mainstream. If anyone wants an English version, just message me.

Re-upping. If you want more reviews of Russia-Ukraine books, take a look at this post and leave a like.

Wow, never thought of that, thanks Tim

Russia's 2025 top inflationary products in "observed basket" of goods: Notarized/reissued official documents (c. +35%) Blood-pressure medicine (c. +25%) Lemons (+32%) Coffee (+26%) Vet services(+23%) social rent (+22%) physical newspapers (+20%). Other food down -15% (!)

Current reading: "A Chto Sluchilos'?: Ethnographies of Holding It Together", Tatiana Chudakova, Cassandra Hartblay, Maria Sidorkina in The Russian Review 83(1).

"a lot of what passes for scholarly work on the Russia-Ukraine conflict fails to meet scholarly standards, becoming a rehash of media sources and stuck in a kind of ‘presentist’ and elite-focussed, geopolitics doom-loop" postsocialism.org/2026/01/21/b...

My pension! We're so back.

Current reading: Kirsti Stuvøy (12 May 2025): Everyday authoritarianism in Russia: new and old stigmatisation and insecurities in monotowns, Contemporary Politics.

I'm not saying this is the case, but it's ironic to think we might enter a timeline with more relative academic freedom from political monitoring (caveats apply) in some Asian contexts than the West. hongkongfp.com/2026/01/20/h...

My interview in Die Zeit coming out shortly. Thanks to them for allowing me this mild criticism of survey data in the German mainstream press.

thread

The gestapo files on public opinion are fascinating. Citizens’ level of grousing about rationing and food availability was a major driver of decision making at the highest levels. Even after the Sportpalast speech there was no capability to really *impose* Total War on the population.

A nonviolent normie protest in literal Nazi germany was successful at impacting policy! The world is not a binary between “enlightened liberal democracy” and “nothing except violence can ever possibly matter”.

ritual humiliation of Vance in exchange for a rock of ice and aquavit

McFaul today: 'i can't understand why Trump isn't embarrassed'... something Washington blobbers are going to be parroting when he starts killing Greenlanders. they didn't blink an eye when he killed 100+ Cubans and Venezuelans. It's always about the niceties of the exercise of Imperial power.

US Army's Northern Warfare Training Center website hasn't been updated since 2018 and their winter 'season' packing list contains gems such as: "(Females) wick away bra as needed" "Underwear (optional) COTTON NOT AUTHORIZED" "Babywipes (NOT AUTHORIZED)" "2 Chapsticks" "1 Tan T-Shirt"

Turns out, Denmark is not alone in deploying troops to Greenland.

a second Hull has hit Yorkshire

BREAKING: Denmark has deployed an advance force and military equipment to Greenland, tasked with preparing to receive reinforcements from the rest of the Danish Armed Forces and allied nations. Follow the story on DR, Denmark’s public-service news outlet. www.dr.dk/nyheder/indl...

Russia Unfiltered is back with our predictions for 2026 and some Russia-related stories you missed from last year. www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2qU...

My most patronizing professional opinion: junior career scholars, don't put just a link to a publication on ResearchGate - put the full text up even just as a private-shareable text and then respond to people who message you there. This is sometimes necessary to start a scholarly 'conversation'.

Great read here from Mark! As my own follow up, some of the 'believers' have responded to me that I'm not doing it right and I need more AI to check and correct the 'bad' AI I'm using. /faceplam

My unfortunate encounter with AI-enhanced research. It doesn't end well. postsocialism.org/2026/01/08/d...

And still no comment from 99% of my US colleagues who say they are 'decolonial' scholars when it comes to North Asia.

HMMMMM GUESS WHO WAS VINDICATED ONCE AGAIN

It’s like if they’d unveiled Ceefax and it did pure evil, and the government said, “Well, what can we do? It’s all in coloured blocks. Laws don’t apply.”

might be needed at this rate. Up the Swedes! Hopefully they won't let their snark towards Denmark prevent them stepping up.