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.

A warning to Venezuela noteholders from recent history. as.ft.com/r/dd9b4e13-d...

Just sent this to my US colleagues who are members of a research association I'm in.

Please stop posting takes like 'Venezuela is about the [insert thing you care about such as deportations or oil]'. You don't effing know! "Venezuela is about libidinal economy" See, we can all do that and mine's no worse!

As usual, Danish equivalent of BBC does not disappoint with this informative coverage:

Checking in with the 'decolonial' area studies scholars today. One removes DC employer from their bio. Another condemns 'horrible analogies' (but nothing else). Another posts a cartoon ridiculing 'tankie takes'. From the rest: silence.

Best explainer from a critical perspective of the Venezuelan path from popular rebellion to Maduro's rentier capitalism 'with socialist characteristics' is this piece from 2024 by KCL's Thomas Purcell.

We've been upgraded from 'forever wars' to 'whatever wars'.

3. Returning Venezuelan exiles and opposition networks find themselves without promised US support, army factions, militias, narco-gangs, illegal mining paramilitaries, Colombian insurgents like ELN pick sides and a country with 6 million weapons in circulation plunges into escalating conflict

Current reading (an excellent article): Preter, V., & Lerner, J. (2024). Class rivalry in ethno-national migration: Soviet intelligentsia vs. the Russian middle class in Israel. Social Identities, 30(3), 156–175.

This was an outstanding essay and well worth the subscription price of NLR alone.

Good excuse to endorse Tatiana Linkhoeva's Revolution goes East, which I'm nearly finished reading.

My roundup of what I blog-posted - and didn't post - in 2025. Be prepared for monsters. From Ukrainian working classes, methodological clashes, fieldwork reflections, to discussion about blogging platforms for academics. Usual snark and awkwardness guaranteed or your money back.

A real nice Christmas present to be the author of one of the five books that Meduza recommends here.

In parallel to Mapping the Planetary, we also have a podcast called 'Planetary Choices' via the Research Center for New Critical Politics and Governance, Aarhus University. Episode One: The New Order of Planetary Governance - A Conversation with Nils Gilman cpg.buzzsprout.com/2543607/epis...

I told you about my Danish auntie who started foaming at the mouth parroting the statsminister: 'we're at waaaaarrrrrrrr' after this happened? Turns out it was all down to her sister Bodil from Tarm who had too much homemade julebryg and saw a plane coming in to land at Legoland.

Doing a mass book clear-out. Here's some random snippets of books going to the pulper: Connor 1972 Deviance in Soviet Society. Margin note is not by me but is funny nevertheless. Also tells you nothing ever changes with gullible and stupid foreigners writing about Russia.

Russia Unfiltered #8: What have Ozempic production, the rising cost of Yandex taxi-rides and significant wage-arrears in the Russian economy got in common? Find out in our eighth podcast. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bcl...

"Bluntly, even in 2022 we only supported Ukrainians because they fought like heroes from Norse myth and got results. We didn’t support them because it was the morally right thing to do." @drjademcglynn.bsky.social smalldeedsbigwar.substack.com/p/circus

New blogpost - the merits of attending to YouTube russophone political commentary. In short, it's a lot more informative than Twitter or Bsky, that's for sure. Kagarlitsky, Schulmann, and Zubarevich. Five hours of interviews condensed into a single post. Link in the next post:

Peak Russian émigré posting in the other place: 'I don't travel [to Russia] but I can tell you how the country is changing' then a long prose-poem linking to a paid pseudoscience therapy in Istanbul. Symptomatic of those who 'woke up' in Feb 22. You had no interest before?

So at what time does crypto's slide become a run as everyone realizes they've got to bail before they're the one holding the bag?

Ticking time-bomb 💣 Russian companies are spending 40% of their profits paying just the interest on their debt, according to a Kremlin think tank. Source: @themoscowtimes.com www.moscowtimes.ru/2025/11/17/r...

Strikes on refineries have been the only tariffs Russia hasn't been able to wriggle out of (at least some extent). The West's leadership has shown itself to be overall weak, compromised and effete - a message not only Russia & co has noted, but also voters. #econsky

The academic world has done an extremely bad job at making even the most basic things about how academics works publicly understood.

What's unfortunate about this kind of coverage is that it interprets Russian reality in precisely the way the Kremlin would like its population to. While in reality this story has almost zero purchase on what's going on with Russian youth. (you can tell that from whom is quoted and not quoted).

Did a short blog on audience questions when I do a talk. "access to information in Russia is not the problem, nor is censorship: the real problem is that people with doubts or moral objections are made to feel isolated and in the minority, when that’s not the case at all." Link in the next post:

Save the date! www.zois-berlin.de/en/events/ta... 16 January 2026, Berlin, we're organising our second conference : "Taking Stock: Russia and the Russians Four Years After the Full-Scale Invasion" This time, we teamed with @zois.bsky.social to build this exciting programme with 4 panels.

Another excellent blog post from @jeremymorris.bsky.social about the perils of positivism and the grave insult / misunderstanding inherent in dismissing ethnography as "anecdotal." Also, the article features a half naked lady. Something for everyone. postsocialism.org/2025/11/01/e...

"When I present my work, it often meets incredulity or hostility, even among fellow social scientists. I can’t tell you how many times my work has been downgraded to ‘that’s just an anecdote’". Link to a rant in the next post.

As the grim darkness descends on Europe (minus Russia) with its insistence on an observing an archaic October clock-ritual, why not brighten your evening with these three blokes talking about which Ru-adjacent journalists and pundits they despise the most. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvGP...

90% of publications now fit this description tbf

Reupping: "Russia has moved towards a much more rigid ideological structure and has an official ideology, but at least to this reader, the book, with its repetition of the terms 'repertoires' and 'plasticity', seems to argue for something different"

New post - a mammoth, though partial, review of Marlene Laruelle's new book on Putinism as ideology. I find a lot to like in her 400 page meticulous treatment, but also a bit of a gap between her final thesis and her evidence. Link in the next post.

Re-uping