@ykomska.bsky.social
writer, German prof, cultural historian of material things that metaphors hide 📚The Icon Curtain; Linguistic Disobedience • 2026: On a Wire above the Abyss: Walking the Tightrope before & after Nazism • next: bio of Curious George • ❤️ in E. Europe • 🐰,🍄,🪡
I’m so sorry. It’s utter insanity
🌺 ❤️ 💋
“This week, Cathay Pacific was selling business-class seats from Sydney to London – stopping in Hong Kong – at £20,000 each.” giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
Wish people were as crown-shy
“When war damages historic monuments, more than architecture is lost. Fragments of cultural memory that have endured for centuries disappear with them.
Once destroyed, these monuments cannot truly be replaced.”
Die Universität Leipzig setzt Kürzungen des eigenen Haushalts durch die Nichtverlängerung von laufenden Promotionsstellen um, meine ist auch betroffen. kreuzer-leipzig.de/2026/01/29/l...
We live in an age when goal-stating has become a meaningless institutional norm at every step—yet for the biggest picture, nothing makes actual sense, institutions blindly jump on the tech bandwagon just because it’s moving, and sense-making is an act of ex post facto rhetorical damage control
I’m less offended by the misogyny than by the AI bros retroactively imputing social intent and quasi-empowering, conservative-revolutionary sense to flukes and accidental bugs in their project, where the only real intent is a deeply antisocial and anti-political urge to self-enrich and self-empower
I still have to read Distant Star!
Die bittere Ironie: Ein echter Konservativer würde die Nationalbibliothek als Heiligtum behandeln. Weimer behandelt sie als Altlast. Was er betreibt, ist nicht konservativ. Er gibt sich modern, ist aber marktliberal. Er gibt sich zukunftsorientiert, ist aber kulturell ahnungslos.
I prefer the original + political imagination
Living through multiple empires’ decline takes a toll on one’s health and wellbeing, I’m noticing
worth reading as a lens on how to try and process the already much more unhinged, deranged, and deeply, dizzyingly, and often boringly cultish declining US empire’s twilight
Sheila Fitzpatrick walked by lots of everyday Soviet weirdness without wanting to write about any of it until someone else did, almost like she’d been Soviet and too preoccupied with survival to pay attention www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
The hack of the British Library, from which it has still not fully recovered, should have been a warning that we cannot rely on digital books alone, but that would require the people making decisions on these topics to be even mildly informed on the subject.
*berücksichtige
Als das Sprachen- und Literatur-Gebäude von meinem Arbeitgeber (die stolze ivy league etc) renoviert wurde, wurde uns erklärt, dass man für die kommenden 100 Jahre baue und daher nicht die „veralteten“ Medien wie Bücher mit ihren nutzlosen und teuren Regalen beabsichtige. Weimer hat nichts erfunden
„Zur Begründung seiner Entscheidung erklärte der Staatsminister, die Sammlung körperlicher Medienwerke bis weit in die Zukunft hinein sei nicht mehr zeitgemäß; die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek solle sich stärker auf die digitale Sammlung konzentrieren.“
I met with AI data labelers in Kenya who are organizing their colleagues to fight the brutal working conditions and horrible pay given to the workers at the "bottom of the AI supply chain." They believe the NDAs they've signed are unenforceable so are speaking out:
www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...
One oil-profiteering aggressor state is enabling another war-profiteering aggressor state and both make maximum profits with inpunity www.bbc.com/news/article...
More than *3 million* people have been displaced inside Iran since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war, the U.N. refugee agency says. Most of them have fled Tehran and other urban areas. www.unhcr.org/news/press-r...
Cities in Vermont and Maine are experiencing some of the same tactics that ICE has been using across Minnesota since December, and facing lots of resistance.
SCOOP: The writing software Grammarly will discontinue its AI “Expert Review” feature, which used the names of authors without their permission to suggest edits. But parent company Superhuman is still facing a class-action lawsuit over it, brought by journalist @juliaangwin.com.
Weimers Verfassungsschutz-Aktion war erst der Anfang. Dahinter steckt ein größerer Plan des Innenministeriums. Recherche mit Markus Balser:
*taps internet microphone*
After months of work, a project i've been coordinating for @literaryhub.bsky.social in conjunction with @maris.bsky.social is now live ...
We've commissioned 13 reviews of books by LGBTQ folks not covered by the NYTBR under Pamela Paul ...
lithub.com/what-was-los...
“IDF officers say they are mostly ‘fighting this war in English’.” Time to rekindle conversations about language as war materiel complicit in atrocities. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
Join us on 14 April for a special panel discussion! 📅
We will be in conversation with Professor David Nirenberg (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) to mark the 30th anniversary of his seminal publication "Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages".
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Such framing reduces universities to vocational school for tech pipeline and is wrong, because a lot of students (esp. those for whom STEM was a gilded cage) flock to humanities for plainly intellectual reasons and because they feed their souls
“There’s a broader and increasing sense from students that something is being stolen from them”https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2026/mar/10/ai-impact-professors-students-learning
Imagine the international community were as good at restricting refuge for the mega-rich as they are for the poorest giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...