Gwen Jones

Curious peace of news to take our minds off current events a bit.

Two predators were captured in a single frame in the Chornobyl Radiation and Ecological Biosphere Reserve in the Kyiv region.

A purple and white sticker with the following text: “German-spreading [noun]: an act of symbolic violence; taking up a disproportionate amount of public space by shouting in German way too loud in a quiet environment; disrespecting quiet cultures; may be retraumatizing”

Sticker in the toilet of a Czech/ Hungarian train from Budapest to Berlin

Best description ever

Machine learning is a neat tool, but clearly companies are desperate to give “AI” credit for what human scholars accomplish in part because companies have bet the farm on the idea that human ingenuity is expendable. This historian is extraordinary and deserves the real credit.

Promotional image for an online book talk titled 'After Disruption.' Left side shows portraits of Trevor Owens and Shannon Mattern with text: 'After Disruption Book Talk, with Trevor Owens & Shannon Mattern.' Center panel reads: 'September 25th, 10am PT / 1pm ET, Online. Join us for a book talk with Trevor Owens, author of After Disruption: A Future for Cultural Memory, in conversation with Shannon Mattern, as they explore how libraries, archives, and museums can reclaim their role in shaping a just and sustainable digital present.' Logos of Internet Archive and Authors Alliance appear at the bottom. Right side shows the book cover for 'After Disruption: A Future for Cultural Memory' by Trevor Owens, featuring a photo of a grand library entrance.

The digital age threatens our cultural memory. Can libraries, archives & museums create a just, sustainable future?

📖 Learn how in the #booktalk for AFTER DISRUPTION with Trevor Owens & Shannon Mattern.

📅 Thurs Sept 25
🕖 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET
📍 ONLINE
🎟️ www.eventbrite.com/e/1633230118...

Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy (1887-1938) in a striped shirt looking grumpy

mood

Hear hear. Taking back control clearly didn't work the first time round. Why should anyone listen to them again?

Or maybe even Lenny Murphy, chief Shankill Butcher dispatched by the IRA, whose demise was likely a massive relief for the UVF and PUP? The piper played "Abide with Me" at his funeral. What a genre.

Wessel could be a good parallel (let’s wait for the song) or maybe Ernst Thälmann? Posthumous lionisation by a movement that is secretly pleased these guys are no longer around?

Czech Documentary on Russian Disinfo Over Ukraine Exposes Bitter Societal Rifts A bold and controversial documentary about Russian disinformation on the war in Ukraine has ignited a heated debate in Czechia, inflaming tensions between two camps that seem more polarised than ever.

What struck me was the 3 protagonists' apparently total ineptitude to overcome their own rants in relation to the world beyond them. Astonishing emotional and cognitive isolation. That's not to say I was overcome with empathy for these lonely unhappy mofos balkaninsight.com/2025/09/15/c...

Ferenc Nemzetes, 1961–2025 The Blinken OSA Archivum community is mourning the untimely death of our beloved colleague, Ferenc Nemzetes, after a serious and short illness, endured with dignity.

An unbearable loss. Jó utat Feri
archivum.org/news/ferenc-...

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935)

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Composition (2025)

Scandalous!

Do you recall who was JM Prof at SSEES? Yes!

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If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.

Only reminds me of Western liberal prof who tried and failed to stop the forced removal of the Central European University from Budapest. The opponents (then Fidesz) are not gentlemen, they rewrite the rules at whim. Tactics and strategy need ethics & muscle or at least willingness to land a punch

Exactly. I often wonder if people in the 1930s also felt their sanity was being chipped away by the constant barrage of these voices. You can shut your eyes but not your ears

Serbien: Demokratie kann Viral gehen - mit Dejan Mihajlović Dejan Mihailović ist Referent für Demokratiebildung und digitale Transformation beim Zentrum für Schulqualität und Lehrerbildung Baden-Württemberg. Er lebt in Freiburg und ist sowohl Lehrer als auch H...

Unermüdlich gehen Studierende & die Zivilgesellschaft in Serbien protestieren. Unermüdlich lässt uns @mihajlovicfreiburg.com daran teilhaben, berichtet von der Beharrlichkeit und den Zielen der Bewegung.
Mit ihm habe ich über den Ursprung der Proteste, Präsident Vučić und die Rolle der EU gesprochen

Tilda Swinton could do it no sweat

Tapestries are a really neat, user- and reader-friendly contribution to the world of online presentation, & a project of the Internet Archive
tapestries.media/t/dfc73e6e-9...

a 19th century embroidery sampler showing the solar system, the distance of the planets from the sun, and the length of time it takes each planet to circle the sun

Imagine the complicated and precious genius of the girl who made this embroidery sampler in 1811

The Solar System, sampler, unknown maker, 1811, England. Museum no. T.92-1939. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Sensible Hairstyles for Women Over 50 “When you step over a certain age, you wonder what upgrades to make to your image so that you could look decent, respectable, fairly youthful, and ...

"Chop off your shoulder-length hair, wrap it around your decommissioned womb, and return it to the heavens inside a paper lantern."

Sadly no 🦓 in this clip but largely the same Fidesz aesthetic of imposing rigorous order and right angles on anything green. Trees enclosed in case they get any funny ideas and start causing havoc. Cf. Városliget

Undoubtedly. And I understand they've all been busy this year moving their liquid assets out of HU. It will be fascinating to see how this ends, which it will. Also don't think they have the stomach for anything involving armed force. What will happen to the toy trains and luxury hotels?

I really think that the remnants of his political career will be the stuff of fairy tales: the mad king eating his zoo, flying around on magic carpets and casting spells that don’t work so well any more

He’s entering the Henry VIII league

The silhouette! Plane belongs to the ecosystem built around a right-wing AI chatbot who hallucinates all the most painful parts of modern Hungarian history

I've now been allowed and asked to share more details about what's going down at the University of Oregon, which involves imminent announcement of firings, among others, of tenure-track and tenured faculty. Given the units impacted (see below), please share this with your professional networks in related disciplines and start getting ready to put pressure (or begin putting pressure already) on the University of Oregon upper admin to abandon this alleged plan before they finalize it. It appears that, with no prior consultations, the departments of Religion and Classics (two separate units), and the programs in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, German & Scandinavian, Judaic Studies, Arabic Studies, and Holocaust Studies (the latter five all parts of a previously-consolidated mega unit called the Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages) are facing imminent announcement of elimination (expected the week of Sept 7), with layoffs of pre-tenure, tenured, and career faculty in these units. The reason given is "financial exigency" -- upper administrations of several universities across the country (and in blue states like Oregon also) appear to be giddy to use the context of Trump attacks on higher ed to dismantle the humanities. Faculty at OU won a faculty union not long ago; this may be, in part, a retaliation for that, I've been told. The union is working with AAUP, etc.; my understanding is that the maximum spotlight is needed at this point.

A massive attack on several humanities units (Arabic Studies, Judaic Studies, Holocaust Studies, Classics, Religion, German & Scandinavian, Russian/East European/Eurasian Studies) *and* tenure now unfolding at the University of Oregon (a blue state!). Closure of units and faculty layoffs threatened.

UNITED24 - The initiative of the President of Ukraine UNITED24 was launched by the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the main venue for collecting charitable donations in support of Ukraine. Funds will be transferred to the official accounts of...

Public Service Announcement: if what's happening in Alaska makes you sick, a donation to Ukraine would improve your health

Leningrad Cowboys album cover featuring a man in a suit with stupid haircut embracing a tiny man in a soviet red army uniform. Text in fake Cyrillic reads "happy together"

When Putin visited Budapest in 2014 the entire city was shut down and we all followed his planes fly around but not over 🇺🇦
It was spooky and the actual 56ers were dumbfounded. My colleague said it's like the Master and Margarita round here. That was a very long time ago.