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Ned Richardson-Little

@historyned.bsky.social

Historian of international crime, international law, human rights and the illiberal right in Germany at ZZF Potsdam. Also teaching at FU Berlin. he/him. Principal Investigator: #OtherGlobalGermany and #il_liberal

8,168 Followers  |  3,446 Following  |  3,737 Posts  |  Joined: 07.08.2023
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Posts by Ned Richardson-Little (@historyned.bsky.social)

Papers please! No not your passport, the last six years of bank statements...

02.03.2026 13:14 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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β€œMy β€˜methodology’ was a series of errors”: Gemini generates false records and fake screenshots of TNA website | Who Do You Think You Are Magazine The Gemini LLM generates fake records and screenshots from the UK National Archives, a family historian has revealed

Gemini: 'I deeply regret the time and effort you spent searching for references that I fabricated. My β€˜methodology’ was a series of errors and an attempt to cover those errors with more artificial information.'

www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/news/gemini-...

02.03.2026 12:06 β€” πŸ‘ 155    πŸ” 103    πŸ’¬ 10    πŸ“Œ 54

I am regularly kind of in awe at the ecological and egalitarian ambition of the political forces they imagine compared to the ones that actually exist in reality.

02.03.2026 09:43 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Kind of amazing the evolution of collective xenophobic paranoid fantasies from "evil foreigners want to steal your children" to "evil international forces want to steal your car."

02.03.2026 09:20 β€” πŸ‘ 17    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

We are at the sunsetting of a new dark age?

02.03.2026 09:13 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Bo Burnham's Country Song | Netflix Is A Joke
YouTube video by Netflix Is A Joke Bo Burnham's Country Song | Netflix Is A Joke

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7im...

01.03.2026 15:46 β€” πŸ‘ 31    πŸ” 7    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 1
Fotografie von Ossietzky als 26-JΓ€hriger im Jahr 1915. Er trΓ€gt das Haar gescheitelt, einen Anzug und Krawatte. Er blickt ernst in die Kamera. Nachweis von wiki commons folgt.

Fotografie von Ossietzky als 26-JΓ€hriger im Jahr 1915. Er trΓ€gt das Haar gescheitelt, einen Anzug und Krawatte. Er blickt ernst in die Kamera. Nachweis von wiki commons folgt.

Am 28. Februar 1933 wurde Carl von Ossietzky von der Gestapo verhaftet, gefoltert und im GefΓ€ngnis Spandau interniert.

"Was er an bâsen und hÀßlichen Instinkten hervorgerufen hat, wird nicht so leicht verwehen und für lange Jahre noch das gesamte âffentliche Leben in Deutschland verpesten. [...]" 🧡

28.02.2026 06:29 β€” πŸ‘ 122    πŸ” 50    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 1

It's been memory holed now, but that was the Hilary 2008 Dem primary pitch in a lot of ways.

27.02.2026 11:09 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Congratulations! Look forward to reading it πŸ₯³πŸΎ

26.02.2026 13:32 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Cover of book with text in yellow reading: The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires, overlaid on an image of an angel in seventeenth-century dress with wings and a long gun.

Cover of book with text in yellow reading: The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires, overlaid on an image of an angel in seventeenth-century dress with wings and a long gun.

Hello Bluesky! My new book, THE FIREARM REVOLUTION, is out on 14 April. It’s about how a new technology changed society, and how hard it was to control. Here’s a little thread of what’s inside:

26.02.2026 12:33 β€” πŸ‘ 707    πŸ” 208    πŸ’¬ 32    πŸ“Œ 32

Read this too quickly and saw Borges on the Muppet Show and honestly he probably would have been great on it.

26.02.2026 10:01 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Trying to imagine Jean de BrΓ©beuf wandering around trying to get signal for his iPhone.

26.02.2026 09:11 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Yeah, I haven't even processed the idea that he thinks draft horses can now enjoy playing video games all day because they aren't weighed down by the 9-5.

25.02.2026 20:41 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Reading and course assignments are not industrial processes to be optimized by automation because the purpose is not to maximize the output of material per student.

25.02.2026 20:39 β€” πŸ‘ 12    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I can listen to Miles Davis so why bother learning to play music? I can watch video of Judith Polgar playing chess so why bother learning to play? I can google a picture by Picasso why why bother producing art?

My god these people have such impoverished inner lives and they have so much power.

25.02.2026 20:38 β€” πŸ‘ 26    πŸ” 4    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

Most of these guys seem to have converted on the basis of seeing the film Kingdom of Heaven and not getting about 50% of it.

25.02.2026 18:38 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

We're there some armed intra-service standoffs during that brief period when it looked like he might actually hand over power to Medvedev already? I remember a documentary claiming that this kicking off is what Putin used to justify to his more skeptical friend that he needed to stick around forever

25.02.2026 11:07 β€” πŸ‘ 15    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Screenshot von "Kufiyas in Buchenwald": "Gedenkwochenende zum 81. Jahrestag der Selbstbefreiung Buchenwalds"

Screenshot von "Kufiyas in Buchenwald": "Gedenkwochenende zum 81. Jahrestag der Selbstbefreiung Buchenwalds"

Es ist bezeichnend, dass die Kampagne gegen die GedenkstΓ€tte #Buchenwald sich am eindimensionalen Topos der "Selbstbefreiung" orientiert, der nach 1945 zum GrΓΌndungsmythos der DDR werden sollte. Ein Thread ΓΌber unterkomplexe Geschichtsbilder und schematisches Freund-Feind-Denken. 1/x ⬇️

24.02.2026 10:01 β€” πŸ‘ 83    πŸ” 42    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 5

This is the complaint about German doctors telling you to drink tea and stay home, but with most viruses that is basically the only thing that actually makes you etter unless you want to get jacked up on pseudoephedrine to keep going to work.

25.02.2026 08:04 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Why do you need fresh content in every publication when there is only one party line?

24.02.2026 17:01 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Recreating the old Neues Deutschland - Berliner Zeitung style recycling of the GDR

24.02.2026 16:56 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

to be fair, he also seems to hate reading

24.02.2026 09:14 β€” πŸ‘ 20    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Agreed - I've found the German system is pretty resilient against this so far since many of the weak points AI is exploiting are the newfangled pedagogy of the last thirty years that has never arrived here.

24.02.2026 09:11 β€” πŸ‘ 16    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

If you know anything about Richard Evans as a German historian, the idea that he would ask his students to have pleasant correspondence with David Irving is fantastical

24.02.2026 09:09 β€” πŸ‘ 15    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

From Peter Fritzsche's Germans into Nazis

24.02.2026 08:28 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Yes - this was a particular beef with US colleges. It was all arriving as I was leaving the US system and everything I've seen since makes it look like a lot of uni admin went all in on transforming coursework into a busybox

24.02.2026 08:13 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Next up is Curie - the science app for men.

24.02.2026 07:02 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

It’s not the main cause of this, but ed tech online textbooks with dozens of micro assignments primed students to see university as a pile of little hurdles to jump over as opposed to an education.

24.02.2026 06:39 β€” πŸ‘ 40    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 4

Glad to see the mask is off and someone is openly offering a cheating app rather than being coy about it.

24.02.2026 06:36 β€” πŸ‘ 85    πŸ” 13    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 1

Always fun when right wing culture warriors present their side in a way that is vastly more simplistic and reductive than any left wing critique.

23.02.2026 21:18 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0