Joe Litobarski

Here’s something I’m curious about…

Historians, do you put an explicit methodology section in your journal articles?

📚CALL FOR PROPOSALS: The Journal for the History of Knowledge is now receiving proposals for the Special Issue 2028. The submission deadline is 1 May 2026. All information is available on our website: journalhistoryknowledge.org/announcement...

"We've failed to terminate the Rwanda treaty by mistake"

Quote by Steven Everts in De Standaard: "This is not just about Trump. He is both a symptom and an accelerator of an America that is fundamentally changing anyway. [...] The ancestral ties with Europe grow weaker with every generation."

💬 For Trump, the transatlantic relationship is no longer one between allies, but a US-dominated order based on coercion rather than consultation and rules.

@sbeverts.bsky.social in @standaard.be on why Europe must detach from a worldview that no longer exists. www.standaard.be/economie/ste...

The Trump administration has secretly rewritten nuclear safety rules The rewrite was done to speed up the construction of a new generation of nuclear reactors. Critics warn it could compromise safety and public trust.

NPR has obtained the new experimental nuclear reactor safety rules from DOE -- revised in secret, a pretty abnormal process not likely to help buy-in. I defer to nuke experts on the details, but apparently they are greately relaxed

www.npr.org/2026/01/28/n...

“Board of Peace” Trademark Filings Reveal Its Murky Legal Status The "Board of Peace" trademarks are not owned by the organization itself, but by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, marking an unprecedented use of executive branch power to protect rights...

🚨SCOOP: Trump's Board of Peace trademarks are being held by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, an apparently unprecedented use of executive branch power to protect the interests of a murkily defined supranational organization.
america2.news/board-of-pea...

The biggest “what if” in the history of the EU? On 22 January 1972, Norway signed the Accession Treaty to join the European Economic Community (alongside Denmark, Ireland and the UK)

Unlike the others, Norway never joined.

I wrote a short text about it here:
www.linkedin.com/posts/pablop...

Now that's a prayer.

That black cat named Moon at Stonehenge surrounded by its adoring crowd during this year's winter solstice

Fine, whatever, this random cat is your new god of the winter solstice

Sir Terry Pratchett is best understood as one of the most interesting, deeply ethical practical (I would say Pragmatist but I cede to actual experts) philosophers of the late 20th Century who just happened to work in deconstructed fantasy literature as his medium.

Christmas is coming. So too the strange, nightmare ghosts On a lonely Christmas Eve drive through the Norfolk Broads, ghosts stir and refuse to stay buried...

A Christmas ghost story for those who know the Broads after dark – where water waits, roads vanish, and folklore remembers.

The past doesn’t rest quietly in Norfolk.

Merry Christmas! Please enjoy the opening to this Japanese Christmas concert special that I watch every year.

As far as I can tell, this has otherwise been scrubbed from the internet

Extremely funny to call the pope “holier-than-thou”

There’s one thing EVERY government can do to shrink Big Tech The path to a post-American internet.

I was thinking mostly of "big five" tech companies, but also more generally about Cory Doctorow's "post-American Internet" where open-source, owner-controlled is the norm:

doctorow.medium.com/https-plural...

Thank you, these are great!

“There’s probably no Facebook (it’s all AI and bots). Now get the hell off it and enjoy your life!”

I know @jonworth.eu worked on the Atheist Bus Campaign, back in 2008.

What would it take to set up a "Boycott US tech" public campaign? These US tech platforms are increasingly just becoming automated hate speech generators, and that's before we consider the techno-nationalist stuff US gov is doing

🧵/ How has political opinion changed over 2025?

In voting intention, Labour have made the biggest losses, while the Greens have gained most, and Reform UK have established a clear lead

Ref: 28% (+3 from 12-13 Jan)
Lab: 18% (-8)
Grn: 17% (+9)
Con: 17% (-5)
LD: 14% (=)

yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

Nick Clegg takes on venture capital role alongside Meta AI scientist Yann LeCun Former lobbyist and UK deputy prime minister joins London-based Hiro Capital

Irony died once more. Nick Clegg (left Europe to be a top lobbyist for Facebook): Europe has a “very, very profound dilemma, which is that we’re not only completely dependent on US tech . . [but] when we have good people with good ideas, we export them to the US”. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

An Engineered World An Engineered World examines the dramatic and global expansion of modern professional engineering between roughly 1870 and 1950. Over these decades, the numb...

just out from @mitpress.bsky.social a new addition to the Engineering Studies series. lots for @engrstudies.bsky.social & especially @thatminesgirl.bsky.social

mitpress.mit.edu/978026255335...

Albania's new AI bot minister: hype or help? | Context by TRF 'Incorruptible' or 'unconstitutional'? AI bot's appointment as anti-corruption minister in Albania sparks debate

"When it comes to modernising government you don't really want to run it like a start-up," said Litobarski. "I’m all for experimentation but let’s do it in a controlled, evidence-based way."

www.context.news/ai/albanias-...

How can Albanians get rid of their AI minister? Citizens should ask of power five questions: What power have you got? Where did you get it? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? How can we get rid of you? In the case of Albania's AI minister, the answers are unclear

How can Albanians get rid of their AI minister?

I wrote another opinion piece for @euractiv.com, this time about Albania's experiment with AI in government:

www.euractiv.com/opinion/how-...

Quick thread on the BBC and the political and societal significance of recent developments:

One of the main reasons the UK has historically been so much less polarised than the US, is that Britain has a shared source of information, consumed and trusted by most people regardless of their politics.

After a week in which Dems exceeded expectations in elections, Trump's popularity continues to tank, the GOP largely abandoned the task of governing (just as Thanksgiving travel approaches), I'm a bit surprised to see many more stories highlighting weakness in the Dem than in the GOP coalition.

one for @nanobubbles.bsky.social. do we at least get to keep Imaginary Friends?

Robert Seymour's The March of Intellect cartoon, with a huge automaton trampling over clerics, doctors, lawyers and the crown

"This is not literature as 'entertainment,' no. It’s literature as propaganda." Rachele Dini discusses OpenAI’s “A Machine-Shaped Hand” and an academic sector in crisis. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/literature-is-not-a-vibe-on-chatgpt-and-the-humanities/

Forget diplomatic niceties: it's beyond time Europe denounced Trump's trashing of democracy in the US | Paul Taylor The convention to stay out of allies’ internal affairs does not apply. What happens in America does not stay in America, says Paul Taylor of the European Policy Centre

Forget diplomatic niceties: it's beyond time Europe denounced Trump's trashing of democracy in the US | Paul Taylor

Lithuania plans to close its border crossings with Belarus indefinitely, after flights at the capital's airport were repeatedly disrupted by suspected sightings of balloons.

PM Inga Ruginienė and her cabinet are expected to decide on Wednesday.

➡️ https://l.euronews.com/6nuk

What the history of tech bubbles can tell us about AI When the dot-com bubble burst, policymakers largely let it collapse, treating it as a market correction. Today’s accelerationist MAGA-AI boom is different

What the history of tech bubbles can tell us about AI