Dr Seán Ketchem

Caturday night fever

Flashback: Your Weekly History Quiz, Feb. 21, 2026 Can you sort 8 historical events?

gahhh...finger slipped and I misplaced a totally obvious one....
Flashback for Feb. 21, 2026

26 points
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Play here:
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

I'm using my work transit benefit to get back on the Deutschlandticket bandwagon. I am digging the feature on the DB website that lets you choose only the "free" routes the pass covers. So I can actually get from Berlin to my old alma mater of Würzburg, albeit a much longer journey time of course...

(I mean not to get too far off the point here, but it shows how steeped the U.S. far-right is in fascist propaganda narratives of European history and society that do not align to the actual historical and scholarly consensus at all, they may as well be saying that LBJ "stabbed whites in the back.")

(MAGAs would probably not enjoy reading Margaret MacMillan's outstanding "Paris 1919", easily the best book I have read on the WWI peace treaties. Germany got off *lightly* compared to the terms they themselves imposed on their defeated enemies, and their own plans for France and the Low Countries).

Which makes clear that they have the worldview that different ethnicities are in fact nations at war with each other (thus the analogy), and also to take the view that the Treaty of Versailles was some unjust travesty is to share the specific platform of the Nazi Party, and is not the historic view.

(The service only runs south to Prague, but once the Berlin-Hamburg railway renovation is complete in a few months, it will run all the way north to Copenhagen without a change of trains.)

I notice on the German Railways site the former EuroCity (EC) branding for the Berlin to Prague run has switched to the RailJet (RJ) branding. I guess it is because all the equipment has now been swapped out to the far superior modern comfortjet cars (other than the beloved classic dining cars).

Berlinale: Sandra Hüller als beste Schauspielerin bei Berlinale geehrt Den Silbernen Bären für die beste schauspielerische Leistung bei der Berlinale hat in diesem Jahr Sandra Hüller gewonnen. Die 47-Jährige wurde für ihre Rolle im Drama »Rose« ausgezeichnet.

The wonderful Sandra Hüller (perhaps best known to English-speaking audiences as the "Queen of Auschwitz" in the haunting film "The Zone of Interest") wins the best actress trophy at the Berlinale awards ceremony. The film, "Rose", comes out in theatres in April.
www.spiegel.de/kultur/berli...

Trump Says He Will Raise Global Tariff to 15 Percent

This is exactly what Gorsuch was referring to in his concurrence: national economic policy should be the result of a deliberative process, not the vengeful ravings of an angry old man tweetstorming at 3am while parked on the crapper.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/b...

(Christian Lent, which by coincidence is concurrent this year, is a cakewalk compared to the privations of Ramadan. For many folks Lent is basically another Dry January, where you give up what is already admittedly probably an indulgence anyway for six weeks, I mean big deal, that is called dieting)

What is funny is that I always think of Ramadan in terms of privation, but when you look at some of the culinary traditions around the evening iftar meal it is (at least once you get through until sundown) quite a time of feasting. Not even having a single sip of water all day is a tough one though.

(Hints of earlier lunar calendars in other religious traditions are still evident in the date of Easter, which is the Sunday after the first full moon after the fixed equinox date of March 21.)

For observers in the Northern Hemisphere, a Ramadan in the winter ensures the shortest fast (as short as a few hours in high northern latitudes, which year by year gets longer before shrinking again. Especially if Ramadan lands before the March clock change.

It would seem to me that a purely lunar calendar would be a big drawback (for agricultural purposes for one) but then I read that the lack of alignment with the solar year can be seen as a benefit, as feast and fast times (such as Ramadan) rotate through the seasons every 33 years.

And yes, there are other authorities to levy tariffs, but those come with significant constraints, which means that Trump can't just throw at 3am tantrum on the crapper at Mar-a-Lago and tweet "You're tariffed!" to any foreign leader he feels threatened by. That is what SCOTUS took away today.

Live Updates: Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Sweeping Tariffs

JFC. Finally. It was illegal on its face from the beginning and made no sense.
www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02...

a group of south park characters are standing in front of a snowman with the words " you 're being a negative nancy " ALT: a group of south park characters are standing in front of a snowman with the words " you 're being a negative nancy "

Here in Berlin we're all excited about the uptick in temps in the coming few days finally coming out of the monthslong icebox, so of course our Debbie Downer local weather forecaster has to remind us that snow is historically far more likely on Easter than Christmas. So we have a long way to go yet.

(I am old enough to have done day trip visits to East Berlin when I was a teenager visiting family in West Berlin, and the description of London in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four fit the place to a tee: "sagging vistas of crumbling nineteenth-century townhouses" and the dust and grayness everywhere.)

There are still folks who indulge the fantasy there could have been a separate path for the former East Germany without having had reunification, disregarding the obvious fact the economy was entirely bankrupt and depended on West Germany for swing loans, which it never would have continued to give.

Even by the late 1980s, sanitary conditions in most Eastern Bloc countries were generally far from adequate. For all countries for which data existed, 60% of dwellings had a density of greater than one person per room between 1966 and 1975. The average in western countries for which data was available approximated 0.5 persons per room. Problems were aggravated by poor quality finishes on new dwellings often causing occupants to undergo a certain amount of finishing work and additional repairs. The worsening shortages of the 1970s and 1980s occurred during an increase in the quantity of dwelling stock relative to population from 1970 to 1986.[150] Even for new dwellings, average dwelling size was only 61.3 m2 (660 sq ft) in the Eastern Bloc compared with 113.5 m2 (1,222 sq ft) in ten western countries for which comparable data was available. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc#Housing_quality

Here's how poor East Germany (and the Eastern bloc) was: at the time of the Peaceful Revolutions, less than half the population had their own bathroom and toilet, an amazing 20% of housing didn't have indoor plumbing at all (in 1989!), and this was considered *the most successful* Communist economy.

Top Secret! is a 1984 action comedy film written and directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker (ZAZ) and Martyn Burke. It stars Val Kilmer in his film debut and Lucy Gutteridge alongside a supporting cast including Omar Sharif, Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, and Jeremy Kemp. The film parodies various film styles such as musicals starring Elvis Presley, spy films of the Cold War era and World War II films. The original music score was composed by Maurice Jarre. The film was considered a box-office bomb, though it still earned $20 million. A 1991 article speculated two possible reasons – the performance of Airplane II: The Sequel (although it had different producers from the original), along with "the lack of any clear sense of period, something that may throw viewers who insist on comedic nonessentials like interior logic. It's basically a parody of World War II-French Resistance movies, but along the way it also skewers '50s rock 'n' roll films ... '60s Beach Party movies and The Blue Lagoon, among other lampoon-worthy source material." "The lesson we took from Airplane! was just fill up 90 minutes with jokes, and you have a movie," reflected David Zucker later. "With Top Secret, it's very funny, but it really isn't a good movie. It really didn't have a plot or real characters or real structure."

"Driver, why have we stopped here? This isn't the Howard Johnson's!"

"I know a little German. He's sitting over there."

"It all sounds like some bad movie..."

"In women's tennis, I always root against the heterosexual."

God I love "Top Secret", one of the greatest comedies of all time.

I still haven't seen any of LAST YEAR'S Oscar movies, with the notable exception of "A Real Pain." Culkin totally deserved that nod.

Schauspieler Lars Eidinger verletzt Zuschauerin in erster Reihe mit Degen Es war die letzte Szene des Stücks "Richard III.", als die Hauptfigur allein mit ihren Dämonen kämpft. Dabei rutschte dem Hautpdarsteller Lars Eidinger ein Degen aus der Hand und traf eine Frau in der...

During a performance of Richard III in Berlin, the actor performing the title role accidentally flung his (prop) sword and hit a woman seated on the front row. Luckily it was more shock than actual injury, and the actor called her the next day to check in and apologize.
www.rbb24.de/kultur/beitr...

Rolltreppen-Ausfall am Hauptbahnhof und Südkreuz wird wohl länger dauern Die meisten Rolltreppen am Berliner Hauptbahnhof und Südkreuz stehen derzeit still – es gibt einen Defekt bei einem speziellen Rolltreppen-Typ. Einen Zeitplan für die Reparatur will die Bahn erst am F...

Sucks to be a traveler going in and out of Berlin this weekend, as practically all the escalators to the very steep upper and lower track levels are defective and the ones at Südkreuz were shut down as a precaution. The elevators (and commuters) are entirely overwhelmed.
www.rbb24.de/wirtschaft/b...

Project 2025 looks increasingly like Project 1933. Because it is.

A Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem’s Missing Blanket and the Constant Chaos Inside DHS Secretary faces fire for confrontational immigration crackdown and self-promotional style; White House to wind down Minnesota operations.

This isn't some radical left libtard Democrat saying this, this is the Murdoch-owned WALL STREET JOURNAL saying this:
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

This has been by far the hardest winter since I moved to Berlin in 2019. I mean in the long view it is average, but in the short view of course, winters have been noticeably milder. And that week we had the extreme slick ice conditions was hell. I am on a side street that is the last to get scraped.

The President of the United States is slumped dead asleep at his own sycophantic "Board of Peace" summit. And yes, the obvious joke makes itself. And we all drove Sleepy Joe out of office for this?

Despite the icebox weather here in Berlin, the coming of spring is slowly coming in sight. I think the last time we had highs in the 50s F/10s C was back in early November.