Jenny Erpenbeck opens #Spring 2024 with Sloughing Off One Skin, a haunting #ShortStory that explores truth and identity, translated by Michael Hofmann.
We're on the lookout for perspectives that are currently under-represented on bookshelves in the UK and in the US, and material first written in languages other than English.
“He and his only son venture forth on the 7th Portuguese Armada to establish the worlds first trade empire. However the challenges that await them will test them to their core.”
"From this graphic, we can see that Asia and Latin America emerge as the primary sources of immigration, collectively accounting for 81% of America’s 46.2 million immigrants."
"This paper studies the constitutive role of cartography apropos law, territory, and social order, in a specific historical context, by examining the crucial political role played by the British East India Company's cartographic practices and maps in aspiring and imagining the transplantation and establishment of English sovereignty in the Indian subcontinent."
Thousands of demonstrators, including climate activist @gretathunberg have gathered in the Swedish city of Malmö to protest against Israel's participation in Eurovision. Thunberg told the BBC there was a "moral obligation to act" and speak out against Israel's military operation in Gaza. "It's not true that the Eurovision is not political, it has always been political, and it will always be," said another protestor, Matilda Varatta, who told Reuters that she would like to see Israel disqualified as Russia was in 2022. Tonight sees the song contest's second semi-final, in which Israel's Eden Golan is performing. The final will take place on Saturday May 11.
They shouldn't be allowed to participate if it wasn't for disgusting double standard of the organizers and pressure from Swedish and German government.
"The ultimate goal, I suggest, was a translatio imperii; the establishment of an imperial monarchy in the west that could rival the Habsburg empire, and which in time, perhaps, might even come to imitate the universal glory of the Roman imperium. Not the American Atlantic seaboard, but rather the continent of Europe, with its arms, its learning, and its treasure, was the goal of Bacon’s early imperial vision."
#Image attribution: Yale Center for British Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anonymous_-_Sir_Francis_Bacon,_1st_Viscount_St_Alban_-_B1977.14.9772_-_Yale_Center_for_British_Art.jpg
"As we can discern from Plutarch and Appian, beyond the socio-economic impacts, the ancient historians equated the displacement of the family-run smallholdings with the slave-dependent Latifundia with a concurrent moral decline that degraded the Roman Republic."
#Russia is planning acts of sabotage across #europe European Intelligence agencies say, the FT reports.
These are likely to be violent and include covert bombing, arson and damage to infrastructure. There were recent sabotage acts in UK, Czechia, Sweden and Estonia.
Chinese President Xi Jinping kicked off a three-country visit to Europe on Sunday as much of the continent is divided over Beijing’s growing power and its intensified rivalry with the U.S. Xi’s first stop is in France, followed by Hungary and Serbia. AP reports: https://flip.it/OQ3xT0 #News#WorldNews#Europe#China#USA#Politics
Many ideas were submitted to the Council of Europe in the 1950s, but the 🇪🇺 EU flag was unanimously adopted on 8 December 1955.
Seven decades on, the flag embodies the values of unity, solidarity, diversity and harmony and is the most recognisable symbol of our European identity.
En matière d'espionnage, la France a tenté d'inscrire dans le Media Freedom Act européen une exception permettant d'autoriser la surveillance électronique des journalistes, au nom de la « sécurité nationale ».
Video of sun’s surface shows solar rain, eruptions and coronal moss
"Scientists say the observations of the sun’s complex surface dynamics could help resolve the question of why the sun’s atmosphere is so much hotter than its surface – a longstanding paradox in solar physics."
Video of sun’s surface shows solar rain, eruptions and coronal moss
"Scientists say the observations of the sun’s complex surface dynamics could help resolve the question of why the sun’s atmosphere is so much hotter than its surface – a longstanding paradox in solar physics."
🇬🇧 🇪🇺 "Our results show that individuals who lacked wealth are less likely to support leaving the EU, explaining why so many Brexit voters were wealthy, in terms of their property wealth."
Green, J. and Pahontu, R.L. (2024) ‘Mind the Gap: Why Wealthy Voters Support Brexit’, British Journal of Political Science, pp. 1–21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123423000728.
🇬🇧 🇪🇺 "Our results show that individuals who lacked wealth are less likely to support leaving the EU, explaining why so many Brexit voters were wealthy, in terms of their property wealth."
Green, J. and Pahontu, R.L. (2024) ‘Mind the Gap: Why Wealthy Voters Support Brexit’, British Journal of Political Science, pp. 1–21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123423000728.
Euronews's David Mouriquand has had it with "immersive exhibitions" — magnified replicas of paintings projected onto gallery walls. He says of the Van Gogh show he saw, "[It] made me want to forcibly shove fistfuls of sunflowers down my throat to make the experience end quicker," and describing the Klimt exhibition in Warsaw as "atrocious." Here's his no-holds-barred essay (read: rant) on the subject. What do you think of immersive exhibitions? Explain why in the comments.
"Examining the global movements of enslaved persons, soldiers, convicts, and refugees across land and sea, Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions presents a deeply entangled history. The book explores the binaries of 'free' and 'unfree' mobility, analyzing the agency and resistance of those moved against their will."
Jansen, J.C. and McKenzie, K. (eds.) (2024) Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions: A Global History, c. 1750–1830. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Publications of the German Historical Institute). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009370578.