Marcel Krueger

Wanna lead Iran?

Star Trek Voyager scene. We see a small, lone shuttlecraft fllying through a cloudy sky. Closed caption reads, "(screaming)"

Quietly, calmly and forensically, BBC just dismantled the Trump communications shitshow on Iran.

No hyperbole, just laying out an unprecedented military, diplomatic and reputational shambles.

Worth a watch.

(🎥 BBC News/BBC Verify)

FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

Drei Buchhandlungen oder schnelle Ausschlüsse in verdachtsprüffauler Zeit - 54books Ein Kommentar von Niels Penke Wie jedes Jahr sollten sich 118 Buchhandlungen sollten sich über eine symbolische wie finanzielle Anerkennung durch den Kulturstaatsminister…

"Weimer als Kulturkampfminister, der er eigentlich doch gar nicht sein wollte, macht sich mit seiner Entscheidung zum Vollstreckungsgehilfen einer äußerst gefährlichen politischen Verschiebung [...]."

@npenke.bsky.social über den Ausschluss dreier Buchhandlungen vom Deutschen Buchhandlungspreis

A snow-covered street in Lwów/Lviv

Odo Dobrowolski (1883-1917): Lwów Namiestnictwo/ Governorship building, Lviv, 1915

Das ist keine Lappalie. Weimer muss weg, das Haber-Verfahren muss unterbunden werden.
Bei jedem Podium mit dem BKM oder Vertretern der Kulturbehörden muss jetzt protestiert werden.

Deutscher Buchhandlungspreis: Weimer schließt Buchhandlungen nach Prüfung durch Verfassungsschutz aus Der Kulturstaatsminister kann Künstler, die sich um eine Förderung bewerben, vom Verfassungsschutz überprüfen lassen. Ein Erlass des Innenministeriums macht es möglich.

Buchhandlungen werden jetzt in Deutschland vom Verfassungsschutz geprüft!
www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/wolfr...

“The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious.”

even the dead will not be safe from Grammarly...

(ol' Walt Benjamin On the Concept of History)

Back in the 80s, we all really wanted to be living in the future. Little did we know:

A) when we got to the future, we'd want to go back, and

B) we were already living in the future.

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed.
Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

NA ALSO GEILOO VAMOSSSS

Just a matter of time before one of our more putinized Trumpers calls this a "special military operation"

And of course the tragedy is that those most vulnerable in Gulf societies are migrant workers from Global South countries whose explored labour is vital to sustaining "expat" comfort, security and luxury. Three migrant workers from the Indian subcontinent have been killed in UAE by Iranian attacks.

The Irish Sea, March 1st, 2026.

The acts of defiance can be big or small. Painting over a bigoted piece of graffiti. Running a youth club for refugees in an area that mostly loathes them. Wearing a rainbow flag in an anti-queer neighbourhood.
These acts all accumulate towards something better, I have seen that in action.

One thing I have learned: you have to attack far-right/anti-democratic voices in the places and on the issues where they appear to be the strongest. You have to remove their assumption that they have *any* easy wins. The more pointless the battle feels, the more important it is to fight it.

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

"The Islamists oppose women getting an education," I mutter, as I aim my missile at the girls school

Nur noch ein Krieg bis zum Frieden.

Nur noch einmal Töten für das Leben.

Nur noch ein völkerrechtswidriger Angriffskrieg mit Bomben für die Freiheit.

Versprochen.

Der alte Spendenlink ist abgelaufen.
Der Krieg leider nicht.

Deshalb habe ich eine neue Aktion gestartet.
Einige Patches sind bereits verschickt. Weitere folgen – wenn wir genug zusammenbekommen.

Wenn ihr helfen wollt:
Liken. Teilen. Spenden.

Sam Altman tweet: Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network. In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome. AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission. Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement. We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the DoW also wanted. We will deploy FDEs to help with our models and to ensure their safety, we will deploy on cloud networks only. We are asking the DoW to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept. We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements. We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place.

My goodness.

The talk to your friends app and the witness the horrors app being the same app is not great for the mental health is it

Reading Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” in front of the fire.

2 degrees on the east coast of Ireland this morning.

gorse 12 + 13 are now available in @chaptersbookstore.bsky.social.

Oooh, I’ll definitely go. Thank you!!

Gemeinsam für die Ukraine:
Engagierte Organisationen im Überblick

Wenn ihr mehr darüber erfahren möchtet, wie die Ukraine unterstützt wird, findet ihr hier eine Auswahl an Organisationen, die sich unermüdlich für die #Ukraine einsetzen.

@efdavies.bsky.social

Marlo Mihkelson, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Estonian Parliament
@markomihkelson.bsky.social:

This is not an AI-generated, Hollywood-style horror. This is the reality in Ukraine, Kostyantynivka right now. This is how Russia is using its “precision” ammunition.

Dundalk Port and the Castletown River, February 2026.