Roving historiographer. “Brevity is... wit."
Joined April 2020
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S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
Take his medical license off him
DR Congo sentences 66 soldiers to death for being 'cowards' bbc.in/48JM8mg
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
Appreciate this person is ill and hope they make a full recovery.
But London Bridge has 15 platforms, a concourse which is 70x150m (the size of a football pitch) and spans 3 levels.
What possible illness could block an entire station which takes 1.2k trains per day?!
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
This is buried in the article, but… brutal. The absolute state of language proficiency in the classical and medieval academies.
Now with a gift link: my response in yesterday's @telegraph to some more interesting recent claims by archaeologists. (NB: title courtesy of the subeditor.)
telegraph.co.uk/gift/f698e1e…
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
Let a hundred Hampsteads bloom.
My latest column in @thetimes, a paean to the 15-minute neighbourhood via Lewis Mumford, James Scott, Jane Jacobs, and the Hampstead novel:
thetimes.com/comment/columni…
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
For @unherd I wrote about ADL's head, Jonathan Greenblatt's recent viral remarks on intermarriage & redeeming the liberal, emancipatory dimension of "assimilation".
unherd.com/newsroom/intermar…
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
Isaac Chotiner's dismantling of Benjamin Moser's book depicting Zionism as the ultimate evil is all the more scathing because Chotiner is not a Zionist himself.
(And you're not dreaming. Moser, a Pulitzer prize winning author, cites TONY GREENSTEIN as an authoritative source).
Was anyone in doubt that the “religious revival” is real at *Oriel*?
How real is the religious revival among young people that we keep reading about?
This evening, I went to Choral Evensong at my old Oxford college, Oriel. In my day, it was rare to get into double figures at a chapel service (not counting the choir). Today, there were 138 worshippers. Yes, there was an adult baptism, but there have apparently been over 110 people at every service this term.
What’s the secret? The unadulterated Prayer Book is part of it; indeed, the traditionalism more widely. This evening, for example, the choir sang Parry’s I was Glad. And the place itself is beautiful, of course.
But my sense is that the style of churchmanship is secondary. What really draws people in is the unapologetic gospel. High or Low matters less than the sense that there is something bigger, and that people are unembarrassed to talk about it. Oriel’s chaplain, Robert Wainwright, is a wonderful example of what a clever, humble and energetic clergyman can achieve.
Afterwards, as always, there was a formal hall. No phones are allowed at Oriel formals, and it was joyful to see undergraduates properly talking over dinner. The meal began with a sung grace. The grace itself is more than 500 years old, but the singing was an undergraduate innovation dating only from last year.
There are oases to be found in the desert. Oriel is one of them.
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
Stephen Kotkin is one of the great historians of Eurasia. In a new series for Works in Progress, he tackles the biggest question of them all: what went wrong between America and China? In the first part, he explains why we shouldn’t expect China to go the way of the Soviet Union. Beijing’s leaders have internalized the obvious lesson from Moscow: No Gorbachev. But they have also done something subtler: fix the incentives that made Soviet elites think that they had something to gain from ending communism.
worksinprogress.co/issue/sov…
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
I treated myself to a first edition of Henry Esmond, one of Thackeray's best novels. He wrote it in the style of its period, and wonderfully persuaded Smith, Elder to publish it looking like an 18th century novel - I wonder if they still possessed a long S for printing?
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
Completely unironically, David Hume. He made important contributions to political economy, to constitutional theory, and to political theory, and yet he rarely comes up in contemporary discussions of political philosophy.
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
How the sausage is made: in this case "black voters" turns out to mean one man, who runs Operation Black Vote, a comically partisan lobby group. theguardian.com/politics/202…
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
The final victory of the secular republic against Popery!
Reduced the pontiff to a citizen, just like everyone else. 😉
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
People worry about ‘teaching to the exam’ but the proliferation of coursework is a much bigger concern. Students make the semi-rational choice to opt out of teaching in favour of working on assessment, severely stunting their academic development in the long run.
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
Bryan Ward-Perkins' book 'The Fall of Rome' put paid to all that nonsense. And it's good to find external corroboration for Jordanes (or rather for Jordanes' adaptation of Cassiodorus).
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
In today's @Telegraph, I respond to some interesting claims made by archaeologists last week...
*Insert caveat about not choosing the headline here*
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/11…
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
The Kraków terror attack perpetrator’s sister was an artist, who received a scholarship in recognition of her exceptional talent, and was already exhibiting her work before the age of 21. What a tragedy.
Pavko Krajka:
"Magdalena Oksińska, 21 lat, osoba queer, była absolutnie utalentowaną malarką, fotografką, poetką i pisarką. Jej śmierć, to wielka strata krakowskiej, polskiej, europejskiej i queer kultury.
7 listopada 2026r. w swoim rodzinnym mieszkaniu, wraz ze swoimi Rodzicami, została brutalnie zamordowana przez swojego brata, który później sterroryzował tysiące mieszkańców i turystów w Krakowie, mordując kolejne 6 osób i raniąc 15.
Ultra prawicowy nacjonalista wobec sztuki głęboko inkluzywnej wrażliwości, queerowej nieheteronormatywnej odwagi, dociekliwego zwierciadła codzienności i samodzielnej obserwacji życiowego doświadczania.
Magda już w VI klasie szkoły podstawowej napisała wiersz:
[Byłam tam]
Byłam tam...
Gdzie panuje różnokształtna zieleń
W nieśmiałych odcieniach seledynu
I głębokiego szmaragdu.
Podążając meandrami ścieżki,
Dotarłam tam...
Gdzie czas i wiatr zgarbiły wierzbę,
Jaśmin częstował swą wonią,
A winobluszcz plątał się leniwie.
Spotkałam tam...
Młode i zadziorne berberysy
Kpiące sobie z opasłej gąsienicy
I jej bezradnych prób
Zdobycia szczytu źdźbła trawy.
Chciałam je skarcić
Za drwiny z pąka,
Który zakwitnie motylem,
Lecz spłoszył mnie
wierny sługa nocy – zmierzch,
Który wilgocią rosy zaczął
Zacierać ślady dnia
Jeszcze wcześniej, Magda, w wieku 11 lat, będąc w IV klasie, odniosła sukces na Międzynarodowym Konkursie Literackiej Twórczości Dzieci i Młodzieży im. Wandy Chotomskiej w Słupsku.
Jej opowiadanie pt 'Spełnione Marzenie' znalazło się wśród nagrodzonych i wyróżnionych tekstów wydanych w oficjalnym pokonkursowym zbiorku zatytułowanym 'Krzyk pióra'.
Fabuła w Jej opowiadaniu ukazuje emocje młodej sportsmenki tuż po perfekcyjnie wykonanym programie na lodzie oraz radosne oczekiwanie na werdykt jury. Zdjęcie z fragmentem treści załączone jest do ilustracji wspierających post.
Warto dodać, że Magda jako niezwykle wszechstronnie utalentowana osoba w wieku 13 lat zdobyła również nagrodę główną w XI Ogólnopolskim Konkursie Plastycznym „Malowane poezją” za interpretację plastyczną utworu „Reduta Ordona”.
W 2024 roku, w wieku 19 lat, była stypendystką Starosty Powiatu Ostrowieckiego w kategorii artystycznej.
Swoje prace z sukcesem ujawniała na wystawach autorskich, na wystawach zbiorowych, w galeriach prywatnych, poprzez które również odnosiła komercyjny sukces sprzedaży.
Magdalena uosabiała czyste wyrażanie życia."
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
Eisenkot’s first action as PM must be to fire the MFA’s public diplomacy team.
S. I. Rubinstein retweeted
Nixon and Obama won in very high turnout elections, but they both were eclipsed by the record turnout (66%) in the Biden election of 2020. Turnout in the midterm elections of 2018 were the highest in a century (50%), though 2026 might beat them. This suggests a dislike of Trump has been the most powerful force in modern US politics.