Tuomas Äystö
@aystotuomas.bsky.social
Associate Professor (Docent) and University Lecturer in Study of Religion, University of Helsinki. Co-editor of Temenos - Nordic Journal for the Study of Religion.
there is a skill to asking tough questions in a friendly way and we'd all be better off if it were more widely distributed
noam@noamchompers.bsky.social · 4d agoI think academic philosophy has gotten a lot less overtly mean over the last couple decades, and that’s overall good. But it is sorta *weird* that as a result a lot of people sorta linger in the hallway after talks to whisper ‘that was shit, right?’ to one another
Saying universities have to allow AI because people are using it anyway is identical to demanding that mainstream TV stations show hardcore pornography. Like, yes, you can certainly make that argument. But only an absolute fool would see this response as the only viable course of action.
EU politicians: what on earth are you still doing there?
Mark Chadbourn@chadbourn.bsky.social · last mo.UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy quits TwitterX. This should be the first of many.
This fits: "Tommy Robinson says Russia is not an enemy as he travels to meet Elon Musk’s father in Moscow."
Tommy Robinson says Russia is not an enemy as he travels to Moscow
Robinson posted a video of himself and Errol Musk in which he says ‘We are going to go and cause some trouble’
independent.co.uk
New issue of Temenos - Nordic Journal for the Study of Religion is out, open access. journal.fi/temenos/issu... Articles on topics such as environmentalism, indigenous activism, Asatru in Denmark, Jewish radicalism, and religious dreams from a cognitivist perspective.
I’m a little behind on my podcasts, even my favorite ones, but guys … @ardenthistorian.bsky.social and @adriandaub.bsky.social talking about Silicon Valley weirdness was so good. I could listen to them for hours. (I also recommend Adrian’s book.) www.straightwhiteamericanjesus.com/episodes/the...
The Sunday Interview: Governing Without Accountability: Silicon Valley’s Ideology with Adrian Daub
straightwhiteamericanjesus.com
The new Department of Defense faith codes list also classifies Orthodox Judaism as a type of Orthodox Christianity and "Reformed Judaism" as a type of Reformed Christian, while classifying Messianic Jews as a type of Judaism.
The Salt Lake Tribune@sltrib.com · 2mo agoThe LDS Church was left off the Department of Defense’s list of Christian religions.
The LDS Church was left off the Department of Defense’s list of Christian religions.
Are Latter-day Saints Christian? The U.S. Defense Department doesn’t appear to think so.
LDS Church left off Department of Defense’s list of Christian religions.
sltrib.com
Pentagon removes 180 items from its internally recognized list of religions (related to chaplains etc.), leaving only 31. Did the US military facilitate the practice of, say, Wicca a lot before this change?
Pentagon drops 180 religions from its recognized faiths list
A former Army chaplain called the reported changes a ‘tragedy’
independent.co.uk
We are not really aiming to advance the concept of Christian nationalism as such (especially not in the normative sense), but we had the data to examine whether the concept would work analytically in a completely different context, so we took the opportunity. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
"The humanities are not a luxury. They are how a democracy understands itself." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/a...
DOGE’s Termination of Humanities Grants Is Ruled Unconstitutional
nytimes.com
I liked this one a lot! It's about how most of us have lived in some relationship with invisible actors. Bonus points for the author not presenting the (correct) argument as a counter-narrative to secularization theory.
The New Science of the Enchanted Universe
One of the world’s preeminent cultural anthropologists leaves a last work that fundamentally reconfigures how we study most other cultures
press.princeton.edu
I appreciate what Pope is saying, though it’s worth remembering that he and other leaders of European national churches refrain from political SPECIFICS. It’s a norm they all follow. Which ultimately makes them mostly harmless to the status quo. And that’s how politicians prefer them, too.
"employees seeking exemptions from using the [AI] technology because of their religion."
AI Religious Objections at Work Emerge as New Employer Concern
Artificial intelligence in the workplace has employers grappling with a new legal issue: whether to accommodate employees seeking exemptions from using the technology because of their religion.
news.bloomberglaw.com
This story smelled wrong from the start and I'm glad the report has been retracted.
Conrad Hackett@conradhackett.bsky.social · 4mo agoThe Quiet Revival report was retracted after YouGov acknowledged problems with bogus survey respondents. In this NYT story, I comment on why the initial report got so much attention. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/world/europe/britain-christian-revival-survey.html?searchResultPosition=1
Remeber the HBO's Silicon Valley series episode, where one co-worker was "outed" as a Christian, at that was the point of the whole episode? Things have changed a lot since mid 2010s, at least in terms of public discourse.
Been reading a lot of user comments and media discourse on religion-associated AI (godbots and such). Users seem to exhibit the same brutal honesty we all have with search engines (e.g., "my son has a weird rash on..."). A machine can seem "safer" and "more anonymous" when seeking spiritual advice.
Nothing surprising about MAGA attacking scientific journals, but it's more worrying when an NYT reporter is doing it. Attacking leading journals in their field, no less.
Philip N Cohen@philipncohen.com · 5mo agoNYT's Jeremy Peters expressing stronger personal views in the comments to this article on transgender medicine than in the article itself. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/u...
What a great piece. This also reminds me SO much of the anglophone, very online, ostensibly anti-imperialist/leftist talk at the early stages of Russia's attack on Ukraine, where Ukraine was (very offensively) portrayed as a Western proxy, pushing borders eastward on the US's/NATO's behalf.
elia ayoub@ayoub.bsky.social · 6mo agoMy latest: Without anti-authoritarianism, 'anti-imperialism' is just conservatism with left-wing aesthetics www.hauntologies.net/p/iranian-pr...
Rubio's colonialist far right 101 speech in Munich also included a reference to global warming policies as a "climate cult". www.state.gov/releases/off... Hence, I'm again linking our article on what people try to do with such language.
“The Cult of Greta Thunberg”: De-legitimating Climate Activism with “Religion” - Jere Kyyrö, Tuomas Äystö, Titus Hjelm, 2023
Contemporary climate activism has often been called a “religion” or a “cult.” We investigate what is done with climate religion discourse (CRD), by whom, and to...
journals.sagepub.com
This whole teenager social media ban is a distraction. The actual topic is the regulation of large social media companies in a way that actually does something.
Social media time does not increase teenagers’ mental health problems – study
Research finds no evidence heavier social media use or more gaming increases symptoms of anxiety or depression
theguardian.com
You see lot's of support for ICE among the European far right, if you follow individual MPs in social media. Of course they support him -- even if his foreign policy has been a disaster for their respective countries. Trump does a lot of things at home they can only dream of.
The fact that people in my field look at theory as unrigorous will never cease to irk me, even if I agree that knowing the sources backward and forward is the ultimate foundation. More is more.
