Recently, for *obvious reasons*, I've been thinking about what it means when anxiety and sadness are caused not by individual predispositions, but by the state of the world itself. This led me to early 19th-c. France and the notion of "mal du siècle" (sickness of the century) aeon.co/essays/young...

Saw the ceiling painting that gave @stockholm-uni.bsky.social its logo today at Spökslottet 😍

PCOS is being renamed PMOS (polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome), providing a much clearer description of the condition. An interesting example of how medical understanding evolves.

🧵 & @cwolbrecht.bsky.social’s essential chart, updated. This is what was great about old Twitter & is good here, if less so. You get the smartest scholars in political science sharing their expertise & discussing the most important topics together. And you get to learn from them.

Balcony season is here 🌞

"Open-mindedness predicts support for public health measures and disbelief in conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic across 68 countries."

Liam has reminded me of something I've been meaning to do for a while: Why "Beauvoir" and not "de Beauvoir"? A thread 🧵

Yes, and also

Lovely portrait by Norwegian painter Even Ulving, Lesende kvinne (Reading Woman, 1886).

"Why has it taken so long for us to treat misogyny as a political problem?"

Two days ago, Andrea Pető recalled that when asked 10 years ago about the future of CEU, she said: "We’ll leave Budapest, live splendidly in Vienna, and when things change, we’ll come back and rebuild what can be rebuilt." May her forecast become reality. verfassungsblog.de/after-collap...

"Trump joins a long list of political leaders who have been beguiled by the prospect of overwhelming early blows achieve decisive effects only then to struggle to find a new strategy when they did not, and the enemy turned out to be resilient and resourceful."

Mozart-Magic meets Chandelier-Magic #ChandelierSunday Thanks for sharing, @killedbyproxy.bsky.social 🌼

"F. D. C. Willard (1968–1982) was the pen name of Chester, a Siamese cat, used on several papers written by his owner, J. H. Hetherington, in physics journals. On one occasion, he was listed as the sole author."

Brunch outside premiere 🌞 been waiting all winter for this

SPLASHDOWN!!! Three cheers for science, engineering, research, curiosity, cooperation. Look what the fuck we can do when we ask big questions, work together, and fund our scientists. Congratulations, NASA. Congratulations, humanity!

Sweden's got you covered since 1978

It’s Friday, the sun is shining, and the construction crew in the courtyard is blasting Pixies' Where Is My Mind – and somehow, it all feels perfect

A Stanford University study tested 11 major Al systems, and found *all of them* show high levels of overly agreeable, flattering behavior. This creates a feedback loop: users like being affirmed → developers train Al to validate → Al gets even better at flattering at the expense of truth

Our colleague needs your help keeping a 1,200-year dataset alive! If you have botanical expertise or are based near Arashiyama, Kyoto — DM her or email [email protected].

Swedish scientist Almira Osmanovic Thunström created a fake disease and uploaded a preprint to see if LLMs would swallow it. You'll never guess what happened next.

The famous baby box, given to every Finnish mum. It's filled with useful things for her and the baby. There's also padding at the bottom so the baby can even sleep in the box. Via the always-excellent Molly Young - who doesn't seem to be on Bluesky but is on Substack.

Last night at the opera. I grew up watching Ingmar Bergman’s TV version of The Magic Flute (1975). Just now learning that Mozart was a Freemason, and the opera is full of Masonic symbolism, rituals, and ideals like conquering the irrational Queen of the Night to pursue enlightenment and progress.

New OECD report estimates the projected annual cost of #LongCovid. "The impact of long-term illness suffered by people after Covid-19 infections is estimated to cost OECD countries a total of up to $135bn a year and will dog their economies for at least a decade, according to new research."

New study showing that online hatred is worse in countries with higher economic and political inequality. www.nature.com/articles/s41... By @m-b-petersen.bsky.social et al.

Reading this remarkable book by @michelamassimi.bsky.social Only just realising what a big deal it is: novel and profoundly erudite accounts of perspective, phenomena, models... All 👌 Plus the style manages to balance gutsy and respectful to predecessors (something I often mess up). Go read it

imagine if i happened to be a trillionaire and bought twitter and 80% of the stuff on the site was just about big pants. you couldn't escape it. just an endless deluge of big pants propaganda

Over two years ago, the magnificent Beth Mazur ended her life while visiting me. I miss her. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/s...

Happy Easter! Life imitating art. Fresco of dish of eggs from the Praedia of Julia Felix, #Pompeii and an exhibit of eggs that astonishingly survived the AD 79 eruption in Herculaneum. 🥚🥚🥚

I can’t help it. I still have an emotional attachment to rationality.

On reading 📚 "Reading represents one of our most sophisticated yet accessible tools for nervous system regulation. In an age of constant stimulation and fragmented attention, books offer something incredibly valuable: an activity that simultaneously stimulates your brain and calms your body."

2000 pages of Leibniz, much of it previously untranslated or unpublished, will be published next month. They’ll appear in a new three-volume edition of Leibniz’s Philosophical Papers (1677–1686), ed. by Lloyd Strickland and published by Oxford University Press dailynous.com/2026/03/27/l... #philsky

Fascinating study on the connections between cultural gender norms surrounding masculinity and national happiness. "Higher national precarious manhood beliefs (PMB) links to less national happiness."

Min vän Christine Bylunds avhandling handlar om detta och möjligheten till relationer länkat till välfärdsstatens stödsystem. Och att ens partner förväntas agera assistent. En väldigt viktig fråga.

Fascinating study on the connections between cultural gender norms surrounding masculinity and national happiness. "Higher national precarious manhood beliefs (PMB) links to less national happiness."

It's funny how these headlines highlight the core idea of the Nordic universal welfare state, as if it’s truly shocking

Det finns en naivetet i Sverige att våra högerpopulister är mer demokratiska än i andra länder. Det stämmer inte. SD-väljare straffar politiker med antidemokratiska tendenser i lika låg grad som väljare för PiS i Polen. www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/in-...

some bell hooks and some hell books

New study from my cardiologist and colleagues at Karolinska Institutet! "Long COVID is associated with increased risk of incident cardiovascular disease, particularly cardiac arrhythmias, heart failure, and coronary artery disease." Based on #LongCovid patients in Stockholm.

A friend drew a picture of my Midsummer cake and I love it!

War & coffee. "The product was launched in 1938 as Nescafé. It was an instant hit, and a year’s worth of stock sold out in two months. World War II boosted sales massively. In 1942, demand from the US military was so great that the government classified it as a 'commodity vital to the war effort.'"

Basically: academia is so hostile to a healthy personal life that the only way to have a romantic relationship and/or parent children is to bond with another academic?

"We expected protective paternalism to play a central role in explaining why some men perceive the tradwife movement positively... We were taken aback to discover that it was instead men’s overt sexism that played the most important role in their attitudes about the tradwife movement.”

It shouldn’t be like this. "Last year, the patient association conducted a survey in which 1,400 people with #longcovid answered the question of how they were treated by those around them. Almost half responded that they feel distrusted when they talk about their symptoms."

🌍 Now available Open Access Excited to share that Gender and Digital Media: A Critical Companion is now out in the world! This accessible textbook explores how gender is shaped online across race, class, sexuality & technology. #OpenAccess #GenderStudies ✨ www.routledge.com/Gender-and-D...

Quick question does anyone know how to restore virtue to a decaying society

The gender gap is not caused by abortion.

Even Sweden joined #NoKings rebranded as “No Dictators” – given the ongoing monarchy. Stockholm sign: "Carl XVI is a king. Trump is a clown." Photo via (not mine) www.facebook.com/share/p/1AKa...