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.

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.

Consider submitting a paper or a closed session to our critical symposium on religious literacy. Deadline is on April 1, and the the symposium itself is on 21-23 October 2026, Helsinki, Finland.

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.

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.

Our criticism of religious literacy is out. Open access. Took some time (hence, data stops at 2023) and not everyone was happy, but here we are. We do not advocate for the concept of religious literacy, but we do suggest a way forward *if* one would like to consider it as a viable concept.

Consider submitting a paper or a closed session to our critical symposium on religious literacy. Deadline is on April 1, and the the symposium itself is on 21-23 October 2026, Helsinki, Finland.

You dream of EU leaders standing up to the US. EU leaders cannot even leave X.

This is basically the view of the world that Plato sets out to refute in the Republic. One of the core questions asked therein is: why do powerful people think the mere fact of them exercising dominion makes it good for them to do so? Sure, you *can* get away with stuff if you're powerful - so what?

Online betting is going to places.

Center vs. periphery is a key political division, and one ignores it at one's peril. For example, it is *very* common for big cities to be more progressive, diverse, and wealthy than the rest of the country. This is, then, often mobilized in politics through the rhetoric of authenticity.

This is why we always get our own copies of data asap.

Short comments from me in The Guardian. Regarding the one Finnish Christian you might have actually heard about, her trial, and her international support from ADF and the like.

If you ever feel the AI tempting you to generate some research paper text for you, thinking that you'll get away with it, consider this. It will probably be easy to detect an LLM from 2025 in 2030, when someone mass-scans all scientific publications. You will be caught eventually.

Our criticism of religious literacy is out. Open access. Took some time (hence, data stops at 2023) and not everyone was happy, but here we are. We do not advocate for the concept of religious literacy, but we do suggest a way forward *if* one would like to consider it as a viable concept.

If you're curious about the extremely racist Finnish far right politicians, who you might've seen in the news shoving fingers in their eyes, I've written about them in a couple of places. For example, in this anthology:

This new White House publication about Europe echoes European far-right talking points almost verbatim.

I was thinking about this meme from 2014. It became viral due to its tonal blunder. A standard video game mechanic of prompting "press button to do X" did not fit a funeral scene. In general: is the difficulty of "gamifying the sacred" a reason why there's e.g. so few mainstream Bible games?

New thematic issue of Approaching Religion is out, open access. It's titled "The Witching of Art History—How to Approach Women, Art and Esotericism."

I guess this is an example of political secularization. Whereas in the 80s, the US conservative stance on D&D was to critique it as devil worship (often by students on liberal campuses), now D&D needs to be "defended" from liberals wanting to make it more inclusive. Demons no longer the issue.

Ex-Evangelical influencer Promise Backlund aka "Eva Was Framed", who moved to Finland from the US, made the local news. Some context: atheist celebrities aren't really a thing over here, so her case is interesting. Her socials: linktr.ee/eve_wasframed

Great episode from a great podcast. They can't buy the death of the author thesis, and neither can I.

The Kabbalistic Tree of Baking Whereby divine Volume emanates to the lower vessels & is differentiated into units

⚡️The “Orbán model” is losing its appeal globally. Hungary’s 2026 elections will be closely watched by leaders of similar regimes, as the vote could decide whether Viktor Orbán’s unique EU-style information autocracy survives or faces a historic defeat.

Just to be blunt, if you want Wired and 404 and The Verge to employ reporters who understand the memes on bullet casings and can connect them to gaming culture while having the legal and support resources to deal with waves of harassment when we do it… you have to subscribe and pay for the work

This is a good book.

It was a blast. Everything worked well and the city was so lovely.

A Silicon Valley billionaire just declared Burning Man “demonic.” This is a heavy concept to drop on people who are currently tripping balls at the annual festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Get ready for “Satanic Panic,” Silicon Valley style. www.thenerdreich.com/demonic-sili...

Have I mentioned that I loathe AI? An international network of spammers are posting AI-generated images of Holocaust victims on Facebook, a BBC investigation into "AI slop" has found. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Happy to report that the host university (Uniwersytet Jagielloński) has the best catering I've ever seen in a conference.

Time to head for IAHR Krakow. See you there!

In secularizing countries: 1. Younger adults are less religious than older adults. 2. The religiosity gap between young men and women may be shrinking. However, I recommend skepticism regarding claims of broad religious revival among young men. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Buffy is so old there were only 103 named elements, we’re at 118 now. (Yes I pause every show that has a periodic table to see if its period accurate)

Peter Thiel recently likened Greta Thunberg to the Antichrist. Which made me think of our article which was about the attacks on Thunberg by calling her movement a religious one. (This is a bit different though. Thiel is himself committed to a Christian framing and considers it good.)

As depicted in these paintings (alt for details), a head scarf was a standard piece of womens clothing in Finland 100 years ago, particularly in religious (Lutheran) setting.

This is interesting. The "impartiality" of the BBC was a bit of a joke even when things were less heated (and when I researched British media portrayals of religion 15 years ago) www.owenjones.news/p/bbc-staff-...

Been reading about early #ColdWar #Finnish #intelligence #history and man, it’s _wild._ Like, a Social Democrat officer ran the largely privately funded military intelligence, which (among other things) spied upon both the Communists and the civilian security police (SUPO), ...

The new issue of the Temenos - Nordic Journal for the Study of Religion is now available, open access. journal.fi/temenos/issu...

You know that narrative that is out there about a religious revival among Gen Z? I get asked about it a lot. This is brand new data from the General Social Survey (released yesterday). Gen Z are the least likely to be weekly attenders. The most likely to be never attenders.

Thanks to Tomas Weber @tomasweber.bsky.social for an article in The Economist that accurately paints author Graham Hancock as a crackpot and darling of racists and fascists. www.economist.com/1843/2025/05...

Yeah no. I'm reminded of that Aleister Crowley anecdote where he explains how his first sexual experience with a man was a spiritual paradigm shift. This took place in the Grand Hôtel, Stockholm, 1896.

"Scientists must push back against the threat of rising white nationalism and the dangerous and pseudoscientific ideas of eugenics."

Many thoughts. I'll share just two. First, does it make sense to speak of arrogance & privilege here, as public atheism would probably hinder one's chanches to become, for example, a high level US politician? academic.oup.com/jaar/article...

Sunday morning started with submitting edited volume manuscript. This will be out in 2026 if all goes well. equinoxreligionlibrary.com/projects/uni...

When scholars of authoritarianism and fascism leave U.S. universities because of the deteriorating political situation here, we should really worry.

It looks like someone uploaded The Bengali Night film to YouTube. Hugh Grant plays Allan, who is semiautobiographical Mircea Eliade.

Have you read the classic essay "The Californian Ideology" by Richard Barbrook & Andy Cameron? Written in 1996. Haunting read. www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

How would one make the analytical claim, that "x has replaced y" in society"? For example, "technology has replaced religion"? Putting aside the problems of definition for a moment, the "replaced" part also seems hard. Replaced -- in terms of time spent on it? Function? Demographic relevance?

An effective way to start an abstract. The article was worthwhile, too. sociologica.unibo.it/article/view...