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Tuomas Äystö

@aystotuomas.eurosky.social
161 followers 296 following 68 posts

Associate Professor (Docent) and University Lecturer, Study of Religion, Uni Helsinki. Co-editor of Temenos - Nordic Journal for the Study of Religion. scholar.google.com/citations?hl=fi&…

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Reposted by Tuomas Äystö
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 24/09/2026
Ron Cobb’s original signage designs for Alien, made with felt tip pen and graph paper. humanoidhistory.tumblr.com/post/8286472...
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Prof. Dr Beth Singler @bvlsingler.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
static.klipy.com
This Is Fine Meme
ALT: This Is Fine Meme
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 12/09/2026
AI-bros evoke the Terminator scenario, because they would rather talk about that than the regulation of data centres, non-consensual pornography, war stuff, propaganda, copyrights, mental health... "They ask to be regulated". Well, they want regulation for the Terminator. Not for the other stuff.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 23/09/2026
Interestingly, I often disagree with Storm, but I almost always enjoy his writings. I'll need to check out what he's up to now.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 19/09/2026
EASR Bucharest schedule is finally published, it appears. See you there!
religions360.eu
Programme — Religions 360°
Religions 360° — The 22nd Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions & Regional Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions. Bucharest, 20–25 Septem...
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 12/09/2026
AI-bros evoke the Terminator scenario, because they would rather talk about that than the regulation of data centres, non-consensual pornography, war stuff, propaganda, copyrights, mental health... "They ask to be regulated". Well, they want regulation for the Terminator. Not for the other stuff.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 04/09/2026
He could at least refrain from using our national anthem as the soundtrack.
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Chris @cperez.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
"Principal investigators need cheap grad and postdoc labor to boost their own research profiles. Treating them like workers by allowing them to unionize disrupts the feudal lord-serf relationship that exists in most labs." There I fixed it for you
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Reposted by Tuomas Äystö
Russell T. McCutcheon @mccutcheonsays.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
New book alert.: “Neoliberalism and authoritarian populism are some of the main forces endangering contemporary universities. This applies to the study of religion in several ways…” @teemutaira.bsky.social @equinoxpub.bsky.social @naasr.bsky.social
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 26/08/2026
My feeds are sure getting a lot of video clips on how to make living in a car better.
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Yale Classics Library @yaleclassicslib.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
History of Religions Vol. 66, No. 1 (2026) www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/hr/2026/... @chicagojournals.bsky.social Bruce Lincoln's Secrets, Lies, and Consequences: A Review Symposium @mccutcheonsays.bsky.social @adeler.bsky.social
journals.uchicago.edu
History of Religions | Vol 66, No 1
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 20/08/2026
I've now seen some researchers, who use Atlas.TI to code their data (and it's a good software to do that) also state, that they did not use the new AI features but actually read the data and coded it themselves. I guess I need to start making a remark about this too, or swich to some other program.
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Geoffrey Hughes @geofffhughes.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
We have just witnessed an incredible A/B test showing how plagiarism allegations at Cambridge University play out depending on how racialized the subject of the allegations are and it says nothing good about our society or the state of "race relations". O'Reilly is still in post.
varsity.co.uk
Plagiarising professor stays in post and threatens student journalists
More than twelve pages of an article published under O’Reilly's name had been lifted almost word for word from two essays by one of his students
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 07/08/2026
So interesting @suscrockford.bsky.social !
youtu.be
Why Climate Change Sounds Like Apocalypticism (feat. Dr. Susannah Crockford)
YouTube video by ReligionForBreakfast
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wendy norris @wendynorris.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Good morning, scholars.
Illustration of a prison yard knife fight. To the left, a man in an orange jumpsuit cowers. A superimposed label reads: “academics tryna enjoy the rest of summer”. To the right, is a man in a gray jumpsuit brandishing a knife. The label reads: “August 1”.
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rose novick @rosenovick.com · 01/08/2026
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
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 29/07/2026
So, this is bad.
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videogame history @vghistory.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
church of scientology, print ad, your commodore, magazine (1986) archive.org/details/16-y...
aside from a picture of einstein, text:
we use only 10% of our mental potentials
einstein
these are the words of albert einstein, the greatest physicist of recent times. l. ron hubbard's discoveries in the field of the mind prove today that einstein was right.
in his book "dianetics: the modern science of mental health l. ron hub- bard takes one more giant step in this direction.
he reveals how anyone can use his dis- coveries to isolate the exact barriers that have so far prevented people from using their mental potentials to the full.
more and more people from all walks of life use dianetics technology today.
the many written reports on their suc- cess are the best proof of the quality of this book.
find our for yourself. order your copy of this remarkable book today.
price 3.95 paperback £17.50 hard- back, make cheques and pos payable to s.h.f. send to church of scientology saint hill foundation, freepost (yc 1) east grinstead, sussex rh19 42a (no stamp required).
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Dr. Jens Foell @jensfoell.de · 11/07/2026
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.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 02/07/2026
EU politicians: what on earth are you still doing there?
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 13/06/2026
This fits: "Tommy Robinson says Russia is not an enemy as he travels to meet Elon Musk’s father in Moscow."
independent.co.uk
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’
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 11/06/2026
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.
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Andrew Rogers @asr-cascadian.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
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...
straightwhiteamericanjesus.com
The Sunday Interview: Governing Without Accountability: Silicon Valley’s Ideology with Adrian Daub
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Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
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.
US military faith code list
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 05/06/2026
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?
independent.co.uk
Pentagon drops 180 religions from its recognized faiths list
A former Army chaplain called the reported changes a ‘tragedy’
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 26/05/2026
"Anthropic's Olah appears alongside pope at Vatican."
reuters.com
Anthropic's Olah says AI must be guided from outside Big Tech
The company's co-founder urged greater oversight from religious leaders, governments and civil society.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 12/05/2026
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/...
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Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
"The humanities are not a luxury. They are how a democracy understands itself." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/a...
nytimes.com
DOGE’s Termination of Humanities Grants Is Ruled Unconstitutional
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 17/04/2026
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.
press.princeton.edu
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
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 16/04/2026
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.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 11/04/2026
"employees seeking exemptions from using the [AI] technology because of their religion."
news.bloomberglaw.com
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.
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Susannah Crockford @suscrockford.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
This story smelled wrong from the start and I'm glad the report has been retracted.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 07/04/2026
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.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 23/03/2026
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.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026
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.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 22/02/2026
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.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 15/02/2026
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.
journals.sagepub.com
“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...
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 31/01/2026
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.
theguardian.com
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
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 27/01/2026
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.
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Dr. Rachel Schine @rachelschine.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
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.
Excerpt from a scholar's recent publication of 'rules' for Islamic studies academics. 
#58 advises that reading al-Ghazali does you fiftyfold more good than reading theorists of religion
#59 is a weird adaptation of Jack and Jill where theory and method fall down the religious studies hill...
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
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?
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 19/12/2025
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.
theguardian.com
Conservative legal group aims to export its rightwing Christian mission beyond US borders
Alliance Defending Freedom has ramped up its global spending on litigation and other campaigns to push its ultra conservative Christian values
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 19/12/2025
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.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 16/12/2025
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.
tandfonline.com
Religious literacy and its discontents: a critical review
Religious literacy is a ‘hot’ topic in twenty-first century study of religion and more broadly. But what do we talk about when we talk about religious literacy? To answer this question, we conducte...
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 14/12/2025
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:
routledge.com
The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Race
Given the intense scrutiny of Muslims, The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Race is an outstanding reference to key topics related to Islam and racialization. Comprising over 40 chapters by nearly 50 i...
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 05/12/2025
This new White House publication about Europe echoes European far-right talking points almost verbatim.
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