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Tuomas Äystö

@aystotuomas.eurosky.social
161 followers 297 following 70 posts

Associate Professor (Docent) and University Lecturer, Study of Religion, Uni Helsinki. Co-editor of Temenos - Nordic Journal for the Study of Religion. tuomasaysto.mataroa.blog

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Reposted by Tuomas Äystö
Gavan Reilly @gavreilly.com · 09/10/2026
You know the xkcd strip about how all modern internet architecture is eventually built on something a hobbyist maintains for free? Someone went out and found them all. sheets.works/data-viz/hol...
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Reposted by Tuomas Äystö
Siobhan @siobhanh.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Informa announced Tuesday that it will separate Taylor & Francis and pursue a £2.24bn deal for Clarion Events. The outcome of its review is due in March 2027. So who might buy / what might happen to T&F?
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Reposted by Tuomas Äystö
Antti Rasinen @ars.iki.fi · 02/10/2026
I think this situation needs the characters reversed
A school girl labeled "Finnish language" is looking for a Terminator, hiding under the desk, labelled "Machine translation"
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 04/10/2026
"We also work with big questions, gods, and such from time to time."
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 04/10/2026
Pretty interesting hunt for legitimacy. Anthropic wined and dined theologians from variety of religious groups and people connected to writing the pope's encyclical. All in hopes that major religious figures would lend you legitimacy and support your views on artificial consciousness.
nytimes.com
Religious Scholars Met With Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them.
In a series of private meetings, the company consulted religious scholars to help instill morality into its A.I. models — and make the case that Claude could be conscious.
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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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Reposted by Tuomas Äystö
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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Reposted by Tuomas Äystö
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 · 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 · 14/09/2026
There should be an easy way to report these things to indexes.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 13/09/2026
Look. All I'm saying is that you should probably treat AI chiefs speaking about AI catastrophe with as much suspicion as you would treat oil executives' concerns about climate change. The crucial difference being, that the latter catastrophe is already happening, partially thanks to these guys.
washingtonpost.com
Top AI leaders unite to warn the technology is advancing too fast
Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk, long at odds with each other, found common ground in calling for a slowdown in the advancement of AI amid mounting fears about its dangers.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 13/09/2026
But I can see how, for example, people who are maybe a little bit too interested in Roko's basilisk -- a kind of Pascal's wager for the AI age -- might feel no dissonance to combine the two. (Supporting AI while terrified, or acting like it.) Investing/supporting it seems like the logical option.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 13/09/2026
Sure, there's something to be said about the existential risk scenarios. They have a long history in Western popular culture, philosophy and comp sci. Potential catastrophes deserve attention. However, AI bros absolutely draw from this cultural repertoire for their more immediate purposes, now.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 12/09/2026
Since when the whistleblower says the same things as the leaders of the organisations they supposedly blow the whistle on?
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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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Dr. 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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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
Imagine reading your own data. By yourself. /sarcasm
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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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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
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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
No doubt. Though it would be interesting to know how they ended up with these 31. Surely size and prominence, but I'm curious if anything else factored in.
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Tuomas Äystö @aystotuomas.eurosky.social · 05/06/2026
Also interesting that they kept agnostics but ditched atheists.
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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
Results in brief: if you modify the items to a non-American context, then yes, some explanatory value is there. We also found that Christian nationalism splits into two dimensions, much like what Li and Froese (2023) argue in the US.
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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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