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Ida Tolgensbakk

@idatolgensbakk.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.1K following 854 posts

Folklorist at Norsk Folkemuseum, Oslo, Norway. Migration history, folklore, childlore, netlore. She/her. ida.tolgensbakk@norskfolkemuseum.no

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Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 20h
Interviewer: can you explain this gap in your CV? Academic: the Recession Interviewer: and this one? Academic: COVID Interviewer: and this one? Academic: mass state funding cuts Interviewer: and this one? Academic: admin trying to replace my field with chatbots Interviewer: and this one?
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Working on a Sunday is fine when it is for something as cool as having a wood carver class. We are making sáhkku board game & pieces! 🥰 #museumlife
Two wooden pieces (the two queens) standing on a board. They are rather raw and unfinished. In the background some more finished pieces.
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Anne Sigrid Refsum @annesigrid.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I have never felt more patriotic in my life
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Today is one of those days I hate peer reviewing. It takes So Much Time. #academicsky
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
It's a beautiful autumn day at the museum, and on a brief walk from one meeting to the next, I got to admire 1) our new (fully functional) old brewery truck...
Big and cool 1970s (?) truck with the brewery name "Frydenlund", standing in front of an early 1900 town house.
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Ray Newman @raynewman.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I'm enjoying Hutton laying into the tendency to assume every folk tradition is a ‘pagan survival’.
By that decade, such interpretations were being made at a feverish pace, so that, in a single presidential address to the Folk-Lore Society in 1937, it could be suggested that pancake tossing on Shrove Tuesday had been a magical rite to make crops grow, team sports on that day had begun as ritual struggles representing the forces of winter dark and spring light, and Mother’s Day was a remnant of the worship of the prehistoric Corn Mother. By now, some theorists were intervening in seasonal local customs and attempting to ‘correct’ them if aspects of the current performance did not fit the particular interpretation which the experts concerned were making of them as survivals of prehistoric religion
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jess m. ☕🍂 @jametc.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Something AI is responsible for that doesn't get enough talk: How, when it scrapes a website to illegally steal everything on it, it uses up a ton of its bandwidth allotment, crashing it or racking up massive fees for site owners.
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Alyssa GO SEE #NAZA 📽️ @drsepinwall.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Indeed: Peggy Sanday wrote her book FRATERNITY GANG RAPE in 1990, following a well-publicized rape in 1983 at the frat ATO at the University of Pennsylvania, where Sanday taught. The book's still obscenely relevant... & in open access. 🗃️ #Cornell opensquare.nyupress.org/books/978081...
opensquare.nyupress.org
Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus
[Open Access] This widely acclaimed and meticulously documented volume illustrates, in painstaking and disturbing detail, the nature of fraternity gang rape. Drawing on interviews with both victims an...
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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
OK out of my usual late medieval France wheelhouse, but @ahannahim.bsky.social came up with my new favorite summary of the Icelandic saga and I just had to share it with you all (with permission of course!) 😂
Greyscale etching (?) of some very serious beardy men in viking-style clothes walking through a rugged landscape. The caption reads "Aasgrim med følge kommer til Snorre Godes bod. Se side 345."
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Hey all #digitalhumanities people, the cfp deadline is around the corner!
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Stayed for a late digital meeting & got locked in at the museum. Seriously, museums are scary after dark 😱 Look at this thing practicing for Halloween! #museumlife
Old building looking eerie, with ivy in autumn colours, & dark skies behind.
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Dr Katie Twomey @k2mey.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026
This is quite cool. My university is the first organisation in the world to force Microsoft to allow us to turn off copilot summaries in Word 365, after a backlash against it from staff (including, very vocally, me). That cannot have been easy for our heroic IT people so hats very much off to them!
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Tim Daw @timdaw.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Historic England vanishing archive - details of why it is broken : www.sarsen.org/2026/09/hist...
sarsen.org
Historic England’s Vanishing Archive
Not just the aerials. The lot. Historic England still holds the negatives, the prints and the scans. What the public lost, in early Sept...
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Btw someone should *really* go deep in a study of *why* Christmas needs to be "magical". Seriously. Why can't it just be... i dunno. Cosy? Relaxing?
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Omg! It's here! @blanriksson.bsky.social and myself have studied how the Elf on the Shelf tradition has developed in Norway and Swedish-speaking Finland. We discuss #homemaking and #crisis in family Christmas traditions.
Title page. "Elf on the Shelf in a Nordic Context. Homemaking and Crisis in a New Nordic Christmas Tradition".
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Elin Lerum Boasson @elinlb.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I am in Bangkok for the @ipcc.bsky.social 2nd Lead Author Meeting for the 7th Assessment Report, Working Group III Mitigation of Climate Change. The ongoing flooding of Bangkok is a stark reminder of the consequences of extreme weather events.
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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
while the British Academy is using partial randomisation on its small grants -- and awarding more women/and POC researchers than ever before -- UKRI is feeding your painstakingly-developed proposal into an AI. But it's okay because they then get *two* AIs to debate whether you get the money.
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angunso.bsky.social @angunso.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Hurra for meir SAMLA!🥳🥳🥳 #folklore #traditionarchive #samla.no
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Ok I wallowed in self-pity yesterday, but this morning we got news that WE GOT THE BIG INFRASTRUCTURE-FUNDING for our tradition archive project!! 🥳🥳🥳 #academicsky #folklore
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Curtis *Spooky Sociologist* @soccurt.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
"ChatGPT, make our campus more diverse." - You should change the underlying structure of society. I suggest more robust college funding and lower tuition, and emphasis on full employment, to redress systematic inequality. "Oops, I forgot the word 'feel' in my prompt."
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Give a hug to your Norwegian researcher friend today! Odds are they got bad news in their inbox. My fourth or fifth attempt at my Dream Project on ✨️the cultural history of the kebab✨️was rejected & I am officially giving up on having it funded. Brb need a drink. #academicsky #foodhistory
Excerpt from an evaluation form. The text reads "The overall objective of KebabChronicles is to examine the history of postcolonial migration in Norway via a
specific case study-the kebab-that aims to shed light on multilateral processes of integration. The project aims to
enhance scholarly and public understanding of the effects of migration on the everyday life and culinary culture of majorities and minorities, in urban and rural areas and across genders, social classes and ethnic groups. The
project engages with recent academic research on European migration and foodscapes through a mixed method
approach. Engagement with stakeholders and publics is integrated throughout. The proposal is creative and
original and shows potential for development of new knowledge beyond the state of the art. The panel found this
project especially exciting, noting that it offers a real chance to address, create attention around, and creatively
work through a number of key cultural and socioeconomic aspects of recent Norwegian migration history."
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Jill Walker Rettberg @jilltxt.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Jessica Witte starts by talking about her analysis of AI-generated stories that posted about earlier. bsky.app/profile/jill...
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Jill Walker Rettberg @jilltxt.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The Center for Digital Narrative @cdn-bergen.bsky.social celebrates the equinox with a research conference! This will be a long thread with snippets from the presentations. @scottrettberg.bsky.social opens with a rap! www4.uib.no/forskning/fo...
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Caleb Smith @c-also.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The idea that leftist, activist academics caused the death of the humanities was born in the Reagan-era reaction to the 1960s. I almost can’t believe how often it is being repeated 40 years later. This was Allan Bloom’s version, more restrained than most, in 1987.
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Thomas Hansen @thomashansen.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
New ad from the Norwegian Consumer Council @forbrukerradet.bsky.social about the declining lifespan, repairability and enshittification of products: Planned obsolescence v 2.0 Read their report forbrukerradet.no/shortlife
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Peter Ellis @almostconverge.kozterulethasznalatienge.day · 11/09/2026
arguably tho the worst in this genre is "engineer spots* and solves** a hitherto unnkown*** but fundamental**** problem in humanities" * reads a tweet about it ** comes up with some bollocks analysis based on made-up data *** well-known **** not that important in the grand scheme of things
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Retraction Watch @retractionwatch.com · 09/09/2026
Five researchers at Norway’s national gender incongruence clinic are appealing a university committee’s finding they committed “gross negligence” and scientific misconduct after the group published studies using the medical records of more than 1,000 minors.
retractionwatch.com
Researchers appeal misconduct finding over studies of trans youth
Oslo University Hospital Five researchers at Norway’s national gender incongruence clinic are appealing a university committee’s finding they committed “gross negligence” and scientific misconduct …
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I'm supposed to write Important Article for Big Deadline, but keep being distracted by the opportunity to do fieldwork on how Spanish TV covers the Norwegian royal funeral. #academicsky
Tv in a Spanish living room, showing a funeral procession and the text "que retos tiene Mette-Marit en su reinado?"
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
I think what I find really depressing about AI in higher education is how so many people didn't even wait for the evidence/research before we decided on telling students "how to use AI responsibly" which often includes things like checking grammar, and obviously, we shouldn't have been

Jill Walker Rettberg

  • 3rd+

Professor @ Center for Digital Narrative, UiB

1d • 


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Did you know that even prompting an LLM to edit your grammar might alter the semantic meaning of your text and remove your human voice? If you're in Bergen on Friday September 4 you can hear Isadora White and Marwa Abdulhai present their recent paper on this. They took human-written short essays, asked LLMs to revise them and found significant changes well beyond just copyediting. This is a large-scale computational study, but the image shared here shows two examples of how this happens.

We'll also have talks by John Gallagher, whose newsletter on AI and writing I read religiously, and by Rashid Mustafin, a PhD student at NHH, and Pedro Jacobetty. And before these public talks the AI STORIES team gets to spend two days in a workshop with these and other brilliant people - I'm so excited! 

Here is the full program: https://lnkd.in/eeGUywhj
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Anne Sigrid Refsum @annesigrid.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Are we more likely to care if the woman in question looks like a modern actress in a period drama?
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Alistair Coleman @alistaircoleman.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
“Copper, you say?”
The statue commonly used to represent Ea-Nasir, purveyor of really shitty copper.
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Camilla Holm Soelseth @supercamilla.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
I love this term coined by this guy. "Amalgaslop" - something which is an amalgation of, in this case "all the fonts the AI model got in its training data" used in this type of communication. I think the term fits for so much else. I.e. research papers being amalgaslop
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Kristel Zilmer @kristelzilmer.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Sigtrygg Silkbeard, the king of Dublin, - on the fascinating coins of the Mørstad hoard in Norway:
sciencenorway.no
You can now see the first 100 coins from the unique Viking hoard
The first 100 coins from the Mørstad Hoard have now been published in the Museum of Cultural History’s databases. They will soon also be put on display.
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
For those curious about why we liked our king so much:
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
The museum has lowered its flags for the King's death, meaning they fly right outside my window today. #museumife
An office window with pc, lunch, potted plants and Pride decor, with a BIG Norwegian flag outside the window.
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Adrian Daub @adriandaub.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Gonna take a wild stab and assume that PinkerKraussWaxAbbotDawkinsCoyne won't be writing any open letter for this person?
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Bethany Mannon @drbethany.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
(from this article by @corrinalaughlin.bsky.social and @sarareinis.bsky.social. It was a wild ride for me as an elder millennial)
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Greetings from my lazy colleagues! #museumlife
Calves resting in the shadow, on a field by the King's Farm.
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Uglesett @uglesett.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
This illustrates why every graphic design team needs one person who is chronically online. Because they could have told the others that: -This is a kind of aesthetic that may not be well received. -Some stone fruits carry a certain... symbolism.
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
This is what happens when the design team is replaced by the robots.
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
We meet again, lecture desk that can not be adjusted.
A desk in front of an auditorium, positioned almost lower than the chair.
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
holy shit, I just found an incredible archive of UFO zines and magazines from around the world, some dating back to the 1950s. this is like Christmas come early. though also I have got so much to do right now so this absolutely could not have come at a worse time 🥴 files.afu.se/Downloads/?d...
the cover for the 1963  Autumn issue of the BUFORA Journal
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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Amazing to see the list of academics who have signed the pro-Cofnas letter, in that every time you think, hmm, I bet that arsehole signed the pro-Cofnas letter, it turns out they actually did
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Some really wonderful pictures from Stockholm 💚
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molly conger @socialistdogmom.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
the guy who said he wanted to chair the harvard department of eugenics and race science??? people are signing a letter in support of his right to bully black men to death in pursuit of his dream of eliminating black people entirely?? just making sure i’m reading this right!!
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David Veevers @davidveevers.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Returned from holiday to find this beauty in the post, which I have the honour of speaking about at Simon’s book launch next month. There’s only one other colleague whose book I’ve aged decades waiting for other than this one, and they know who they are! *cough* @eicathomefinn.bsky.social *cough*
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Rhys Kaminski-Jones @rhyskamjones.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Send an author one "I read your book and liked it" email, disproportionately increase the world's happiness/smugness quotient
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Ida Tolgensbakk @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Optimist: the cup is half full Pessimist: the cup is half empty Folklorist: quote tweeting meme formats is a central part of the folk culture of the internet.
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The Local Sweden @thelocalsweden.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Swedish bus operator removes anti-immigration ads after drivers call in sick
thelocal.se
Swedish bus operator removes anti-immigration ads after drivers call in sick
Public transport operator Västtrafik is removing election advertisements from the Sweden Democrats on local buses in Skaraborg after bus drivers went on sick leave in protest.
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Dr. Nick Posegay @nposegay.northsky.social · 16/08/2026
Dear readers, the correct figure is 0.4%. Nearly 100x less. www.varsity.co.uk/features/29235
While the proportion of BAME professors has increased from 7.1% in 2016 to 9.4% in 2022, progress remains slow and uneven. Asian academics form the majority within this category, while Black academics remain critically underrepresented at 0.4%. White staff continue to dominate senior roles, shaping hiring and promotion
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