Duplex

With much trepidation, I made one of the biggest financial decisions of my life today as I signed the contract on a duplex apartment in Gothenburg. Located in Munkebäck, it will let me once again follow the seasons around Delsjön and go for early morning forest runs among all the deer. More importantly, it will mean that I can be an active parent and share in the everyday lives of my two boys as they grow up.

When I brought Eddie along to see the apartment, we were both blown away by its charm. Built in the 1940s, the apartment is split between two floors, with unobstructed views to both the east and the west. With the move-in date set for 2 November, I will give notice to my landlord at Hallandsgatan tomorrow, although I am afraid I will be on the hook for two months of paying for two homes.

Now on the train back to Halmstad, I am forever grateful to my mother for making all of this possible and for being there when I need her most. As for work, I wrapped up my last statistics class of the semester earlier today, so now I just have a brutal amount of marking and supervision to get through over the coming weeks.

Phase change

With mathematicians talking about something of a phase change in the ability of leading AI models to tackle hard problems (the most spectacular example, of course, being the apparent solution of the Navier–Stokes problem), the road towards AGI appears to be shortening by the day. While recursive self-improvement may still lie in the future, AI is already writing more and more of its own code, and there is clearly room for concern.

Oddly enough, at today’s project group meeting, I realised that some of my colleagues who are more sceptical about technological solutions to climate change, tending instead to emphasise the need for behavioural change, were also less worried about AI. The irony is that it feels as if we have come full circle here: I, historically the techno-optimist in the room, have come to fear the future and distrust our ability to regulate the AI industry, precisely because I believe in the transformative capacity of technology.

Underworld

Just ten kilometres from central Kristianstad, Linnéa showed me around Balsberget nature reserve yesterday. Rising as a wooded bedrock hill above the flat agricultural landscape, it mixed magnificent old oaks with scattered boulders and stands of ancient woodland. With the weather shifting back and forth between blue skies and intense showers, we used my rain jacket as a shared umbrella, only to find ourselves moments later having coffee in the sun and taking in the sweeping views from the top. With 160 metres of elevation gain over six kilometres, I hope to return soon for a trail run, but what I found most fascinating was the world underneath.

One of the largest caves in southern Sweden, Balsbergsgrottan immediately caught my imagination, with some halls stretching twenty metres long and five metres high. Apparently, you can borrow a key during the summer months, so maybe I could make unexpected off-season use of my running torches.

Seattle drizzle

Walking to the railway station through the drizzle, I was reminded of the Pacific Northwest, and of last Saturday when I wished so much that I could have stayed in bed with a cup of coffee. By the time I got to the station, the rain had intensified and my brown corduroy pants had turned almost black with rain.

A day with the boys in Gothenburg made it worthwhile, though. It has now been two months since I was last part of their everyday lives, and I have missed them so much. At least I am grateful for what we got to share: a thousand metres of swimming at Åby with Eddie, dystopian book hunting with William at the city library.

Coming back to Halmstad alone, I ended up running ten faster kilometres on the treadmill despite my earlier promises of taking it easy on my left knee. But sometimes running is the only way to stay sane and, if anything, the knee felt better after I had finished my run and walked back out into the pouring rain.

Made the cover

Considering all my years as a subscriber and how much I tend to follow the “Monocle trail” on my journeys (or maybe it is Monocle that is following me?), it only felt fair that I finally made the cover.

Jokes aside, these AI-saturated times clearly blur the line between fact and fiction, and when teaching statistics, I find myself depending more and more on generative AI to come up with examples, operationalizations, and workshop exercises. For the students, the obvious question becomes: why bother learning how to use JASP or understanding the reasoning behind the models when AI can give seemingly perfect answers on its own? While I can give good pedagogical answers to that question today, we are definitely on a slippery slope, and it is already very difficult to imagine what the education system will look like five, let alone ten, years from now.

Rise and shine

Falling asleep just as a heavy thunderstorm came ashore, I set my alarm for 5:00 a.m., hoping to bring back some of that winter arc energy of autumns past after all the Bohemian bacchanalia. With the sky still dark, I went for the first torch-lit run of the season, limiting myself to six kilometres on soft trails as I am still having a bit of pain in the back of my left knee (even if it is much better after taking a few days off from running while in Prague).

With my mind still on the dunes of Västra stranden, I went through an insanely long day of teaching statistics. To stop hearing myself talk about significance levels and Cronbach's α, I decided to create a bit of culinary content for the blog, even if it was just dinner for one.

After dinner, it is now back to constructing exam questions and running one last load of washing. Tomorrow, I have decided to stick to rowing rather than running, as Malmö Marathon is only 17 days away now and I desperately need my knee to hold up for those fast-paced 42 kilometres on asphalt.

30A

After crossing the Atlantic twice on the upper deck of the 747, it only felt fair that I ended up in seat 30A at the very end of the bus on my morning flight back to Scandinavia after two perfect days in Prague. With the CFM turbofan engines loud enough to block out any music, I find myself exploring the Hebrew concept of “timshel” (תִּמְשֹׁל), or “thou mayest”, in Steinbeck’s East of Eden: the possibility of overcoming what we inherit and, more specifically, the extent to which we can choose to be good.

With clear skies over central Europe, we are just passing Berlin, and I am reminded again of how close all of this is now that I no longer live in Umeå. Having taken Monday off, the rest of the week will be pretty wild, with different statistics classes between 8 and 17, but it was so obviously worth it.

Last night, sipping a “Madalenha caipirinha” and sharing a molten chocolate cake, I found myself thinking that, much like Steinbeck’s novel, these twenty years of blogging have created almost too many cross-references and layers upon layers. Still, tomorrow remains unwritten, and I am very grateful for having you all along for the journey.

Twenty years

When I composed a blog post to celebrate a decade of writing Rawls & Me back in 2016, I hinted at the idea of continuing for yet another decade, even as it felt almost unfathomable.

Obviously, it is impossible to sum up everything that has happened since, both on a personal and a political level. Yet, throughout, I have kept blogging, as toddlers have turned into teenagers, ultra distances beyond my wildest imagination have been conquered, and Halland has come to replace the High North.

There have been moments of existential bliss but also many foregone futures. Democracies have faltered and new wars have broken out. Still, sitting here in Prague on the rooftop of Grand Hotel Europa turned W, it is with a certain Panglossian optimism that I take on the task of continuing Rawls & Me into the future. Over the coming months, I hope to take you along as William and I travel to Montenegro and then, just in time for Christmas, Linnéa and I plan to cross the Atlantic and make landfall in la France d’outre-mer – or French Guiana to be more specific. Beyond that, the road is just as open as it was ten years ago with plenty left to chronicle.

3x Prague

Election watch

From last night’s election, it is clear that Sweden, like many other European countries, has become sharply divided into two blocs defined by their relationship to right-wing populism, with only a few tenths of a percentage point separating two very different futures.

Indulging in Eggs Royale at the Hilton Atrium in Prague, I started the day with a longer rowing session at the hotel gym, trying to digest all the news from the night. I had been fading in and out of sleep, falling asleep to exit polls showing a clear lead for the Left, only to wake up to see the margin narrow to a single seat at one point. It is now back at 176–173, but the final result will not be available until Wednesday. In any case, government formation is likely to be an arduous task, perhaps even arduous enough to raise the prospect of another election later in the autumn.

Canapés

From champagne under the wrought-iron pillars of St Pancras to bookstore browsing in Prague, Sofi’s and my adventures continue. Revisiting the Museum of Communism and the Výtopna model railway restaurant, both discoveries I made when I was here with the kids in 2024, we have had a charming first day in the rain, although we have both been a bit tired after the short night at Arlanda.

Staying at the Hilton Atrium next to the Vltava (which fortunately seems to have fairly normal water levels despite the dry summer), it otherwise feels a bit like being thrown back to China in 2011, when delayed immigration paperwork led to a few months in hotels, with complimentary lounge canapés becoming my primary source of nutrition. And just like at the DoubleTree in Beijing, the hotel has a slightly too-cold pool, but luckily also a Finnish spa section that more than made up for all those steps in the rain.

Norwegian

For the first time since 2019, when I flew down to Marrakech in the midst of winter, I am back aboard Norwegian. With return tickets going for just 600 SEK, there was an obvious deal to be had and, since last time, Norwegian has started giving out 15 minutes of free Wi-Fi and upped its coffee game by introducing Starbucks coffee. Looking down over Öland and Hanöbukten, Sofi and I have already been up for three hours, having enjoyed an excellent complimentary breakfast at La Girafe (as there were some floor repairs going on at Pontus) and spotted an Italian Brainrot colouring book featuring “Orangutini Ananasini”.

Once on the ground in Prague, I hope to catch up on some of the art museums I missed when I was there with the kids in 2024, and perhaps go for a city jog between the rain showers. I am flying back to Copenhagen already on Tuesday morning, as I have lots of statistics to teach this week, while Sofi will be travelling on to Pardubice, a town famous for its gingerbread, the Cold War-era plastic explosive Semtex, and being the epicentre of Lyra Ekström Lindbäck’s novel Moral.

Once in Pardubice, Sofi will visit a maximum-security prison that runs the same kind of monastery programme she used to run at Kumla, before the Swedish Prison and Probation Service doubled down on repression.

Molom

Taking the first X2000 service of the day from Halmstad, I got to hang out with Sofi and Birgitta in Örebro, walking around a town brimming with election frenzy, each poster seemingly worse than the last. Being the hometown of Örebropartiet, there were plenty of posters with Markus Allard (Sweden’s own Sahra Wagenknecht) pushing for deportation, but at least there was some comic relief from the fictitious party “Kumlademokraterna”.

Before taking the train to Arlanda for our flight to Prague tomorrow morning, we drove out to the 12th-century church in Knista for a joint concert by Sofi’s choir and another choir from Stockholm. Together, they sang songs by Alf Hambe, who was born on the Steninge coast in Halland (forever made famous for its role in my attempts to run Halland Ultra Beach). Now on the train, I am listening to Lars Winnerbäck’s “Vad gör det om hundra år”, praying that Sweden will make the right choice tomorrow.

Tylö

With the waves rolling in, I followed the wooden bridge onto the sand, just as my watch again warned me of its critically low battery level. After three years of exemplary service everywhere from the mountains of California to the streets of Tallinn, my Suunto 9 Peak had refused all attempts to charge it so, before heading out, I had ordered a new (or rather refurbished) Suunto 9 Peak Pro from the factory in Finland. Luckily, the battery held up long enough for me to complete my half-marathon loop.

Once back home, I booked tickets to Umeå in mid-October for an environmental ethics conference that has apparently had a change of heart after previously rejecting my submission. That alone was intriguing enough to warrant my attendance, and by combining night trains and flights, I will be able to attend while still doing my planned teaching in Halmstad. Paying 500 SEK extra out of my own pocket for biofuels (as that is not covered by the university travel policy), I realize that I really need to say something about that, not least in relation to yet another post on LinkedIn about those who say that what we do in Sweden does not matter for the climate.

While it is technically true that Sweden is responsible for only 0.1–0.2 percent of global emissions (roughly equivalent to its share of the world’s population), the way we go about reducing those emissions may matter much more than our small share alone would suggest. If we were to pioneer technologies or lifestyles that are globally scalable and attractive to others (ranging from advanced reactors that can recycle our nuclear waste to bicycle-friendly city planning), then we could have a disproportionate effect on global emissions. On the other hand, doing what feels good for the climate may not always be good for the climate. If we expend scarce political capital on non-scalable or environmentally harmful solutions (such as wind energy sprawl in sensitive mountain areas), then we may perhaps look good in our own eyes but do little to rein in global emissions.

So, how about that flight to Umeå? Biofuels are clearly neither scalable nor environmentally sensible as a general solution to aviation. So why pay extra for them? Because, by buying biofuels, one is sending a signal to the airline that someone actually cares, that people are willing to pay to reduce their climate impact, and that signal may ultimately help the airline explore other forms of sustainable aviation fuel. So, between doing nothing and sending that signal, I have decided that signalling is better. 

Finally, even the underlying choice between flying and taking the train to Umeå is not quite as straightforward as it may seem from a climate standpoint. For long-distance travel, the climate arithmetic becomes more complicated once infrastructure and opportunity costs are included: scarce railway capacity may be better used for shifting heavy freight from road to rail, while new high-speed lines require enormous quantities of concrete and steel and may take decades to repay their initial carbon debt. Meanwhile, aviation requires remarkably little infrastructure between its points of departure and arrival.

Yoko

This being Rawls & Me, I cannot end the day with such a dark and ominous post. If only to dream, I need to pretend for a bit longer that it is the 1920s aboard the Orient Express, and that new international adventures lie ahead.

As such, I met up with Linnéa in the rain last night for the September instalment of the American Express dining benefit. Blending Japanese and Nordic cuisine, Yoko at the waterfront in Helsingborg served a five-course omakase. Kicking things off with a “Bruce Lee 2.0” champagne drink and a “Mr Miyagi” cherry G&T, highlights included sashimi, arancini with prosciutto, and an absolutely lovely ice cream dessert.

After a night at Mollbergs, which was one of the first real hotels in Sweden when it opened two hundred years ago, we stayed true to the Helsingborg ethos by taking a morning swim. With the water at 16.8 degrees, summer may technically be over, but luckily there are still trains or planes to catch.

Balad al-fawḍā

After four years with the Tidö government, I was hoping that Sweden would somehow have turned the page, that there would be a strong popular rebuke of all the attempts to sow distrust, and that a new government (however imperfect) would start the long journey back to solidarity and a greater vision that would speak to the highest, rather than the lowest, in each of us.

Yet, seeing the blatantly racist poster above, and getting a push notification saying that the distance between the two blocks is now within the margin of error, I am beginning to fear that the land of chaos (balad al-fawḍā) that the poster warns of may indeed soon be upon us. As with Trump’s America, it is tempting to give in to misanthropy or cynicism, to think that we have indeed become prisoners of the past, and that the Star Trek idealism that Obama expressed in his 2009 speech at Cairo University cannot overcome the rising fascism of our time:

“For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes -- and, yes, religions -- subjugating one another in pursuit of their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it.”

Kyro

There is a new Korean app called “Kyro” that lets you claim territory based on your runs or hikes. Every time you close a loop, the enclosed area becomes your territory. With one of Eddie’s favourite teachers also playing, Eddie and I set out to capture some of his territory in Gothenburg yesterday. Hiking almost 17 kilometres over three hours, we had some great conversations but, sadly, failed to get the hike registered due to a GPS error caused by our indoor lunch break. Though disappointing, we have not given up; we will just have to be a bit more careful next time.

Yesterday, I also discovered a wild card for commuting between Halmstad and Kristianstad that I had not thought about before: the bus from Halmstad to Markaryd. Travelling along Road 15 into Kronoberg, I was reminded that there is also a perfectly functioning railway between Halmstad and Hässleholm (one that I used extensively in 2009 and 2010 when commuting between Lund and Gothenburg). Unfortunately, that railway is nowadays used only by freight trains, which is annoying since passenger services would effectively cut the travel time in half.

Otherwise, I have been busy submitting not one but two journal reviews, drafting a grant application to the Swedish Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU), and submitting yet another application to the Karl Staaff Memorial Fund. With that, all that remains is my real work or, more specifically, to do another round of interviews and finally write up that paper on the legitimacy of different allocation mechanisms for biogenic hydrocarbons.

Consequential

It is always tempting to privilege the present, to think that we stand at a critical juncture in time. But after four years of the Tidö government, the election coming up in nine days is no ordinary one. If the Sweden Democrats were to enter government directly – and every vote for the Tidö parties is a vote for exactly that – Sweden would take a very dark turn indeed. From the dismantling of public service to outright ethno-nationalism, this is not an election about specific policies or how much money one gets to keep in the wallet, but a fundamental test of who we are (and aspire to be).

That does not mean that the choice is simple on every dimension. It would clearly be detrimental to our chances of reining in climate change if Sweden’s nuclear ambitions were replaced by an even greater reliance on gas-dependent renewables. But a misguided energy policy can be reversed, reactors can still be built, and technological development will continue elsewhere. Some political choices are more difficult to undo.

Perhaps that is why I found myself returning to Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. His book is a useful reminder that democratic institutions are neither automatic nor indestructible, and that defending them ultimately depends on the choices ordinary people make while those choices are still theirs to make. 

Marc O’Polo

It took another round of returns, but in the end I was able to secure exactly the kind of corduroy blazer I had been looking for. At 180 SEK, it cost about a tenth of the retail price, reminding me again what a bargain Sellpy can be. Working away at Espresso House in Hässleholm, I felt reasonably on top of the autumn semester and my long to-do list. Once Linnéa had finished her riding class, we drove to her place in Kristianstad to make prawn linguine while rain came hammering down outside.

Today, I stopped in Helsingborg on my way back to Halmstad, running past Vikingsberg and along the familiar shores of Fria Bad, condensing decades into kilometres. After a quick shower, I caught the train to work for lunch with Ulf and our new professor, Johan Söderman, who has just edited a lovely new book on Didactics for Bildung in Preschool (yes, Bildung!).

Cows, trees and flights

When growing up in Sweden in the 1980s, the dairy industry was very visible in otherwise non-commercial schools, indoctrinating kids into believing that consuming large amounts of cold cow’s milk was absolutely essential for their health. Despite the dubious scientific basis, the message was remarkably successful in presenting a particular commercial interest as neutral, almost self-evident, public-health advice.

Something similar seems to have happened in Swedish forest politics. It is surprising to what extent the forest-industrial complex has been able to cast itself as an apolitical force for environmental protection, rather than as an industry with obvious material interests in how forests are managed and used. Despite the increasing polarization of forest politics, the industry’s own vision of intensive forestry, continued harvesting and expanding biomass use is still routinely presented not as one contested political position among others, but as an almost natural contribution to the green transition. This was particularly striking today at the Bio+ conference in Stockholm, where several of the projects presented were funded directly by the forest industry.

Now at Pontus on my way back to Halmstad, I have picked up Lisa Röstlund’s Skogslandet: en granskning from 2022, which examines precisely some of these relationships between the forest industry, science, public authorities and politics. Röstlund approaches Swedish forestry from a clearly critical perspective, but the book seems particularly interesting for its attempt to understand how certain claims about forests and sustainability have acquired scientific and political authority. Given today’s conference, it feels like timely reading as I wait for my biofueled flight (yes, I am once again buying biofuels for my flights, more on that in another post) down to Halland.

Capital

Listening to today’s presentations at the Bio+ conference, a recurring theme has been the lack of venture capital and the corresponding need for public funding. While I am generally sympathetic to greater investments in energy R&D, it is worth considering that the lack of private capital may also be a function of basic physical realities, that there simply is no scalable business case for the proposed innovations.

To give a practical example, the reason that we do not see electric generators at every stationary gym bike is not that capitalism is short-sighted but that the 100–150 W generated from biking simply does not amount to enough power to make practical sense. Still, after today, I could easily see the PowerPoint slide:

"Our innovative circular bio-based human energy platform (HEP) unlocks previously untapped endogenous renewable energy resources while simultaneously delivering public-health co-benefits. The technology is mature, locally sourced, fossil-free and compatible with existing electricity infrastructure. The principal barrier to rapid scale-up is currently insufficient access to patient, risk-tolerant capital."

3x Stockholm