Darkening sky

In the midst of passing thunderstorms, the sky turns almost completely black as I sit in the living room, trying to schedule thesis seminars for January 2026. Last night was absolutely awful – I seem to have picked up some kind of stomach bug, and William is also at home with a cold. So yes, it is clearly “vobb” season again. At least that probably explains why yesterday’s 10k rowing session at the gym felt so excruciating.

Usually not much for joggers, I spent my lunch on the sofa, reading a few pages in Nick Bostrom’s latest Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World. It was a reminder of how stimulating it can be to engage with people who really think, even if one does not always have to agree.

Before finishing this post, I should say something about what happened in Poland a couple of days ago. The more I think about it, the only plausible explanation for Russia’s actions is that it wanted the countries of Eastern Europe to hold back more of their air defence and other military resources at home – fearing further aggression – rather than sending them to Ukraine. The fact that no NATO bases, such as the one in Rzeszów, were struck (even though some drones apparently were heading in that direction) suggests that Russia’s aim was less to provoke direct conflict than to trick NATO states into diverting resources away from the actual ongoing war.

Playing with fire

Last night’s massive Russian drone incursion into Poland shows how willing Putin has become to take ever-greater risks in relation to the collective West—risks that are difficult to make sense of from a rationalist perspective alone. While one or two drones might plausibly have lost navigation, the scale of the incursion points unmistakably to a deliberate attempt to test NATO’s resolve.

Much like the way our headlong AI expansion risks bringing about a misaligned technological singularity, there is something profoundly unsettling in how Russia seems to treat even the end of human civilization as an insufficient deterrent. The contrast to the veranda here in Kåltorp – on what looks to be the last dry day for a while – could hardly be sharper, with looming macro processes so remote from anything I can say or do.

Fat Tuesday

Yesterday, having been super busy with my grant application to the Swedish Research Council, I discovered that I had (once again!) forgotten to inform the students about their afternoon class on information literacy with the university library. Last time that happened, not a single student showed up despite that the activity was in their schedule. Fearing that the same thing would happen again and that it would further strain my relationship with the library staff, I scrambled to come up with a solution. Recognizing that today would be Fat Tuesday, I saw an immediate opportunity, namely to promise every student that attended the class a “semla”. And sure enough, 15 students did indeed show up so today I went over to Maxi during the break and picked up the batch above.

Otherwise, with Donald Trump in the White House, the question one wakes up to is always, what fresh hell do we have today? Be it new trade wars, cuts to HIV-treatment in Africa or Lech Wałęsa having to write a letter to express his "horror and distaste" at how Trump is treating Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Yesterday, I perhaps made it sound like I agree with what Trump is doing with regard to Ukraine so perhaps I should clarify that I do not. However, as I wrote two weeks ago, it is also clear that Ukraine can never “win” this war, if winning is defined as pushing Russia back behind its 1991 borders by military means, without risking a global conflagration. And after hundred-thousands of deaths, an open-ended war of attrition is not an option. So, something simply had to be done.

Thirteen Forty Five

Joined by my fox from Örebro, I entered the SJ lounge just as it opened at 6 am this morning for a post-run breakfast. Though I was able to catch some spring sunshine with Anna and the kids on Sunday as we walked up to Lyckan for waffles, much of the past weekend has been spent in front of the computer finalizing my grant application to the Swedish Research Council.

As for less important things, Air New Zealand is launching its own wine label called “Thirteen Forty Five”, a name that is paying tribute to the airline’s inaugural flight from Auckland to Sydney, which covered a distance of 1,345 miles 85 years ago. With all the dark things going on right now, it is indeed tempting to dream of an easier existence at the other end of the world. With regard to Trump and Ukraine, I remain divided though since our overriding obligation to posterity must be to avoid a nuclear apocalypse and, with that in mind, I have a hard time seeing how appeasing Russia can really be a bad thing, whatever the moral loss may be in the present. Besides, the chance of regime collapse in Russia presumably increases monotonically for every year that passes so, to some extent, it is about waiting it out.

Grand Fitness Revisited

When my summer trial membership expired and I had my last free breakfast in August, I was almost certain that I would never return to Grand Fitness. Yet, there was something with the atmosphere (or, perhaps more accurately, the deodorizer?) that made it feel like a gym in New York so, when Nordic Wellness offered me another month of free trial membership, I gladly accepted. As such, I was back this morning for some exercise and a free smoothie. However, with the abundant winter sunshine outside, I decided to skip the treadmill and limit myself to a bit of indoor rowing and ten kilometres of stationary biking (which was just as awful as I remembered it to be).

Instead, I took my Salomon Pulsar Trail Pro 2 out for eleven faster kilometres in the afternoon which apparently was enough to impress Strava’s AI. Meanwhile, in the real world, things are finally starting to move with regard to Ukraine, the question is just in what direction. In general, as much as I understand the need to stand up against Russia, I am also not certain that freezing the present lines of contact would be such a bad thing since, with the war over, Russians may more clearly see how little that has actually been gained at such a terrible human cost. It would also leave it to Russia to rebuild (and demine) the lands that it has ravaged. 

Absolutes

Waking up to slippery roads and stranded trams, it took me forever to get to the railway station this morning but, with two minutes to spare, I made it aboard train 481 which delivered me in time to my quantitative methodology class in Halmstad. Now on the train back home, I am eating another “lussekatt” and pondering the very normality around me. The Dutch tourists taking in the scenery along the coast, the kids asking how much longer the ride will take, and the many tasks on my list of things to do before the Christmas holidays.

Meanwhile, it has been a thousand days since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, two internet cables have just been cut in the Baltic Sea, and everyone seems to think that the only way to defeat nationalism abroad is by becoming equally nationalistic at home. Whereas the Cold War was about defeating an undemocratic ideology, today’s conflicts seem to be about absolute identities, with no serious conversation about how it will all end. In today’s discourse, the mere thought of regime change is made fun of, as if the only thing certain is that Russia (or China for that matter) will remain an enemy for decades to come.

Those you named

Sadly, Alexei Navalny has died in his Siberian prison colony, further dimming the hopes of regime change in Russia. In the global media coverage, a photo taken at the 2019 Duma elections of him walking, seemingly healthy, with his family stuck with me. One year before, Anna and I had been to St Petersburg and, tense as those days seemed at the time, it is difficult to grasp how much the world has changed since. For all his possible shortcomings, Navalny was a true leader figure, and it is telling that Putin never dared to say his name, instead referring to him in convoluted ways like “those you named”.

Here in Gothenburg, I woke up with a really sore throat so instead of a planned expedition to Hönö, I will stay at home marking exams.

Vobb

After the incredible spring sunshine yesterday, Friday brought rain and ice on my super early morning run. Once at home, Eddie asked for Strepsils and complained about a sore throat which made it clear that I would have two, rather than one, kid to juggle while teaching 2x2 hours on Zoom. With Anna away all day in Trollhättan, I did not really know how I would survive this paradigmatic example of “vobb” but, somehow, I did and now Anna is back home, and we are all having Indian takeout from the “South Indian Bistro” on Lilla Kungsgatan.

Meanwhile, Sweden is one step closer to NATO membership as Turkey finally completed its ratification process. Necessary as this may be in the short term, I am really concerned about the lack of a long-term vision for our relationship with Russia, at least beyond mere confrontation. Having cut almost all normal economic and cultural ties, we have also inadvertently cut ourselves off from being able to influence Russian society in a positive direction. After living next to North Korea for three years, I was always sceptical of sanctions, believing that, instead of isolation, we should seek to win the hearts and minds of the Russian elite.

SK1744

Halfway across the Baltic aboard an ATR 72-600, the last time I was in this part of the world was when Anna and I visited St Petersburg five years ago. With the gates to Mordor now firmly shut, I am still thrilled to tick off another country and look forward to exploring the old town of Tallinn together with Elin as we get ready for the big race tomorrow. 

For the moment, the weather forecast suggests warm and sunny conditions, with some chance of overcast skies in the morning, so conditions may not be optimal. Nevertheless, I could not be more eager to take on my sixth official road marathon and, hopefully, secure entry to the 2024 Boston Marathon by running under 3 hours and 20 minutes

Russia against modernity

The other week, Fareed Zakaria mentioned Alexander Etkind’s Russia Against Modernity which immediately sparked my interest. As I have already written along similar lines here on Rawls & Me, I was not surprised to find myself humming in agreement to much of what Etkind has to say, ranging from the dangers of extractive economies (yes, natural resources are truly a curse) to the central role of homophobia.

Yet, perhaps equally unsurprising, I find his romanticization of a “decentralized gaiamodernity” powered by renewables to be not only empirically false (just consider the deep fossil dependency of the German economy) but also the very last thing we need to “survive the Anthropocene” as Etkind puts it. If anything, it is rather the Russian high modern project that Etkind detests that comes closest to providing viable paths to a low carbon future.

Building volume

Running through the ice-cold morning, I was able to complete Strava’s "Running Endurance Challenge" for the third month in a row. In fact, I am currently 36 km ahead of pace as to my goal of running 10k per day this year. As previously noted, there is very little luck in running and, as such, building volume remains the key thing one can do to improve race performance, all assuming one gets sufficient recovery. 

Beyond running, today has mostly been about department kitchen duty and the construction of new exam questions for those who failed the first time now in mid-March. Meanwhile, reading the news about Russia and how the circle around Putin is preparing for a “forever war”, it is becoming increasingly clear that Putin cannot back down given the endemic corruption of his regime and its imperial obsessions. What is even more frightening is that perpetual war may in fact be quite useful for the pursuit of Putin's hypermasculine vision of social purity and global isolation. 

Lord of the Flies

With my hands still raw from the rowing, I read another chapter for William in his rather unusual choice of bedtime story. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, it is just as frightening to follow the stranded young boys on the island today as it was when I first read Lord of the Flies three decades ago.

Today, Svenska Dagbladet had an interesting piece on Austrian neutrality and how the country has not followed the same road towards NATO membership that Sweden and Finland have taken. While I, most reluctantly, have come to the conclusion that joining NATO is the right decision at this point, I was surprised to find that a majority in Austria thinks that Ukraine should trade land for peace even if it would mean rewarding Putin for his war of aggression. In a further unexpected twist, only among Green (!) voters is there a slim majority in favour of continuing the fight, something which again goes to show how differently the war in Ukraine has played out on a sociological level compared to previous conflicts.

Considering what is at stake, a Russian victory in Ukraine, however ephemeral, is simply ethically unacceptable. The problem is that a Russian loss would come with extreme escalatory risks, meaning that, with the possible exception of regime change in Moscow, it is difficult to see how this can in any way end well.

Galaxy S23

After almost four years of faithful service, the time had come to upgrade my old Samsung S10 to a brand new S23. Equipped with multiple wide-angle cameras and a much faster chipset, I hope that this investment in the Korean export industry will not only allow me to take better food photos for the blog but, more importantly, shoot much higher-quality videos for my online classes.

Otherwise, I have spent most of the day constructing exam questions for my social work students. At lunch time, I went for a river run with Elin which brought me above 2,000 meters of vertical gain this month. Hopefully, I will be able to run the 13 kilometres that remain so that I can complete this month’s Strava 300k running endurance challenge as well (even as February only has 28 days), meaning that I would again be slightly ahead of pace with regard to my goal of running 10k per day in 2023.

A week ago, Bo Petersson at Malmö University published a rather sincere piece about Russia and how academics, like himself, had given in to wishful thinking by ignoring the warning signs of where Russia was heading in the years leading up to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While we may all be guilty of hoping for the best, I am not sure that I share his conclusion, that it would have been better to accelerate Ukraine’s NATO membership following the invasion of Georgia in 2008. If anything, that would have given Russia precisely the kind of casus belli that many people (did anyone say John Mearsheimer?) would have found reasonable. As such, I am back thinking that maybe the real problem was not so much that the West was not tough enough against Russia but rather that it failed to broaden its “Wandel-durch-Handel”-philosophy beyond hydrocarbons.

Treadmill Tuesday

Instead of a “semla”, I decided to torture myself for one hour on the treadmill. While I was running, the sky cleared up, leaving behind the most beautiful winter day. Though bitterly cold, life still goes on somehow, at least here, far from the frontlines of Ukraine. It is strange how normalized the war has become in the year that has passed. I can still remember the acute anxiety that I felt when skiing around Nydalasjön at night or walking next to the port in Gothenburg whereas now, listening to Putin threating anew to end the world, just makes me tired.

Still, the risks are no less real than they were a year ago, and Joe Biden’s courageous decision to take the train to Kyiv is indeed impressive. Interestingly enough, Russia was given advance notice of Biden’s trip, and apparently it realized that it would be in its own self-interest not to intervene, which after all is an encouraging sign as it shows that some measure of rationality still prevails even in Putin's alternative universe of self-pity.  

Last commutes

Yesterday, I decided to run back to Sävar as my bus card had expired and the winter felt slightly less cold. Speeding up turned difficult though with plenty of snow on the road but at least I was able to keep a steasy pace around 5:30 min/km as I made my way to what has been our home for the last few months. Today I will pick up a rental car and start moving our things to Ålidhem.

Running in the snow, I once again came to think of JFK. Back in June 1963, he gave a commencement speech at American University in which he said:

“While defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy--or of a collective death-wish for the world”

As the war in Ukraine rages on with ever more hawkish statements, I am genuinely frightened about how it will end. While it is obvious that Putin grossly miscalculated the situation and now finds himself in a trap of his own making, all possible courses of action are fraught with great risk. If I had one wish, it would be that leaders in the West would more clearly communicate that this is not a war against Russia or Russian culture, and that the Russian people would be warmly welcome in Europe if the Putin regime were to fall.

Metaphors

Back in 2015, I published a paper on metaphors for sustainability that ended up becoming one of my most cited papers. In the paper, I discussed the power of metaphors in limiting our thinking, and how seemingly innocent ideas like the ecological footprint metaphor can have far-reaching consequences for all our futures.

In a similar vein, I read an article in Foreign Policy on how using the Second World War as analogy makes the war in Ukraine worse by insisting that the only way it could end is in the complete surrender (if not annihilation) of either side. To treat the war as an existential struggle against evil, however apt that metaphor may have been during the Second World War, limits the room for compromise and risks ultimately spark nuclear Armageddon (especially if Russia is forced out of Crimea). Instead, Anatol Lieven suggests that we should think of the conflict more akin to the First World War and accept that a messy outcome is immeasurably more desirable than one in which the world ends.

Inner emigration

The other day, I talked to my friend in St Petersburg who described her life of “inner emigration”. After all, as an individual, we have little influence over how society evolves, and with the European borders now closing for Russians, leaving is not really an option.

Far from such real-world concerns, I finally got to catch up on sleep with my Polar watch giving me full score in terms of “nightly recharge”. With that in the bank, I went for 10k along the lake followed by some American pancakes made with Oatly rather than milk. With only a week left in the house, I am not sure how many more lake runs there will be (currently at about 250) before I will start exploring the trails around Sävar instead.

Rain and ragu

With the Friday sunshine turning into rain all Saturday, we have taken it slow this weekend as our original plans for a family Zipline adventure were dashed. Instead, Anna has been working at the office while I have been doing the usual household chores and hanging out with the kids. On the food front, after making the “ragu to end all other ragus” on Friday (picture above), ratatouille felt like the obvious vegetarian counterpole for Saturday. 

Reading the news about more and more countries calling for a ban on short-term Schengen tourist visas for Russians, I can see where the argument is coming from (and the frustration with possible pro-war Russians partying in Europe while Ukraine burns), yet, as evident from North Korea, isolation is no recipe for regime change. As I have written before, I think that sanctions in general are not the way forward, even as I realize that removing them now may be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Still, the more isolated that Russia becomes, the easier it will be for Putin to sell his antagonistic worldview.

Underwood

Making tabouleh in my beloved Beirut bowl, I am saddened to think of all the hardship that Lebanon has gone through since Ally and I visited in November 2019. While reality was always more multifaceted (just think of Rwanda or the Balkans), it is difficult to escape the feeling that, when I grew up, the world was still about rebuilding from war, walls were coming down and countries were opening up whereas, today, one cannot even travel to large swaths of the world (including liberal democracies such as Japan). Instead of engagement, all that politicians talk about are boycotts and sanctions, how to isolate our enemies rather than winning them over. As despicable as Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine is, every day makes me less and less certain about the wisdom of the current approach. If anything, the West should be everywhere in Russia right now, fostering cultural exchange, and creating millions of micro-connections undermining Putin’s antagonistic logic.

Ultimately, this is of course a question about who we are, and who we want to become. If there was ever any doubt, StarTrek will not happen by itself, it will take all of us if we ever are to climb to the stars and bring the world together.

Economics

Having both tested positive for Covid, Anna and I have had to postpone the viewings of the house, meaning that the whole process is put on hold for now. Considering the market situation, we are not in a position to buy anything until we have first sold the house, but hopefully it will not be that long until we have a new home.

After decades with falling interest rates and low inflation thanks to automation and China’s entry into the world economy, we are now seeing a return to the energy-driven inflation of the 1970’s. Consistently mistaking levelized costs for system costs, the proponents of renewable energy have a large responsibility for causing this situation as wind and solar have deepened fossil dependency and fragilized the grid in a time when we should have made clean electricity abundant and cheap. Although I did not foresee the madness in Ukraine, it should have been obvious that relying on the goodwill of corrupt foreign elites for your energy supplies was never going to be a good idea. 

While I still believe that Europe could have done a lot more to integrate Russia politically and socially, it is important to remember that the hypermasculine worldview and values of Putin is not at all that different from our own Sweden Democrats. While these forces have been narrowly defeated in previous elections, I am afraid that a worsening energy crisis may be just enough to tip the balance.