Rawls & Me

Bottlenecks

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 12:28:19 +0000

Having worked in academia for more than twenty years, I have come to the conclusion that few people complain as much as academics, which is particularly perplexing given that we remain among the most privileged groups in society.

While there are always individual stories that are genuinely horrifying, I find it incredibly frustrating how little attention is paid to the simple fact that when demand exceeds supply, as it clearly does for permanent academic positions, some mechanism of selection must exist. We can limit the number of doctoral students, postdocs, assistant professorships, or senior lectureships, but no matter how we arrange things, there will inevitably be a point at which not everyone can advance to the next level.

Over the last decade, Sweden has increasingly invested in assistant professorships (biträdande lektorat) as a pathway for relatively junior scholars to secure permanent positions as senior lecturers. Often restricted to applicants who earned their PhDs within the preceding five or seven years, these positions effectively exclude more experienced scholars (like me), creating a situation in which academic mobility becomes increasingly difficult, as noted in a recent article in Universitetsläraren.

What the article largely overlooks, however, is why universities have become so reluctant to advertise traditional senior lectureships in the first place. One important reason, I suspect, is that competition for such positions has become so intense that successful applicants would often already have been promoted to full professor elsewhere. From the university's perspective, there is little incentive to recruit someone at the senior lecturer level who is already qualified for a professorship, particularly when the latter comes with considerably greater financial commitments.

The result is something of a paradox. By creating a more predictable career path for younger academics, universities have simultaneously made it increasingly difficult for established scholars to move between institutions. And as everyone holds on to the positions they already have, fewer vacancies become available, further reinforcing the problem.

I am not sure there is any easy solution to this. Certainly, I would welcome greater opportunities for academic mobility, including for people like myself. But increasing the number of permanent academic positions comes at a cost, and I am far from convinced that this should be a priority given the many other pressing needs in society. In the end, moving the bottleneck from one career stage to another is unlikely to make it disappear.

Ostbewusst

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 17:40:37 +0000

Today, Svenska Dagbladet had a long-read article on the cultural legacy of East Germany, telling the story of how young Germans, born long after the fall of the Wall, have come to build their identities around a country that ceased to exist more than thirty years ago. As someone who travelled extensively to the GDR as a child, and whose imagination has never quite left the sand dunes of Rügen, I find this phenomenon of Ostdeutschwerdung fascinating on so many levels.

In part, I think it speaks to the poles of my own identity, to how I can appreciate both Spreewaldgurken and the modest pleasures of Good Bye, Lenin!, while also enjoying business class aboard Lufthansa across the Atlantic. As an outsider, it is of course easier not to take sides, but similar tensions play out in Sweden too, if less visibly, as the rural periphery finds itself at odds with Stockholm’s metropolitan centre. Here, too, I find myself belonging to both worlds and neither.

Children of Men

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 09:55:08 +0000

With the rain intensifying through the evening, William and I slowly dried off after our Ryde ride back to the hotel as we had dinner. Unwilling to venture out again, we opted for a quiet evening together in our hotel room, looking through old photographs of him growing up in Umeå. Though memories never tell the whole story, it was heartwarming to see all those photos of me and the boys, especially now that we have spent so much of this autumn apart.

Having reached the present in Google Photos, we debated which film to watch before settling on a true dystopian classic from 2006: Children of Men. Set in a decaying, fascist England in an alternative future where no children are being born, its extraordinary extended takes were as brutally realistic as ever, even if reality has not quite turned this dark (though sometimes, as with Gaza, one wonders).

Having won five of his seven rounds, William is now playing against an opponent with a much higher Elo rating, while I am recovering at Espresso House after a mad ten-kilometre run on the treadmill. With only a week having passed since Malmö Marathon, my legs were not really up to it, so I had to compensate by pushing my cardiovascular system harder, with my heart rate averaging 163 bpm.

Dysosmia

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 17:36:09 +0000

Having dropped William off at the chess tournament venue, I laced up my red Hoka Rincons and headed out for a short sunset run in Karlstad, a city I have not visited for almost twenty years to the day.

Located on the northern shore of Sweden’s largest lake, the city feels surprisingly coastal, with its large guest harbour. What stood out even more, though, was the strong smell of chocolate or coffee, making me briefly wonder whether I was experiencing dysosmia (I have lost much of my sense of smell over the last couple of years) before I stumbled upon the Löfbergs Lila coffee roastery.

Once back at the hotel, I indulged in the complimentary dinner included in Strawberry’s Home concept. While the value is more obvious in Norway, where everything else is outrageously expensive, it definitely saves a few bucks (if such Americanisms are allowed) when on the road. With heavy rain expected tomorrow, I am happy I got to explore at least the central parts of the city on my run, as I will probably be confined to the gym’s rowing machine.

Matcha latte

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 05:52:44 +0000

This morning, a young woman wearing a hijab spilled what looked like an entire cup of matcha latte across the floor of the train. Rather than telling anyone, she simply walked away. As the train attendant appeared with a roll of paper towels, I felt rather strange just sitting there behind my laptop, so I got up to help.

While we were cleaning up the mess, the attendant began complaining about “Arabs”. And just like that, a rather ordinary instance of inconsiderate behaviour had become something much bigger. Or, perhaps more accurately, something much smaller. What struck me was how readily the stereotype was available, as if it had been waiting all along for an opportunity to be confirmed. The young woman had behaved badly, no doubt, but somehow her behaviour was no longer her own. It had become evidence about an entire category of people, one to which the attendant had assigned her without knowing anything else about her.

Almost at the same time, I happened to come across an old promotional photograph from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, where I used to teach. It shows me surrounded by students in a classroom, a little snapshot of a time when my own world was expanding. Looking at that photograph now, I was reminded of how much larger the world is than the categories through which we ordinarily understand it. Of course, meeting people from different backgrounds does not mean that we will always like them, agree with them, or approve of their behaviour. But perhaps it can teach us to let people remain individuals, rather than immediately turning them into representatives of something else.

Listening to the wind

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 16:34:33 +0000

When told by the Swedish Academy that she had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, Anne Carson apparently replied that she was in Iceland listening to the wind. Hard to match, but at least I grabbed the one book of hers I had on my shelf and jumped aboard a metallic Öresund train into the autumn rain.

Compared to Carson's Eros the Bittersweet, with its exploration of desire in classical literature and philosophy, I must admit that my own final edits to the När då då? manuscript feel rather flat. Still, I am happy to have finally submitted it for review, meaning that I can now turn my academic attention back to those elusive biogenic hydrocarbons, courtesy of the Swedish Energy Agency.

Beach runs

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 10:51:14 +0000

Moving north in less than a month, I am trying to maximize my beach running by chasing the morning light along Västra stranden. Yesterday, I was even able to squeeze in a lunch run as the waves kept rolling in.

Today, I attended that APT-turned-lecture on cognitive perspectives on education, which I greatly appreciated, with my only reservation being the insistence that learning science is not a “perspective” but rather an entirely inductive enterprise. In fact, claims that something is not theoretical or in any way ideological are often an indication of the exact opposite. Unsurprisingly, it did not take many minutes before someone in the audience took the content as a vindication of their own views on education, emphasizing “hard work” and the importance of homework.

While I prefer to remain on the sidelines of these pedagogical debates, I think it is important that we all recognize our own biases and preferred interpretations. Just as “evidence-based policy-making” often becomes “policy-based evidence-making” in practice, translating cognitive research into educational practice inevitably involves values and priorities of its own.

The president

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 15:51:20 +0000

On the train this morning, Linnéa and I came to reflect on the fact that Donald Trump first became president in 2016, and that for our younger kids, he is simply “The President”, in much the same way that Ronald Reagan was for our generation. Like yesterday, when we watched a rather disturbing documentary about Sweden’s minister for civil defence, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, it is difficult to fully grasp just how much political discourse has changed.

Considering the speech Trump recently gave at the United Nations, it is worth remembering that, for all his faults, Ronald Reagan told the 42nd session of the General Assembly in 1987:

“In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity […] I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”

Science fiction, alright. But perspectives like that mattered. Democracy itself depends on something similar: losers’ consent, the willingness to accept temporary defeat because one remains committed to a political order larger than one’s immediate interests. The same is true internationally. Politics cannot function for long if every disagreement is reduced to the satisfaction of our basest instincts.

Perhaps that is what feels most different today: not simply the policies, but the shrinking of the horizon.

Too cool for school

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 15:08:25 +0000

Returning to Halland in time for tomorrow’s workplace meeting (APT) on learning science and the cognitive psychologist Daniel T. Willingham’s book “Why don’t students like school?”, I am struck by the basic point that our brain is not designed for thought, that thinking is hard work, and something we often do our best to avoid, especially when it comes at a social cost.

At the same time, humans are naturally curious. We want to see what lies beyond, to better ourselves (if we are to speak Star Trek), and to learn new things. But curiosity is fragile. What we seem to enjoy is not thinking as such, but the small reward that comes from successful thinking. Problems that are too easy are boring; problems that appear impossible are frustrating. Somewhere between the two lies the pleasure of figuring something out.

This also means that good teaching cannot simply consist of making students “active”. To think about something, students need something to think with: factual knowledge, previous examples and procedures stored in long-term memory. Asking students to critically discuss a question for which they lack the necessary background knowledge is no more intellectually demanding than asking them to guess.

Perhaps the better question for teachers is therefore not whether a class is a lecture, seminar or game, but: where is the cognitive work? Who is actually doing the thinking? Willingham notes how easily a lesson can become a long series of teacher explanations, while the students themselves solve very few problems. And perhaps we are sometimes too eager to supply answers before we have created a question that students actually want answered.

Seen this way, the challenge is to design teaching in which students repeatedly encounter problems that are difficult enough to require thought, but sufficiently accessible that they can experience the satisfaction of solving them.

C4

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 13:09:06 +0000

Founded by the Danish king Christian IV in 1614, many things in Kristianstad, including the city itself, bear his name. Taking the bus out to the C4 shopping mall, I started the day with an upper-body strength session at Nordic Wellness (my legs are still trashed from the marathon) before sitting down to mark 47 exams in Inspera, a marathon in its own right.

However, as so often in my life, I had already received the reward before putting in the work, as Linnéa baked the most delicious cinnamon buns yesterday while I cooked an old favourite dish of mine (minced lamb with sage and lemon) for dinner. We also got to play a game with all the flags of the world, which I am bringing along to Karlstad to play with William next weekend, as well as a round of the feminist edition of När då då?. Linnéa’s daughter won the latter, presumably thanks to Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women having been her favourite book when she was younger.

Malmö, again

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 17:01:19 +0000

Being a city full of memories, reaching back to the 1980s in Beijers Park, through the late 90s of coming of age, to the open skyline of Kasai this summer, Malmö has always held a special place in my heart. Today, I got to race 42.2 kilometres through its streets.

For the first half marathon, I lived the dream of running in under three hours and thirty minutes, even if my heart rate was well above 170 bpm. Having passed the 21k mark in one hour and 43 minutes, it only took a few more kilometres for reality to catch up with me. With my knee hurting like hell and my stamina simply not there, from 32 kilometres onwards it became pure suffering, often with my pace dropping to between six and seven minutes per kilometre. Finishing in 3 hours and 53 minutes, I felt horribly nauseous but, luckily, both my parents were at the finish line and took extraordinarily good care of me.

A few hours at a Parisian café later, all parameters were back to normal and I could take the train back to Halmstad. Looking back on the race, I am still happy about finishing in under four hours and having had such a beautiful day by the water. Contrary to the forecast, the sun broke through the mist in ways that almost reminded me of California, and it is no exaggeration to say that I could see myself living in Malmö again sometime in the future, when the kids have grown up.

200 papers

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 17:26:06 +0000

According to the Washington Post, a tenured professor at the University of Chicago managed to produce more than two hundred papers in just nine months, largely thanks to generative AI, before fellow academics started raising questions. As such, I should perhaps not be surprised that I recently had to wait three months for a journal to even decide whether to send my manuscript out for review. Luckily, they did, so now I have one more article out there awaiting its fate.

Hopefully, I will have another one joining it next week, as Kalle and I are wrapping up our co-authored article on the board game När då då?. Compared with my work in environmental ethics, pedagogical research really is such a blissful world of encouragement and supportive comments. I mean, few people are going to object to students learning the history of political thought or being exposed to voices outside the established canon.

After spending six hours in the classroom, I stopped by Nordic Wellness for a quick gym session before making a massive carb-loading feast of pecorino meatballs and spaghetti, served with a glass of Argentinian red (as per tradition). Tomorrow, at 7:37 a.m., I will take the high-speed train down to Malmö, where the gun goes off at ten sharp at Ribersborg, sending me everywhere from Limhamn to Värnhem before eventually bringing me back to Ribersborg – hopefully with the clock showing something under three hours and thirty minutes.

Kennedy

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 15:48:18 +0000

After twenty years of blogging, I might be forgiven for thinking I have written things here on Rawls & Me that I in fact have not. Talking with Linnéa yesterday about the not-so-clear-cut distinction between democratic debate and foreign influence operations, I was reminded of a speech John F. Kennedy gave in 1962, which I was certain I had mentioned on the blog. I searched in vain, but I remember the quote as speaking directly to a democratic ethos that seems all but lost these days:

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

Much like Linnéa's wish to raise her kids as world citizens in a time dominated by chauvinism, many of my values (such as the idea that everyone on this planet deserves a reasonable material standard of living) would, I often feel, have been plain common sense sixty or a hundred years ago. But as the discourse has shifted, they, like Kennedy's words above, have come to seem almost like fringe positions, now that "safety" and group egoism have taken precedence over everything else.

När då då

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 15:45:25 +0000

Today, I finally got to test my latest pedagogical innovation in the classroom. Inspired by the boardgame “När då då?”, I have created hundreds of cards with different political philosophers, works and events that the students are to place along a timeline, making their knowledge and reasoning visible to each other as a form of collaborative learning. While attendance was not the best, the students who did show up seemed to really enjoy the game.

And, for once, this impression was not entirely based on wishful thinking on the part of the teacher. At the end of the seminar, I asked the students to fill out a digital exit ticket.

On a five-point scale, the students gave the game an average of 4.47 for helping them get a better sense of the chronological order of political thinkers, texts and events. The group discussions scored 4.20 for helping them understand how the different pieces of intellectual history fit together. Even more pleasingly, the statement that the game required them to actually use their knowledge and reason about where to place the cards, rather than simply guess, scored 4.60. But the real triumph came with the final question: would they like to do this kind of activity again in another course? Average score: 4.80 out of 5. Thirteen of the fifteen respondents simply ticked the maximum score.

The free-text answers were perhaps even more interesting. One student noted that the history of political thought somehow tends to exist entirely “before 1900” in their head, and that seeing everything on a timeline made it apparent that many philosophers and ideas are actually not that old. Others mentioned suddenly seeing how interconnected the different political thinkers were, how ideas influenced one another, and “how quickly development happened”. Another wrote that the game made them reason their way towards plausible conclusions from the different texts.

Obviously, fifteen enthusiastic exit tickets do not demonstrate that playing a homemade board game produces superior learning outcomes. There is selection bias, social desirability, a teacher standing next to them who seemed to really like his game, and all the other things that tend to ruin causal inference. Still, as a first classroom experiment, it worked remarkably well. More importantly, walking around the room and listening to the discussions, I could hear students doing precisely what I had hoped they would do: not asking “what year was this?”, but reasoning from what they already knew. If Hobbes wrote after the English Civil War, and Locke comes after Hobbes, and The Communist Manifesto surely has to be somewhere around the revolutions of 1848, then where on earth do we put Mary Wollstonecraft?

Which, pedagogically speaking, was exactly the point.

Flower power

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 17:56:05 +0000

Taking the train down to Malmö to pick up my bib in preparation for next week’s marathon, Linnéa and I got to eat some highly authentic Malaysian nasi lemak at Cantin (which is closing for the season this weekend) and have a cup of coffee at Solde. Best of all, there was the Dahlia Festival at Slottsträdgården and clear autumn skies across Öresund.

Being both public transport super-users, we found ourselves reflecting on geography and how monthly tickets (especially this autumn, when they are available at half price) contribute to regional enlargement, making it possible to wake up in Halmstad, have a full day in Malmö, and still be back in time for a sunset half marathon out to Tylösand.

Perhaps there is a rebound effect of sorts here: as trains become cheaper and more convenient, we simply get used to travelling ever greater distances. In my case, 260 kilometres today.

Duplex

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 20:30:13 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 20:05:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 11:56:25 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 20:27:36 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 11:07:24 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 18:38:08 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 07:58:18 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 19:21:55 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 14:32:37 +0000

Election watch

noreply@blogger.com (Rasmus Karlsson) — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 06:34:08 +0000

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.