Ida Tolgensbakk
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idatolgensbakk.bsky.social
Ida Tolgensbakk
@idatolgensbakk.bsky.social
1.6K followers 970 following 610 posts
Folklorist at Norsk Folkemuseum. Migration history, folklore, childlore, netlore.

[email protected]
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idatolgensbakk.bsky.social
The best thing about the current Discourse is all the (latin) Americans making jokes. Also, this:
keristars.bsky.social keri @keristars.bsky.social · 1d
I've been reading Greg Grandin's America, América and it's got some interesting discussion about this, and Anglo-America vs Latin-America in general. I highly recommend it!

This passage is from the introduction, addressing the demonym "American" specifically.
Who is an American? And what is America? These questions go back a long way. “I that am an American,” affirmed Cotton Mather in the early 1700s. In 1821, the radical Catholic priest Servando Teresa de Mier—born in northern Mexico to a family that traced its lineage back centuries to the first dukes of Granada—also thought himself an American. Having escaped the dungeons of the Inquisition, Mier had set up a printing house in Philadelphia to publish books banned by Spain. He complained, in a letter he sent to a revolutionary compatriot, about the way English speakers used the word America. There were two problems, actually. The first was the constant equation of Spanish American with South America. Mier was tired of pointing out to his English-speaking acquaintances that North America was also Spanish America—that there were more Spanish speakers in Mexico (which at that point ran well into what is today the United States’ Southwest) than in all South America. The second problem was that each European empire used the word America to refer only to their colonial or former colonial possessions. Great Britain called the United States America, Spain called its colonies America, Portugal referred to Brazil as America, France and the Dutch did the same for their Caribbean islands. It is as if, Father Mier said, “there is no other America other than the one they dominate.” “A thousand errors,” he said, lamenting how America was fractured by such usage. All the New World is America. Confusion was natural. America, for Anglo settlers before their revolution, was both the entire New World and their sliver of that world—both their narrow dominion of a thin slip of land between the Alleghenies and the sea and all the land west of those mountains. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation named the new country the United States of America, but also referred to it as just America. Europeans liked to point out that the “United States” wasn’t really a “proper name” but rather an adjective attached to a generic noun. Washington Irving agreed. Irving wanted “an appellation” of his own to ensure that he wasn’t confused with a Mexican who by rights could also call himself an American. He wanted a name that would identify him as “of the Anglo-Saxon race which founded this Anglo-Saxon empire in the wilderness.” He suggested Appalachian or Alleghanian. The New England social activist Orestes Brownson thought such ideas rubbish. The “name of the country is America,” he wrote in 1865, “that of the people is Americans. Speak of Americans simply and nobody understands you to mean the people of Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, but everybody understands you to mean the people of the United States.”[11] Brownson was right at least about royal Canadians, who tended not to call themselves Americans to distinguish themselves from their English-speaking republican neighbors. But Mexicans, Brazilians, Peruvians, Chileans, and Paraguayans all thought themselves Americans, as did the Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda. Nosotros los Americanos—We, the Americans—was how early Mexican nationalists called themselves. Somos da América e queremos ser americanos, said Brazil’s republican leaders, who wanted to overthrow their monarch: We are from America and want to be Americans. Proprietary claims to America became politicized over time, serving as stand-ins for struggles about more substantive issues. “We’ve lost the right to call ourselves Americans,” the Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano wrote in 1971. “Today, for the rest of the world, America means nothing but the United States. We inhabit at best a Sub-America, a second-class America of confused identity.” “We are more American,” goes a song by the Mexican norteño band Los Tigres de Norte “than the sons of the Anglo-Saxons.” Los Tigres are a favorite of migrant and borderland workers, suggesting the matter is not just a concern of literate elites. In 1943, the diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis struggled to decide what adjective he should use to refer to the United States, reluctantly settling on American. It sounds better, Bemis wrote, than “the less euphonious adjective United States.” Latin Americans will occasionally refer to the United States as América del Norte, but generally use Estados Unidos and estadounidense, which in Spanish with all its rolling vowels is euphonious, mellifluent even.
November 28, 2025 at 9:54 PM
idatolgensbakk.bsky.social
All I want for Christmas is no more journalists asking repetitive Christmas questions, and also that our amazing chain letter journal article is published before the year is over. #folklore
November 27, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
jilltxt.bsky.social
New #AIstories publication by @annesigrid.bsky.social! I love this one: it compares human-told variants of a folktale with LLM-generated variants, finding 1) the implicit is made explicit 2) floatif motifs (fascinating new concept) 3) sex is censored, cannibalism augmented doi.org/10.3390/h141...
doi.org
November 26, 2025 at 11:18 PM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
jilltxt.bsky.social
Read my🧵about our new #AIstories publication, by @annesigrid.bsky.social - read on for floating motifs, cannibalism and more! And honestly just to understand more about what actually characterises LLM-generated storytelling.
November 27, 2025 at 12:12 AM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
annesigrid.bsky.social
Definitely a hill people should stop dying on
dopestatistics.bsky.social Mollz @dopestatistics.bsky.social · 1d
People should stop climbing mt everest
November 27, 2025 at 6:30 AM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
willpooley.bsky.social
all those years work pitching the value of the humanities and STILL when financial crunch comes and management consultants role in, they could not care less.

history doesn’t have enough commercial applications! humanities aren’t engaged enough with AI! why isn’t my house a helicopter!
November 26, 2025 at 6:59 PM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
culinavetus.bsky.social
Today, a set of recipes for cooking lungs and liver in spicy sauces. #Earlymodern German had no word for #offal, but some meats were less equal than others.

www.culina-vetus.de/2025/11/26/l...

#culinaryhistory #foodhistory #organmeat
Frontispiece of the first (1547) edition of Balthasar Staindl's Künstlichs und nutzlichs Kochbuch held at the Bayrische Staatsbibliothek. The image shows a woodcut of a richly equipped and busy kitchen. The master cook is standing to the left of the large masonry hearth, tasting the contents of a large cookpot stood next to the fire while a cauldron is suspended above it. Two men in the background seem to be addressing him. In the right foreground, another man is cutting meat on a work surface set up atop a wooden trough on trestles. Carcasses and a large sausage are shown suspended on the wall in the background. Everything about this image - the size, the range of equipment, the exclusively male staff, the amounts of meat on display - signals wealth. This is the kind of kitchen you would expect to find in the house of a rich burgher or landed nobleman. The motif recurs in many German cookbooks of the fifteenth and sixteenth century.
November 26, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
folkloretodmorden.bsky.social
Don’t miss this wonderful talk with Roy Vickery looking at queer plant lore, can’t wait as this is such a new and unique topic! 🌸
Plus support the Centre while in hibernation. 💚
Ticket holders will be sent a replay link to watch at your leisure.
Tickets: www.folkloremythmagic.com/event-detail...
November 26, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
jessemlocker.bsky.social
How to make tortillas, from Girolamo Benzoni, La Historia del Mondo Nuovo (Venice, 1565)
A woodcut of three women in a thatched hut grinding maize, forming and cooking tortillas text reads: "Modo di fare il pane Le donne Molandaie che lo macinano pigliano una quantità di questo grano, & la sera inanzi lo bagnano con acqua fredda; la mattina con due pie[tre]..." ["Method of making bread The miller women who grind it take a quantity of this grain, and in the evening they soak it in cold water; in the morning, with two stones..."] https://archive.org/details/la-historia-del-mondo-nuovo/page/n123/mode/1up?q=pane
November 22, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
psychunseen.bsky.social
Pre-print of our case of new-onset AI-associated psychosis in a patient with no prior psychotic episodes.

Although there have been many such reports in the media, I believe this the first case published in the academic literature.

innovationscns.com/youre-not-cr...
“You're Not Crazy”: A Case of New-onset AI-associated Psychosis - Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience
Peer-reviewed evidence-based information in neuroscience research and practice, including psychiatry, neurology, psychology
innovationscns.com
November 22, 2025 at 5:51 PM
idatolgensbakk.bsky.social
I have family at the other side of the continent. Sometimes I need to be with them. Incredibly grateful to have the money to go, an employer who lets me work from abroad, and the digital means to do so ❤️ #academicsky
A laptop on a table in a messy office. The office is in Spain, but you can't tell from the picture.
November 21, 2025 at 8:33 AM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
annesigrid.bsky.social
Read this thread + the replies
eliothiggins.bsky.social Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 9d
Bellingcat’s contact email has always been a magnet for people with fairly unusual views; paranoid delusions, sprawling conspiracies, the works. But recently, the pattern has shifted, we’re seeing more and more emails clearly written with ChatGPT.
November 21, 2025 at 5:38 AM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
kjsoar.bsky.social
Well, I know what I'll be wearing next time I visit 😁🖤
@helleborezine.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
‘Demonic’ Wind in the Willows jumper banned from Westminster Abbey
Woman told to remove or cover up garment featuring 1908 illustration of Pan lest it offend worshippers
www.theguardian.com
November 14, 2025 at 9:18 AM
idatolgensbakk.bsky.social
Today in #museumlife : thinking about the fact that plastic is the worst to conserve.
He-Man figures standing on an office desk.
November 14, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
drtaragoddard.com
THIS IS WHY WE NEED THE HUMANITIES IN SCHOOL
rezekjoe.bsky.social Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 14d
This is a real flight school, teaching people to fly planes!!! Like????
Logo for Icarus flying academy in Farmingdale, NY
November 14, 2025 at 2:31 AM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
jilltxt.bsky.social
When I submitted a paper to AI & Society the email confirmation sent me to a website that told me my language quality score was only 3/10 but RUBRIQ could fix it. I study this stuff, so uploaded my paper to RUBRIQ, which proceeded to introduce scientific fabrication and change scientific terms.
November 11, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
jtullock.bsky.social
No no no begs every archivist. You are never going to be able to find anything. Please don’t start using emojis in file names. Who asked for this? What fresh hell is next?
Screen grab from Dropbox saying Emojis in file names are finally here!
November 12, 2025 at 10:38 AM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
evansmithhist.bsky.social
The birth of the author
November 12, 2025 at 11:31 AM
idatolgensbakk.bsky.social
Wet, pretty, and probably not historically correct cobblestone #museumlife
November 12, 2025 at 11:55 AM
idatolgensbakk.bsky.social
Today: revision of the toy collection at @norskfolkemuseum.bsky.social . Some toys are more cursed than others! #academicsky #foklore
A very scary mechanical toy: a monkey in a blue hat, yellow face with weird smile and red staring eyes, holding red bells.
November 11, 2025 at 4:09 PM
idatolgensbakk.bsky.social
Warm and wet november, climate change will probably not do our church good. But it does look nice and dramatic! #museumlife
Old stave church, tarred so it's almost black, standing in the rain on a lawn.
November 6, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
reactorsff.bsky.social
How can a microhistory about cooking and kitchen implements inspire speculative fiction? Here's @r-emrys.bsky.social on how "Consider the Fork" may change the way you think about the technological and cultural aspects of food 🍴
Fridge Phobia and the Invention of Boiling: Bee Wilson’s Consider the Fork - Reactor
A surprisingly deep look into the connections between food, technology, and human culture — plus fun facts about spoons!
reactormag.com
November 6, 2025 at 6:08 PM
Reposted by Ida Tolgensbakk
bildoperationen.bsky.social
Generative AI is literally destroying knowledge
emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social Emanuel Maiberg @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social · Oct 17
wikipedia's data shows that AI is siphoning traffic away from the site, which is a danger to its sustainability. ironically Wikipedia is more important than ever to users who want reliable information instead of slop, and to AI companies that need it for training data www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...
Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors
“With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work.”
www.404media.co
October 17, 2025 at 5:10 AM