Spencer Greenhalgh likes RSS and thinks you're great for using it

🔗 linkblog: Trump Threatens CNN For Very Basic Reporting On His Shitty, Unpopular War

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:26:47 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Trump Threatens CNN For Very Basic Reporting On His Shitty, Unpopular War https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-04-10-dumb-indefensible/

🔗 linkblog: Police corporal created AI porn from driver's license pics

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:23:26 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Police corporal created AI porn from driver's license pics https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-04-09-so-gross./

🔗 linkblog: Money for War, But... | Friends Committee On National Legislation

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:40:24 -0400

Shameful spending priorities:

Roughly 5.5% of that $200 billion could fund universal meals to all U.S. public school students for the year. The whole package could feed millions of children for decades. As Sen. Adam Schiff (CA) has pointed out, “A hospital costs about $100 million… If we’re spending a billion a day in Iran, we’re effectively dropping 10 hospitals a day on Iran.”

🔗 linkblog: What the heck is wrong with our AI overlords?

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 17:17:41 -0400

I wrote recently about how my concerns about (generative AI) are probably more about the broader Ellulian system of technique than the specifics of the technology. Here’s a passage from this article that makes a similar point better:

For some tasks, AI really is amazing; the tech behind things like machine-learning algorithms and large language models is ingenious, but the results always seem to be hawked the hardest by people and companies I don’t particularly like or trust. (Heck, Anthropic used one of my books to train its database, a sin for which it is now paying authors in court.) Give me the same sorts of tools but under my local control, governed by a Wikipedia-style nonprofit and trained on ethically sourced data, and I’d use them a lot more.

🔗 linkblog: When the President threatens to commit a genocide

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 17:14:07 -0400

🔗 linkblog: When the President threatens to commit a genocide https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-04-07-i-follow/

🔗 linkblog: The New York Times Got Played By A Telehealth Scam And Called It The Future Of AI

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 17:08:16 -0400

Masnick’s fierce critique is all the more notable for how public he is that AI is good for some things, pushing back against grumpier folks (e.g., me).

Check this paragraph out, though:

What we actually have here is a marketing operation that used AI to automate the production of deceptive advertising at a scale and speed that would have been harder to achieve otherwise. Snake oil salesmen have existed forever. What AI gave Matthew Gallagher (and, I guess, his affiliates) was the ability to crank out fake doctors, fabricated testimonials, and deepfaked before-and-after photos faster than any human team could — and to do it cheap enough that a guy with $20,000 and no morals could build it from his house. That’s the actual AI story the Times should have written.

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:28:50 -0400

I think this will always be my favorite panel from all of Dumbing of Age.

🔗 linkblog: America is exceptional — in its addiction to violence and war

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 08:15:03 -0400

Lots to think about here. In the context of Trump’s proposed budget, this stood out in particular:

Our military spending is not a partisan issue. Obama raised Bush’s military budget. Trump raised Obama’s budget. Biden raised Trump’s budget. What would King say to that? Probably exactly what he said in 1967: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching a spiritual death.”

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: EU ready to cave to Trump on tech (04 Apr 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 08:10:21 -0400

Doctorow has been arguing for a post-American internet/tech industry for a while, but this passage really landed for me:

If Trump wants to steal Greenland, he doesn’t need tanks or missiles. He can just tell Microsoft and Oracle to brick the entire Danish state and all of its key firms, blocking their access to their email archives, files, databases, and other key administrative tools. If Denmark still holds out, Trump can brick all their tractors, smart speakers, and phones. If Denmark still won’t give up Greenland, Trump could blackhole all Danish IP addresses for the world’s majority of transoceanic fiber. At the click of a mouse, Trump could shut down the world’s supply of Lego, Ozempic, and delicious, lethally strong black licorice.

🔗 linkblog: Senators Ask Tulsi Gabbard To Tell Americans That VPN Use Might Subject Them To Domestic Surveillance

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:04:36 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Senators Ask Tulsi Gabbard To Tell Americans That VPN Use Might Subject Them To Domestic Surveillance https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-04-03-ugh-this/

🔗 linkblog: DOGE Goes Nuclear: How Trump Invited Silicon Valley Into America’s Nuclear Power Regulator

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 06:54:30 -0400

So much about this that I don’t like. The article makes a good case that there may be good reasons to ease up on nuclear power regulations, but the language of AI and VCs suggests to me that those good reasons aren’t the top priority.

🔗 linkblog: Anthropic says its leak-focused DMCA effort unintentionally hit legit GitHub forks

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:49:42 -0400

So Doctorow already said this in the essay I linked to this morning, but it’s very striking how much this leak highlights Anthropic’s willingness to use our creative labor while simultaneously cracking down on any effort for others to do the same to them.

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: It’s extremely good that Claude’s source-code leaked (02 Apr 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:16:08 -0400

Didn’t expect from the headline that this would turn into an essay on copyright, but I’m glad it did:

Expanding copyright will gain little for creative workers, except for a new reason to be angry about how our audiences experience our work. Expanding labor rights will gain much, for every worker, including our audiences. It’s an idea that our bosses – and AI hucksters – hate with every fiber of their beings.

🔗 linkblog: Sam Altman: ‘If I Don’t End The World, Someone Far More Dangerous Will’

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:44:56 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Sam Altman: ‘If I Don’t End The World, Someone Far More Dangerous Will’ https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-04-01-the-depressing/

🔗 linkblog: The World Would Not Know Jesus Christ

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 07:00:36 -0400

🔗 linkblog: The World Would Not Know Jesus Christ https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-04-01-some-good/

🔗 linkblog: I Asked ChatGPT What WIRED’s Reviewers Recommend—Its Answers Were All Wrong

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 06:23:25 -0400

Interesting article here. I don’t read WIRED (or The Verge, or…) for the product reviews, but it’s not hard to see how generative AI can create issues for them in that way.

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 18:57:02 -0400

Gotta admit that I was tempted to put “Brendan Carr is a dummy” on my protest sign today so I could find the other Vergecast listeners in town.

🔗 linkblog: The United States router ban, explained

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:19:50 -0400

This is the first thing I’ve bothered reading about the router ban, and it is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to read.

🔗 linkblog: Jessica Foster, la citoyenne-soldate 'parfaite' du camp MAGA qui n'existe pas | RTS

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 06:58:19 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Jessica Foster, la citoyenne-soldate 'parfaite' du camp MAGA qui n'existe pas | RTS https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-25-histoire-fascinantemais/

🔗 linkblog: Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:46:10 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-20-uh-this/

📚 bookblog: More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:42:11 -0400

Cory Doctorow’s end of year recap of books he reviewed always puts a few titles on my list, and this was one of them. The history of energy is not inherently the most interesting topic ever, but once I got past the fact that I was reading in translation (which only bugs me with French, since I can read that pretty well) and trying to figure out how the translation was done (worried about AI, to be honest), I really enjoyed this book.

Well, enjoyed as much as one can: It’s a sobering read that challenges narratives about energy transition as overly simple—not to downplay the importance of the climate catastrophe but instead to emphasize that more radical steps than “wait for solar to fix everything” (or, I would add, wait for AGI to fix everything) are necessary if we’re going to respond responsibly. It will impact my thinking for quite some time, I imagine.

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:17:15 -0400

That Marc Andreessen clip about having zero introspection sounds like it’s straight out of an Ellulian critique: There is no good or bad, there is only technique.

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 12:26:57 -0400

The Martian is a fun reread—except when its casual references to a functioning federal government and US media ecosystem briefly take me out of the narrative.

🔗 linkblog: House GOP leadership silent as more members post anti-Muslim statements

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 07:27:45 -0400

🔗 linkblog: House GOP leadership silent as more members post anti-Muslim statements https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-14-reprehensible-comments/

🔗 linkblog: Pete Hegseth Questions What Girls Were Doing In School To Begin With

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 16:42:18 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Pete Hegseth Questions What Girls Were Doing In School To Begin With https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-13-terrible-but/

🔗 linkblog: Trump Defends Wearing Fruit Hat, Samba Dancing During Dignified Transfer

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:44:21 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Trump Defends Wearing Fruit Hat, Samba Dancing During Dignified Transfer https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-12-the-last/

🔗 linkblog: 'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 12:37:58 -0400

🔗 linkblog: 'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-12-required-reading/

🔗 linkblog: Grammarly Is Facing a Class Action Lawsuit Over Its AI ‘Expert Review’ Feature

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 20:39:08 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Grammarly Is Facing a Class Action Lawsuit Over Its AI ‘Expert Review’ Feature https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-11-oh-okay/

🔗 linkblog: Grammarly says it will stop using AI to clone experts without permission

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 20:33:29 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Grammarly says it will stop using AI to clone experts without permission https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-11-oh-look/

🔗 linkblog: A DOGE Bro Allegedly Walked Out Of Social Security With 500 Million Americans’ Records On A Thumb Drive And Expected A Pardon If Caught

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 20:30:51 -0400

🔗 linkblog: A DOGE Bro Allegedly Walked Out Of Social Security With 500 Million Americans’ Records On A Thumb Drive And Expected A Pardon If Caught https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-11-terrifying-stuff./

🔗 linkblog: Grammarly will keep using authors’ identities without permission unless they opt out

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 16:35:07 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Grammarly will keep using authors’ identities without permission unless they opt out https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-10-opt-out/

exploring grace and generosity (and the recalcitrant rich) through two translations of a psalm

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 12:48:46 -0400

Over the past few months, one of my afternoon traditions has been to take a short break to read through the day’s passages in Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro’s Common Prayer: Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. I bought this book after being impressed by Claiborne’s work in Jesus for President (which is much more radical than the title sounds) and with the hopes that it would be another resource for me as I continue to learn about the liturgical calendar. I didn’t stick with it long during the 2024-2025 liturgical year, but I’ve been having more luck with the 2025-2026 liturgical year. Sometimes, I’ll admit, I just go through the motions, but every once in a while, something really stands out to me.

This afternoon, I was impressed with the psalm passage (Psalm 49:4-8) that was included with today’s readings, the translation apparently taken from the Book of Common Prayer. Here’s how it reads:

Why should I be afraid in evil days : when the wickedness of those at my heels surrounds me the wickedness of those who put their trust in their goods : and boast of their great riches? We can never ransom ourselves : or deliver to God the price of our life; for the ransom of our life is so great : that we should never have enough to pay it, in order to live for ever and ever : and never see the grave.

To be clear, there are some very obviously toxic ways that the idea that “we owe everything to God” can be interpreted, and I’m not interested in any of those. Yet, passages like this (and King Benjamin’s sermon in the Book of Mormon) really work for me in combatting my own tendency to think that I’ve pulled myself up by my bootstraps and that I deserve through my own hard work every good thing that comes my way. (This post from a few years ago is a non-scriptural exploration of that same question). Whether I attribute it to God, the universe, or dumb luck (and as a non-theist, it’s usually the latter two in a trenchcoat with the trappings of the first), I (and so, so many others) need a reminder that I will never earn enough to pay the ransom of my own life. I always owe who I am and what success I’ve had to good luck and others’ grace, and this language encapsulates that reality for me.

I was so taken with the psalm that I decided to open up Robert Alter’s The Hebrew Bible to take a look at how he rendered it. To my surprise, it was pretty different (and not just in versification)!

Why should I fear in evil days, when crime comes round me at my heels? Who trust in their wealth and boast of their great riches— yet they surely will redeem no man, will not give to God his ransom. To redeem their lives is too dear, and one comes to an end forever.

Alter notes that “pronoun reference is confusing” in Biblical poetry, which might go some way toward explaining the difference between his rendering and the one in the Book of Common Prayer. Yet, Alter argues:

> the meaning of this verse is not in doubt. Those who trust in their wealth but are unwilling to put up money for those in need find it too expensive to redeem the lives of the needy. Before the recalcitrant rich can be prevailed on to help, the poor man in straits will perish, will be gone forever.

At first, I was disappointed to see that Alter’s translation differed so much from the one that had really connected with me (for what it’s worth, the NRSV seems to chart a middle ground, resembling the BCP translation but acknowledging the possibility that it could be interpreted more like Alter). After some brief reflection, though, I feel that the two translations work pretty well together. The rich who believe that they can ransom their own lives are also frequently those who refuse to ransom others. We need reminders that we are not fully responsible for our own successes so that we will be more likely to help lift up others who are waiting for success to come their way.

In short, this wrapped up neatly to be an interesting exploration of Community of Christ’s enduring principle of Grace and Generosity—it is in recognizing that grace that we have received that we prepare ourselves to be generous to others.

on anarchist themes in Pluribus

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 09:07:31 -0400

This post takes for granted that one is familiar with the first season of the Apple TV+ show Pluribus—I don’t make any effort to explain the premise of the show or to avoid any spoilers about it.

As I concede just about every time I write something related to anarchism, I don’t claim to be a serious student of this political philosophy, and I don’t know if I’m ready to declare my allegiance to it. Yet, there are two basic beliefs of anarchism that I find attractive and that keep me coming back to anarchist writing (both fictional and philosophical):

anarchism believes in the possibility of a better world than the one we live in
anarchism is very skeptical of any concentration of power—it insists that that better world must be collectively decided on rather than imposed on us

Ever since finishing the excellent tv show Pluribus back in December, I’ve been thinking about how both of those themes are implicitly present in the show. I doubt that this was intentional, and yet the show does an excellent job of not only representing those two themes but also of playing with the tension between them.

On one hand, the most attractive thing about the global hive mind in the show is that it has the “better world than the one we live in” more or less figured out. Granted, there are some horrifying undercurrents to that better world, but one could imagine a slightly different, less horrifying take on this hive mind—one that was less doctrinaire about not eating meat or picking fruit but that was still capable of achieving a kind of responsible, “everybody lives” degrowth (in full disclosure, that link is a Doctor Who reference, not a philosophical argument) that sounds pretty appealing from an anarchist point of view.

And yet! Even if the Pluribus hive mind were less horrifying in terms of what it was willing to sacrifice and what lines it’s willing to cross in terms of its food supply, the show would still do an excellent job of interrogating whether that better world was truly something that individual members of the hive mind had consented to or something that had been imposed upon them. In Kōhei Saitō’s book calling for degrowth, he is as frank about the dangers of “climate Maoism” as he is insistent that something needs to be done to respond to the climate crisis. Even if we were to set aside the most horrific elements of the Pluribus hive mind, I’m not convinced that the better world that they’ve achieved justifies the lack of autonomy and agency that it cost (I am somewhat surprised to find myself acknowledging that “Superman: Red Son” also plays with these themes, though I don’t think it does so as well as Pluribus does).

I appreciate that both of these themes are present in anarchism, even as their combination puts us in a bit of a pickle! Even that pickle, though, has an attractiveness on its own. Part of what draws me to anarchism is its insistence on the necessity of a better world, but perhaps the bigger part is the belief that we can achieve it without needing to resort to a hive mind of dubious consent (or even worse methods) for doing so. That last part is very hopeful, and that’s something I really need these days.

📚 bookblog: Autonomous (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 14:50:49 -0400

The beginning of this book felt like a bit of a slog, which felt tragic because I knew the book had all the elements I like in sci-fi! It eventually won me over, though, and I’m glad I stuck with it.

🔗 linkblog: Grammarly is using our identities without permission

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 21:34:14 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Grammarly is using our identities without permission https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-06-wild-escalation/

🔗 linkblog: Anthropic’s Statement To The ‘Department Of War’ Reads Like A Hostage Note Written In Business Casual

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:20:29 -0500

Good observations here. My respect for Anthropic was solely based on their seeming willingness to stand up for something, because otherwise, I have a lot of issues wirh them. This groveling makes that respect disappear.

🔗 linkblog: Workers report watching Ray-Ban Meta-shot footage of people using the bathroom

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 08:50:48 -0500

Hate this so much. The company statements are weaselly and gross. This also demonstrates one of the worst things about this whole issue. I would never buy Meta smart glasses, but I know two people in my life who own them, and the privacy burden of this product isn’t borne by the owner of the device so much as by those around them. Barf, barf, barf.

📺 tvblog: Un village français Saison 2 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 09:51:46 -0500

On commence à voir pourquoi Andor s’est inspiré de cette série ! Au bout de douze épisodes, je commence à mieux connaître les personnages et à choisir des préférés parmi eux. En avant !

📚 bookblog: France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 09:47:43 -0500

As soon as I saw this in a bookstore, I knew I’d need to read it, and I was happy to find an audiobook through hoopla (even if ew, hoopla). The details of the trial itself weren’t always easy to follow, but it was fascinating to learn more about a historical figure I was only loosely familiar with—and the final part of the book tracing Pétain’s continued significance was especially interesting.

🔗 linkblog: Trump Wins $60 On Kalshi Betting He’ll Bomb Iran

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 18:40:43 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Trump Wins $60 On Kalshi Betting He’ll Bomb Iran https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-02-vicious-and/

🔗 linkblog: OpenAI’s ‘Red Lines’ Are Written In The NSA’s Dictionary—Where Words Mean What The NSA Wants Them To Mean

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 16:19:55 -0500

🔗 linkblog: OpenAI’s ‘Red Lines’ Are Written In The NSA’s Dictionary—Where Words Mean What The NSA Wants Them To Mean https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-02-masnickwho-is/

🔗 linkblog: With Iran War, Kalshi and Polymarket Bet That the Depravity Economy Has No Bottom

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 14:00:43 -0500

🔗 linkblog: With Iran War, Kalshi and Polymarket Bet That the Depravity Economy Has No Bottom https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-02-good-observations/

🔗 linkblog: Anyone Else Have Those Weird Dreams Where Sobbing Future Generations Beg You To Change Course?

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 13:56:53 -0500

Pretty sure The Onion accelerated the web publication of this deliciously vicious skewering of Sam Altman after last weekend’s making nice with the Pentagon.

thinking about (French) resistance

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 12:01:38 -0500

The year or so that I spent living in France (alongside another year or so in French-speaking Switzerland) was under very particular circumstances—working with a group of mostly Americans doing volunteer work for a U.S.-based church—that led to some idiosyncratic experiences in the country. Perhaps one of the oddest was a small, shared, and superficial obsession with Marshal Ferdinand Foch of World War I fame. This grew out of the fact that the church we were working with rented an apartment on the boulevard Maréchal Foch in Grenoble; those of us who had been assigned to work in that area and live in that apartment had really fallen in love with Grenoble, which translated into constantly talking about Foch (the street) as a superior place to live. We didn’t know much about Foch (the person), but we knew he must have been pretty cool to have a street named after him, and we knew—with all the confidence of Iraq War-era Americans—that he must be better than Marshal Pétain, since Pétain had been a coward who surrendered to the Germans. (That Foch had been dead for nearly two decades at this point wasn’t really on our minds).

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been slowly making my way through Julian Jackson’s France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain, which has in no way turned me into a Pétainist—but has challenged the naïve views that I held while living on bd Maréchal Foch. For one, it’s repeatedly mentioned Foch’s post-war reactionary politics, which I’d like to learn more about (but that I suspect wouldn’t do anything to dent his reputation among some of those I knew who were most Foch-obsessed). The book hasn’t been as gripping as I hoped when I started it, but it did inspire me to finally get around to watching Un village français, a 2009-2017 TV series about a fictional French village under German occupation but very close to the line separating the occupied zone from Pétain’s Vichy France.

The show is further reinforcing an idea that further began in my head while listening to the book on Pétain: If I had lived in occupied France, it’s hard to say whether I would have been fully engaged in resistance, if I would have consented to collaboration, or if I would have tried to find an uneasy balance between the two. I think I could have done better than Pétain did, but as I watch the fictional characters of the TV show decide whether to take German contracts at their sawmill, how to respond to German demands as mayor of the town, and otherwise wrestle with trying to make a life under German occupation, I honestly don’t know what lines I would draw and where I would be willing to compromise. Of course, this is more than just a hypothetical exercise—there’s lots happening in this country right now that I don’t approve of, and I know I’m unlikely to totally avoid total “collaboration” with the powers that be.

I’m reminded of when I first read the late John Lewis’s March trilogy of graphic novels recounting his experiences during the Civil Rights movement. It occurred to me while reading them that in hindsight, it was very easy for me to be on the side of the protestors—but that if I had been living at that time, there was a strong chance that I would have been the kind of white moderate that Martin Luther King excoriated in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. Now, as I watch the characters of Un village français make choices that I feel uneasy about, I wonder how I am, too, conceding to the powers that be for pragmatic reasons instead of being the kind of pure, resistant hero that seems the most in the right. Of course, watching the show also makes me more sympathetic to those who made those choices, so I don’t think it’s helpful to berate myself for every small concession. I just hope that when things become really important, I have the courage to make the right choice.

🔗 linkblog: How OpenAI caved to the Pentagon on AI surveillance

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 11:16:09 -0500

🔗 linkblog: How OpenAI caved to the Pentagon on AI surveillance https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-03-02-an-important/

🔗 linkblog: Trump Says Iran War Could Last Weeks and Gives Competing Visions of New Regime

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 20:18:30 -0500

I nearly completed a degree in international relations (traded it for a political science teaching minor near the end), and what impressed me about that experience is how less sure I was about knowing what I was talking about the longer that I studied things. Trump, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be bothered by that same concern and is happy to insist that things will go a certain way just because he says so. Gift link.

Polymarket as the ultimate unethical abstraction game

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 17:00:20 -0500

About nine months ago, I wrote about abstraction being on my mind and my thinking about how games abstract human life in potentially problematic ways. Abstraction is still on my mind, not least because I’m continuing to read Jacques Ellul, whom I referenced in that post (among so many others). In particular, I think a lot about Ellul’s argument that efficiency and efficacy are the ultimate value in the technical society, and that everything essentially gets ground down to that. I also think a lot about how “efficiency” so often comes down to “less money for others, more money for me,” turning complex policy and other decisions into a single, self-interested abstraction.

Since at least December, I’ve been thinking about Polymarket, a so-called “predictions market” in this context. At 404 Media, Matthew Gault wrote about an incident where:

A live map that tracks frontlines of the war in Ukraine was edited to show a fake Russian advance on the city of Myrnohrad on November 15. The edit coincided with the resolution of a bet on Polymarket, a site where users can bet on anything from basketball games to presidential election and ongoing conflicts.

Note that Gault describes what’s happening on Polymarket as “betting”—Polymarket itself rejects this terminology, insisting that it’s not about gambling but about using the pure power of the market to accurately predict the future. (I think that lends itself to other Ellulian critique, but that’s a post for another time). Whatever Polymarket’s claims are, Gault succinctly describes what’s so problematic with what’s going on here:

Practically every town and city along the frontlines of the war between Russia and Ukraine has a market and gamblers with an interest in geopolitics can get lost in the minutia about the war. To bet on the outcome of a war is grotesque. On Polymarket and other predictive gambling sites, millions of dollars trade hands based on the outcomes of battles that kill hundreds of people. It also creates an incentive for the manipulation of the war and data about the war. If someone involved can make extra cash by manipulating a map, they will. It’s 2025 and war is still a racket. Humans have just figured out new ways to profit from it.

Polymarket is back in the news with the Trump administration’s strikes on Iran, and with suspicion that a small number of people made a lot of money using insider knowledge to make money off of the Iran strikes. So, it’s also back in my thoughts about the dangers of abstraction and the way that “efficiency” so often comes down to personal gain.

📺 tvblog: Un village français Saison 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 15:41:18 -0500

Ça fait des années que j’ai envie de regarder cette série, et apprendre qu’elle a inspiré Andor ne fait que renforcer cette intention.

Je la trouve intéressante, et j’en apprends beaucoup. En fait, je dois avouer que c’est grâce à un livre que j’écoute au sujet du Maréchal Pétain que j’ai enfin décider de commencer la série. Je risque de ne pas finir le livre, mais pour la série, je crois que je vais continuer jusqu’à la fin.

🔗 linkblog: Meta won’t let morality get in the way of a product launch

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 09:04:13 -0500

Don’t think I’ve posted anything on this story yet because as the article points out, it’s hard to focus on this evil with so many other evils distracting us.

🔗 linkblog: Trump announces 'major combat operations' in Iran

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 06:41:50 -0500

It’s not even March, and it’s the second time this year I’ve woken up to Trump treating the military like his plaything to do something reckless while I was asleep.

This line made me laugh-to-keep-from-crying:

Trump said the U.S. had “sought repeatedly to make a deal” but Iran “rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions.”

Hey, what happened to the deal we already had with Iran?

🔗 linkblog: Anthropic Hits Back After US Military Labels It a ‘Supply Chain Risk’

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 06:31:15 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Anthropic Hits Back After US Military Labels It a ‘Supply Chain Risk’ https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-02-28-it-takes/

📚 bookblog: Where the Axe is Buried (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 21:08:21 -0500

Lots to love in this book, and I am tempted to give it full marks. It’s just clunky enough in its plot to dock it a few points, but the ideas in the book are powerful, and its message of hope is great. It also rewards the reader for knowing a bit about geopolitics, which I’m a sucker for.

🔗 linkblog: Anthropic refuses Pentagon’s new terms, standing firm on lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:59:42 -0500

Anthropic is weird, and their conscience is focused in some directions at the expense of others (Claude is trained on pirated copies of my research), but at least they have a conscience.

🔗 linkblog: Being a Luddite Is Cool and All, but Have You Seen the Hilarious Tapestries These New Looms Are Making?

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 17:41:20 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Being a Luddite Is Cool and All, but Have You Seen the Hilarious Tapestries These New Looms Are Making? https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-02-24-very-clever./

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 11:31:01 -0500

Look, I have complicated feelings about my Latter-day Saint mission experience, but I’d be silly not to take joy from learning that Ardis Parshall served in the same mission as me (and Lavina Fielding Anderson). Wish I’d read Keepapitchinin more regularly.

📚 bookblog: Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 08:19:22 -0500

I liked this, but I’m predisposed to like it. It makes a compelling argument that may not convince those who really need to be convinced but that will further open the minds of the already open minded. It made me angry in a good way, but I still don’t know what the right next steps are for me to help make a difference.

🔗 linkblog: The RAM shortage is coming for everything you care about

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 08:48:55 -0500

Love that I get to worry about deepfake nudes, scramble to change the way I assess, and now pay more for tech—if it’s even available.

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 17:28:29 -0500

I’ve been sour on Ring for a long time, but literally everything their CEO is saying to Nilay Patel in these interview clips I’m listening to makes me even angrier at the company.

🔗 linkblog: Big Tech Says Generative AI Will Save the Planet. It Doesn't Offer Much Proof

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 10:56:56 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Big Tech Says Generative AI Will Save the Planet. It Doesn't Offer Much Proof https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-02-18-important-helpful/

🔗 linkblog: Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans to Expand ‘Search Party’ Surveillance Beyond Dogs

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 10:54:12 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans to Expand ‘Search Party’ Surveillance Beyond Dogs https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-02-18-who-could/

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 17:26:19 -0500

“Lent starts tomorrow, I should go ahead and eat that cookie,” I said to myself, unwittingly reinventing Mardi Gras.

🔗 linkblog: Inside the Debacle That Led to the Closure of El Paso’s Airspace

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 06:54:54 -0500

Like Dr. Strangelove, but dumber. Gift link.

📚 bookblog: The Terraformers (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 21:33:23 -0500

Loved this book as much as I did the first time around. It reads like Walkaway mixed with Braiding Sweetgrass, with a bit of The Disposessed for good measure. It’s bonkers but delightful, and I’m glad that I own a copy now.

on being glad BYU wasn't hiring when I was on the job market

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:49:45 -0500

I can’t remember why I had a version of this post bouncing around my head several months ago—maybe a Times and Seasons post? probably a message from an acquaintance at BYU who isn’t up to date on my religious situation?—but I never got around to writing it. With Clark Gilbert’s call to the Latter-day Saint Quorum of the Twelve Apostles today, it felt like a good moment to actually get those thoughts out of my head and into a text file.

My time as an undergraduate at BYU was mostly (maybe even overwhelmingly, with a few exceptions) good, but I didn’t bother applying there for my PhD program, and I can’t say that it was at the top of my wish list of places to work when I started applying for faculty positions near the end of that program. At the same time, though, I knew that as a practicing Latter-day Saint with academic aspirations, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that I’d return there to start my career. Over the course of my graduate studies, I met a lot of the students and faculty in the program I could have studied in if I hadn’t gone off to MSU. If that program had been hiring when I was on the job market, I definitely would have applied. I had a strong research record coming out of grad school, and I had plenty of connections in that program—I don’t think it’s too self-serving to say that there’s a good chance I could have been offered a job there.

It was during my first year in my new job at UK that Mormonism started to crash down around me. This came as something of a surprise—I had been experiencing a slow and steady deconstruction over the course of several years, but I never imagined a life not as a Latter-day Saint who would fit the bill as BYU faculty. It’s not hyperbole to say that this was one of the most difficult and painful experiences that I’ve ever gone through. In January 2019, I wrestled with and ultimately turned down a calling as Young Men’s President of my ward. The night after I first received the call, I could hardly sleep, because I already knew that I wasn’t going to be able to continue on the path that I’d imagined my whole life following. I spent much of the next day on campus trying to nap at my desk but mostly just feeling lost and exhausted. So much of my life and identity was tied up in the church that I’d grown up in, and the idea that the rest of my life would not follow the rough outlines of the future I had so often imagined and expected was terrifying. I cried through a lot of church meetings and a couple of temple sessions, I repeatedly felt like a failure, and it felt like my whole life was being upended. It sucked.

It’s hard to imagine that experience being more difficult than it already was, but if I had been hired at BYU—where my employment would have been explicitly tied to my Latter-day Saint identity and practice—it’s clear that it would have been so, so much worse. Over the course of more than a year, while getting used to faculty life, I made the difficult-but-necessary decision to transition into another faith transition. It was a hard, painful decision, but there were two things I had learned during my life as a Latter-day Saint that convinced me that it was the right thing to do: to put the well-being of my family first, and to study and pray about difficult decisions. I’m not trying to be clever when I say that distancing myself from my Latter-day Saint upbringing is one of the most Mormon things I’ve ever done—I brought all of my Mormonism into that decision, even if it brought me elsewhere.

No matter how true to my faith that decision felt to me, it couldn’t have flown at a BYU where higher powers were becoming more and more insistent that to be a good faculty member at BYU was to toe the line on Latter-day Saint teachings and not show any deviation. It’s not impossible to imagine an alternate reality where 1) I did get hired at BYU and 2) the institution would be cool keeping me on even after my joining Community of Christ. In that alternate reality, I think I’d still be respectful of the faith tradition of the institution I was working for. I could even teach a class on the Book of Mormon and give it a different spin. Even setting aside that BYU wasn’t hiring when I was looking for a job, though, that’s clearly not the BYU that exists.

I have a certain amount of respect for BYU wanting its faculty to embody its mission—both in the abstract and as someone whose Mormonism still means a lot to him. At the same time, though, I think back to the incredible difficulty of my first couple of years on the UK faculty as I was trying to get used to my new job and also navigate a painful religious transition at the same time. If those had been the same thing instead of two different things, it would have been so much harder. Could I have been honest with my bishop or my co-workers? What charades would I have had to play so that I didn’t put my job in jeopardy? How much time would I have had to spend looking for other jobs simply because my religious views were changing?

Whatever respect I can muster up for BYU’s unique identity and mission, whatever real respect I have for the institution and so many of the faculty there, whatever lasting respect I have for what the institution gave me during my time there, I cannot find any respect for a set of policies about faculty conduct and loyalty that would have made one of the most difficult experiences in my life even more miserable. I wonder how many faculty there are now stuck in the hellish position that I could have been stuck in if a few things had been different the year that I was on the job market. I still have a lot of good feelings about BYU, but I am so, SO glad that they were not hiring when I was on the job market.

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:07:22 -0500

You know, I was just thinking of Clark Gilbert earlier today (or maybe yesterday morning?). It was while I was standing “the wrong way” in the elevator, something I do—and have perfectly good reason to do—every day I bike into work.

🔗 linkblog: OpenAI Introduces Premium Video Generator For White House Advisors Manipulating Trump

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:21:35 -0500

🔗 linkblog: OpenAI Introduces Premium Video Generator For White House Advisors Manipulating Trump https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-02-12-excellent-jokes/

🔗 linkblog: With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:21:28 -0500

Ring sucks and is creepy. Here’s the killer paragraph from this story;

Unlike, say, data analytics giant Palantir or some other high-profile surveillance companies, Ring is a surveillance network that homeowners have by and large deployed themselves, powered by fear mongering against our neighbors and unfettered consumerism.

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:23:56 -0500

My brain is fuzzy enough this morning that I read this as a Bible verse: The book of Linux, chapter 6, verse 19. Now wondering what that would read and whether I’d add it to my personal canon (which already includes Doctorow’s pro-open-source “Walkaway”).

a sermon in which I implicitly call Tim Cook a coward

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 09:07:58 -0500

It was last November that I signed up to preach on Isaiah 58:1-12 (“Bring an End to Oppression”) on February 8th, and it was depressing how much the universe gave me to work with over the course of the first few weeks of 2026. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to address the idea of the prophetic critique in Isaiah and invite those of us in the service to emulate that critique in our own day. What I had trouble figuring out—almost right up to the end—was what I wanted to use as examples.

I knew that I needed to reference contemporary events, but I struggled with which examples to use and how explicit to make them. I’m not proud of that last part—I think a more courageous sermon would have mentioned Alex Pretti (and so many others) by name instead of vaguely alluding to just one of them. Calling out Tim Cook by name would have been even easier to do, but I took the easy way out and will have to repent of that in future sermons.

I’m in the funny situation of not knowing the congregation where I was preaching as well as I’d like (long story), so I wasn’t even sure how well this “low courage” version of the sermon would go over, between explicitly breaking the news on Deutero-Isaiah and implicitly referencing ICE killing a man. Most folks are open-minded and are concerned about the direction the country is heading in, but I know that there are different perspectives within the group, and I was thinking a lot about that as I wrote things. It seems to have gone fine, and I know that some people liked it, but once again, I’m not sure that I’m focusing on the right things there. I think I’ll be wondering for a long time how to better follow the example of the prophetic critique myself.

Anyway, here’s the text of the sermon:

sermon text

Our passage today is from the book of Isaiah, chapter 58. When I was growing up, I knew two things about Isaiah: 1) the person Isaiah was a prophet from ancient times, and 2) the book of Isaiah was, well, kind of boring.

I grew up in a family and a church that always read out of the King James Bible. Everything in the Bible is a little harder to understand in that old timey King James language, but Isaiah felt especially hard to understand. It was only in the past 7 or 8 years that I’ve started reading other translations of the Bible, and it turns out that it’s a bit easier to understand Isaiah when it’s written in more modern language.

In fact, once you can really understand what the book is saying, it goes from boring to actually pretty interesting. That’s what I think anyway, but let’s put this to the test and see if you all agree. Let’s start at the very beginning of the book of Isaiah: Chapter 1, around verses 13 and 14. I say “around” because I’m going to read this from The Message, which is more of a paraphrase of the Bible than a translation of the Bible. It’s not the most reliable resource if we want to get into the exact words of a passage, but if we want to see how Isaiah can wake us up instead of put us to sleep, it will do the job nicely. Here we go:

“Quit your worship charades.
I can’t stand your trivial religious games:
Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings—
meetings, meetings, meetings—I can’t stand one more!
Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them!
You’ve worn me out!
I’m sick of your religion, religion, religion"

Wow. Did that wake us up? I’m awake, and I’ve got some questions. If Isaiah is God’s prophet, why does it sound like he’s telling people to stop going to church? Is that what a prophet does?

Now, in Community of Christ, we call the leader of our denomination a “prophet-president,” so we’re used to thinking about a prophet as the leader of a church. It would be rather odd for a leader of a church to tell people to stop attending that church, but prophets in the Hebrew Bible, what we usually call the Old Testament, often play a different role. They aren’t the leader of their religious community. It’s probably the king and some high-ranking priests who are the religious leaders, and as you can tell by the king being involved, the religious community and the national community were pretty tightly connected.

Now, the king and the priests might listen to what the prophet has to say, but they might not always like it. The prophet’s role is to stand outside of the religious and national leadership of the people… and to call them out if those leaders are failing to follow God. So, Isaiah isn’t necessarily saying “stop going to church.” What he’s really saying is “you are doing church wrong.”

In a community where national community and religious community are pretty tightly connected, it can be tempting to say that as long as you’re flying the right flag, God is happy with you. In a religious community that believes it is closer to God than other communities, it can be tempting to say that as long as you’re going to the right church, God is happy with you.

Isaiah’s response to that is “no.” It’s not enough to fly the right flag (if there is such a thing as “the right flag”), it’s not enough to attend the right church (if there is such a thing as “the right church”), God cares about more than that. So what else does God care about?

We can find an answer to that in Isaiah 1, but I’m not supposed to be preaching on Isaiah 1 today! I’m supposed to be preaching on Isaiah 58, so we really ought to turn our attention there.

Before we do, though, let’s talk a bit more Isaiah: the book and the person. Isaiah is a long book, and over the past 250 years or so, scholars of the Bible have noticed that it’s probably only the first 39 chapters that were written by the original prophet Isaiah. The rest of the book, including chapter 58, is most likely written by people hundreds of years later, who really appreciated the original Isaiah and wanted to kind of write a sequel—one that hit all the same notes, but was a bit more relevant for their time.

It can be awkward when we learn that parts of the Bible were probably not written by the authors that are traditionally associated with them. This happens with some of Paul’s letters, for example, and the Book of Daniel was probably written in a very different time and place than the story that is told in that book. We can respond to that awkwardness in different ways, but the reason I bring this up at all today is because I think there’s something special about Isaiah 58 not being written by the original Isaiah.

If people hundreds of years after the original Isaiah liked what they saw in Isaiah 1 and decided that they would follow that example to critique the religious and national leaders of their time, that gives us permission—right there in the Bible—to also follow Isaiah’s example, to consider how in our day, we and the people in our community might be settling for flying the flag and going to church, and ignoring things that really matter to God. Let’s turn to Isaiah 58 and see what those people in that time felt really mattered—I’ll bet that we find something relevant to us today.

Here, I’ll turn back to the NRSV instead of The Message. As I read, we’ll first hear the people speaking to God. They are fasting, going without food and water, in the hope of attracting God’s attention, but it doesn’t seem to be working. In the first part of verse 3, they complain:

“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”

In the rest of verse 3 and through verse 4, God responds:

Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day
and oppress all your workers.
You fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.

“You serve your own interest on your fast day and oppress all your workers.” That, God says, is why those fasts do not count for anything.

Like most people these days, I have a little black rectangle that I keep in my pocket and that goes with me almost everywhere. It’s a really useful device. I can make calls on it, I can send messages with it, and I can access nearly all of the world’s information with it. This little black rectangle was made in a faraway country and then shipped here for people like me to buy it. It’s made in another country because you can get away with paying workers in that other country a lot less than you’d have to pay workers in the United States.

Those workers might move from rural areas, where farmers make even less money, to new industrial zones, where they can make a bit more. To make that extra money, they might sign up at factories on large campuses that have their own dormitories. They might sleep eight to a room in those dormitories, with a bed and a curtain making up all of their private space (and they might have to supply their own curtain). Their roommates might work in different areas of the factory, making it hard to chat about work, or come from different regions with different dialects, making it hard to chat at all.

At any rate, there might not be much time for chatting at all. There might be 12 hour shifts, and unpaid work meetings before every shift. There might be mandatory overtime. There might only be one day off every other week. You can make little black rectangles pretty cheap under those conditions, but the company that makes this kind of little black rectangles still charges a fair amount of money, and pockets a lot of that cost for itself. The company that makes this kind of little black rectangles is one of the richest companies in the world.

Recently, many of the employees at this company—and these were well-paid employees here in the U.S., not the employees in faraway countries who are paid poorly to do the actual work of putting black rectangles together—talked to their bosses about using their status as one of the richest companies in the world to stand up for something.

Law enforcement officers had recently shot a man ten times—six times while he was already wounded and motionless on the floor—despite the fact that he had done nothing illegal and nothing threatening. This event had sparked debates that might have been familiar to Isaiah. There were those who said that the event may be unfortunate, but because the shooting had taken place in the name of a particular flag, the officers couldn’t possibly have done anything wrong. These employees of this wealthy company felt differently. They felt that flying the right flag (if there is such a thing as “the right flag”) wasn’t enough. More is expected of us, and they wanted their company to say so.

The top leaders of their company made some sympathetic noises but ultimately didn’t do much. Those top leaders knew that taking this kind of stand could anger people who have the power to make it much more expensive to have little black rectangles manufactured in faraway countries. It was more valuable to these leaders to continue getting rich thanks to their access to poor workers than it was to express any kind of moral concern. Those leaders knew that they were one of the richest companies in the world because they relied on some of the poorest workers in the world.

What about me, then, the person carrying around this black rectangle in my pocket? Am I a sinner for using this device that comes at the price of the sins described in Isaiah 58? I don’t know? I don’t think so? I hope not? I think the world is more complicated than that, and I think that God appreciates that. But as leave church today, I will remember that attending church is not enough—that it is good, but that God expects more of us, and that God expects me to do my part.

Let us finish with with Isaiah 58:6-9, which tells us what God wants us all to be working toward:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you;
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.”

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 19:09:26 -0500

A mail truck was abandoned at the bottom of our cul-de-sac after an ice-related accident a couple of hours ago, blocking traffic in and out. The tow truck sent to move it got stuck in the ice, and now a second truck is coming for it. If I were better at social media, this would be a viral thread.

🔗 linkblog: Ron Wyden Only Talks Like This When The Spies Do Something Real Bad

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:45:56 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Ron Wyden Only Talks Like This When The Spies Do Something *Real* Bad https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-02-05-i-appreciate/

🔗 linkblog: ‘In the end, you feel blank’: India’s female workers watching hours of abusive content to train AI

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:00:17 -0500

🔗 linkblog: ‘In the end, you feel blank’: India’s female workers watching hours of abusive content to train AI https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-02-05-horrifying-stories/

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 14:19:40 -0500

I appreciate that The Verge is reporting on the government tear gassing kids, I appreciate the transparency of The Verge’s reporters as they do so, and I appreciate the nerdy details of this specific disclosure.

🔗 linkblog: Tim Cook is destroying his own legacy

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 09:14:46 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Tim Cook is destroying his own legacy https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-02-01-tim-cook/

🔗 linkblog: ChatGPT isn’t the only chatbot pulling answers from Elon Musk’s Grokipedia

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 09:39:53 -0500

🔗 linkblog: ChatGPT isn’t the only chatbot pulling answers from Elon Musk’s Grokipedia https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-31-wish-i/

🔗 linkblog: ICE protester says her Global Entry was revoked after agent scanned her face

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 18:00:02 -0500

🔗 linkblog: ICE protester says her Global Entry was revoked after agent scanned her face https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-30-facial-recognition/

🔗 linkblog: Musk to Epstein: ‘What Day/Night Will Be the Wildest Party on Your Island?’

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 17:57:32 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Musk to Epstein: ‘What Day/Night Will Be the Wildest Party on Your Island?’ https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-30-unsurprising-i/

🔗 linkblog: After Minneapolis, Tech CEOs Are Struggling to Stay Silent

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 13:23:33 -0500

🔗 linkblog: After Minneapolis, Tech CEOs Are Struggling to Stay Silent https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-30-ceos-silence/

🔗 linkblog: How do I talk to my kids about Minneapolis?

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 12:47:17 -0500

🔗 linkblog: How do I talk to my kids about Minneapolis? https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-30-heartbreaking-read/

📚 bookblog: Présence au monde moderne (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:50:12 -0500

J’avais déjà lu la traduction anglaise en 2025, mais depuis que j’ai reçu un exemplaire du livre original, j’éprouvais le désir de le relire. Vers la fin, je trouve que je ne comprend pas tout à fait ce qu’Ellul essaie de dire (c’est peut-être une question de compétence linguistique, mais je crois avoir éprouvé le même sentiment en lisant en traduction aussi), mais il y a des idées bien fortes dans ce livre aussi. En fait, il est fort intéressant de relire ce livre après avoir lu quelques-uns de ses autres livres pour voir combien de ses idées sont déjà présentes en 1948.

🔗 linkblog: Apple says Patreon creators must switch to subscription billing by November

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 10:14:39 -0500

So, Apple will kick Patreon off the app store for not forking over 30% of its revenue, but it won’t do anything about Grok? Sounds about right.

🔗 linkblog: The Onion’s Exclusive Interview With Gregory Bovino

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 18:43:15 -0500

🔗 linkblog: The Onion’s Exclusive Interview With Gregory Bovino https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-27-the-onion/

🔗 linkblog: Police Told to Be ‘as Vague as Permissible’ About Why They Use Flock

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 10:47:57 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Police Told to Be ‘as Vague as Permissible’ About Why They Use Flock https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-27-surveillance-sucks./

🔗 linkblog: Trump Administration Social Media Posts Echo White Supremacist Messaging

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 07:21:43 -0500

Strategic ambiguity is as much an indicator of far right influences as any of these references. Gift link.

sermon on dreaming of a better world

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 13:04:43 -0500

Yesterday, I got another opportunity to preach for the Beyond the Walls online Community of Christ congregation based in Toronto, Ontario. I enjoy contributing to their services when I can, and I was glad that the winter storm here in Kentucky (and so many other places) spared our power and internet so that I could show up as planned. I got to work Jacques Ellul into my sermon (perhaps unsurprising, given how often I reference him these days), though I did oversimplify his thinking a bit and would appreciate the opportunity to dive a bit deeper into what he had to say at some point.

In short, Ellul’s encouragement for Christians to try to bring about a better world isn’t a naïvely optimistic take—he makes it clear that he doesn’t think that human beings are capable of bringing about that better world on their own and that it would be hubris for Christians to believe that they can do so without divine intervention. I appreciate that point, and I think there’s something to be done with it, but also: 1) I didn’t have the time/space to get into the details, and 2) as a non-theist, my belief in the reality of divine intervention is… complicated, and I especially didn’t have the time/space to get into that. Again, I think Ellul can be read through a non-theist lens, so I’m happy to keep using him as a reference point, but it got too gnarly to work out in a Sunday morning sermon. In fact, one of my main goals in this sermon (like the last one I wrote on a similar subject) was to figure out how to approach the idea of a Second Coming from a non-literal, non-theist perspective. I don’t know how well I succeeded, but it was good practice for myself at least.

Here’s the recording of the service, and I’ll place the sermon text below the YouTube embed:

sermon text

Between May 2008 and May 2009, I had the wonderful opportunity of living in French-speaking Switzerland, including the towns of Chambésy (near Geneva), Renens (near Lausanne), and Sion (which is surrounded by the Swiss Alps). I have lived in several places, and I have loved many of them, but few have captured my heart in the way that Switzerland did.

In fact, during my first year of doctoral studies, one of my classmates caught me reading something in French on my computer instead of paying attention to our statistics lecture. I admitted that I was reading about Swiss universities. I still had at least four years left in my training to become a professor, but I was already trying to figure out what my chances were of getting hired in Switzerland.

I now live in Lexington, Kentucky where I work at the University of Kentucky, so obviously, those chances were not very high. Of course, I wasn’t disappointed to move to Lexington. My family lives nearby, and my spouse’s family moved nearby shortly after we arrived. I love my local church community, and at least on most days, my job is good and fulfilling. On a long day, though, you still might find me watching YouTube videos filmed from the cabin of a train making its way through the beautiful Swiss countryside.

It’s silly, but in my mind, Switzerland represents the dream of a better world than the one I live in: one where I could travel by train instead of by car, one with gorgeous scenery, and one where I would have easy access to high-quality chocolate. This is silly because I know that Switzerland isn’t perfect. If I ever did get to live there again, the trains, the mountains, and even the chocolate would eventually lose some of their magic, and I would find myself once again dreaming for a better world than that one.

Dreaming of a better world is part of the human experience—and it has also been part of the Christian tradition since the very beginning. Many of Jesus’s disciples saw in him the promise of a better world—one even better than Swiss chocolate—and they were shocked when he was killed before that world could arrive. Yet, even faced with tragedy, many of those disciples reaffirmed their faith in a better world through Jesus. If his ministry had been suddenly interrupted by crucifixion, surely a resurrected Christ would return to bring the end times and establish a better world.

In fact, many early Christians, including the Apostle Paul, never met Jesus during his ministry. In some sense, their conversion was based less on what he had previously taught and more on the better world that they hoped he would bring in the future. We’re used to thinking of the four gospels as the first Christian documents because they tell a story that happened earlier, but it’s probably 1 Thessalonians that’s the earliest surviving Christian text. Isn’t it interesting that it has more to say about Jesus’s Second Coming than it does about Jesus’s teachings? In chapter 4, verses 16-18, just before today’s passage, you can feel Paul’s excitement about the better world that awaits him:

“For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever.”

Last year, my chance finally arrived. A Swiss university was looking to hire a professor who could teach and do research about online technologies. I teach and do research about online technologies! They needed someone who could speak English and French. I speak English and French! I poured my heart into that job application. I could imagine what was waiting for me and my family in Switzerland: trains, mountains, chocolate, and more besides. I looked up apartments where we might live, imagined what bus I might take to work, and considered which grocery stores we might shop at. I probably should have spent that time working on the job application, but I couldn’t help imagining the better world that I hoped would finally arrive—especially because the world that I was living in did not seem great. Then, as now, there were worrying political developments in the United States, and I wanted to escape to the better world I had been imagining for so long.

I am speaking to you today from Lexington, Kentucky, where I still work at the University of Kentucky, so obviously, things didn’t work out the way that I hoped for last year. I’m not that disappointed to still be in Lexington: I love my nearby family, I love my church community, and on most days, I love my job. But now, as then, there are worrying political developments in the United States, and I still find myself wishing that a better world would finally come.

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ is one of the oldest beliefs that Christianity adopted, and in many ways, it’s also one of the hardest beliefs for a Christian today to accept. Christians have been waiting for Jesus to come back for nearly 2,000 years, and so many generations of Christians have been sure that it was just around the corner, that Jesus was about to replace the disappointing world that they lived in with something much better.

Just as Paul was one of the first Christians to take up the idea of a Second Coming, he was one of the first to be convinced that it was about to happen—and one of the first to be disappointed that it did not. Look at the urgent and confident language in today’s passage: “the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (v. 2), “let us keep awake and be sober” (p. 6), “[God] will do this” (p. 23). We’re used to thinking of the four gospels, with their speculations about the end times, as the first Christian documents because they tell a story that happened earlier, but by the time they were written, Paul’s hope that the end times would arrive during his life had already been dashed.

One of the first times that I attended a Beyond the Walls service, on Easter 2020, I heard an important reminder from John that this very faith movement was also born in the hopes that the Second Coming was about to happen and that a better world was on the horizon. Many of our spiritual ancestors, living in the 19th century, were as convinced as Paul had been that a better world was just about to emerge, likely in their lifetimes. We are quickly approaching the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of this faith movement, and those hopes have been dashed just as thoroughly as Paul’s had centuries earlier.

If continuing to wait for a better world to emerge is a key part of Christianity, so is continuing to be disappointed that it has not yet happened.

It’s silly to compare my brief, shallow disappointment at not getting that job in Switzerland with our long-standing, deep disappointment that we still live in a world marked by racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, poverty, illness, and so much else. I must admit, though, that in the couple of days I spent moping after getting the bad news, I did think about some similarities between the two.

More specifically, I thought about some of the passages of a book that I had read earlier that year. Presence in the Modern World was first written in 1948 by the French sociologist and theologian Jacques Ellul and was the result of Ellul’s trying to figure out what it meant to be Christian at that time, as his country was emerging from the Second World War and beginning to enter a time of economic and technological change.

On the very first page of the book, Ellul writes:

Christians are in the world and… there they should remain. Christians are not meant to be separate or to set themselves apart. Such separation is for God to effect at the end of time, when he will gather the wheat and discard the chaff; it is never for human beings to decide their own election.

Let me be clear on the limits of the analogy that I have been using up to this point. It was helpful for me in my disappointment to think about my duties as a Christian living in a country that I was worried about instead of dreaming about escaping it for a land of trains, mountains, and chocolate. However, there are people—in my country and others—who have far more reason to worry than I do and who are entirely justified in leaving the dangerous place they live for another, safer one.

Ellul was not arguing that Christians should not separate themselves from dangerous places or situations; Ellul was reminding us that even the best this world has to offer will always fall short of the better world that Paul dreamed of and that every Christian since has hoped for. We will always feel that disappointment that Paul felt, and that every Christian since has experienced.

And yet, Ellul suggests, Christians should not try to escape that disappointment but rather to face it head on. The second chapter of Ellul’s book is called “Revolutionary Christianity,” and he describes two characteristics of Christianity that have the potential to bring about what he calls “a profound change, a radical transformation.”

First, “Christians belong to two cities.” Even if we do not separate ourselves from this world, we never really belong to it. We cannot neglect our responsibilities in this world, but they cannot be our highest priority. We must accept that we live in a disappointing world, but we can never accept its disappointments.

Second, and most relevant to our passage today, “Christians are essentially people who live in expectation.” Not only are we constantly looking forward to a better world, but it is our responsibility to try to make it happen. As Ellul explains:

“All Christians having received the Holy Spirit are now prophets of Christ’s return, and by this alone they have a revolutionary mission…. For prophets do not merely announce to some extent an event that will happen at some point. Prophets are those who live out the event now and who make it real and present to the world around them.”

Paul’s teachings in today’s passage don’t do much for me when I think about them in terms of just waiting and hoping for a better world to come. I have an easier time making sense of it when I think of things like Ellul does—that it is our Christian duty to live out that better world now and to make it present for those around us.

Of course, this is more easily said than done. When Paul calls his audience “children of the light,” he is expressing confidence that they would recognize the coming of Christ when others did not. It is interesting, though, that he does not take the time to teach them how to recognize the emergence of that better world.

Even if Jacques Ellul invites us to think differently about how that better world might emerge, he is also short on details. In fact, Ellul insists that there is no easy manual for Christian action—as far as he is concerned, being Christian means continually struggling to decide what is right—what will bring about that better world—in each situation that we are in.

Perhaps, then, being “children of the light” today is less about recognizing specific signs of that better world than it is about believing that such a better world is possible. It might seem silly to suggest that some people don’t believe that—after all, don’t we all dream of a better world? That’s true, but sometimes we are so used to our disappointing world the way that it is that we are incapable of seeing it in any other way.

You may be familiar with “The Blue Marble,” a famous 1972 photograph of Earth taken by astronauts on Apollo 17. What you might not know is that the original picture is taken with the South Pole near the top of the photograph—upside-down from how we are used to it. Of course, in space—and, honestly, even on earth—there’s no reason that we can’t think of south as up and north as down, but we are so uncomfortable with the idea of the world being upside-down that everyone adjusts the photograph so that it fits with the vision that we have of the world.

Let us have the courage to see the world upside-down. Let us have the conviction to turn the world upside-down. Let us borrow Paul’s hope and Jacques Ellul’s commitment, and let us work to bring about the better world that we have all dreamed of.

🔗 linkblog: An American Murder

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 12:45:03 -0500

🔗 linkblog: An American Murder https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-26-good-rage/

🔗 linkblog: Deepfake ‘Nudify’ Technology Is Getting Darker—and More Dangerous

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 12:43:16 -0500

Look, I’m open to the argument that there are legitimate, good uses of generative AI, but I think anyone making that argument needs to address stuff like this.

🔗 linkblog: A Mormon drag queen in the Queen City

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 12:17:08 -0500

🔗 linkblog: A Mormon drag queen in the Queen City https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-26-beautiful-interview/

🔗 linkblog: We mourn state killings and demand justice, not terror | Friends Committee On National Legislation

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 18:10:50 -0500

🔗 linkblog: We mourn state killings and demand justice, not terror | Friends Committee On National Legislation https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-25-fcnl-is/

🔗 linkblog: Videos Show Moments in Which Agents Killed a Man in Minneapolis

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 16:25:37 -0500

Not particularly interested in watching the video footage myself (don’t need those nightmares), so I’m glad for journalists providing descriptions of the footage and how it stands in tension with DHS accounts. Abolish ICE. Gift link.

🔗 linkblog: Detained by ICE, two women became first responders during agent’s seizure

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 20:11:48 -0500

What a story:

What stayed with Amundson most, she said, was not the adrenaline of the moment but the realization that came while she was holding the agent’s head in her hands and keeping his airway open.

“I was hit so hard with the fact that this man would not do this for me,” she said.

🔗 linkblog: White House alters arrest photo of ICE protester, says 'the memes will continue'

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 15:11:44 -0500

🔗 linkblog: White House alters arrest photo of ICE protester, says 'the memes will continue' https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-23-big-ellulian/

🔗 linkblog: ICE detains 5-year old Minnesota boy; school leader says agents used him as ‘bait’

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 08:49:06 -0500

There are lots of stories circulating on social media that I try wait to read a full article on before I get angry about them. Here’s the article, and it’s as bad (worse?) as every post I’ve seen about it on Bluesky.

The Columbia Heights Public School district says federal agents have detained four of its students in four separate incidents over the last two weeks. One child is a 5-year old boy who attends a district elementary school and was used as “bait” to draw family members out of their home.

What callousness. What cruelty.

🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk’s Grok A.I. Chatbot Made Millions of Sexualized Images, New Estimates Show

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 06:53:32 -0500

Holy crap, these numbers. This passage really stood out:

“This is industrial-scale abuse of women and girls,” said Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which conducts research on online hate and disinformation. “There have been nudifying tools, but they have never had the distribution, ease of use or the integration into a large platform that Elon Musk did with Grok.”

🔗 linkblog: Trump Appears to Confuse Iceland and Greenland

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 13:38:23 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Trump Appears to Confuse Iceland and Greenland https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-21-i-dont/

🔗 linkblog: Wikipedia volunteers spent years cataloging AI tells. Now there's a plugin to avoid them.

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 07:43:33 -0500

A few thoughts:

First, it is almost comically mean to use the results of a project collecting AI tells to get LLMs to not sound like that. Like, of all the digital labor exploitations of AI, this might be the pettiest.

Second, AI detection is hard, and for all my concerns with AI, I think this is another good example of why policing its use can do more harm than good. I don’t blame the Wikipedia community for doing this project, but I would never recommend this approach in a classroom.

🔗 linkblog: ICE’s Facial Recognition App Misidentified a Woman. Twice

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 07:00:03 -0500

Another story that speaks to the power of Ellul’s “image vs. word” distinction. It must be trustworthy because it comes from a machine…

🔗 linkblog: Everyone Knows Our Mad King’s Greenland Obsession Is Insane. Why Won’t Congress Stop It?

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 14:34:20 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Everyone Knows Our Mad King’s Greenland Obsession Is Insane. Why Won’t Congress Stop It? https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-20-the-whole/

🔗 linkblog: Trump says he's pursuing Greenland after perceived Nobel Peace Prize snub

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 13:01:05 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Trump says he's pursuing Greenland after perceived Nobel Peace Prize snub https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-19-he-is/

🔗 linkblog: Remembering Beyond Vietnam on MLK Day

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:04:02 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Remembering Beyond Vietnam on MLK Day https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-19-good-read/

🔗 linkblog: Under Musk, the Grok disaster was inevitable

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 08:09:24 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Under Musk, the Grok disaster was inevitable https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-18-good-overview/

🔗 linkblog: Donald Trump annonce de nouveaux droits de douane aux pays européens 'jusqu'à la vente du Groenland' | RTS

Sat, 17 Jan 2026 12:12:39 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Donald Trump annonce de nouveaux droits de douane aux pays européens 'jusqu'à la vente du Groenland' | RTS https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-17-non-mais/

🔗 linkblog: America can’t look away from MLK’s warnings about power

Sat, 17 Jan 2026 07:43:03 -0500

🔗 linkblog: America can’t look away from MLK’s warnings about power https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-17-some-very/

🔗 linkblog: The Campaign to Destroy Renee Good

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 20:23:09 -0500

🔗 linkblog: The Campaign to Destroy Renee Good https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-16-depressing-read/

🔗 linkblog: Giddy Trump Struts All Around White House With Nobel Peace Prize In Mouth

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:57:10 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Giddy Trump Struts All Around White House With Nobel Peace Prize In Mouth https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-16-the-onion/

📚 bookblog: Farthing (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 10:47:39 -0500

This book is the perfect kind of unexpected blend. It never hides that it’s an alternate history novel, but what begins as a relatively cozy mystery story gradually becomes more and more of a reflection on unsufficiently resisting Nazis and slow decline into fascism.

It will be 20 years old this year, but it feels written for this time.

🔗 linkblog: Conservatives Say Renée Good Was Brainwashed By Bible Into Loving Thy Neighbor

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 11:40:52 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Conservatives Say Renée Good Was Brainwashed By Bible Into Loving Thy Neighbor https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-15-chefs-kiss./

🔗 linkblog: European troops arrive in Greenland to boost the Arctic island's security

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 06:52:44 -0500

It’s a sign of how crazy everything is right now that this is just one of sevral political developments contributing to my current anxiety.

🔗 linkblog: Musk and Hegseth vow to “make Star Trek real” but miss the show’s lessons

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:00:36 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Musk and Hegseth vow to “make Star Trek real” but miss the show’s lessons https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-14-this-is/

📚 bookblog: The Prophetic Imagination: 40th anniversary edition (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 17:31:46 -0500

This book is great! I have some quibbles—I found Brueggemann a bit more literal in his exegesis than I would have expected—but I get why this is a classic, and I’ll have to buy a print copy to reference in the future.

As I noted yesterday, I think there’s a lot in here that also appears in the anarchist writing that’s appealed to me lately: refusal of the status quo, skepticism of power, and the audacity to imagine a better world. It’s good stuff.

Ellul, nuclear weapons, and generative AI

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 16:56:24 -0500

One of the most interesting recurring themes in Jacques Ellul’s writing is one that contrasts reality (or facts) with truth. As Ellul distinguishes them, facts are what are and—implicitly—what must be conformed to, whereas truth is what ought to be. Ellul’s The Humiliation of the Word explores this distinction at length, but it crops up in plenty of his other writing. In fact, I’m currently reading his Présence au monde moderne (or rereading it, depending on what one considers reading the original French after reading the English translation last year), and I’m delighted to see that he makes this distinction as early as this 1948 book.

I’ve previously written (though in French) that I find this distinction helpful for interrogating the idea that “well, since AI is here, we have to learn how to use it correctly.” I tend to disagree with this take, but I have a certain amount of appreciation for it. People I deeply respect have made this argument, and as much as I strive to be more radical, my default posture is one of pragmatism. Furthermore, in my professional life, I’ve taken steps to approve and encourage classes in my department that are focused on AI, basically operating off of the “if it’s here, we should teach about it” principle.

Yet, I’m still not satisfied with the idea, and I think this passage from Ellul about nuclear weapons nicely illustrates why:

Those who question the value of the fact incur the harshest of all reproaches today: they are reactionaries, they want to return to the good old days, and so on. . . . Those who level this reproach do not realize that such doubt is perhaps the sole revolutionary attitude that is currently possible. Even so, we need to know the reason why we refuse to bow before the fact, for the surrealistic approach does not seem desirable.

The atomic bomb provides quite a striking example of this religious authority that the fact carries. In the face of this discovery, this instrument of death, humankind retained the possibility of not using it, of not accepting this fact. But this question was not even posed. We found ourselves before a fact; thus we had to accept it. And from that point on, the questions asked were “secondary.” Who will use this weapon? How will its control be arranged? What will be most expedient: to use nuclear power for war, or for peace? How can the economy be organized around nuclear power? and so forth, and so on. At no time was the problem posed of knowing if it was good or evil to embark on this path, and this was because the fact today seems to be beyond good and evil.

Now, Ellul is prone to a bit of rhetorical exaggeration, and I’m willing to concede that there are differences between LLMs and atomic bombs. Even with those caveats, though, I think this passage remains effective for challenging a simplistic “so long as it’s here, we might as well do something with it” defense of AI. As he argues, the “fact” of a particular technology is not an ethical justification of that technology. I’d like to hear more reflection from those who make the “well, it’s here” defense of AI on what the ethical harms of the technology are and why it’s worth using/promoting/teaching anyway.

🔗 linkblog: Trump Says Civil Rights Led to White People Being ‘Very Badly Treated’

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 18:46:09 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Trump Says Civil Rights Led to White People Being ‘Very Badly Treated’ https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-11-what-an/

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 12:25:03 -0500

I did not expect Walter Brueggemann’s writing to remind me of anarchism, but I think what has appealed to me in anarchist writing is what I would eventually find in Brueggemann.

🍿 movieblog: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 22:00:44 -0500

I don’t remember liking the first Knives Out all that much, but the second and third felt like they were made just for me. It’s religious, it doesn’t pull any punches against toxic religion, it’s funny, and it has interesting characters. So glad I watched.

🔗 linkblog: Grok Is Being Used to Mock and Strip Women in Hijabs and Sarees

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 20:00:45 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Grok Is Being Used to Mock and Strip Women in Hijabs and Sarees https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-09-grok-continues/

🔗 linkblog: Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are cowards

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 16:56:42 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are cowards https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-09-this-is/

🔗 linkblog: Immigrant citizens would be barred from local, state offices in Kentucky under proposed bills

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 19:43:52 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Immigrant citizens would be barred from local, state offices in Kentucky under proposed bills https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-08-glad-to/

🔗 linkblog: DHS Warns Any Action By Americans Will Be Treated As Domestic Terrorism

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 19:34:45 -0500

Glad a family member gifted me another year of The Onion in print, because it sure sounds like I’m going to need it to get through 2026.

🔗 linkblog: Grok assumes users seeking images of underage girls have “good intent”

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 19:33:18 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Grok assumes users seeking images of underage girls have “good intent” https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-08-depressing-read/

🔗 linkblog: DHS Is Lying To You About ICE Shooting a Woman

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 17:48:10 -0500

This shooting is making me panicky, and I’m honestly trying to not read any more about it, but this is important.

🔗 linkblog: Grok Is Generating Sexual Content Far More Graphic Than What's on X

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 17:42:10 -0500

Pair this with Emanuel Maiberg’s article I linked to earlier, and there’s a lot to think about.

I sometimes wonder if base Grok is less wild than integrated-with-Twitter Grok, but this is at least one way in which that’s not true.

🔗 linkblog: Inside the Telegram Channel Jailbreaking Grok Over and Over Again

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 11:51:57 -0500

Oof, this line:

what is clear to me from following this Telegram community for a couple of years now is that nonconsensual sexual images of real people, including minors, is the cost of doing business with AI image generators

📚 bookblog: Bullshit Jobs (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 11:24:06 -0500

I felt the same way about this book that I often feel about Graeber’s work: I like where he’s going with things, but I’m not always convinced in the details.

So, the thesis of this book is great, and the last few chapters won me back when I was feeling a bit skeptical. Even with Graeber’s concessions about his data, though, his conclusions sometimes felt tenuous, and I’m not sure we needed the taxonomy of bullshit jobs to get to the conclusions he wanted to draw in the end.

I’m glad I read it, and I’d be happy to revisit it (in fact, reading this made me want to revisit the other Graeber books I own), but I think it’s worth being critical about the details.

🔗 linkblog: Grok Is Pushing AI ‘Undressing’ Mainstream

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 18:42:49 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Grok Is Pushing AI ‘Undressing’ Mainstream https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-06-bookmarking-all/

🔗 linkblog: Grok is undressing children — can the law stop it?

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 18:37:30 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Grok is undressing children — can the law stop it? https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-06-what-a/

🔗 linkblog: Pour Google et Apple, la ville de Moutier est toujours bernoise | RTS

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 11:52:32 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Pour Google et Apple, la ville de Moutier est toujours bernoise | RTS https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-06-bel-exemple/

🔗 linkblog: Grok's AI CSAM Shitshow

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:59:07 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Grok's AI CSAM Shitshow https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-05-excellent-writing/

🍿 movieblog: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 22:48:41 -0500

Cory Doctorow has a bit he returns to in a lot of his writing about how tech billionaires aren’t geniuses, just power-hungry people who got lucky, and now I will always wonder if he got it from this movie. I’m a huge fan of Cory’s, but Rian Johnson’s having Daniel Craig rant about how dumb Edward Norton’s tech billionaire character is in this movie is perfection.

Also, super good cameo appearance by The Verge.

I have read plot summaries and the TVTropes page for this movie several times, but nothing was as good as watching it. It was terrible, powerful person revenge fantasy that feels very good in 2026.

📚 bookblog: Moroni: A Brief Theological Introduction (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 13:11:37 -0500

Happy to have wrapped up this series, though I’m sure I’ll be coming back to each of the titles. This last book has some good stuff in it (including a fascinating, existential discussion of the tension between grace and agency), but I found too much of it to be boring rather than captivating. I think that’s probably my fault in part—as I’ve previously noted, I’ve been powering through these books just to finish them—but it’s how things stand right now.

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 08:09:51 -0500

One of my political science professors in undergrad studied Chavista populism in Venezuela and, with the rise of figures like Sarah Palin, was considering pivoting to populism in the US when I TAed for him. Anyway, wondering what’s going through his head this morning.

🔗 linkblog: No, Grok can’t really “apologize” for posting non-consensual sexual images

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 18:24:46 -0500

🔗 linkblog: No, Grok can’t really “apologize” for posting non-consensual sexual images https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-01-02-bookmarking-because/

📚 bookblog: President Bitch (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 10:57:28 -0500

Just as good as the first volume, and it’s disappointing to know that there’s nothing more to read.

📚 bookblog: Extraordinary Machine (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 10:55:30 -0500

I want to describe this series as equally over-the-too and restrained, which feels contradictory, but I stand by it. It doesn’t take the time to overexplain the misogynistic dystopia of its world, it just lets it happen and gives space for the reader to react. And yet, it’s also intentionally campy, too! It’s interesting!

📚 bookblog: Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 07:27:56 -0500

Cory Doctorow has regularly referenced this book (most notably, the anecdote about people letting Mark Zuckerberg win at Catan) several times since reading it himself, so I decided it was time to take a look myself. It was an enjoyable (by which I mean horrifying) read, though I think I would have enjoyed it more if the same stories had been collected as part of a journalistic project rather than as a tell-all memoir.

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 12:47:43 -0500

The thrill I feel at wrapping up grading has been immediately destroyed by the email from my Kentucky state rep reflecting on the theological significance of Christmas. C’mon dude, at least pretend to separate church and state.

🔗 linkblog: Home Alone, Updated for the Age of Surveillance

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 16:25:31 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Home Alone, Updated for the Age of Surveillance https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-12-18-darkly-hilarious./

📚 bookblog: Ether: A Brief Theological Introduction (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 21:18:20 -0500

I don’t agree with everything in the book, but it’s full of great observations that I would gladly tweak to draw slightly different, really powerful conclusions. The author’s “reader-centered theology of scripture” is great, and its meditations on the weakness of God also really spoke to me. This made Ether more interesting than I remembered it being, and I’m grateful for that.

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 18:10:38 -0500

LDS press releases occasionally get published early, and while it gets fixed quick, an orphaned reference will show up in my RSS reader. This one sounds interesting…

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 20:41:10 -0500

In the ~2 months since The Verge launched ad-free podcasts for subscribers, I’ve listened to more of their audio content than in all the years that I’d been reading them previously.

🔗 linkblog: 20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 09:44:45 -0500

🔗 linkblog: 20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-12-13-this-is/

🔗 linkblog: Disney wants to drag you into the slop

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 12:25:17 -0500

I missed the detail about Disney+ using some of the Sora output, and that makes this whole thing even more about labor exploitation.

🔗 linkblog: I Am Time Magazine’s Person of the Year

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 17:28:27 -0500

I disagree with the copyright framing here (it’s a labor issue), but otherwise, I think this is a good take.

🔗 linkblog: OpenAI’s billion-dollar Disney deal puts Mickey Mouse and Marvel in Sora

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 11:39:35 -0500

Involving Disney, who infamously stiffed Alan Dean Foster on Star Wars royalties, so clearly demonstrates how the underlying issue with generative AI isn’t copyright, it’s labor.

📚 bookblog: Apple in China (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 09:51:00 -0500

Fascinating read! I’m not as interested as the author in his largely geopolitical thesis, but the raw materials he uses to construct that thesis are depressingly fascinating. They could also make up the elements of an Ellulian thesis on the dangers of power, efficiency, and technical systems. It’s harder to use Apple products after reading the book—and it’s a stark reminder of how the world we live in is so different than the world I’d like us to.

🔗 linkblog: The disinformation wars are here

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 11:38:19 -0500

🔗 linkblog: The disinformation wars are here https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-12-09-oof-what/

📚 bookblog: Boys Weekend (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 21:39:44 -0500

Cory Doctorow recently reviewed a newer book from Lubchansky, which I’d love to read. I can’t easily get a copy, though, so I checked this one out again from the library. It is bonkers and beautiful, and there should be more comics like it.

🔗 linkblog: LDS Church pressures ‘Mormon Stories’ and other critical podcasts to rebrand

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 15:53:09 -0500

I think this is dumb, I feel strongly that “Mormonism” is larger than LDS institutions, and I’m pleased that the EFF has weighed in on this.

🔗 linkblog: Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 06:56:43 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-12-08-propublica-does/

🔗 linkblog: New Facial-Recognition Tech Could Let You Keep Your Passport in Your Pocket at the Airport

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 06:17:53 -0500

That this article talks up (and uncritically repeats) purported advantages of surveillance and only briefly acknowledges privacy concerns is a real failure. Reporting needs to do better so that we can walk back surveillance instead of sleepwalk into more of it. Gift link

📚 bookblog: Mormon: A Brief Theological Introduction (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 21:11:37 -0500

Wow, wow, wow. I was intrigued by what I knew about this book when I first bought it but am only now getting to it, five years later. It’s a beautiful book and quietly radical, using the story of Mormon to develop a theology of the world ending around us. Miller explicitly invokes the climate crisis at the end of the book and calls for disciples to be willing to sacrifice all things instead of simply waiting to lose all things. Even outside of that context, Miller’s quasi-mystical reading of Mormon has so much to offer—and is pleasantly aligned with some of the theologies I’ve heard in Community of Christ. This is a good one.

🔗 linkblog: Huge Trove of Nude Images Leaked by AI Image Generator Startup’s Exposed Database

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 08:45:56 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Huge Trove of Nude Images Leaked by AI Image Generator Startup’s Exposed Database https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-12-07-are-we/

🔗 linkblog: Grok Says It Would Kill Every Jewish Person on the Planet to Save Elon Musk

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 18:01:52 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Grok Says It Would Kill Every Jewish Person on the Planet to Save Elon Musk https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-12-04-wait-what/

🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk's Grok AI Is Doxxing Home Addresses of Everyday People

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 17:58:40 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk's Grok AI Is Doxxing Home Addresses of Everyday People https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-12-04-surely-elon/

🔗 linkblog: Pentagon watchdog finds Hegseth risked the safety of U.S. forces with use of Signal

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 19:04:16 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Pentagon watchdog finds Hegseth risked the safety of U.S. forces with use of Signal https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-12-03-things-are/

🔗 linkblog: Anyone can try to edit Grokipedia 0.2 but Grok is running the show

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 18:56:49 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Anyone can try to edit Grokipedia 0.2 but Grok is running the show https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-12-03-very-helpful/

🔗 linkblog: Trump Calls Somalis ‘Garbage’ He Doesn’t Want in the Country

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 17:58:34 -0500

Bookmarking this so that I can return to it and quote the man verbatim when necessary. Gift link.

🔗 linkblog: 'Franklin' publisher slams Hegseth for his post of the turtle firing on drug boats

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 12:45:05 -0500

Good on the publisher, and what a dumb world we live in. Also, “narco terrorist” reminds me of the poli sci class I had where we spent an entire day (week?) talking about the difficulty of clearly defining terrorism. It was mostly an abstract conversation, even with a GWOT backdrop, but I feel like it was preparing me to detect nonsense from this DoD.

🔗 linkblog: Flock Uses Overseas Gig Workers to Build its Surveillance AI

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 12:14:01 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Flock Uses Overseas Gig Workers to Build its Surveillance AI https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-12-01-flock-continues/

« L'amérique pleure » comme hymne contre le Black Friday

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 09:00:23 -0500

J’écoute souvent Les Cowboys Fringants, et j’ai déjà écrit au sujet de combien je trouve de l’importance dans les paroles de leurs chansons. En plus, il m’arrive souvent de critiquer le « Black Friday » et toutes les façons dont on gâche le week-end de Thanksgiving avec le commercialisme (s’il n’est pas déjà gâché par les mythes colonialistes qu’on lui attribue, bien sûr).

Pourtant, j’ai été étonné ce week-end par combien la chanson « L’Amérique pleure » semblait évoquer directement le Black Friday et tous les problèmes de la culture américaine auxquels je suis particulièrement sensible pendant le Thanksgiving. Les personnes qui doivent travailler pendant les fêtes pour permettre aux autres de fêter (tiens, on pourrait invoquer aussi « Santé » de Stromae), les « excès de [notre] époque », les bouchons sur les autoroutes, et ainsi de suite. En voici la vidéo :

Bon, il faut que je retourne au travail (pour « jouer la game », comme le chante Karl), mais j’espère continuer dans les années à venir à reconnaître dans « L’amérique pleure » un hymne contre le Black Friday et tous ses maux.

🔗 linkblog: During Advent, immigrant congregations find hope shadowed by fear

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 06:24:08 -0500

🔗 linkblog: During Advent, immigrant congregations find hope shadowed by fear https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-12-01-powerful-read/

📚 bookblog: 3rd, 4th Nephi: A Brief Theological Introduction (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 11:04:21 -0500

This book starts off strong, with a very interesting exploration of Christology in the Book of Mormon. There are some other interesting observations, too (including a frank-to-the-point-of-productive-discomfort evaluation of race in the Book of Mormon). If I were only reading the conclusion, I’d likely give it full marks. A few things keep me from doing that for the book as I read it, though.

I admit that some of those things are entirely my fault. As with the last two books in the series, I’ve read this one too quickly to appreciate the arguments it’s making. Furthermore, I confess that I have personal biases against a couple of the authors cited even though I don’t know much about those authors—it’s the laziest kind of bias, and while I might still dislike those authors after a thorough evaluation of their work, it’s not solid ground for grumping about their appearance in this book.

I think (hope?) some of my critiques are more substantive, though. Becerra’s exploration of human faculties is interesting but feels underdeveloped. The overall structure of the book could be made more consistent, I think. The treatment of race in the book is open-minded, but it’s unclear what the conclusion is supposed to be. There’s lots of implicit attention to the Sermon on the Mount passages without exploring what the significance of that extensive quotation is. Finally, I think Becerra makes a strong argument for citing Mormon-as-narrator outside of the specific books he focuses on, but it feels like it distracts from a focus on 3rd and 4th Nephi.

All these nitpicks aside, I appreciate Becerra’s work and wouldn’t rate it any lower. It merits a closer reread from me in the future to see if I feel any differently.

🔗 linkblog: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says Steam should drop its ‘Made with AI’ tags

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 08:58:10 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says Steam should drop its ‘Made with AI’ tags https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-11-28-if-one/

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: (Digital) Elbows Up (28 Nov 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 08:49:42 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: (Digital) Elbows Up (28 Nov 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-11-28-some-real/

📚 bookblog: Helaman: A Brief Theological Introduction (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 13:02:29 -0500

This book is great: its emphasis on sight and invisibility, its meta-emphasis on self-evaluation and self-deception, and its leaning into the Book of Mormon’s condemnation of wealth and departure from contemporary Latter-day Saint understandings. So much good stuff in here. The only thing keeping me from giving full marks is that I’ve skimmed it too quickly to critically evaluate (or appreciate) the throughlines of the book.

🔗 linkblog: OpenAI says dead teen violated TOS when he used ChatGPT to plan suicide

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 14:48:25 -0500

I genuinely don’t know what legal liability for generative AI products should look like, but arguing that the onus was on the kid and his family because of TOS strikes me as incredibly shitty, not to mention falling back on “look, we have a mission to benefit humanity by building AI, have you taken that into account?”

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 06:36:26 -0500

Black Friday is one of the worst things to ever happen to our world, but if I had to suddenly consider finding an expensive replacement for the bike I use to regularly commute to work, I guess I’m glad the choice came up this week?

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 19:42:17 -0500

Thinking about how I don’t know much about the Great Recession because I lived in a Mormon missionary bubble during that time—and about how during that time, I was supervised by a recently retired high-ranking Fannie Mae executive.

sermon on deciding which Jesus to follow

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 14:10:00 -0500

I had the opportunity to preach yesterday for Reign of Christ Sunday. Reign of Christ Sunday is one of those liturgical moments that admittedly makes me a little nervous: I like the idea of putting Jesus first, but it really, really depends on what we understand by Jesus. (I’ve been writing on this for a while, it looks like.) So, I decided to take the opportunity to invite members of my congregation to reflect on who Jesus is for them and what it means to put that Jesus first. Here’s the sermon text:

introduction: Jesus vs. Joseph

Sixty years ago, our denomination, Community of Christ, was going through some growing pains. At the time, most of our congregations were in places like North America, French Polynesia, or Western Europe—places where people were already familiar with Christianity. If people in those congegations wanted to share our common faith with someone new, all they had to do was to explain how our church was different than other Christian churches. We would talk about Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of our church, and his son Joseph Smith III, who reorganized the church 30 years later, and we would talk about what they had contributed to our beliefs.

In the 1950s and 1960s, though, members of our church started to encounter people in places like Korea and Japan, where Christianity was not as common. Some of these people were interested in our church, but now, we couldn’t explain our faith as easily as comparing ourselves to other Christian churches. Members and leaders found that first, they needed to answer an important question: Who is that Jesus that you keep talking about?

Up to this point, our identity as a church had mostly been about being different than other Christians, but now that we had to explain even our Christianity to people curious about us, we decided that maybe we could learn something from other churches after all. Top leaders of our denomination gathered for some classes with professors at a nearby United Methodist seminary so that they could take what they learned and decide what was most important for our beliefs.

As the first class was just getting started, those leaders quickly got put on the spot about that question of “what was most important.” One seminary professor asked a pointed question: If you ever had to choose between what Jesus taught and what Joseph taught, what would you do?

All eyes turned to W. Wallace Smith, the president of our denomination at that time. This might have felt like a personal question, because he was the son of Joseph Smith III and the grandson of Joseph Smith Jr. Did he feel like his family legacy was on the line? Whatever he felt, his answer was clear: “We would have to go with Jesus.”

“Reign of Christ” Sunday

I love this story for the way it reminds us of the importance of putting Jesus at the center of our faith, and at the center of our life, even if it means rethinking other things that are still important for us. In the decades since this moment, we as a denomination have worked hard to keep Jesus at the center of our faith. Just as W. Wallace Smith and other church leaders turned to other Christians to help them think through what was most important for our denomination, we have continued to ask what traditions and practices we can borrow from other Christian churches to keep ourselves focused on Jesus.

Today, for example, we join other Christian churches in celebrating “Reign of Christ Sunday,” which is also known as “Christ the King Sunday.” Our scripture passage for today touches on Jesus’s importance in a couple of different ways, but let me reread for you Colossians 1:15-18, whch emphasizes to what it means to make Christ our King.

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, 16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.

When we celebrate the Reign of Christ—when we celebrate Christ as King—we (and other Christians) acknowledge Jesus as most important.

the perversion of Christ as King

I love the invitation of Reign of Christ Sunday, to reconsider what is most important in our lives and to make an effort to put Jesus first. However, this beautiful invitation can also go wrong. Let’s consider a couple of examples.

First: A few months ago, a crowd gathered in London, England—specifically, in the neighborhood of Whitehall, where the offices of the British government are found. They began to chant “Christ is King, Christ is King, Christ is King.”

Second: Andrew is the name of the CEO of a small social media company. Whenever Andrew writes a news release or sends an email to a reporter, he always signs off with the phrase “Christ is King.”

Today, on Christ the King Sunday, it sure sounds like these people get it. Right? They are very focused on making Jesus their King and their Ruler. However, the truth is that I’ve left out some important details from these stories.

First, that crowd gathering in London and chanting Christ is King was there to protest immigration. At least some of the people in that crowd believed that no one born outside the United Kingdom deserved to be in the United Kingdom.

Second, sure, that social media CEO writes “Christ is King’ at the bottom of all his blog posts, but some of those blog posts describe Jewish people and organizations as “demons.”

Is that the Jesus we want to rule over us on Reign of Christ Sunday and throughout the year? Before we put Jesus at the center of our lives, we might need to ask ourselves the same question that people in far-off lands were asking us in the 1960s: Who is that Jesus that we keep talking about?

different visions of Jesus

When I started preparing this sermon, I decided to reread a book called Imaginary Jesus, which I’d first read in college. The book is about a man who realizes that his faith has been built around a certain version of Jesus and finds himself trying to discover the real Jesus instead.

Throughout the story, he meets several different imagined Jesuses: Legalist Jesus (who is very focused on rules), Magic 8 Ball Jesus (who gives easy answers to prayers), Perpetually Angry Jesus (who is always mad at sinners), Testosterone Jesus (who can rip a phone book in half and is very popular at men’s retreats), and even King James Jesus (who speaks only in thees, thys, and thous).

It’s a pretty funny book, and I love how the author invites us to set aside the Jesuses that are convenient or easy for us to believe in and to try to identify a real Jesus who challenges us more. Here’s the thing, though: I don’t know if it’s always easy to tell who the real Jesus is.

Even if we committed to sit down together, open up our Bibles, and not leave this sanctuary until we read everything we could about who Jesus really is, we would run into an obstacle: In the Bible itself, we’ve got at least four different authors with their own take on Jesus—five if we count Paul, and maybe a couple of others in there, too. We can reconcile these different stories, but still: if you read closely, Mark’s Jesus is very human and down to earth, while the Gospel of John emphasizes Jesus’s cosmic power before it even tells us his name. Those Jesus are kind of different.

The Anglican priest and Bible scholar John Barton has this to say in his book A History of the Bible:

Modern Christians probably do not spend much time reflecting on this issue. Long familiarity with the Gospels prevents people from noticing just how strange it is to have [different] official versions of the life and sayings of the founder of Christianity… it is remarkable that the Church decided to canonize all four versions and not to attempt to reconcile them.

Barton notes that this can be an advantage for Christians, and I agree, but it also makes it harder to agree on who the real Jesus is. The New Testament gives us a Jesus who tells Peter to put away his sword (Matthew 26:52), but it also gives us a Jesus whose robes are stained red with the blood of his enemies (Revelation 19:13). It probably makes a difference which of those Jesuses we choose as our King, which of those Jesuses we choose to put ahead of everything else in our lives.

choosing a Jesus

Of course, those aren’t the only two Jesuses we have available to us. Of course, I won’t pretend to know with any certainty who the “real” Jesus is among all those choices (though I definitely have some opinions!). Of course, we don’t all have to agree—here in this room, or throughout our denomination, or across the world. If Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, and others could offer us slightly different Jesuses and all make it into the New Testament, I think there’s room for us to have different views of Jesus and still share in Christian fellowship.

Yet, there are some versions of Jesus who are just plain dangerous. So, it’s still a good idea for each of us to think carefully about which Jesus we want to put on the throne, which Jesus we want to put ahead of our favorite church leaders, political parties, sports teams, and movie stars.

One of the interesting things about Reign of Christ Sunday—about today—is that it is the very last Sunday in the Christian calendar. As far as our worship themes and religious seasons go, today is December 31st, and next Sunday, things start all over again. However, when the Christian calendar restarts, we don’t restart with the month of January, we restart with the Christian season of Advent.

Advent begins next Sunday and continues all the way until Christmas. Advent is all about waiting for Jesus: waiting for his birth, waiting for his second coming, waiting for his Reign, waiting for him to be crowned as King, as the most important person in our lives.

As we wait, I can think of no better time for each of us to consider: Who is that Jesus that we are waiting for? What kind of King are we preparing to put on the throne?

Thank you.

🔗 linkblog: Candles and Concrete - The Birth of Jesus Today

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 07:44:39 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Candles and Concrete - The Birth of Jesus Today https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-11-24-beautiful-and/

📚 bookblog: Alma 30-63: A Brief Theological Introduction (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 21:34:31 -0500

I struggled my way through this book, but I also liked it? My wanting to quickly fly through this series hampered my ability to sit with it and evaluate its arguments in the way that it deserves, and it feels weird to review the book based on the skim that I ended up settling for. Yet, I also really liked the directions Wrathall explored, and I would be eager to reread what he has to say with more care and attention sometime in the future.

📚 bookblog: A Short Stay in Hell (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 08:23:30 -0500

This remains one of the best pieces of short fiction I’ve ever encountered, and I have trouble imagining ever finding anything that replaces it in my mind. It is existentially terrifying and yet beautiful, it’s clever in even the smallest details, and I will never stop thinking about it.

🔗 linkblog: Grok’s Elon Musk worship is getting weird

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 19:48:15 -0500

This provides some helpful context, including confirming my suspicion that Twitter!Grok works differently than Base!Grok when it comes to these weird episodes.

🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk Could 'Drink Piss Better Than Any Human in History,' Grok Says

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 16:57:38 -0500

🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk Could 'Drink Piss Better Than Any Human in History,' Grok Says https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-11-20-sometimes-ai/

what is the correct monkey paw threshold?

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 12:21:07 -0500

One of the great “be careful what you wish for” stories is The Monkey’s Paw in which a family receives a magic item that grants wishes but discovers to their horror that all the wishes are granted in terrible, horrible ways. I can’t remember when I last read the story (though I’m confident I have—maybe in high school?), but monkey paw has stuck in my brain as the metaphor for this idea that wishes can go terribly, terribly wrong, so you really ought to think them through.

One of my favorite variations on this metaphor comes from an episode of the Total Party Kill actual play podcast from The Incomparable entitled “Professional Monkey Paw Operator.” The episode title comes from the clip below, where a player is granted access to a powerful spell that will allow them to bring a party member back to life; because she is very aware of the ways that the Dungeon Master could really mess this up for her, the wording of her wish is hilariously exact.

Generative AI gets me thinking about monkey paws a lot. Reading stories like this article from 404 Media—“Massive Leak Shows Erotic Chatbot Users Turned Women’s Yearbook Pictures Into AI Porn”—fills me with rage and makes me think that if I had access to a monkey paw, I’d be really, really tempted to use it to make generative AI disappear from the face of the earth. Yet, I’m also very aware of the lesson that the monkey paw teaches, that for all of my rage, there could be unintended consequences to this.

First of all, how does one define generative AI? Definitions are famously a problem in the AI industry, with many companies having artificial general intelligence as an explicit goal of theirs… but also struggling to define what it is. (Nilay Patel and David Pierce had fun with this on a recent episode of the Vergecast). AGI and genAI are (clearly) not the same thing, but definitions are hard, and I expect that a definition for generative AI is harder than many definitions. What could I inadvertently wish off the face of the earth by making a rash monkey paw wish about generative AI?

Second, as grumpy as I am about generative AI, I (think) I have the presence of mind to recognize the ways that a cure can be worse than the disease. For example, I’m generally opposed to running student work through an AI detector, because I think cultures of surveillance and consequences of false positives are potentially a bigger problem than using generative AI to do your schoolwork. Likewise, Mike Masnick has written repeatedly (including yesterday about how increasing copyright protections to counter generative AI scraping may create more problems than it solves. For all that I’m angry about generative AI, I think Masnick is right here.

Ultimately, though, this post is less about trying to wrestle with generative AI and more about the idea of a “monkey paw threshold.” At what point would I (or someone else) be justified in making a brash wish in response to a clear problem even though there may be unintended consequences? When it comes to generative AI, I think there are clear problems to the technology and I don’t see a whole lot of societal benefits to the tool (at least as its currently deployed and marketed), and yet I would still be hesitant before trying to monkey paw it away—even at my angriest, I don’t know that we’ve crossed the threshold. The Simpsons’ take on the monkey paw story, on the other hand, ends with Homer angry that the turkey sandwich he carefully wished for was a little too dry—sure, things didn’t turn out the way he expected, but it worked out a lot better than the family’s previous wishes. This seems like a reasonable use of a monkey paw, but a turkey sandwich isn’t exactly a pressing need, either.

No answers in this post, but I’m intrigued by the idea of a monkey paw threshold for helping someone try to think through when a problem is big enough that unintended consequences may be worth it. Maybe you can never reach the monkey paw threshold (after all, part of my anger with generative AI is precisely AI companies’ seeming disregard for unintended consequences), but it’s an interesting question to puzzle out.

another Liahona observation

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 20:23:05 -0500

Ever since blogging twice about the Liahona and Jacques Ellul’s technique six months ago(!), I’ve been thinking a lot about this story in the Book of Mormon as a possible starting point for a Book of Mormon-based theology of technology. As I first wrote then, I think this story is particularly interesting for the implicit tension in the story: Why would an all-powerful God need a mechanical(?) device in order to communicate their divine will to their followers?

Reading through I Nephi 5 today (in the Community of Christ Revised Authorized Version), I came across a short passage (verses 31-33) that really drives this point home:

And the voice of the Lord came to my father; and he was truly chastened because of his murmuring against the Lord, insomuch that he was brought down into the depths of sorrow. The voice of the Lord said to him, “Look upon the ball, and behold the things which are written!” And when my father beheld the things which were written upon the ball, he feared and trembled exceedingly; and also my brethren, and the sons of Ishmael, and our wives.

The middle sentence here is kind of wild if you start to think about it. God is already talking to Lehi, so why does God need to tell Lehi to look at the message on the Liahona? This is wildly inefficient and seemingly nonsensical; however, from an Ellulian perspective, the rejection of efficiency is itself theologically interesting. If God embraces technology, God does not seem to embrace Ellul’s all-consuming technique, and that’s worth digging into.

🔗 linkblog: Even the lawmakers behind the TikTok ban have no idea what’s going on

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 11:28:05 -0500

There are many terrifying things happening right now, but let’s not forget about this spectacularly dumb thing that is also, somehow, continuing.

📚 bookblog: For the Win (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 08:06:01 -0500

I’ve been meaning to reread this for a while, and I’m glad I finally got to it. It’s fifteen years old now and feels it sometimes (not necessarily in a bad way), but it’s a fun read.

I appreciate Doctorow’s use of MMOs as a metaphor for economics, and even if I’m not economically savvy enough to follow all the details or evaluate their accuracy, it’s a lot of fun to read about “Great Recession, but a heist carried out by unionized workers.”

🔗 linkblog: At least seven faith leaders arrested at Broadview ICE facility protest

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 07:19:52 -0500

What a terrible time we’re living in. Good for these clergy, and let us all remember that they aren’t even seeing the worst of the inhumanity currently so popular.

Sat, 15 Nov 2025 08:08:59 -0500

Just heard a podcast ad where Amazon tries to claim that shopping from them is supporting small businesses, and it made me want to barf.

📚 bookblog: Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 22:34:47 -0500

There’s a lot I like in this book: the call for urgency; its focus on bottom-up movements; echoes of Ellul, Graeber, and other authors I’ve appreciated. It feels like an example of the prophetic voice, and I hope to keep it in mind in the years to come.

I’m not an economist or an environmental expert, so I feel inadequate in my ability to thoroughly review it. I wish it were easier to translate those lofty ideals into daily action, though maybe part of the point is that there are no easy answers to this.

🔗 linkblog: xAI used employee biometric data to train Elon Musk’s AI girlfriend

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 11:09:10 -0500

🔗 linkblog: xAI used employee biometric data to train Elon Musk’s AI girlfriend https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-11-05-what.-the./

🔗 linkblog: The GOP Civil War Over Nick Fuentes Has Just Begun

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 12:24:10 -0500

🔗 linkblog: The GOP Civil War Over Nick Fuentes Has Just Begun https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-11-04-nick-fuentes/

🔗 linkblog: How Silicon Valley enshittified the internet

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 10:14:56 -0400

🔗 linkblog: How Silicon Valley enshittified the internet https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-10-30-good-interview/

🔗 linkblog: Grokipedia is racist, transphobic, and loves Elon Musk

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 11:51:43 -0400

No surprises here but still worth bookmarking.

Honest question: Is Grokipedia a wiki? Or just Grok output?

🔗 linkblog: Grokipedia Is the Antithesis of Everything That Makes Wikipedia Good, Useful, and Human

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 15:09:04 -0400

Easy to dunk on Grokipedia, but this article gets at some ideas that I think are particularly important. If I had more time for blogging this semester, I’d write something up on Ellul’s image vs. word dichotomy and how it aligns with Koebler’s thoughts here.

🔗 linkblog: President Denies Reality Of Massive Nationwide Protests While Posting Videos of Himself Dumping Shit On Citizens

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 15:18:12 -0400

🔗 linkblog: President Denies Reality Of Massive Nationwide Protests While Posting Videos of Himself Dumping Shit On Citizens https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-10-20-some-good/

🔗 linkblog: Salesforce Offers Its Services to Boost Trump’s Immigration Force

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 12:11:32 -0400

Technology, efficiency, and growing public and private power—this has Ellul written all over it. Gift link.

🔗 linkblog: OpenAI halts MLK deepfakes on Sora

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 10:38:59 -0400

🔗 linkblog: OpenAI halts MLK deepfakes on Sora https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-10-17-who-could/

🔗 linkblog: Yes, everything online sucks now—but it doesn’t have to

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 06:57:20 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Yes, everything online sucks now—but it doesn’t have to https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-10-17-finally-got/

🔗 linkblog: The Blurred Truths of Sora

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 06:51:57 -0400

🔗 linkblog: The Blurred Truths of Sora https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-10-17-not-sure/

🔗 linkblog: Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 21:34:46 -0400

Booooooo. That Wikipedia is being mined by AI scrapers and negatively affected by AI search is such a perfect encapsulation of my concerns about generative AI.

📚 bookblog: Alma 1-29: A Brief Theological Introduction (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 12:54:20 -0400

I probably ought to rate this book higher. Even if I’m not terribly interested in psalmic structure and how it applies to the Book of Alma, there are some fascinating readings of familiar characters and stories in this book. In particular, Turley’s reading of Ammonihah and “fire and brimstone” has really impacted me, and I want to spend more time with it.

In fact, that’s ultimately what keeps me from rating the book higher. I’m powering through this series and more often skimming than reading. I don’t regret that if it’s the price I pay for finally making my way through all twelve volumes, but it does mean it’s hard to truly evaluate some of these books.

🔗 linkblog: ICE Boasts Zero Murders Committed By 5-Year-Olds Since Child Detainments Began

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 15:09:47 -0400

🔗 linkblog: ICE Boasts Zero Murders Committed By 5-Year-Olds Since Child Detainments Began https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-10-10-the-onion/

🔗 linkblog: Sora gives deepfakes 'a publicist and a distribution deal.' It could change the internet

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 06:52:23 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Sora gives deepfakes 'a publicist and a distribution deal.' It could change the internet https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-10-10-some-good/

🔗 linkblog: People Are Crashing Out Over Sora 2’s New Guardrails

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 13:31:59 -0400

Look, maybe this is a genuine misstep on OpenAI’s part, but it still feels to me like the company started with the guardrails off so that it could use this kind of user backlash to push the Overton Window in conversations with rightsholders.

Also, remember that we small potatoes rightsholders will never be able to have our voices heard like Disney or Nintendo.

🔗 linkblog: OpenAI wasn’t expecting Sora’s copyright drama

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 11:25:54 -0400

Something feels off here. An AI CEO who claims they genuinely didn’t anticipate copyright and deepfake concerns is either dumb or playing dumb. I can’t help but suspect the latter, which is arguably worse, since it suggests an effort to shift the discourse before complaints come in.

📚 bookblog: Théologie et technique : Pour une éthique de non-puissance (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 21:28:18 -0400

Oh là là, comme il a beaucoup exigé ce livre ! Ça fait des mois que j’essaie de le lire, et les écrits d’Ellul ont souvent dépassé ma capacité de comprendre le français philosophique.

Je pardonne beaucoup à ce livre pour trois raisons. D’abord, c’est surtout un brouillon, n’ayant jamais été publié, et ce qui était surtout pénible aurait sans doute été corrigé lors d’une vraie édition du livre. Deuxièmement, il y a beaucoup de pépites d’or là-dedans, même s’il faut beaucoup creuser pour les atteindre. Enfin, malgré mes plaintes, j’aime beaucoup la façon dont ce livre joint les deux grands thèmes de l’écriture d’Ellul lors de son vivant.

🔗 linkblog: Ted Cruz doesn’t seem to understand Wikipedia, lawyer for Wikimedia says

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 17:55:02 -0400

This is a good article; it would be easy to just roll eyes at Cruz, but this goes further in explaining how Wikipedia actually works.

🔗 linkblog: Dead celebrities are apparently fair game for Sora 2 video manipulation

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 14:04:32 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Dead celebrities are apparently fair game for Sora 2 video manipulation https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-10-07-just-bookmarking/

🔗 linkblog: Police Said They Surveilled Woman Who Had an Abortion for Her 'Safety.' Court Records Show They Considered Charging Her With a Crime

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 10:49:39 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Police Said They Surveilled Woman Who Had an Abortion for Her 'Safety.' Court Records Show They Considered Charging Her With a Crime https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2025-10-07-wish-id/