This book has been on my radar for a few months, and I’m glad to have found an audiobook I could check out (though I doubt I’d have regretted an impulse buy—this would be a good book to have on hand).

Palestinian Christian ministers and theologians always call me to account in a way that I appreciate. I don’t think I should need someone from my own faith tradition (broadly speaking) to tell me how bad the situation in Palestine is (i.e., I should have already figured that out by now), but this book pushed my thinking in ways that are going to stick. I’m more informed than many on Israel and Palestine thanks to a few classes in college, but this still brought in new perspectives that had never really landed before.

The headline is a little provocative, but it’s scary that we live in a world where it makes some sense.

More broadly, though, I found that the first Trump administration converted me to nuclear disarmament—yes, this president is scary, but that any president has access to that much destructive power is scarier still. I expect I’ll go further in that direction this time around.

Starting to sense a pattern.

The rules seem to be that it’s okay to do whatever in the GOP, but no Democrat can even seem to be in a sticky situation. What a joke.

Like everything I’ve read from Graeber, I appreciate the overall argument that he’s making and I find the evidence he marshalls compelling. At the same time, there’s a density to the latter that I admit having trouble following, so I don’t always see how it leads to the overall argument.

Even with those caveats, I’m happy to endorse this read. I’m interested in how Graeber explores the relationship between moral thinking and economic modeling—as I posted earlier, I also find his thoughts on the moral dangers posed by abstracting interpersonal obligations into quantifiable debt with the help of money.

Bookmarking for… sigh… teaching purposes.

As usual, lots to like in this post from Mike Masnick.

Resubscribed to WIRED because despite my efforts to focus more on tech news than political news, THEY HAVE BECOME ONE AND THE SAME IN REALLY WORRYING WAYS.

Currently reading David Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5,000 Years,” and while it’s really dense, one clear theme is how money has the power to abstract our moral thinking in dangerous directions. This NYT blurb seemed relevant.

Love to be living in a world where a blog I read for tech commentary—and that is more reserved than I would be on a lot of that commentary—is running articles describing current goings-on as “a coup in progress.”

More good writing from Masnick on scary stuff coming out of DC.

It’s obviously not the most worrying thing about it, but a very specific tragedy about Musk’s DOGE nonsense is that it may end up being the largest (indirect) influence Homestar Runner has had on the world.

Lots of bad things are happening right now, but this one stands out. There’s no good reason for this except to make Musk happy.

Some Bluesky posts are reminding me of what I wrote about how my LDS mission sometimes played fast and loose with immigration documents:

https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/the-missionary-with-the-expired-visa/

I always appreciate Sam’s writing and especially here. I’m waiting to see what—if anything—my current church has to say about the current mess, but I have a deep fondness for the church I grew up in, and it’s deeply disappointing for a rich church that is willing to throw those resources behind its interests to decide that combatting the present cruelty is not one of those interests.

If current events continue to echo the Twitter takeover, we’re about a year out from Elon Musk telling a gathering of world leaders to go fuck themselves for not supporting his agenda.

I’m grateful for The Onion right now.

Bookmarking this because with the sheer quantity of nonsense that’s happened in just the last couple of weeks, I feel like I will eventually need reminders of just how dumb some of it has been.

Masnick pulls no punches.

Government overreach is scary, but it can also be really, really petty.

Oh, he really is doing this like he did Twitter. That was a nightmare by itself.

Anyone who hasn’t should read one of two excellent books—Extremely Hardcore or Character Limit—on Musk’s takeover of Twitter, because I’m getting similar vibes here. Remember when Musk just refused to pay money Twitter owed because he didn’t feel like it?

What a mess.

My first print copy of The Onion came today, and it’s the only news I’ve been happy to read for days.

This headline would be hilarious if it weren’t so infuriating.