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

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:41:06 -0400

I feel like everything I read about the Taylor Farms response to being identified with the cyclosporasis outbreak makes me distrust the company more than just their being identified with the outbreak.

📚 bookblog: The Way of the House Husband, Volume 4 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 17:52:16 -0400

Would I read more of this? Absolutely. But I’m also glad to have exhausted the volumes available at my library, because as fun and cute as the premise is, there’s only so much I can read in a short time without getting tired of it.

🔗 linkblog: The dizzying experience of 'vibe coding'

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 13:55:56 -0400

I always pay attention to Josh’s perspective on things, and this post really stood out to me.

📚 bookblog: The Way of the House Husband, Volume 3 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 13:52:59 -0400

Part of me feels like there’s only so long you can drag along the premise of “retired yakuza becomes stay-at-home spouse,” and a lot of the humor here builds on, rather than outright challenges, traditional gender roles. Yet, it remains a fun read!

📚 bookblog: The Way of the House Husband, Volume 2 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 13:34:08 -0400

This series is clearly formulaic and episodic, but it’s still fun (and since I struggled to follow the ongoing plot of My Hero Academia, maybe it’s an easier entry point for me).

📚 bookblog: The Way of the House Husband, Volume 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 13:32:25 -0400

📚 bookblog: The Way of the House Husband, Volume 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️) https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-07-19-cozy-yakuza/

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 11:30:24 -0400

I think I have an idea for a book, but a book doesn’t make professional sense for at least two years, BUT this means for the first time in my career, I have an idea of a true research trajectory instead of repeatedly stumbling into cool projects.

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 11:09:02 -0400

I have the lowest possible standards for feeling victorious at home improvement tasks, and yet I so rarely meet that standard that I will always take that feeling when it comes.

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 11:24:33 -0400

I have purchased a reel mower because it is less expensive than buying a replacement battery for our electric mower, which was itself a replacement battery for the one we originally had.

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:00:05 -0400

Last night, I decided to return a bunch of unread volumes of My Hero Academia to the library, and I am feeling uncultured.

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 19:15:55 -0400

Okay, you weird French blobs: It’s time to try out Heave Ho 2.

🔗 linkblog: The CDC Has a Cyclospora Lab. DOGE Downsized It Last Year

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 17:06:57 -0400

🔗 linkblog: The CDC Has a Cyclospora Lab. DOGE Downsized It Last Year https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-17-quelle-surprise./

les petites victoires d'un francophone aspirant

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 09:58:21 -0400

Je viens de passer trois jours à un colloque sur Jacques Ellul, un penseur français qui m’intéresse beaucoup en ce moment (et depuis déjà un peu de temps). J’avoue sans honte qu’une des choses qui m’a attiré chez Ellul, c’était sa francophonie, car le français m’est très cher et je suis toujours à la recherche des moyens d’entraîner mes propres capacités francophones.

C’était donc un grand plaisir de rencontre d’autres francophones à ce colloque (même si la plupart des gens qui y assistaient étaient des anglophones qui lisaient Ellul uniquement en traduction—je ne critique pas, je constate). J’ai pu bavarder avec deux Bordelais.e.s sans trop dire des bêtises, je crois que j’ai bien réussi à savoir quand je pouvais tutoyer (alors que la plupart du temps, j’ai du mal à comprendre ces nuances), et j’ai même fait la bise pour la première fois depuis bien des années (en disant au revoir à une nouvelle amie).

Même si j’avais des raisons surtout professionnelles pour assister à ce colloque, ça m’a fait vraiment—mais VRAIMENT—du bien au niveau personnel et « francophone aspirant » d’avoir eu ces petites victoires au cours de trois jours.

🔗 linkblog: xAI can’t deny Grok makes CSAM anymore. So it’s suing users.

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 21:33:59 -0400

🔗 linkblog: xAI can’t deny Grok makes CSAM anymore. So it’s suing users. https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-16-love-this/

☕ teablog: Druids Garden Tea Company, Vanilla Cherry Chai (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 11:13:51 -0400

Kiddo brought this back from a Ren Faire for me, and it is great. You can taste cherry (a lot of it), and there are clear hints of vanilla and an aftertaste of peppercorn in the chai. It’s better sipped over the course of a morning than finished in a rush, but I’m looking forward to going through this whole bag.

☕ teablog: Teavana, Jasmine Citrus (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 11:08:48 -0400

☕ teablog: Teavana, Jasmine Citrus (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤) https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-07-16-not-bad/

☕ teablog: Teavana, English Breakfast (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 11:02:07 -0400

☕ teablog: Teavana, English Breakfast (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️) https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-07-16-this-tea/

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 09:13:25 -0400

Nothing annoys me more than an academic argument whose conclusion I want to agree with but is constructed in a sloppy, superficial way.

Call for Papers: Platformed Mormonism

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 15:08:04 -0400

This CFP has been up on the journal website for a while now, but with our second “rolling deadline” of September 1st coming up soon, I thought it was time to start sharing it a little more personally. In short, I’m thrilled to joining Spencer Stewart and Rosemary Avance in editing a special issue of the Journal of the Mormon Social Science Association on Platformed Mormonism. Here’s a quick blurb on the issue, and please check out the link above for more details:

The Journal of the Mormon Social Science Association (JMSSA) is accepting submissions for a special issue exploring the intersection of Mormon traditions and digital platforms. Papers accepted for the special issue will receive an honorarium of up to USD 1,000. We welcome interdisciplinary perspectives that explore how the technological, architectural, and political structures of digital platforms are not only governing how Mormonism is perceived, represented, and encountered by the broader public but also mediating and reshaping belief, practice, and community across various Mormon traditions. We welcome both scholarly/empirical studies and shorter reflective submissions.

As I suggested above, we have a set of rolling deadlines, the next of which is September 1st, 2026, with two more on December 1st, 2026 and March 1, 2027. We encourage submitting to the earliest deadline that makes sense for the authors, but anything submitted by the March 1st deadline will be considered for the special issue. I also want to emphasize two points from the blurb above: First, that we’re accepting both longer, empirical submission and shorter, reflective submissions; and second, that papers accepted in both formats will receive honoraria. If the blurb or the longer CFP don’t answer your questions, please feel free to reach out to me specifically!

🔗 linkblog: Musk’s Starlink Socks Customers With $1500 ‘High Demand’ Surcharge

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:09:41 -0400

I wish I’d had this on hand during a conversation with someone last month who was willing to give Musk credit for what he’s done with Starlink. As Bode points out, there is genuine value in the product, but there are huge problems, too.

🔗 linkblog: A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:01:52 -0400

🔗 linkblog: A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-13-terrifying-stuff./

conference presentation on Jacques Ellul and Mormonism

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:28:31 -0400

Later this week, I’ll be presenting for the first time at the International Jacques Ellul Society. My paper is called Image and Word in Mormonism’s Foundational Media Events, and I’ll be using Ellul’s image and word framework in The Humiliation of the Word as an explanatory framework for how the founding events of Mormonism can be understood by scholars and believers as either the sure-and-certain image or the ambiguous and fleeting word. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Latter-day Saints and their leaders tend to prefer the image over the word, and I think Ellul’s writing helps understand why this is (beyond the obvious reasons)

I’m quite excited about this, given how much Ellul has affected my scholarly (and, frankly, personal) thinking in the short time that I’ve been reading him. In fact, over the past couple of weeks, as I’ve been putting final touches on my paper and slides (and doing other reading), I’ve been thinking that I’d like to use this as a starting point for a broader project on what I’m tentatively calling the “Latter-day Saint technical apparatus.” I’ve got another paper in mind for an upcoming special issue from Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, and we’ll see if I can find time in the next three months to put that together.

Anyway, for anyone outside of IJES who might be interested, I’ve created a new entry in the Research section of my website that has some information about the presentation and a link to the slides that I’ll be using.

sermon text on Parable of the Sower

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:03:59 -0400

I haven’t been preaching for Community of Christ for very long, but by virtue of different demographics and traditions than the denomination I grew up in (in short, I preach more often for Community of Christ than I would have continuing in Latter-day Saint congregations), I suspect that I may be soon approaching the number of “talks” that I’d given in my past religious life. Maybe not this year, but that might happen in the next couple of years if I keep up the schedule that I’m on. Anyway, I bring that up because in my short time preaching for Community of Christ, I’ve never struggled with a sermon as much as I have with this one, and I’m trying to remember if that’s also true of my contributions to Latter-day Saint worship services over the years.

I mentioned in this morning’s review of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (which, I forgot to mention, feels truly written for the 2020s and not just because it’s set during that time) that I listened to that book in order to prepare for the sermon but ended up not using it much. I think I could have if I hadn’t finished the book in the minutes before I arrived at the church building, and that’s something to think about for next time.

This time, though, I wound up solving my problem by addressing that difficulty head on and talking about how I can’t see this parable as a metaphor for missionary work anymore—to make any sense of it, I need to think of it in a broader sense of building the peaceable reign of God. Here’s the text"

introduction

My parents recently moved, and one of the consequences of that move is that I am going through a bunch of stuff that they kept from my childhood and teenage years and that they don’t want to keep anymore. Now it’s my responsibility to go through this stuff and decide if I want to keep it.

In one binder I went through, I found a handful of pieces of paper with outlines for speeches written on them. When I was in 10th grade, one of my friends encouraged me to join our high school’s speech and debate team, which I did. I quickly learned that I enjoyed competitive extemporaneous speaking, where you had 30 minutes to research, write, and memorize a 7-minute speech in response to a question that you were given on the spot.

This was a very nerdy thing to do in high school and was not as impressive as being on a sports team, but it gave me a lot of experience that has been very helpful ever since. For example, when you only have 30 minutes to research, write, and memorize a speech, you learn to think on your feet. I have found in the past couple of years that this is really helpful for sermon writing. Even though I have a lot longer than 30 minutes to prepare a sermon, and even though I need all of that time to do it properly, my high school instincts mean that I often have the broad outline of a sermon in my head within a day or two of receiving a scripture assignment.

Or, at least, that’s usually the case.

the Parable of the Sower

A couple of months ago, I got the latest worship schedule in an email and looked up my name so that I could start preparing for anything that I’d been assigned. This time, my assigned scripture was the Matthew 13 version of The Parable of the Sower. You’ve probably heard this scripture before, but let’s go over the first part together:

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on a path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. If you have ears, hear!”

Well, friends, when I read over this scripture back in May, all of my high school instincts failed me. I had no idea what to preach about when it came to this parable—not just in the day or two to come, but for a solid month or two: no matter how often I thought about it, it just didn’t seem like any ideas were coming.

the disciples and parables

If there’s one comfort I can take from just not getting this parable, it’s that Jesus’s disciples felt the same way. The Parable of the Sower appears in Matthew 13 (today’s scripture) as well as Mark 4 and Luke 8. In all three tellings of this parable, the disciples sheepishly walk up to Jesus afterward and say “hey, Jesus, do you mind helping us out here? what exactly are you talking about?” In all three tellings of the parable, Jesus agrees to explain what he meant, and here’s what he says in Matthew 13:

“Hear, then, the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet such a person has no root but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of this age and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

my real issue

Knowing that the disciples needed things explained to them brings some comfort, but to be honest, I already knew that explanation when I was struggling to know what to preach about. I’ve heard this parable countless times since I was a kid, so I already knew that the seed is the word, and the ground is the people who hear the word, and all the rest. I just didn’t want the parable to be about that.

I mentioned earlier that my parents just moved. They moved because they accepted an assignment from the church that they attend (and that I grew up in) to go supervise missionary efforts for that church in another part of the world. They will probably talk about the Parable of the Sower a lot to the missionaries that they work with, encouraging them to be sowers who sow seed, hope that it grows, and know that it won’t always grow the way they hope. I know this because when I was younger, I took two years to be the kind of missionary that my parents are off supervising. We talked about the Parable of the Sower a lot, encoouranging ourselves to be sowers who sow seed, hope that it grows, and know that it won’t always grow the way we hope.

That missionary interpretation is a pretty common way of understanding this parable, so I don’t think that I was wrong to think about it in those terms or that my parents will be wrong to think about it in those terms. However, I have issues with how I used to think about that parable, and that stops me from appreciating the parable now. When missionaries from that church think about the Parable of the Sower, the seed doesn’t just represent “the word,” it usually represents the specific teachings of that church. For the missionaries that my parents are supervising, so long as I don’t believe the things that they do and practice my faith in the way that they do, I represent the path, or the rocky ground, or the ground with thorns—somewhere where the seed is not growing.

I think those missionaries have the right to believe that; when I was one of those missionaries, I did, and I believed it sincerely. But I obviously don’t believe that anymore: I’m preaching for all of you this morning, and not for the church I grew up in. I also don’t know that I can bring myself to believe it back at them, that just because they don’t believe the things that I do and that they don’t practice their faith the way that I do, they aren’t good soil, no matter how sincere they are. Besides those missionaries, I have friends and family members with lots of different beliefs—including no religious beliefs at all—and as deeply important as my Christian commitment is to me, I have to be honest: I don’t want to be in the business of sowing the word at them and judging whether it’s growing. Maybe that makes me a bad Christian, maybe that makes me a bad minister, but that’s where I am, and that’s why I struggled with this scripture for today.

what is the word?

One thing I loved about doing speech and debate in high school is that I never knew what I was going to get asked to speak on, and that forced me to learn a lot of things so that I would always have something to say. One thing I love about getting scripture assignments for sermons is that even when I struggle with the scripture, it is always an invitation to learn something new about my own faith. I found something I love about this scripture, something that helped me know what to say today, something that helps me transform this parable from the way I used to understand it to something that speaks to my faith here and now.

What is the word in this parable? At least in the version we read in Matthew, Jesus tells the disciples that the seed represents “the word of the kingdom.” In Mark, it’s just “the word,” which is mysterious; in Luke, it’s the word of God, which is good; but what I needed for today is Matthew’s version, which is “the word of the kingdom.”

In our foyer, we’ve got copies of a little booklet called “Sharing in Community of Christ.” One of the sections in that booklet is called “Basic Beliefs of Community of Christ,” which is pretty self explanatory, but it has an entry called “The Reign of God,” which is just another way of talking about “the kingdom.” Here’s how it goes—here’s how our denomination thinks about “the kingdom.”

The Reign of God is the coming triumph of love, justice, mercy, and peace that one day will embrace all of creation. Jesus’ life and ministry were the living expression of this promise. He taught his disciples to pray for the kingdom’s full coming and sent them out into the world to be living emblems of that new creation. “Zion” expresses our commitment to herald God’s peaceable kingdom on Earth by forming Christ-centered communities in families, congregations, neighborhoods, cities, and throughout the world.

Wow. If that is the seed in this parable, that changes a lot for me. I’d get a little grumpy if missionaries from another church told me that my heart was unprepared ground because I wasn’t learning to believe like they believe, but I do need regular reminders that “the cares of this age and the lure of wealth” are distracting me from “love, justice, mercy, and peace.” I’m hesitant about sowing the seed if that means convincing everyone else to practice their faith like I practice mine, but sign me up for building the better world that “one day will embrace all of creation.”

I know that that seed won’t always grow the way that we hope, but I do hope it grows, and I want to be involved in sowing it wherever I can.

conclusion

This sermon is a little more personal than usual, and I’m not sure that that’s how sermons are supposed to be. But thank you for letting me make this sermon personal, because it’s been a chance to think through a lot that’s been on my mind for the past couple of months. I love what we believe about the Reign of God, and I love Matthew’s emphasis on sowing the “word of the kingdom.” I hope we can all be sowers of that seed—and that we can all be prepared ground to let “love, justice, mercy, and peace” grow in us.

📚 bookblog: Parable of the Sower (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:00:02 -0400

Wow, was this good! I picked it up because I was struggling with a sermon on the parable that gives the book its name, but even if I didn’t end up taking much from the book for my sermon, it really made an impression.

It’s evocative, and it does an amazing job of describing a hopeful apocalypse. I can see how other media I like—Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway or the indie TTRPG Why We Fight—owe something to this book.

I’ll be thinking about this for a long time!

📚 bookblog: Dungeon Crawler Carl (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 08:54:56 -0400

I honestly didn’t know what I would think of this book. I’d heard some complaints and caveats about it, but some folks also highly recommended it, including one of the people who made a caveat (and who is outspoken on problematic social attitudes), so I thought it was worth a try.

My verdict is that this feels like fanfiction, which isn’t supposed to be an insult but also captures some of my own caveats. Why compare it with fanfiction? Some parts feel unwieldy and overly explanatory of the worldbuilding. It does take a certain pleasure in being transgressive, and sometimes that does cross a line. Yet, I meant what I said about comparng to fiction not being an insult, because it is creative and interesting in the way that sometimes only self-published stuff can be.

I have the second book on hold, so I’m interested to see where the series goes, but I’m also not totally upset that it will be weeks before my hold comes in.

Image and word in Mormonism's foundational media events

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Image and word in Mormonism's foundational media events https://spencergreenhalgh.com/research/2026-greenhalgh-ellul-mormonism/

🔗 linkblog: How Marco Rubio Runs Venezuela From Afar

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 13:22:38 -0400

🔗 linkblog: How Marco Rubio Runs Venezuela From Afar https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-11-every-word/

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 13:28:42 -0400

I don’t mind a genuinely difficult escape room (or at-home escape room game), but one advertised as difficult that just feels arbitrary is just frustrating.

🔗 linkblog: Adults Broke The Internet, And They’re Trying To Fix It By Kicking Kids Off

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 13:24:31 -0400

I appreciate Masnick’s pushing back against Haidt-like discourses about social media, but I haven’t taken the time to dig into the weeds myself. I’m bookmarking this for my own reference.

🍿 movieblog: This is Spinal Tap (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:56:32 -0400

🍿 movieblog: This is Spinal Tap (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤) https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-07-09-i-get/

🔗 linkblog: The Party That Screams About The Evils Of Socialism Wants To Nationalize AI Companies

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:09:58 -0400

🔗 linkblog: The Party That Screams About The Evils Of Socialism Wants To Nationalize AI Companies https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-09-bookmarking-in/

podcast interview about recent Dialogue article

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 20:42:02 -0400

Earlier this week, I got to meet with Margaret Olsen Hemming to record an episode of the Dialogue Out Loud podcast about my recent article in Dialogue on rethinking sexual ethics through Jacob’s temple sermon. It feels like a real accomplishment to have something theological published in this journal, and being interviewed by someone I cite in the article only makes it more surreal. It was a good conversation, and I’m happy to see that it’s already available for listening!

🔗 linkblog: Meta is reportedly working on smart glasses that would be recording all the time

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 20:06:05 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Meta is reportedly working on smart glasses that would be recording all the time https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-08-just-so/

🔗 linkblog: Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 19:19:03 -0400

For my entire career, I have resisted demonizing students and have sincerely believed in the need to adapt assessment to context rather than police student behavior. Yet, this kind of thing is untenable:

Eighteen students suddenly dropped the course, while nine others didn’t even attend the final exam. Of those 27 students, El País noted, “22 had scored a perfect 100 in the midterm exam.”

🔗 linkblog: Lawsuit: Man used Grok to make 7K sex images of stepdaughter, then shot himself

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 18:06:33 -0400

When Musk brags about Grok not being “woke” or whatever, he is signaling that he’s implicitly okay with this kind of edge case.

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:22:32 -0400

Am I playing fast and loose with tracking kiddo’s time for summer reading programs? Yes, but she’s also a kid who never gets angrier at me than when I tell her to put down a book to come to dinner, so I think I can get away with it.

🔗 linkblog: Cops Say Waymo Snitched on Teens for Allegedly Drinking and Shooting a Toy Gun

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 15:06:21 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Cops Say Waymo Snitched on Teens for Allegedly Drinking and Shooting a Toy Gun https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-07-self-driving-cars/

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 10:50:37 -0400

One perk of using Markdown/HTML-based slides is that I can work on them from my phone’s text editor when sitting a few rows back from kiddo at a summer library event.

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 08:50:32 -0400

J’ai commencé à écouter Stromae ce matin, sans trop me demander si ça représentait de la trahison après la défaite de mes compatriotes aux mains (aux pieds ?) des Belges hier. Mais bon, j’aime bien Stromae, je m’en fiche un peu du foot, et en tout cas, les USA méritent du châtiment en ce moment.

🔗 linkblog: A New Battle Hymn

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 17:32:56 -0400

🔗 linkblog: A New Battle Hymn https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-06-this-is/

🍿 movieblog: Toy Story 5 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 08:22:25 -0400

Look, there were good parts to this movie, including jokes that made me laugh and scenes that made me tear up. It just seems weird to feel continuity lockout from a Toy Story movie (never having seen the fourth one), and that made me wonder if this movie needed to exist.

What’s more, I have a rule of thumb that good tech criticism in fiction needs to target the companies as much as the computers, and this fails that test. While the movie stops short of moral panic (and intentionally so), it gets close, and critiques that could be good feel a bit shallow and obvious to me.

📚 bookblog: I'm a Trash Goblin Who Craves Mess (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 08:17:12 -0400

This storyline is a bit tough for me, but reading it in a collection reminds me of how much better Dumbing of Age is when you can read a storyline all at once. Really enjoyed the read even if it’s not my favorite arc.

🔗 linkblog: Footage Shows Cop Stalking Woman He Met on a TV Set After Surveilling Her With a License Plate Reader

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 08:13:36 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Footage Shows Cop Stalking Woman He Met on a TV Set After Surveilling Her With a License Plate Reader https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-06-so-gross./

🔗 linkblog: These Immigrant Kids Were Once Protected. Under Trump, Their Deportations Have Tripled.

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 07:05:35 -0400

🔗 linkblog: These Immigrant Kids Were Once Protected. Under Trump, Their Deportations Have Tripled. https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-06-how-cruel/

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 13:22:57 -0400

My mother-in-law just picked up a Snorlax mug and asked “is this a cat or Dracula?”

📚 bookblog: Medallion Status (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 20:18:56 -0400

I don’t regret reading this book, but it’s not as good as Hodgman’s other memoir. I don’t feel like it holds together as well, it feels anchored in 2019 in a way that doesn’t work for me, and I always get bugged when someone picks on “reckless cyclists” when so much of our world and infrastructure are stacked against cycling (though I’m confident that some cyclists are the entitled white dudes that Hodgman is taking aim at in that particular story—I just think there are better ways to skewer white dudes than targeting those who travel by bike).

📚 bookblog: Rebirth (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 21:45:48 -0400

The finale of this series (or at least this arc) focused more on the parts I liked less, so meh. I still enjoyed the series though and would be interested to read more Andolfo.

📺 tvblog: Sugar Season 1 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:06:43 -0400

I was ready to rate this higher when I watched the season finale last night, but after sleeping on it, I’m actually grumpier about the series than I realized. I loved the first few episodes, but I’m not sure the twist pays off, and the final episode felt stuffed too full. There’s a bit too much going on in the series, and while I’d gladly watch the second season, I won’t mind if we don’t get to it.

📚 bookblog: The Hunt (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:04:57 -0400

Gotta say that I don’t like the fantasy elements of this story as much at the digs at totalitarian policing of gender and sexuality, but this second volume is still a good read.

📚 bookblog: Awakening (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:03:33 -0400

This comic is very weird, but the art is good, the translation is excellent (or at least I don’t think of it being translated), and the social commentary is very well done.

🔗 linkblog: JD Vance Brags About Being Able To Do Lots Of Watergates, Compares Himself To Nixon

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:58:05 -0400

🔗 linkblog: JD Vance Brags About Being Able To Do Lots Of Watergates, Compares Himself To Nixon https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-01-wait-what/

🔗 linkblog: Supreme Court Upholds Temporal Gerrymander That Would Cost Democrats 1932 Election

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 09:59:55 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Supreme Court Upholds Temporal Gerrymander That Would Cost Democrats 1932 Election https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-06-30-this-is/

🎙️ radioblog: La Commune de Paris : Page maudite ou page glorieuse de l'histoire ? (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:18:17 -0400

Comme il m’arrive de lire un peu sur l’anarchisme, comme les écrits anarchistes parlent souvent de la Commune de Paris, comme je ne savais pas beaucoup sur cet évènement, et comme j’avais besoin de quoi écouter ce matin, j’ai choisi cette série pour approfondir un peu mes connaissances. J’ai toujours l’impression de ne pas savoir grand-chose (et de ne pas connaître la réponse à la question posée par cette petite série), mais elle a été bien faite.

📚 bookblog: The Boy Born with Everything (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:12:34 -0400

I waited a couple of days before writing my review, and I had trouble remembering what I had read. I really want to like this series, and I don’t actively dislike it, but that is just not a great sign.

new exegetical article on Jacob 2

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 14:33:53 -0400

I’m very pleased to share that the latest issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought includes an exegetical essay (available here as webpage, PDF, and audio recording) that I wrote arguing for reading Jacob 2 in the Book of Mormon as an example of reinterpreting scripture and rethinking sexual ethics. I’ve published in Dialogue before, but with my secular social scientist hat on, and it feels like a personal accomplishment to have published something more theological in nature.

This particular idea has been bouncing around my head for a while: In fact, thanks to my recent import of my old Twitter archive, I can say with authority that this essay began its life as a Twitter thread from March 2020. I spent years wanting to expand it into something bigger, and I am thrilled that it found a home at Dialogue.

sermon on idols and certainty

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 14:20:44 -0400

I had another chance to preach for the Beyond the Walls ministry based out of Toronto yesterday. I went a bit off-script in emphasizing passages other than the one I was assigned to, but I’m pretty happy with the result, and I hope it worked out for others, as well. There are a lot of people (Jacques Ellul, Pete Enns, Thomas Römer) whose ideas are floating in the background of this sermon without ever getting mentioned—it channels a lot of thoughts that I’ve had over the past decade or so. Here are the recording and the script:

A couple of months ago, John wrote to me to tell me about today’s passage and theme and to say that he thought I might like them. To be honest, I wasn’t sure at first. Our passage today features Paul in Athens. There are a lot of different religious beliefs in Athens, but Paul is very certain about his own beliefs. This leads him to explain to others why they should all believe like him.

This feels familiar to me. When I was a young adult, I was very certain that the church I then attended was “the one true church.” This led me to take two years off from university to travel, like Paul, to another place full of diverse religious beliefs and explain to others why they should believe like me.

I think I was sincere in wanting to share my beliefs with others, and I’m sure that Paul was, too, so I can appreciate what he’s doing. However, the fact that I’m preaching today for a Community of Christ congregation and not in the denomination I grew up in shows that the certainty I once had in my beliefs eventually disappeared.

While I am very happy to have found a new spiritual home in Community of Christ, I can’t say that I’ve ever experienced that same certainty again. I have friends, co-workers, and family members who have many different religious beliefs—or even none at all—and while I know that a place like Beyond the Walls is where I find spiritual meaning, I’m just not ready to be like Paul and argue with others about what they ought to believe.

Here’s the thing, though: John’s a pretty smart guy, so it’s not a surprise that I have turned out to really like this passage. I think there’s a way of reading this story that invites us all to challenge our certainty—and even to find God in uncertainty—and that’s what I’d like to share with you today.

Let’s start by remembering what Paul’s main motivation was when he argued with others in Athens. In the first verse of today’s passage, we read: “While Paul was waiting… in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols.” Then, in the last verse of today’s passage, Paul argues that: “‘Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.’”

So, Paul’s arguing with other people seems to be motivated by a concern about idols. This makes sense: Anyone who’s spent even a little bit of time with the Bible probably knows that its authors just do not like idols. Paul is drawing on generations of tradition in his arguments. However, even this tradition is not as straightforward as it seems. Yes, the Bible insists that idols are bad, but that insistence might be hiding something.

Imagine that on your first Sunday attending a new congregation, the pastor stands up, gives some announcements, and then says “in this congregation, people of all genders are valued.” You might be excited to hear that—it might come off as a sign that this is a truly inclusive congregation.

Imagine, though, that every Sunday for the next six months, the pastor stands up, gives some announcements, and then says “in this congregation, people of all genders are valued,” maybe with added insistence each time. If the pastor feels the need to repeat this phrase every week, it could instead be a sign that there are actually problems with inclusion in the congregation, and that the pastor is trying to change the congregation, not describe the congregation.

Many scholars have suggested that something similar is going on in the Bible, that the repeated insistence that God’s people do not worship idols is a pretty good sign was an effort to change things, not describe how things were. In other words, these authors may have been trying to shift from a religion that valued idols to a religion that firmly rejected them.

I don’t bring this up to criticize our spiritual ancestors but rather to ask some important questions: What value did they once find in idols, and if they did find value in idols, why did they eventually reject them in the way that Paul does in Athens?

To explore these questions, let’s go to one of the most famous stories about idols in the Bible. In Exodus 32:1, we read: “When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, ‘Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’”

Notice the uncertainty that drives this question. Moses is supposedly up on the mountain talking to God, but Moses is late getting back, and the people don’t know what has happened to him. Rather than this uncertain God whom they can’t see and who apparently can’t stick to a schedule, they long for a God who is more visible and more certain.

So, let’s read what happens next, in verses 3 and 4: “all the people took off the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took these from them, formed them in a mold, and cast an image of a calf, and they said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’”

This last sentence is a little bit funny. The Exodus story tells us that God’s people made a single golden calf but for some reason talked about it as though there were multiple of them. Is this a simple grammar error, or is something else going on here? To puzzle this out, we need to remember that the stories in the Hebrew Bible—or Old Testament—were often written in a different order than the order they take place in. Like a prequel that is written after a book or movie that it takes place before, the stories in Exodus sometimes include references to stories that we will not read until later in the Bible.

So, let’s take a look at 1 Kings 12, which will help us better understand some of the golden calf story in Exodus. In this chapter, a man named Jeroboam has led a revolt that has led to the splitting off of the northern kingdom of Israel from the southern kingdom of Judah. Jeroboam is now king over the new northern kingdom, but he still faces one important limitation to his power: The holy site of his people’s religion is still in the southern kingdom. Let’s read verses 26-27: “Then Jeroboam said to himself, ‘Now the kingdom may well revert to the house of David. If this people continues to go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, the heart of this people will turn again to their master, King Rehoboam of Judah; they will kill me and return to King Rehoboam of Judah.’”

Jeroboam understands that as long as his people are looking elsewhere for religious leadership, he does not have full power over them. (As a brief tangent, this may also help us understand why high ranking politicians in the United States have recently tried to fight with the pope about what Catholicism teaches). We find Jeroboam’s response in verse 28, which should feel very familiar to us after reading the famous story in Exodus: “So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. He said to the people, ‘You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’”

The strange grammar in Exodus, which refers to a single calf as though there are at least two of them, is probably the result of a direct quotation of this story, where Jeroboam creates two golden calves.

Now, in both of these stories, we may be used to understanding these figures as rejecting God by turning to a golden idol (or idols). However, that’s not the only way of understanding what’s happening here. We can also understand them as worshipping the same God but preferring a visible, certain version of that God that is under their control to an unseen, uncertain version that they have no control over. Aaron just wants to reassure the people that God is present and predictable. Jeroboam just wants to ensure that God does not distract from his political agenda. They don’t need a different God so much as a more convenient version of the same God they have been worshipping.

We might be proud of never worshipping a golden calf, but can we really say we have never tried to reduce God into something more visible and certain than what the divine really is? During my own faith journey, I have often built golden calves, not in the sense of trying to replace God but in the sense of trying to make God fit within the narrow scope of my own expectations and desires. However, while certainty is comforting, it is also more fragile than it seems.

During much of my life, I kept God contained within the walls of a single church and its specific teachings, and I could not fully recognize the divine except when it aligned with that perspective. Several years ago, I was confused when I felt the divine calling to me from beyond those walls toward some “new teaching” I did not recognize. I was terrified when the visible, certain, controllable God that I had constructed for myself began to fall apart and revealed itself for what it had always been, what Paul describes as “an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.” I was awestruck when I came face to face with a very different version of God whom I did not understand but who had a much larger world to show me.

So it was with our spiritual ancestors, who also traded their familiarity with a visible, certain God for trust in a God who is harder to understand but is present in a much larger world. I have already mentioned today that the stories of the Bible are not always written in the order that they take place in and that earlier stories are often written with later considerations in mind. Perhaps the biggest of these “later considerations” was around 586 BCE, when the southern kingdom of Judah, its capital of Jerusalem, and the temple in Jerusalem were all destroyed by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar. Remember that this is the same temple that was so important to our spiritual ancestors that the Bible earlier describes Jeroboam, king of the northern kingdom, as trying to replace it with golden calves so that he could keep God under his control.

Yet, it’s also important to recognize that even if the temple was the “true” place of worship, it also represented an effort that tried to contain God within the realm of certainty. Our spiritual ancestors understood that temple as the home to a powerful, unmatchable God who would never allow the kingdom of Judah to be defeated. When that kingdom was defeated, and when that God’s home was destroyed, they were faced with a crisis of faith that makes my experience pale in comparison. In fact, some scholars believe that the temple contained a physical representation of God never mentioned in the Bible that might have been destroyed or carried off by Nebuchadnezzar’s armies. How does a believer respond when their God is literally destroyed or captured by an enemy?

Our spiritual ancestors responded by recognizing that God as yet another “image formed by the art and imagination of mortals” and embracing a “new teaching” of God as something less visible and less certain but also much less fragile. We can understand the biblical authors’ rejection of idols as an embrace of a God who may not always protect our nation but will be accessible from any place on the planet, a God who may not be visible but who can never be destroyed, a God who may feel uncertain but who always has a bright future prepared for us.

So, yes, Paul brings some religious certainty to Athens with him, and yes, I feel a little uncomfortable with that certainty. But Paul’s certainty is in an uncertain God, and that is something that speaks deeply to me.

Today’s theme—which I am finally getting to at the end of my sermon—is a question: “What Is This New Teaching?” This is not just a question that Athenians asked Paul as he challenged their gods of “gold or silver or stone.” It is also a question that Paul himself asked as the risen Christ challenged everything he thought he knew about his faith. It is also a question that his ancestors asked generations earlier as they built a new faith out of the ruins of all they had taken for granted. It is also a question that we must repeatedly ask ourselves if we want to set aside our golden calves and embrace the fulness of the divine, even though it is unseen and uncertain and out of our control.

Thank you.

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 08:38:48 -0400

Had a family discussion over breakfast about not following the example of certain behaviors depicted in music videos (taking the rotoscoped hands of strange men reaching out from comic books).

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 17:30:08 -0400

Like Icarus, we have soared to new heights* only to now find that we have flown to close to the sun**

*gotten away for years with buying knock-off versions of IKEA furniture

**that our new, official IKEA accessories aren’t compatible with them

🔗 linkblog: Are frontier models really too dangerous?

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 12:38:31 -0400

Some insightful comments here. I don’t know if they capture the whole picture of what’s going on here, but I think they’re an important part of it.

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:38:20 -0400

Spouse lines: “We christened our car—wait, I’m not religious. We ‘heathened’ our car ‘Chester.’”

☕ teablog: Trader Joe's, English Breakfast (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:42:13 -0400

This is good! I thought I might have oversteeped my first cup, but it was a delicious contribution to my breakfast, and I’m looking forward to trying more of it.

🔗 linkblog: BYU professor's novel 'A Short Stay in Hell' explodes in popularity — 17 years later

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 12:28:02 -0400

🔗 linkblog: BYU professor's novel 'A Short Stay in Hell' explodes in popularity — 17 years later https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-06-24-this-book/

rediscovering the library as workplace

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 09:39:01 -0400

Kiddo is at a half-day summer camp this week, which is freeing up my mornings for work. However, the camp is across town from where we live, so rather than driving all the way home for a couple of hours of work, I’ve been driving to a nearby branch of the Lexington Public Library to set up my laptop and get some work done there. It has been really nice!

When I was in grad school, I often made the library a workplace. For a while, I had a semi-regular “Spencer writes in the library” series going on my WordPress blog. I would pick a different place each week to set up shop, focus on writing, and then blog about my experience there. I might have a backup of that site that I could dig some of those posts out of (or rather, I do have a backup that I might be able to dig posts out of—I feel like I’ve done that before, but it feels opaque as I glance at it today). It has been fun to recapture that feeling of working at the library as a third place between home office and campus office.

In fact, I think I should do this sort of thing more often. Because I’m a bike commuter, getting to my campus office is a long, sometimes sweaty process. Because I try to use my professional flexibility to make room for more present and intentional parenting, I tend to prioritize working from home whenever I can rather than making it to campus to work. During May 2026, though, I felt like this meant rarely getting out of the house during the critical weeks where my semester had ended but kiddo’s hadn’t yet. This didn’t seem to be great for my mental health, which cancelled out a lot of “productivity gains” (ugh) that I had been hoping for.

If a 40-minute bike ride and ten minute change of clothes on either end of the workday doesn’t feel like a great investment when I’m trying to clear my professional checklist to make time for kiddo, and if rarely leaving the house so that I don’t need to invest that time doesn’t feel great for my mental health, maybe rediscovering the library as a workplace offers a compromise position. Biking to the closest branch of the Lexington Public Library would only take 10 or so minutes, and I wouldn’t feel the pressure there that I would at the office to change from bike commuting clothes to something more professional.

I’ve got another “critical week” coming up in August where kiddo will be in school but my semester won’t have started yet. I think I ought to look into the library as a workplace then, to better balance mental health and time to work. Before I even get there, I want to think about how to use the library as a workplace over the summer, while kiddo is at camp, or maybe letting her roam and read during a morning that I need to get a few things done.

🔗 linkblog: Podcaster John Dehlin’s answer to the LDS Church’s lawsuit: You don’t own the word ‘Mormon’

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:35:41 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Podcaster John Dehlin’s answer to the LDS Church’s lawsuit: You don’t own the word ‘Mormon’ https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-06-22-mormon-stories/

📚 bookblog: Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:15:26 -0400

I like John Hodgman, and I liked this book. It’s well-written, nerdy and funny in the right places, and does a good job (or at least I think so) of valorizing his own lived experiences while also candidly acknowledging the mountain of privilege that serves as their foundation. Listening to him narrate the audiobook was even better.

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 14:39:46 -0400

Spending part of my Father’s Day afternoon exploring a rhyming dictionary with kiddo in an urgent care waiting room, and I actually think that’s kind of perfect.

🔗 linkblog: President Dallin Oaks announces the LDS Church is poised to set a new record

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 09:23:10 -0400

Discourse in the modern American right often understands free speech as protecting the right to say objectionable things but not the ability to criticize people who say objectionable things. While a “one true church” mentality is less problematic than racial slurs or transphobic language (though there’s also some of the latter in Oaks’s full remarks, according to the Church Newsroom release), this excerpt strikes me as embodying a similarly selective view of religious freedom:

Oaks said the “fashionable opinion of this age is that all churches are true. If that is so,” he added, “then all religious messages that identify differences in religious doctrine, like ours, are unimportant. That conclusion can cause us and others a serious loss of religious freedom.”

The idea that religious freedom is threatened by (rather than protects) the idea that there is no “one true church” is just bonkers to me. First of all, my current church is very capable of describing differences in religious doctrine and why they matter without claiming a monopoly on religious truth. Second, Oaks’s take seems to value evangelical exclusivism (which has famously and recently been exercised at Latter-day Saints’ expense) above a more pluralistic approach. And yet, Oaks surrounds the discussion of threats to religious freedom with a claim that Latter-day Saint doctrines remain superior to others. It really, really feels like a “religious freedom for me but not for thee” approach, and it makes me angry.

on not living up to family expectations

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 20:29:54 -0400

My parents recently moved (are in the process of moving? are only temporarily moving? it’s a bit complicated and in a way that connects to the title of this post, but I don’t feel like going into the details), and so I recently came into possession of a few boxes of scrapbooks from my childhood and adolescence. I understand that my siblings were all happy to have theirs thrown away, but I am a committed journal-er, and if my dumb Facebook and Twitter archives were worth importing into the Day One app I use, I figured I should put the effort into digitizing the good stuff out of these boxes before throwing out all of the physical artifacts. I’ve only put an hour or two of effort into this yet (and much of that into a Siri Shortcut workflow that I hope will make the process go more smoothly than previous digitization efforts), but it’s been worth the effort so far. It’s neat to have some documentation to go along with bits of personal and family history that I’m only vaguely aware of, like the year of German kindergarten (equivalent to U.S. preschool) that I attended.

One of the most interesting (and also most difficult) parts of journaling is seeing how much I’ve changed over the years. Before picking up these boxes, I had finally finished digitizing stuff from the two years I spent as a Mormon missionary, and reading my thoughts on religion from nearly 20 years ago was often enough to make my shoulders tense up while I was writing—suffice it to say that I’ve changed my mind on a lot of things since then. Looking over documents and artifacts from nearly 40 years ago, though, is a very different experience. As a Mormon missionary, I expected that my relationship with Mormonism would continue indefinitely, and that that didn’t happen is the source of a lot of tension when “sitting down with my past self.” In the early days and years of my life, though, I didn’t have any expectations for myself, and any expectations were set for me by my family.

Some of those expectations were of the same religious flavor that I set of myself when a teenager and young adult (and, frankly, into my early thirties if that goes beyond “young adult”). I know that I haven’t lived up to those expectations, and I know that that’s a source of tension with many family members. What really stood out to me, though, when going through the cards that my parents received in the days before and after I was born, is how many expectations there were that because I was to be a boy, there were going to be a lot of sports in my parents’ future. Now, I did as many sports as most American boys do, and even if I was bad at them, I won’t say that I regretted the experience, but the cards that put a football helmet on a baby boy or that mentioned baseball as though it were a given did not really track at all. I wonder if that was a disappointment for the family members who sent those cards, in the same way that other missed expectations were.

I’m going to stop short of drawing any kind of explicit analogy or comparison here—because I’m mostly just riffing on ideas—but I think there is something to explore in the relationship between those two sets of expectations. As I keep digitizing, I’ll continue to explore how much I’ve changed over time, and I’m (mostly) looking forward to it.

📚 bookblog: All Might (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 14:14:30 -0400

I enjoyed this volume more, likely because I read it in a shorter timespan. I still feel hesitant about the series, perhaps because I have read so dang much superhero fiction that it’s hard to feel like there’s anything new here. I still have a bunch of volumes checked out, though, and I do want to keep going.

📚 bookblog: The Areas of My Expertise (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 14:10:09 -0400

I can’t remember how long it’s been since I listened to this the first time. It is artfully done, and the Jonathan Coulton addition is tremendous. Some jokes feel like they haven’t aged well (either because they’re simply not timeless or because I don’t think Hodgman would make the same joke today), but the low-key absurdity of the project really appeals to me.

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: The (real) dead economy theory (17 Jun 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 07:50:21 -0400

Recently, I’ve been thinking about Jacques Ellul’s image/word dichotomy as more broadly applicable than to media—as applicable to the whole technical phenomenon that he criticizes. That is, by virtue of its seeming objectivity, the technical phenomenon enjoys trust that is not warranted when one digs into the details and sees the fuzziness and subjectivities and artifice that prop the whole thing up. Doctorow’s critique here seems firmly in that vein.

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:42:20 -0500

Currently, I am experience the specific academic joy of receiving a peer review invitation that feels like recognition of a specific research reputation I have been trying to cultivate for a few years.

📚 bookblog: Rage, You Damned Nerd (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:27:16 -0500

I read this in scattered chunks before and during a busy week of family camp, so this might not be the measured assessment this deserves. There are things to like here, and I want to continue trying the series, but I confess to having trouble following this particular volume. I’m still learning to tell many of the characters from each other (and a LOT get introduced here), and manga conventions remain unfamiliar to me, so I’m still trying to get used to the medium.

📚 bookblog: Reagan Youth (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 18:52:28 -0500

This series just does not work for me, I think. I passed it up countless times at various libraries before coming into PDFs of it through a Humble Bundle. That was also not a done deal until I read Remender’s Black Science, which I mostly appreciated and figured that maybe I should try this one, too.

It was shortly into the second volume that I ruled it out for good, so I guess this is a partial review of that, too. I get that the series is supposed to be an allegory or whatever, but the violence and grossness just does not work for me, whatever it is supposed to mean more broadly.

what I'm learning about TTRPGs from playing Magical Kitties Save the Day with kiddo and her camp friends

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 16:00:40 -0500

I long meant to but don’t think I ever got around to blogging about the fun afternoon I spent last year playing a session of the excellent all-ages TTRPG Magical Kitties Save the Day with kiddo and two friends she’s made at the family camp we’ve been attending since 2022. (I also cannot be bothered to see if I did actually blog about this because I am writing this on my phone from a network-poor area and only because I’m feeling stupidly committed to my running “blog once a week” goal.

We’re back at camp (the aforementioned network-poor area), and since it was a hit last time, we brought our Magical Kitties stuff again to play with friends. We’re two days into camp and two sessions in and having a fun time. Playing for a couple of hours this weekend has got me learning (or relearning) some lessons about TTRPGs broadly.

sandboxes are great

I really appreciate the Magical Kitties sandbox that is provided: Well, multiple sandboxes for multiple settings, which is even better. I also recently made a half-effort to get into the Land of Eem TTRPG based on the strength of its sandbox. With about six months of hindsight from running a session at Christmas, I’m not sure that I love the Land of Eem system as much as the sandbox, but I’d be willing to “port” the sandbox materials to a slimmer system (FATE?) because it’s just so dang useful to have a sandbox to work in.

Getting back to the purported inspiration for this post, I had a crazy week leading up to camp, and that meant absolutely no time to prep anything campaign-wise. As an insecure gamemaster, I’ve been surprised and proud of how easily I’ve been able to plant the seeds for possible adventure paths this week simply with some quick thinking and flipping through a sandbox document. I think I like sandbox structure for a TTRPG more than an adventure structure

stories are more important than rules

Speaking of no time for prep, it’s also been a year since I played Magical Kitties, and I realized partway through today’s session that I had not correctly remembered the basic mechanics of how a check works. I felt a bit embarassed, but it also impressed me how much fun we were having while playing “wrong.”

I think that also speaks to my growing preference for rules-light systems. I get the impression that a misunderstanding in the very crunchy Pathfinder is a bigger problem than in Magical Kitties, where story comes first and the dice are clearly subservient to it.

let players contribute

Letting my young players contribute to worldbuilding has been a lot of fun for us these past couple of days. I have intervened for a couple of suggestions, but we had a bonkers detail of a cat door built into the city government offices come up today, and it not only ended up fitting nicely into the sandbox in a way I didn’t expect but also just made the scene more fun.

Once again, this system does a good job of building that in. It’s not that this couldn’t work in D&D, but it’s mechanically present in Magical Kitties, and that’s good. I almost overruled the cat door suggestion when it came up, but because the player in question was proposing to use one of her “Kitty Treat” tokens, I couldn’t really say no. And I’m glad for that! It made things more fun, and giving players a voice can often do that.

🔗 linkblog: BYU professor’s book about a Latter-day Saint stuck in hell now numbered among greatest works of fiction

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 08:19:23 -0400

🔗 linkblog: BYU professor’s book about a Latter-day Saint stuck in hell now numbered among greatest works of fiction https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-06-12-had-no/

📺 tvblog: For All Mankind Season 5 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 07:32:41 -0400

I still recognize the bones of why I’ve liked this show for 5+ years, but this season feels like a stretch. The Titan mission seems like the worst planned space mission of all time, Dev makes a lot of dumb decisions so that he can have a change of heart later, and many of the characters feel like dominoes to be set up in specific ways so that the writers can set off a particular chain reaction. It was fine, but not as good as past seasons.

🔗 linkblog: Grok Is Still Hosting Sexualized Deepfakes of Famous Women

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:40:02 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Grok Is Still Hosting Sexualized Deepfakes of Famous Women https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-06-11-important-update/

🔗 linkblog: Why Google’s New AI-Saturated Search Page Will Be A Disaster

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:30:09 -0400

Pretty compelling example of digital labor issues (both subtle and explicit) related to AI. Surely letting Google shape our questions and provide all the answers won’t be an issue?

📺 tvblog: Un village français Saison 6 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:51:07 -0400

Cette série continue à faire des bêtises que je trouve gênantes: Il n’y a que quelques personnages « importants » qui doivent vivre toutes les expériences d’un.e Français.e de cette époque, et il y a plein de choses qui se passent pour des raisons dramatiques et non logiques.

Pourtant, cette saison en particulier montre la saleté de la guerre, et je suis impressionné par combien on ose critiquer les Français.e.s même au lieu de croire que tout le monde a été des héros pendant la guerre.

🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk is encouraging race riots on the eve of SpaceX’s IPO

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:06:33 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk is encouraging race riots on the eve of SpaceX’s IPO https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-06-11-walking-disaster./

🔗 linkblog: People Living Near xAI’s Dirty Data Centers Are Pissed About the SpaceX IPO

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 07:18:10 -0400

I concede that appeals to the environmental costs of AI sometimes feel knee-jerk and lacking nuance. However, you can always count on Musk to provide a clear example of the harms of AI, and this is a particularly compelling one.

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 07:59:22 -0400

“C’mon kiddo, you need to try to get up.” “Sorry, dad, I rolled a nat 1, so I have to stay in bed.”

☕ teablog: Coffee Crossing, Almond Cookie (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:04:31 -0400

☕ teablog: Coffee Crossing, Almond Cookie (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤) https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-06-08-late-night/

📚 bookblog: Other Confections (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:00:41 -0400

See, here’s a volume that is also reallll dark but has enough anti-nihilism in it to make it shine. This is apparently the last of the volumes I own, and I don’t mind not having any more to read… this series isn’t quite as much fun the second time through.

📚 bookblog: Tiny Lives (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:58:25 -0400

Ice Cream Man rides a fine line between nihilism and anti-nihilism, and this volume was too far on the side of the former for me to really enjoy a reread.

📚 bookblog: Hopscotch Mélange (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:56:19 -0400

Don’t remember how much I liked these stories the first time around, but the worldbuilding of Ice Cream Man is my least favorite part, and without the novelty of a first read, it was just meh.

📚 bookblog: As Good As New (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:54:06 -0400

It didn’t change my life, but this mix of genie magic, techbro survival bunker, and passion for the theater was a fun combination.

📚 bookblog: All the Birds in the Sky (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:51:28 -0400

This book was exploding with creativity: I loved the idea of a two-second time machine as something that just kind of exists but hasn’t caught the public eye, to the extent that it’s forgotten about quickly in the narrative. I also appreciate any story that takes shots at tech bros, and the magic in the book was really interesting.

That said, there were seams in the book that stopped me from giving it full marks. I didn’t follow all of the plot developments (especially the end), it sometimes felt like it was trying to be too cute, and I didn’t always get what Anders was going for with the overarching themes. Still really good, though!

📚 bookblog: Izuku Midoriya: Origin (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:46:31 -0400

I picked this up on a whim while visiting a Japanese bookstore with family. I’ve long felt that of the great comics traditions, manga is one I know less well than I should. I’d heard this name enough to trust buying it without knowing much about it, and I enjoyed reading it on the plane back from Los Angeles. I’ve checked out several of the subsequent volumes from local libraries, and we’ll see how this goes!

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:43:29 -0400

Look, I’m glad that they put good comics in the teen section of the library, but I don’t like feeling like a creeper when I go in there to check some out for myself. 😬

🔗 linkblog: Hackers likely hijacked over 20,000 Instagram accounts with Meta’s AI chatbot

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:49:19 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Hackers likely hijacked over 20,000 Instagram accounts with Meta’s AI chatbot https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-06-08-20000-accounts/

🔗 linkblog: Momfluencers Are Pitching AI as a Better ‘Coparent’ Than Men

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 07:12:01 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Momfluencers Are Pitching AI as a Better ‘Coparent’ Than Men https://spencergreenhalgh.com/relationships/2026-06-08-dont-love/

on extemporaneous speaking and writing sermons

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 21:41:29 -0400

One of the best things I did for my future self when I was in high school was to follow a friend’s advice to join our school’s forensics (speech and debate) team. Joining the team let me discover something I was good at, and I developed some skills that are tremendously useful to me personally and professionally, not least when teaching or presenting my research.

Lately, as I’ve been putting together some sermons for my local Community of Christ congregation and the Beyond the Walls ministry in Toronto, I’ve thought about another way that competing in forensics decades ago has shaped me. One of my particular strengths was competitive extemporaneous speaking, which involved having half an hour to write and memorize a seven-minute speech on a semi-randomly chosen topic related to domestic and foreign affairs. (I also did fairly well in impromptu speaking, which involved slightly shorter speeches with drastically shorter prep time).

These events have affected the way that I prepare sermons. This is a bit unintuitive: Both of those competitive events involved memorizing key points and then learning to expand them on the fly into a full speech. This is how I used to prepare remarks for Latter-day Saint worship services, but in Community of Christ, I’ve taken to preparing remarks word-for-word. Given that shift, you wouldn’t think that I’d be relying on the skills I developed during extemporaneous and impromptu speaking at all.

However, one thing that I’ve noticed is that within a few minutes of being assigned a scripture passage to speak on, I usually have the overall thesis of a sermon planned out in my head. (This is notably not true for a sermon I’m giving in July, and I need to do some thinking there). Of course, the specifics take days, weeks, or even months to draft, edit, and finesse, but it’s uncommon for the finished product to change drastically from the initial idea that I form off the cuff. Of course, there are downsides to that: It’s not difficult to imagine that I could miss important ideas that I could only come through by research and reading simply because I form an initial impression quickly. However, it’s also helpful to have an initial impression in the moment that I agree to give a sermon, and I have no doubt that I owe a great deal of that to three years of practice in quickly developing outlines for speeches.

📚 bookblog: The Fermi Paradox Is Our Business Model (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 12:14:20 -0700

There’s an interesting idea here, but I don’t know if it’s enough to build a short story around.

📚 bookblog: The General: Charles de Gaulle and the France He Saved (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 12:11:39 -0700

After watching several seasons of Un village français, it was inevitable that I would want to learn more about De Gaulle, someone I certainly already knew about, if not at the level I would have liked. At some point, I remembered that I had bought this biography about 15 years ago but never read it, so I pulled the forgotten ebook up on my phone and made my way through.

I’m going the book credit for being so thorough, and if Fenby is not always as critical as I might have been (his “De Gaulle proves the great man theory of history” conclusion to the book raised an eyebrow), he does not shy away from the problematic aspects of his life and career. Yet, I was irritated by a lot of small things in the book: inconsistent terminology and translation, a shift in format for day-by-day accounts of particularly important events, that sort of thing. As an academically oriented reader, I also would have preferred a more explicit working of sources into the text, even if I know most readers appreciate the more subtle way it’s done.

🔗 linkblog: Steam Sends Boilerplate Message To Gamemaker For Angering Russian Anti-LGBTQ+ Bigots

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 22:18:39 -0700

🔗 linkblog: Steam Sends Boilerplate Message To Gamemaker For Angering Russian Anti-LGBTQ+ Bigots https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-06-02-pretty-disappointing./

☕ teablog: Bigelow, English Teatime (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 08:32:08 -0700

This was one of the better parts of a mediocre hotel breakfast, but that’s not high praise. I’d try it again, though.

📚 bookblog: Strange Neapolitan (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sun, 31 May 2026 16:40:49 -0500

Caleb is my favorite in this series, and so this volume gets full marks for introducing his anti-nihilism.

📚 bookblog: Rainbow Sprinkles (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 31 May 2026 10:56:38 -0400

The first several volumes in this series came in an Image Humble Bundle I’m trying to complete so that I justify the money I spent on it, so I guess it’s time for a reread!

While I still semi-regret starting the series on hoopla last time, I’m glad I read the first few volumes together that time, because these first few issues are not my thing. I don’t mind the bleakness of Ice Cream Man (well, most of the time), but gore and ick are NOT my thing, and they are present here. My favorite parts are yet to come, but what I like in this series (almost despite myself) is definitely here already.

📚 bookblog: Anarchy in Action (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Sun, 31 May 2026 10:35:37 -0400

This was fine? I really enjoyed the introduction and conclusion: They got at what I find interesting about appeals for anarchism. The rest of the book got at what I find tedious about (some) appeals for anarchism, though: A lot of anecdotalism, seemingly speaking to the already converted (or at least the already insider), and big claims without walking me through them. I’m glad I bought it, and I’m glad I read it, but it wasn’t as amazing as I’d hoped.

🔗 linkblog: AI avatars in digital blackface want to sell you this belt buckle

Sat, 30 May 2026 12:32:16 -0400

🔗 linkblog: AI avatars in digital blackface want to sell you this belt buckle https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-30-scale-and/

🔗 linkblog: How AI Can Lead To False Arrests & Wrongful Convictions

Sat, 30 May 2026 07:25:58 -0400

I don’t mind being a broken record when pointing out Ellulian vibes. Check this paragraph out:

These are unfortunate examples of how AI can lead to mistreatment of people because of technical flaws as well as misplaced human faith in the technology’s supposed objectivity. These cases involve different tools, but the underlying issue is the same. AI systems produce probabilities, and people treat them as certainties.

🔗 linkblog: Proposed new US funding rules: We can cancel any grant at any time

Fri, 29 May 2026 21:44:53 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Proposed new US funding rules: We can cancel any grant at any time https://spencergreenhalgh.com/work/2026-05-29-i-dunno/

🔗 linkblog: The White House’s Aliens.gov Site Brags That ICE Arrested More Than 700 US Citizens

Fri, 29 May 2026 17:55:36 -0400

Very gross stuff here. I remember downplaying the connection between “alien” as an immigration term and “extraterrestrial” in a conversation in college, chalking it up to etymology and dismissing the idea of ill intent. This is definitely ill intent, and it’s all kind of dumb and gross,

🔗 linkblog: Amazon Is Making an AI-Animated ‘Good Advice Cupcake’ TV Show. Its Original Creator Is Furious

Fri, 29 May 2026 17:36:52 -0400

Digital labor is, imo, the fundamental problem with AI, and I think this story shows why: It’s not just the AI use here that’s exploitative, it’s kind of everything.

Fri, 29 May 2026 15:50:54 -0400

Look, I enjoy that I get to study the weirdness of online Mormonism in all its breadth, but I was still not expecting a genAI Ghibli rendition of the Short Creek raid as a thumbnail for a Warren Jeffs recording on a fundamentalist Rumble channel.

🔗 linkblog: This AI startup will clean your home for free to train future robots

Fri, 29 May 2026 09:08:03 -0400

🔗 linkblog: This AI startup will clean your home for free to train future robots https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-29-uh-no./

rediscovering Jonathan Coulton this morning

Fri, 29 May 2026 07:45:29 -0400

Ever since importing my Twitter archive into the Day One journaling app back in March, I’ve been able to revisit things I tweeted over the years as part of my almost-daily scroll through Day One’s “on this day” feature. (In fact, it’s an almost-daily scroll because I’m having to purge the tweets that actually don’t work well as journal entries). That’s how I learned this morning that twelve years ago today, I reached out to Jonathan Coulton on Twitter to ask if the line “je suis celui qui suis” in his “barely remembered French” track Je suis Rick Springfield was an intentional reference to a similar line in the Bible or just a “crazy coincidence.”

I don’t remember if Coulton responded to my tweet, and my Twitter archive doesn’t seem to include replies (which is part of the reason why I’m purging so many of them from Day One after all), but reading the post this morning got me thinking about Coulton. He’s one of those artists that I really like when I remember he exists, but I don’t always remember that he does. Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Les Cowboys Fringants, a new-to-me They Might Be Giants album (which is actually a decade old, because I also forget about how much I like TMBG), and the Train Valley 2 soundtrack. In fact, nearly four years ago, I wrote a shorter, similar post about rediscovering his music, but that obviously didn’t stick.

This is all somewhat surprising given the amount of my mental real estate Coulton has occupied over the past 15+ years. In a Facebook post from 2010 (which also appears in Day One thanks to an earlier import), I bragged about weirding out my roommates by listening to him. Around that same time, I bought a stuffed monkey toy and a hobby horse so that I could create a mashup stuffed animal for my then-fiancée as a reference to Coulton’s Skullcrusher Mountain. Back when I was teaching French 102, I would actually use a line from Je suis Rick Springfield (« je suis un chic type / qui joue de la guitare ») as an example of the e caduc in French (for all the clumsiness of his French, Coulton correctly pronounces « joue de la » in a way that resembles “Jude Law”; I didn’t really know who Jude Law was, because I was a guy who listened to Jonathan Coulton a lot, but I figured a pop culture reference would help my students). I also spent a lot of time fretting about the proper way to listen to Code Monkey without hearing the word “goddamn,” because that’s something that was really important to me at that time.

All of this led to me singing Je suis Rick Springfield in the kitchen while getting kiddo out the door for school this morning. Kiddo and I share a lot of interests, but she’s at an age where she’s (healthily) setting boundaries by insisting that she doesn’t have to like everything that daddy likes, and she decided that this weird French language song daddy was playing for her on his phone was one of those things she was going to reject. Fair enough, but I knew something that she didn’t, and I told her that we were going to listen to just one more song by Coulton as we got out the door and that she was going to like it.

In a true “crazy coincidence,” Day One tells me that today is also the one-year anniversary of my downloading Portal to kiddo’s Switch to see if she would like it. She did—a lot—and so I blew her mind by explaining that Coulton also wrote the excellent credits song Still Alive. We spent the whole trip to school talking about Portal and wondering if we’d ever completed the co-op campaign, and I felt vindicated… and happy to be remembering all of the time I’ve spent listening to Coulton.

It’s hard to say how long this re-memory is going to stick with me, but at least for this morning, I’m going to revisit some of my favorite Coulton songs and take some pleasure in it.

🔗 linkblog: Utilities report as many as 30 data centers under discussion in Kentucky • Kentucky Lantern

Fri, 29 May 2026 07:12:08 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Utilities report as many as 30 data centers under discussion in Kentucky • Kentucky Lantern https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-29-dont-love/

🔗 linkblog: Cities Are Covering Flock Cameras With Trash Bags

Thu, 28 May 2026 14:05:53 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Cities Are Covering Flock Cameras With Trash Bags https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-28-do-lexington/

🔗 linkblog: Clavicular Wakes Up As Hideous, Jawless Monster After Rating Old Crone A 4

Thu, 28 May 2026 09:22:17 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Clavicular Wakes Up As Hideous, Jawless Monster After Rating Old Crone A 4 https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-28-i-hate/

🔗 linkblog: US law enforcement warns of 'anti-tech extremism' as AI hatred grows

Wed, 27 May 2026 07:06:38 -0400

One of the things I’ve had to wrestle with while engaging more and more with Jacques Ellul is that Ted Kaczynski thought he was pretty cool, too.

This Mauro Lubrano quote in the piece sums up a lot of my same feelings:

While anti-technology violence is unacceptable, it should not be used as an excuse to securitize AI and emerging technologies, thereby silencing those who are critical of the current trajectory.

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: AI and a world without migrants (27 May 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Wed, 27 May 2026 06:59:13 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: AI and a world without migrants (27 May 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-27-this-piece/

🔗 linkblog: Pope Leo Schooled the Tech Bros on Tolkien

Tue, 26 May 2026 19:48:29 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Pope Leo Schooled the Tech Bros on Tolkien https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-26-another-good/

🔗 linkblog: Is Peter Thiel the target of Pope Leo's Gandalf quote? An investigation.

Tue, 26 May 2026 18:52:27 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Is Peter Thiel the target of Pope Leo's Gandalf quote? An investigation. https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-26-what-wild/

🔗 linkblog: ‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access

Tue, 26 May 2026 12:36:27 -0400

🔗 linkblog: ‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access https://spencergreenhalgh.com/work/2026-05-26-if-edtech/

📚 bookblog: No Authority But Yourself (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 26 May 2026 10:46:49 -0400

I wish I had read this finale more slowly. I like it, but I’m not sure I follow exactly what Remender is going for at each step. This series is worth rereading in the future.

📚 bookblog: Later Than You Think (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Tue, 26 May 2026 10:45:03 -0400

I don’t love the wild shift in premise at the end of this volume, but I do enjoy seeing Grant and Sara work through stuff in a way that feels earned, so it gets credit for that.

📚 bookblog: Exctinction is the Rule (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 26 May 2026 10:42:38 -0400

Same as the last volume, there are bits of this that I like (including the framing device), but the ramping up of stakes and driving forward of plot are more “meh.”

📚 bookblog: Forbidden Realms and Hidden Truths (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 26 May 2026 10:39:26 -0400

As promised, I’m starting to blur the lines between volumes—I think some of the things I’m penalizing this review for were actually in the last volume. Oops.

Anyway, I love the art and the premise of this series too much to ever rate it below a four out of five, and there are bits of this volume that I really enjoy, but I like the premise and exploration of this series more than I like its main plot arc, and its efforts to move that plot forward in this story (especially by ramping up the stakes) aren’t super interesting to me.

📚 bookblog: True Atonement (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Tue, 26 May 2026 10:33:46 -0400

This series takes more turns in this volume, introducing a major villain who will continue longer than expected and further shifting the premise and main ideas of the series.

I think it works! Grant and Pia get some time to explore their identities and relationship, and playing with bonkers ideas usually works for me.

📚 bookblog: Godworld (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Tue, 26 May 2026 10:30:54 -0400

Okay, so let’s get one thing out of the way up front: After a long break from this series, I spedread the remaining five volumes in the course of a few days. My ability to distinguish the volumes is being pushed to its limits, so these reviews may not be super helpful.

I do remember liking this one, though. I’m a bit annoyed at the timeskip, but this volume signals a real shift in the series where Remender introduces some exploration of his characters alongside the bonkers sci-fi premise. That’s cool, and I appreciated getting to know Grant better here.

📚 bookblog: A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 26 May 2026 10:26:44 -0400

Reviewing reference works that I largely skimmed always feels silly, but it’s my website, and no one can stop me.

I’m not a historian, but this historical context was really useful for me for a paper I’m writing on Ellulian perspectives on “media events” in early Mormon history. I appreciated having easy access to documents related to events I was writing about, and as I eventually expand the paper, I expect that I will come back to this volume.

Morris feels a need to weigh in on apologetic/critic debates in a way that I feel is unnecessary—especially since I feel like he tries to have it both ways in pushing back against critical arguments while also saying that “the historian can’t know for sure,” etc. That’s annoying, but the volume is also so helpful for my purposes (and the commentary in mostly good faith) that I can’t penalize it too much for that.

🍿 movieblog: The Sheep Detectives (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Tue, 26 May 2026 10:19:59 -0400

Grandma and Grandpa suggested we all take kiddo to go see this over the long weekend. Spouse was skeptical, but I was excited—we’d apparently had very different impressions of the trailer.

Anyway, it’s not a deep cinematic work, and you can see some of the seams (I assumed some of them were due to an overly faithful adaptation of the book, but after reading the book summary on Wikipedia, I’m less sure), but I really enjoyed it. It’s trope-y in a meta way that works, it was fun and funny, and even my skeptical spouse was won over by the joke about “eating God on Sundays,” which had her in tears.

It was a fun way to spend a family weekend!

🔗 linkblog: She Faced a Life-Threatening Miscarriage. Under Arkansas’ Abortion Ban, Even Calls to the Governor’s Office Didn’t Help.

Tue, 26 May 2026 07:53:01 -0400

🔗 linkblog: She Faced a Life-Threatening Miscarriage. Under Arkansas’ Abortion Ban, Even Calls to the Governor’s Office Didn’t Help. https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-26-necessary-reading./

🔗 linkblog: Pope Leo calls for being ‘profoundly human’ in the age of AI

Mon, 25 May 2026 12:20:46 -0400

Check this guy out:

He compared the current era of AI to the Tower of Babel, saying society must “avoid the ‘Babel syndrome,’” which he defines as “the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance.”

🔗 linkblog: In his first encyclical, Pope Leo XIV says AI must serve humanity, not the powerful few

Mon, 25 May 2026 10:59:27 -0400

🔗 linkblog: In his first encyclical, Pope Leo XIV says AI must serve humanity, not the powerful few https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-25-i-think/

🔗 linkblog: The FDA Takes Its Turn Burying Studies Showing The Safety Of COVID, Shingles Vaccines

Sat, 23 May 2026 07:47:20 -0400

🔗 linkblog: The FDA Takes Its Turn Burying Studies Showing The Safety Of COVID, Shingles Vaccines https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-23-there-are/

🔗 linkblog: This Week in the World: The Cascading Harms of US Aid Cuts | Friends Committee On National Legislation

Fri, 22 May 2026 21:08:28 -0400

🔗 linkblog: This Week in the World: The Cascading Harms of US Aid Cuts | Friends Committee On National Legislation https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-22-weve-got/

🔗 linkblog: SpaceX’s IPO Filing Shows Elon’s Twitter ‘Business Genius’ Was A Fantasy

Fri, 22 May 2026 18:52:47 -0400

🔗 linkblog: SpaceX’s IPO Filing Shows Elon’s Twitter ‘Business Genius’ Was A Fantasy https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-22-hate-reads/

🔗 linkblog: Amazon Gets Into The AI Podcast Slop Business

Fri, 22 May 2026 17:58:58 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Amazon Gets Into The AI Podcast Slop Business https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-22-ugh-gross./

l'anglais américain dans les séries télévisées françaises

Fri, 22 May 2026 12:03:26 -0400

Une de mes blagues préférés dans la série télévisée Au service de la France, c’est l’accent horrible de tout personnage américain qui paraît dans la série. J’aurais aimé trouver sur YouTube la scène où deux agents de la CIA sont incapables de prononcer « communiste » à la française, employant toujours la prononciation américaine d’une manière qui souligne bien l’attitude américaine paranoïaque envers le communisme pendant la guerre froide. Ne la trouvant pas, je présente donc cette autre scène, où un autre agent CIA parle de combien le président Kennedy « aime les femmes » avec un accent vraiment horrible:

On voit la même chose dans la deuxième film OSS 117 (ce n’est pas étonnant, vu que Jean-François Halin est impliqué dans les deux œuvres), avec Bill Trumendous, un agent américain avec un accent en français qui est tellement mal que j’ai plus de mal à le comprendre que Jean Dujardin.

Bref, je trouve cette blague amusante. Si on se moque de mon pays un peu, j’avoue qu’on le mérite—surtout nos services secrets du 20ème siècle. En plus, c’est difficile d’être offensé, vu que dans les deux scènes, on se moque gentiment des Français aussi.

Mais il y a une chose qui cloche un peu: C’est le décalage entre le vocabulaire des Américains dans ces scènes et leurs accents. J’ai un meilleur accent en français que tous ces personnages, mais ils prononcent quand-même des mots et des phrases que me font courir au dictionnaire. En fin de compte, ce sont des personnes qui parlent mal—mais assez couramment quand-même.

Je viens de remarquer la même chose dans la sixième saison d’Un village française. Vu que cette saison se déroule en 1944, il est normal qu’il y a des personnages américains dans des scènes. Mais, cette série, c’est un drame et non une comédie, et les mauvais accents de ces personnages clochent encore plus. Pourquoi un officier français est capable d’avoir une conversation courante avec une cheffe des FFI mais doit terminer la conversation en anglais, comme s’il a oublié la phrase « au revoir » après avoir parlé des détails minutieux d’une opération militaire ? Comment ça se fait qu’on soldat a appris plus de vocabulaire français que moi dans mes vingt années d’apprentissage mais sans améliorer sa prononciation ?

C’est en réfléchissant sur cela que je me suis rendu compte que c’est ça aussi que nous les Américains font avec nos personnages étrangers dans nos médias. Un Français doit toujours avoir un accent, un Allemand doit sortir des petits mots et phrases allemands, etc. Tout ça pour rappeler que le personnage est bien étranger, malgré sa capacité de participer dans la vie anglophone sans obstacle. Donc, même si je supporte tout cela beaucoup moins dans un drame que dans une comédie (où les accents mauvais sont une blague que j’apprécie beaucoup, en fait), ça reste difficile d’être offensé, vu que nous imposons cette injustice aussi à nos personnages étrangers.

☕ teablog: Elmwood Inn, Hojicha (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Fri, 22 May 2026 12:00:22 -0400

This purchase felt like a real gamble. I’m not sure I actually like green tea, and while I have had one yummy hojicha latte, that’s not a lot to base a long-lasting purchase on.

Anyway, I like it! It feels like I shouldn’t, because it’s a very unique taste that reminds me of being in a Japanese restaurant more than the teas I usually like, but it’s good and I’m looking forward to drinking more.

🔗 linkblog: The Science Is Not Settled: How Weak Evidence Is Fueling A National Push To Ban Social Media For Youth

Fri, 22 May 2026 06:21:23 -0400

🔗 linkblog: The Science Is Not Settled: How Weak Evidence Is Fueling A National Push To Ban Social Media For Youth https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-22-bookmarking-this/

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: Shopping isn’t politics (21 May 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Thu, 21 May 2026 19:38:55 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: Shopping isn’t politics (21 May 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-21-i-definitely/

🔗 linkblog: In desperate times, graduates find hope in humiliating tech CEOs

Thu, 21 May 2026 18:27:27 -0400

The purported inevitability is one of the most frustrating things for me about AI, and I think this shows that I’m very much not alone in that feeling. (Also, mandatory Ellul reference).

🔗 linkblog: OpenAI Announces Construction Of New Data Center On Top Of Sick Child

Thu, 21 May 2026 13:38:00 -0400

🔗 linkblog: OpenAI Announces Construction Of New Data Center On Top Of Sick Child https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-21-i-apparently/

🔗 linkblog: How Deepfakes Tore a High School Apart

Thu, 21 May 2026 11:49:16 -0400

🔗 linkblog: How Deepfakes Tore a High School Apart https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-21-stories-like/

🔗 linkblog: The EU Is Going Through a Trump-Fueled Breakup With Big Tech

Thu, 21 May 2026 11:23:07 -0400

🔗 linkblog: The EU Is Going Through a Trump-Fueled Breakup With Big Tech https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-21-good-for/

🔗 linkblog: Researchers Wanted Preschool Teachers to Wear Cameras to Train AI

Thu, 21 May 2026 11:17:06 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Researchers Wanted Preschool Teachers to Wear Cameras to Train AI https://spencergreenhalgh.com/work/2026-05-21-very-glad/

🔗 linkblog: Trump Sued Himself And Walked Away With A $100 Million Tax Debt Erased

Thu, 21 May 2026 09:38:23 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Trump Sued Himself And Walked Away With A $100 Million Tax Debt Erased https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-21-i-hate/

🔗 linkblog: 4chan’s Misogynist ‘Wizards’ Are Nudifying Women by Request

Thu, 21 May 2026 07:07:51 -0400

🔗 linkblog: 4chan’s Misogynist ‘Wizards’ Are Nudifying Women by Request https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-21-i-will/

🔗 linkblog: US Senate votes to advance resolution limiting Trump war in Iran as Cassidy flips • Kentucky Lantern

Wed, 20 May 2026 09:22:45 -0400

🔗 linkblog: US Senate votes to advance resolution limiting Trump war in Iran as Cassidy flips • Kentucky Lantern https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-20-its-telling/

🔗 linkblog: Hey Platforms: Add TAKE IT DOWN To Your Transparency Reports

Wed, 20 May 2026 07:36:42 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Hey Platforms: Add TAKE IT DOWN To Your Transparency Reports https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-20-helpful-thinking/

🔗 linkblog: Bill Cassidy Loses Primary; RFK Jr. Will Be His Legacy

Wed, 20 May 2026 06:27:27 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Bill Cassidy Loses Primary; RFK Jr. Will Be His Legacy https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-20-harsh-but/

🔗 linkblog: The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers

Tue, 19 May 2026 17:57:09 -0400

🔗 linkblog: The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-19-absolutely-terrifying./

📺 tvblog: Un village français Saison 5 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Tue, 19 May 2026 15:06:46 -0400

Elle n’est pas parfaite, cette série : On nous impose de croire qu’un tout nouveau personnage est évidemment un chef naturel, et il a plusieurs éléments qui sont là pour être là, même s’ils ne sont pas fondés sur l’histoire de la série ou sur la logique en général.

Pourtant, je lui donne 5 sur 5 car j’apprécie beaucoup la série, et cette saison en particulier. En avant !

📺 tvblog: Samuel Saison 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Tue, 19 May 2026 15:01:25 -0400

Je ne sais plus comment j’ai découvert cette série, mais je suis bien content de l’avoir regardée (merci M. Le VPN pour m’avoir aidé à convaincre Arte que j’étais en France). Si elle est minimaliste, elle est plus forte pour ça.

J’ai écrit quelque chose il y a deux ans sur comment la chanson « Coup de vieux » de Bigflo & Oli m’a beaucoup marqué, car même si je n’ai jamais eu l’expérience d’être jeune en France, je reconaissais quand-même l’expérience d’être jeune. J’ai eu une expérience semblable avec cette série. Si certains éléments m’étaient étranger (je connais pas du tout Diddl, par exemple), les souvenirs de MSN Messenger me sont fort revenus, et même sans cela, l’expérience de jeunesse a quelques éléments universels.

🔗 linkblog: America’s dangerous, messy deepfakes crackdown is here

Tue, 19 May 2026 14:33:47 -0400

To echo a comment I made earlier today, I will always hold tech companies morally responsible for the harms they cause, but I get a lot less sure about legal responses. Do we trust this administration to handle NCII properly?

🔗 linkblog: The Mandalorian and Grogu should have been a season of TV

Tue, 19 May 2026 09:11:37 -0400

Sigh. The first paragraph here sums up my own feelings about the show, so I expect I’ll agree with the whole review about the movie:

When The Mandalorian first debuted on Disney Plus, it was a refreshing reminder of how fascinating Star Wars stories can be when they aren’t focused on the same handful of well-established characters. Especially in its first season, the series felt like a sign that Disney was shifting gears after disappointing fans with its last trilogy of big budget features. But as The Mandalorian went on, it became overstuffed with supporting characters and haphazardly-introduced lore that did little to make the show feel like must-see TV.

🔗 linkblog: We Need A More Serious Discussion About Suicide And AI Chatbots

Tue, 19 May 2026 08:28:54 -0400

This post is hard for me. I am deeply resentful of commercial AI products, and I don’t like the idea of letting companies off the hook (at least in moral terms—I get a lot more hesitant when we start talking about specific legal responses). That said, I know the post is written in good faith, and I do think it makes some productive points. I dunno.

☕ teablog: Elmwood Inn, Caramel Kettle Corn (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 19 May 2026 08:21:24 -0400

I’m not ready to give this full marks (maybe because I don’t actually like caramel corn all that much, so who knows why I felt like I had to have this tea). That said, it’s good and interesting, Elmwood Inn somehow managed to make it taste like its description, and I don’t think I’ll get bored of it.

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: There’s no such thing as “age verification” (19 May 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Tue, 19 May 2026 07:10:17 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: There’s no such thing as “age verification” (19 May 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-19-doctorow-has/

sermon on the Ascension and fleeting joys and hopes

Mon, 18 May 2026 19:20:39 -0400

I got the chance to preach in my home congregation yesterday and wanted to post the text here. In high school, I competed in extemporaneous and impromptu speaking (these were two different competitions with two different formats in Kentucky speech and debate, so I’m not just rattling off synonyms). This is something which has really impacted my life in terms of teaching me how to think on my feet. In the context of giving sermons, I usually know more or less what I want to say within a few minutes of reviewing the passage that I’m assigned to, though over the days and weeks that follow, I spend a lot of time figuring out the details of what I want to say. I really felt that with this sermon: The text I used on Sunday morning was the third draft of a sermon, and I even made some last minute changes over breakfast. I’m fairly happy with how it turned out, though there are parts of previous drafts that I missed, too.

My practice with public speaking also came in handy when I showed up at the church building on Sunday morning to find that we had a few guests, including a couple of high-up church leaders I’d never met before. Even after setting aside the leader worship that I acquired in Mormonism, it could have been easy to get thrown off by having important guests in the pews while I spoke, so I’m glad for all the practice I got in high school (and have had in the years since) about focusing on the speech and not the audience.

introduction

“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:44)

These first words from Jesus in today’s passage are a reminder that Christianity has always been about waiting. Waiting for the fulfillment of the promises of scripture. Waiting for better times to come.

The New Testament authors, like many Christians today, saw Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection as the fulfillment of prophecies that had been included in the scriptures that they grew up with. They saw their people as having waited for years, decades, centuries for better times to come, and their experience with Jesus represented a major step forward in that experience.

Now, this is not necessarily as straightforward as we may have learned growing up—often, these passages of scripture didn’t originally have a Christian purpose, but they have acquired new meaning for Christians as we try to understand all of scripture and all of life through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Whatever the details of what is prophecy and what is reinterpretation, one thing is sure: As long as there have been humans, we have been hoping and waiting for better times. As long as there have been Christians, we have believed that that those better times have come and will come through Jesus Christ.

Seventh Sunday of Easter

Today, we celebrate the seventh Sunday of Easter. One of the great joys I have experienced in the last few years of my faith journey has been to better learn the Christian calendar: Not just the big days like Christmas or Easter Sunday, but the small observances and the whole seasons that are there to guide our faith if we will let them.

As I’ve been preparing this sermon, I’ve been thinking about what it means to have seven Sundays of Easter—to have 49 days of Easter, which started all the way back on Easter Sunday and go all the way until next Saturday. What does it mean to have a whole Easter season?

I know about Easter Sunday, about having one, big, exciting day to think about the better times that we hope for as Christians. It’s a day for shared meals and energetic singing, to listen to one of Karen’s great Easter sermons and to look forward to the day that everything is finally made better than it is now. We need that day every year, because things aren’t better yet, and having at least one day every year to exercise our hope that it will be is really important. What does it mean to have 49 of those days?

ups and downs

Maybe it’s because sometimes one day isn’t enough. Maybe we need 49 days to build up enough hope for the rest of the year. And that’s important, because while Easter is the promise that better times are coming, it is certainly not a promise that those better times are already here. Because they aren’t. And that, too, is part of today’s scripture passage.

Today is not just the Seventh Sunday of Easter. It is also the Sunday that we celebrate Jesus’s ascension into heaven. This is a real celebration of a story that is worth celebrating. Today’s scripture tells us that after the Ascension, the disciples returned to Jerusalem “with great joy.” But! I’ve been surprised over the past few weeks to find myself wondering if that story could have turned out differently—if the Ascension could have been a moment of disappointment for the disciples.

Let’s put ourselves in their shoes. The disciples have just lived through a very busy time with a lot of ups and downs in their journey of faith. This time begins with Jesus’s triumphal entry. He enters Jerusalem riding a colt, and the disciples are there shouting:

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” (Luke 19:38)

They are convinced that the better times they have been waiting for are almost there. They’re not totally wrong, but they have no idea what is coming. They spend a few days enjoying Jesus’s presence and listening to his teachings, but then the unthinkable happens: Jesus is arrested, tried, and executed. Now they realize that they are still living in the not-yet-better times—maybe they even ask themselves if times could possibly get worse than they are right now. They spend a few days mourning Jesus’s absence and remembering his teachings, but then the unthinkable happens: Jesus rises from the dead.

Let’s remember how this all plays out, though—at least in the Gospel of Luke. The women go to the tomb and find it empty. The women go back and they tell Peter. Peter runs to the tomb and finds it empty. Peter goes back and is a little bit confused. Two disciples walk the seven miles to Emmaus and meet a stranger on the road. They invite him to dinner and realize that he is the risen Lord. They walk the seven miles back to Jerusalem (a nice after dinner stroll) to share what just happened to them. The eleven disciples are all there, and they have stories to share, too: Peter has seen the Lord just like they have seen the Lord.

Over the course of a few days, they’ve gone from the highest hope to the lowest despair, and now their hope is higher than where it started. And then Jesus appears to them and eats with them, and the hope is even higher still. Now they wonder again if those better times are around the corner—maybe they even ask themselves if times could possibly get better than they are right now.

the unfair Ascension

But then comes the Ascension. Now, it’s important to remember that sometimes the Bible tells us the same story in two different ways. That’s true of the Ascension of the Lord, which we can read about in Luke and in Acts. Just about everyone who studies the Bible agrees that Luke and Acts were written by the same person, but for whatever reason, that author tells the story of the Ascension in two different ways. In Acts, the disciples get to spend 40 days with the resurrected Jesus before He returns to heaven. In Luke, they don’t even get 24 hours.

In Luke, all of these Easter stories happen on the same day. Early in the morning, the women find the empty tomb. It’s a couple of hours after dinner that the disciples return from Emmaus to Jerusalem just in time for Jesus to appear to everyone. But after some talking and some broiled fish, Jesus takes everyone on another walk all the way out to Bethany. It’s got to be late, but they’re all so excited because those better times are on their way—but then Jesus “[withdraws] from them and [is] carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:51).

So, I’m glad that the disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy, but my reaction might have been a little different. Lord, you just got here. We thought you were gone, we thought we had lost everything, we thought those better times would never come. We just found out that you’re still with us, we just found out that we haven’t lost anything at all, we’ve just remembered that those better times are going to come after all. Why do you have to go, Lord? Why can’t you bring about the better times now? Why do we only get one day with you?

I’m sure most of us can think of Easters that have felt like that. Last year, I had a wonderful Easter Sunday with all of you and then with my family, but then my Easter Monday was awful—my mental health was in a bad place, and for that day, I thought that better days might never come. Other years, I’ve enjoyed spending time with someone on Easter Sunday only to unexpectedly attend their funeral before the 49 days of Easter were even up. 49 days to build up Easter hope is better than just one Sunday, but sometimes the not-yet-better times don’t wait for the Easter season to be over to crash down on us.

So maybe it’s not about having 49 straight days of Easter to build up hope for the rest of the year—maybe it’s about giving ourselves Easter moments throughout the entire year to keep us going. To keep us hoping for better days even while we’re living through the not-yet-better days.

bringing each other Easter hope

And, of course, there’s one more lesson that we can learn from today’s passage. Mareva Arnaud Tchong, our denomination’s presiding evangelist, had this to say in a story posted to the World Church website this morning:

In Luke 24, before ascending to heaven, Jesus blesses his disciples. He could have left in silence, but he chose to pass on to them what he carried within himself: peace, love, and mission. He did not promise them a life without hardship, but rather a constant presence—a living blessing that would go with them.

What if we are called to do the same? To be living blessings, even in uncertainty? To offer peace and hope, instead of waiting for life to be perfect?

With this in mind, let’s pay attention to some of Jesus’s words that I skipped over earlier:

“repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in [the Messiah’s] name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” (Luke 24:47-48)

Jesus isn’t just assuring his disciples that better times will come; he is asking them to be witnesses of those better times, to be ready to proclaim those better times. Think about it. Our Easter hope as Christians today is not because we were present for that one very busy day where Jesus rose from the dead and then ascended to heaven, our Easter hope comes because generations of Christians have shared that story and shared that hope.

Maybe it’s important to have our Easter moments—whether it’s 49 days in a row or scattered throughout the year—not to build up hope and joy for ourselves but so that we can find those who are going through not-yet-better times and we can make things a little bit better for them.

So, I can’t promise you that your last six days of this Easter season are going to go perfectly, that all of them will be filled with hope and joy in the way that we’d like. But these last six days of the Easter season are an invitation to look for hope and joy whenever we can, to build ourselves up on the foundation of Easter promises of better time to come. And as much as we do find that hope and joy, as much as we are able to build ourselves up, these last six days are an invitation to look for those who are struggling to believe in better times to come, and to lift them up through our love and our words and our actions, just as generations of Christian witnesses have done before.

Thank you.

Mon, 18 May 2026 09:48:26 -0400

(Me, I’m less upset that she’s getting x-rays than that her school will have her make up the state testing she’s currently missing.)

Mon, 18 May 2026 09:40:30 -0400

Kiddo is asking a lot of questions about Marie Curie on her way to get her first set of x-rays, and it’s the first time I’ve ever wished she doesn’t read as much as she does.

Mon, 18 May 2026 09:32:17 -0400

Il nous arrive souvent de trouver que les meilleurs « romans graphiques » que ma fille trouve à la bibliothèque sont en fait des traductions des bandes dessinées françaises, et ça me plaît beaucoup.

🔗 linkblog: AI-generated research papers are overwhelming peer review

Fri, 15 May 2026 07:58:40 -0400

Here’s a gift link. Jacques Ellul argued that you can’t separate the good aspects of technique from the bad. In that context, this paragraph stands out:

Optimists about generative AI have high hopes for its ability to produce future scientific breakthroughs — accelerating discovery, eliminating most types of cancer — but the technology is currently undermining one of the pillars of scientific research, inundating editors and reviewers with an endless stream of papers. Paradoxically, the better the technology gets at producing competent papers, the worse the crisis becomes.

Even if we don’t take the super broad view that Ellul argues for, though, I think there’s still something to be said about the scale of generative AI being an issue, even if it can be used for good and bad purposes. Even if we were generous and assumed that a majority of scientific uses of generative AI were positive, two things are worth noting: First, the scale at which the minority of negative uses are carried out would still be a hell of an effect. Second, we would still struggle to respond to the positive uses at scale.

☕ teablog: Good & Gather, Chai (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Fri, 15 May 2026 07:44:23 -0400

☕ teablog: Good & Gather, Chai (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤) https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-05-15-not-the/

📺 tvblog: Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Thu, 14 May 2026 09:06:59 -0400

“Intentionally bad” is a vibe that really works for me, and this is a masterclass of that vibe. I have some complaints: Some parts are grosser than they need to be, and even though I can forgive most of that as part of the “intentionally bad schtick,” there’s a rape reference in one episode that feels unnecessary even if it’s meant to be a bad call by the characters. Despite even that, I really appreciate this show for the specific thing it’s trying to do, and it made a good break from more serious media this week.

I still love the new Reeder, but Current is the RSS app I need right now

Thu, 14 May 2026 08:07:28 -0400

I feel like the common wisdom is that if seasonal changes are going to affect your mental health, it’s going to be the winter, when temperatures get colder and days get shorter. My experience has often been the opposite, though: It’s not that I don’t sometimes struggle during the winter, but it’s spring and summer that really do a number on my mental health. It’s been helpful to recognize that over the last year or two, not because it changes the pattern but rather because being aware of the pattern is a first step toward developing healthier responses to it.

One thing I know that I can do in response to changes in my mental health is to change the way that I consume information from the internet. For the past year and a half, I’ve really enjoyed the new iteration of the Reeder app, which has added Mastodon and Bluesky client functionality to its core RSS offerings, letting me consume a bunch of different kinds of content all in the same app. However, when my mental health is in a not-ideal place, one of the things I know I need to do is to reduce feed consumption, setting aside the need I feel to stay in the loop about everything and paring down to a core set of sources that actually matter.

So, this year, when I started to feel the added stress that I experience in spring and summer, I pivoted to the Current RSS reader. I’d bought it on a whim earlier this year, when it was first announced, because I really like the aesthetic and feel that it’s going for: no unread counts, items automatically drop out of the feed after a certain amount of time has elapsed, information without obligation. When I first bought it, I decided against using it, because I was really enjoying following Mastodon and Bluesky accounts alongside a bunch of RSS feeds, and Current isn’t as good at that. Now, though, I need to be following less. I’ve almost entirely cut out Mastodon and Bluesky consumption, and I’ve pared down my RSS feeds to the ones that I really care about.

Current fits what I need from an RSS app right now. It will support following Mastodon or Bluesky accounts if I really want to, because both of those platforms have native support for RSS and don’t strictly need client functionality. I’m only following one so far, but I could add more if I feel like I’m missing anything. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, I don’t—I know I’m missing posts from people and accounts I like to hear from, but stepping back from online discourse is sometimes the best move even if I miss a few gems here and there.) It’s also got great support for in-app, full-text reading, so I can prioritize really reading fewer things over scrolling past a bunch of headlines and short posts. That feels right in this moment. Finally, when I’m feeling particularly anxious, I know that articles in the feed will just disappear on their own, and I don’t feel the need to stay caught up with everything.

Wed, 13 May 2026 15:52:12 -0400

Marketing yourself as “the tech in edtech” is not at all a flex like Infinite Campus seems to think it is. Like, all edtech is tech—that’s the point. I don’t know that I’d agree with “the ed in edtech” either, but I’d at least get what they’re going for. This just boggles me.

🔗 linkblog: Meet the Sad Wives of AI

Wed, 13 May 2026 06:50:46 -0400

Embarrassed to say that this gender dynamic of AI had never really occurred to me before. Interesting read.

📚 bookblog: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Tue, 12 May 2026 16:59:41 -0400

I’m being hard on this book, so I want to emphasize that: I think it’s important, I pre-ordered it and have been looking forward to read it for a long time, there are parts of it that I deeply enjoyed, and it is likely to get cited in a couple of papers I’m working on.

That said, while I think there are a lot of good ideas and bits in here, it feels more like a collection of ideas than a cohesive book. I think a stronger throughline and more aggressive structure would have made it even better. I know it started off as essays/blog posts, and I think the individual components are great, but I’m not sure it’s more than the sum of its parts.

I also acknowledge that I read a lot of Doctorow and that his ideas tend to be repeated throughout his writing. Someone coming fresh to his ideas probably wouldn’t have the same nitpicks that I do, and that’s the main, well-deserved audience for this book, so I’m fine with a little bit of “meh” in my own reaction.

it sure looks like David Kloiber is creeping on University of Kentucky employees to send them personalized mailers for the KY-6 primary

Tue, 12 May 2026 15:33:53 -0400

Kentucky primaries for the 2026 elections take place a week from today, so it’s not surprising that we’ve been getting some political mail over the past couple of weeks. Today, though, something came in the mail that really took me aback. David Kloiber’s campaign sent us something that was clearly more than a regular mailer, since it came in a letter-style envelope and was addressed to both me and my spouse.

Both of us are employees at the University of Kentucky, a public institution, so there’s a fair amount of publicly available information about us floating in the ether. That’s to be expected, but it doesn’t mean that someone can’t be creepy about it. The first paragraph of the letter that we got addressed one of us by name, listed their exact employer within the University, and had some personalized text in there that was clearly a riff on a publicly listed position title before pivoting into a “you work for this kind of institution, so this is why you should vote for me” spiel.

In response to Kloiber’s speaking directly to us, I’d like to speak directly to him for a paragraph: This is weird, my dude. Super weird. I don’t know who on your campaign thought this would make your outreach feel more personalized and be more effective, but you should see the number of 🤢 emojis, “creeeeppyyy"s, and “maybe I would have expected this from a GOP mailer"s that we’ve texted each other in the 45 minutes since I checked the mail today. This doesn’t say “I know who you are and I care about you” so much as “I looked you up and want to use what I learned for my personal benefit.”
Of course, it arguably gets better from here. I do a bit of web scraping myself, so there’s a (small) part of me that’s technically impressed with how this might have all worked. Here’s my best guess: Scrape the hell out of the UK website to identify employees, compare that list of employees with public or purchased voter info to identify folks likely to participate in a Dem primary, and then develop personalized mailers for all of them. Good so far, but: Even assuming that you can script the first two steps of that (which doesn’t strike me as terribly hard, even if I don’t know if I could do it easily myself), the level of personalization that’s in here (again, specific riffs off of specific job descriptions) is not something that would be easy to automate.

At least, it wouldn’t have been before 2023 or so. I’m pretty confident that there’s some LLM work going on here, and the awkward phrasing of some of the personalized language only makes me more confident. So now I wonder how much of this is good old fashioned web scraping (which, to be clear, can be plenty creepy on its own) and how much of this is a carefully massaged LLM prompt. Because nothing makes the appropriation of publicly available information for private gain (this mailer) worse than using a tool that is fundamentally built on the appropriation of publicly available information for private gain. Bravo.

Anyway, I’m going to be honest: I didn’t vote for David Kloiber in 2022 because he struck me as someone with more money than ideas. That impression has stuck enough in my head that although I haven’t done all my primary homework yet, I don’t know that I was all that likely to vote for him in the first place. That said, I take pride in being an informed voter, so I would genuinely have tried to read up on his policies and give him a fair evaluation before next Tuesday. Not now, though—I am not very interested in reading up on a candidate who thinks he can win my vote by creeping on me online and feeding the results into an LLM.

🔗 linkblog: Data center guzzled 30 million gallons of water and nobody noticed for months

Mon, 11 May 2026 20:45:02 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Data center guzzled 30 million gallons of water and nobody noticed for months https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-11-shouldnt-be/

🎙️ radioblog: The Elite (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Mon, 11 May 2026 17:25:51 -0400

There’s a fun meta-premise to this story (adapt Doctor Who stories never made for TV as radio dramas), and I enjoyed some parts of this, but I can’t say that Peter Davison is engaging enough (for me personally! I’m sure he’s wonderful for other fans!) for me to be a huge fan here.

🔗 linkblog: Your AI Use Is Breaking My Brain

Mon, 11 May 2026 14:33:03 -0400

Long before I ever knew what generative AI was, I was grumpy about the idea of Grammarly because I was suspicious of deferring to a computer on what “good writing” looks like. I appreciate Koebler’s thoughts here for the way it shows how generative AI—including Grammarly now, apparently—is doing something similar on an even larger scale.

🔗 linkblog: I Work in Hollywood. Everyone Who Used to Make TV Is Now Secretly Training AI

Mon, 11 May 2026 07:08:20 -0400

🔗 linkblog: I Work in Hollywood. Everyone Who Used to Make TV Is Now Secretly Training AI https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-11-its-digital/

Sat, 09 May 2026 11:35:02 -0400

My decision a few months ago to import my Twitter archive into my journaling app has been a mixed bag. I’ve been deleting a lot of orphaned references and truncated posts, but also, now I have a record of the time I picked a fight with an LMS CEO about privacy, and that’s fun.

🔗 linkblog: Canvas is open source, but its cloud services ransomware attack really hurts

Sat, 09 May 2026 10:00:42 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Canvas is open source, but its cloud services ransomware attack really hurts https://spencergreenhalgh.com/work/2026-05-09-bens-perspective/

Fri, 08 May 2026 19:30:22 -0400

Ça fera bientôt vingt-cinq ans depuis le début de mes études du français, mais dans une scène de fiction, les nuances du tutoiement et du vouvoiement m’échappent toujours. Je comprends ce qui est dit mais trop souvent sans reconnaître les implications pour la relation entre deux personnages.

Fri, 08 May 2026 16:56:02 -0400

It’s amazing how much I struggle to write a single sentence during time I’ve set aside for writing, but when I’m in the middle of grading, I can “pause for a second” to jot down an idea and wind up with three draft paragraphs.

Fri, 08 May 2026 14:21:54 -0400

I love a genuinely good experience as a peer reviewer. The current manuscript I’m reviewing is one that I’m very well suited to review (which does not happen enough), and the authors have clearly improved the paper since the last round. It’s nice when things work like they’re supposed to.

🔗 linkblog: 'The Biggest Student Data Privacy Disaster in History': Canvas Hack Shows the Danger of Centralized EdTech

Fri, 08 May 2026 12:22:53 -0400

🔗 linkblog: 'The Biggest Student Data Privacy Disaster in History': Canvas Hack Shows the Danger of Centralized EdTech https://spencergreenhalgh.com/work/2026-05-08-some-important/

🔗 linkblog: The Canvas Hack Is a New Kind of Ransomware Debacle

Fri, 08 May 2026 06:49:55 -0400

Definitely worth bookmarking this for semesters to come. I like Canvas as far as LMSs go, but the sheer scale of dependence here has me thinking about taking other approaches. This first paragraph is a doozy:

Higher education has long been a target of ransomware gangs and data extortion attacks. But never before, perhaps, has a cyberattack against a single software platform so thoroughly disrupted the daily operations of thousands of schools across the United States.

🔗 linkblog: Canvas is down as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

Thu, 07 May 2026 18:46:08 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Canvas is down as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data https://spencergreenhalgh.com/work/2026-05-07-oh-wait/

Thu, 07 May 2026 18:42:37 -0400

Amazing time of year for this to happen.

Thu, 07 May 2026 11:40:47 -0400

Look, I think it can be equally true that the local school district really screwed up their financial situation AND that my rep in the Kentucky state house’s handwringing over that is motivated by bad faith and not genuine concern.

des blagues qui se cachent derrière les sous-titres

Thu, 07 May 2026 07:42:54 -0400

Mon français est assez fort, mais pas hyper, hyper fort quand-même. Il y a certaines expériences, comme les appels téléphoniques et les films, qui me rappellent surtout mes lacunes linguistiques. Je suis maintenant en train de regarder la cinquième saison d’Un village français, et comme je la regarde grâce à un service américain de vidéo à la demande, la seule version de cette série qui m’est disponible est celle qui a des sous-titres en anglais imposés sur la vidéo—on n’a même pas la possibilité de regarder sans sous-titres. Même si j’aurais préféré des sous-titres en français, il est vrai que ça m’aide beaucoup, avoir les sous-titres pour surmonter les faiblesses qui restent dans mon français.

Pourtant, tout le monde sait qu’il y a beaucoup qui se perd dans la traduction, et si j’ai parfois besoin des sous-titres pour mieux comprendre le sens d’une conversation entre deux personnages, je suis assez fort pour souvent constater quand quelque chose cloche dans les choix des traducteurs. Les choix de traduction pour les gros mots font souvent réfléchir, car il est vrai que ce n’est pas forcément le sens exact d’un gros mot qui compte, mais plutôt sa force dans le contexte, et il faut donc beaucoup de nuance et de compréhension pour bien les traduire. Si ces choix là ne sont pas forcément des fautes de traduction, il existent quand-même d’autres choix qui sont peut-être nécessaire mais quand-même décevants pour ce qui est caché derrière les sous-titres.

Hier soir, je regardais la sixième épisode de la cinquième saison d’Un village français, qui a une scène vraiment drôle, où quatre prisonniers font un procès pour un cafard dans leur cellule. La voici :

J’ai vite vu qu’il y avait des choses qui ne se traduisaient pas bien. Déjà, il y avait plusieurs jeux de mot du genre « avoir le cafard », « cafarder », etc., et là, j’avoue que ce ne sont pas des expressions que je connaissais, et j’étais donc bien reconnaissant pour les sous-titres, même si j’ai du consulter un dictionnaire après pour vraiment apprécier la scène. Ce qui m’a vraiment marqué, pourtant, c’était quand Anselme, un des prisonniers, demande pour le cafard « la mort par écrasement manuel spontané, monsieur le juge ». Cette ligne est traduite en anglais par “death by crushing” qui saisit plus ou moins le sens de la phrase en français mais qui est beaucoup moins drôle. Justement, ce petit procès se déroulait lieu parce qu’on avait demandé à Anselme pourquoi il écrasait les cafards dans leur cellule à la main et spontanément, et c’est là d’où vient la force de la blague. La réduire à “death by crushing” en sous-titres n’est pas forcément faux, mais ça fait pas rire comme j’ai ri quand j’ai entendu la phrase originale.

Bon, je ne dis rien de nouveau ici, car il est bien connu combien on perd dans la traduction, mais la phrase « écrasement manuel spontané » me semble si drôle que je n’ai pas pu m’empêcher de dire combien il est triste que les traducteurs ne l’ont pas gardée—et combien je suis content d’avoir pu surmonter ces fautes de traduction pour pouvoir rire comme la blague le méritait.

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: Bubbles are REALLY evil (07 May 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Thu, 07 May 2026 06:50:56 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: Bubbles are REALLY evil (07 May 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-05-07-i-have/

🔗 linkblog: Book publishers sue Meta over AI’s ‘word-for-word’ copying

Tue, 05 May 2026 16:04:38 -0400

This is a good example of how thorny the AI problem is, and why I strongly prefer a digital labor critique to a copyright critique. Yes, I’m mad that Meta trained their models on my work, but I don’t think the answer is to strengthen Elsevier or Cengage’s copyright claims.

📺 tvblog: Un village français Saison 4 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 04 May 2026 16:36:28 -0400

J’ai fait une grosse pause au milieu de cette saison, car comme j’ai déjà dit, je m’intéresse plus aux détails historiques, et les intrigues dramatiques de la série peuvent m’ennuyer au bout de plusieures épisodes. Pourtant, j’aime bien regarder, et j’en apprends beaucoup—il m’arrive même de m’investir dans le drame.

Sat, 02 May 2026 10:33:17 -0400

Kiddo’s soccer game this morning involved a dad bro coach and a startup bro dad, and I’m glad we have D&D to play this afternoon to de-bro my day a bit. (I’m sure there are D&D bros out there, but not in the campaign we play in).

☕ teablog: Twinings, English Breakfast (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Fri, 01 May 2026 12:47:42 -0400

Okay, so I just reviewed this, but I already think it’s better than I gave it credit for. I just oversteeped a cup because I got caught in conversation on my way back from the break room and it was still just the right taste, and I think that deserves full marks.

🔗 linkblog: Utah’s New Law Targeting VPNs Goes Into Effect Next Week

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:00:53 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Utah’s New Law Targeting VPNs Goes Into Effect Next Week https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-04-30-wait-u.s./

☕ teablog: Twinings, English Breakfast (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 09:31:34 -0400

I know it’s a breakfast tea, but this hit the spot yesterday when I was dragging right before an afternoon meeting. Not too strong, just the exact kind of malty flavor I’m trying to experience more of.

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:10:31 -0400

Briefly forgot my work password and then tricked myself into remembering it by first typing out my work username and letting muscle memory take over.

☕ teablog: Harney & Sons, Cookies & Cream (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 10:58:50 -0400

This blend felt like a bit of a gamble, but if the flavors are subtle, they are more or less what I would have expected from the branding. A welcome addition to my current lineup.

🎙️ radioblog: La guerre des ondes, 1939-1945 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 10:50:36 -0400

Même si je trouve que l’application Radio France est assez pourrie (difficile à organiser, de grosses pubs qui paraîssent en début de journée), elle a été utile pour trouver d’autres émissions sur Radio Londres et ses concurrents. Hyper fascinante, cette série !

🎙️ radioblog: La liberté au bout des ondes, Radio Londres, 1940-1944 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 10:42:26 -0400

J’ai enfin repris « Un village français », mais la deuxième épisode que j’ai regardée m’a fait me poser plein de questions sur Radio Londres. Tout ce qui est radio m’intéresse, et je trouve l’idée de Radio Londres particulièrement intéressante. J’ai donc recherché quelque chose qui pourrait m’en apprendre plus, et j’ai découvert ce documentaire, qui m’ai bien plu.

📚 bookblog: Penric's Demon (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 10:34:04 -0400

The Incomparable has once again clued me in to a fun series, and I was delighted to listen to this over a couple of days. It’s a fun premise, and if the podcast I listened to was any indication, it will only get more fun with time.

what is the authoritative text of the Book of Mormon?

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:33:40 -0400

I’m working on a couple of projects right now (one professional, one personal) that have me asking the question that makes up the title of this post. While working on one of those projects last night (the personal one), I came across the verse that is Alma 5:5 in Community of Christ versification and Alma 7:12 in LDS versification. For this project, I’m reading out of the 1830 text of the Book of Mormon, as captured on WIkisource, and when I read over the verse, something felt off to me:

and he [Jesus] will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to suffer his people acccording to their infirmities.

Besides the three c’s in “according,” the phrase “how to suffer his people” felt wrong to me. Not only does it not make much sense, but I remembered the phrase reading as “succor his people according to their infirmities,” which frankly makes a lot more sense. I checked Royal Skousen’s Analysis of Textual Variants, and sure enough:

Here the printer’s manuscript and the 1830 edition read suffer. The 1837 edition replaced suffer with succor, probably intentionally (although this change was not marked in P by Joseph Smith in his editing for the 1837 edition). All subsequent editions have retained succor.

Here, “P” is the printer’s manuscript, distinguished from “O,” the original manuscript, which is not fully extant. The existence of two separate manuscripts before the Book of Mormon even went to print (and the knowledge, based on surviving fragments of the original manuscript, that there are differences between them) raises the question of which of them ought to be authoritative. This question is further complicated by the existence of 1830 and 1837 editions, the latter of which involves a number of changes to the text introduced by Joseph Smith himself. Are Smith’s edits in 1837 more authoritative than his original dictation in 1830?

Of course, as Skousen also points out, the introduction of this specific change in the 1837 edition can’t quite be pinned down:

It is quite possible that the original manuscript read succor and that scribe 2 of P miscopied the word as suffer, especially since succor and suffer are orthographically similar. We should note that in one place in the original manuscript Oliver Cowdery spelled succor as succer (Alma 57:12). If the original manuscript had the same spelling of succer here in Alma 7:12, then the conjectured misreading as suffer by scribe 2 in the printer’s manuscript would be all the more plausible. Indeed, a spelling such as sucker would be even more susceptible to being misread as suffer (but there are no instances of that misspelling in the manuscripts).

Another possibility is that the scribe in O misheard Joseph Smith’s succor as the phonetically similar suffer and thus wrote down suffer in O. It’s also possible that Joseph himself misread succor as suffer as he dictated the text.

I want to draw attention to the last sentence here, because it takes for granted that Joseph was not merely dictating a text but reading it aloud off of words that appeared in the seer stone he typically used for the “translation” process. Skousen’s Critical Text Project is a veritable goldmine for engaging with the Book of Mormon, but it’s important to note that this is functionally an apologetic argument, that the Book of Mormon was divinely revealed to Smith—to the extent that he was provided the text word for word as he peered into a stone.

In my other, academic project related to the Book of Mormon text, I’m drawing off of authors like John-Charles Duffy (and using frameworks provided by Jacques Ellul, perhaps to no one’s surprise) to make the argument that this “word for word” understanding aligns with a desire to make a clearly authoritative text that must be conformed to by its reader. However, for all of Skousen’s apologetic commitments, the uncertainty of the suffer / succor change in the text points out just how difficult it is to determine which of the differing texts of the Book of Mormon ought to be understood as the authoritative one. Can it be the one purportedly read off of a seer stone by Smith if Smith later made changes to that text? Can we agree that succor is the authoritative reading if we don’t have a provenance for that change?

Skousen and I (and countless others) would surely disagree as to the ultimate significance of these ambiguities, but it’s important to recognize that there are ambiguities. The Book of Mormon is famously held by LDS-flavored believers to be “the most correct of any book on earth,” but even if that were true, it woiuldn’t mean that there aren’t questions that need to be resolved. In this particular case, which of the texts available to us is that “most correct” book? Latter-day Saint authorities have turned the exact wording of particular verses into theological observations before, and that assumes a word-for-word correctness to the book that is not always clear.

🔗 linkblog: University Professors Disturbed to Find Their Lectures Chopped Up and Turned Into AI Slop

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:17:25 -0400

🔗 linkblog: University Professors Disturbed to Find Their Lectures Chopped Up and Turned Into AI Slop https://spencergreenhalgh.com/work/2026-04-27-well-this/

🍿 movieblog: Wuthering Heights (2026) (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:17:39 -0400

Watched this with spouse over two nights. It wasn’t the movie that we expected (I’m not familiar with the source material, and the trailer feels selectively edited in hindsight), but I have some (perhaps begrudging) respect for it?

I don’t like the characters, I don’t love the plot, and I’m not sure I enjoyed the movie, but it feels like it really knew the vibes it was going for, and I feel like it succeeded there. I like a movie that knows what it wants to be and doesn’t mind being weird along the way, and this fit that bill.

Earnshaw’s death feels like a good example of all of this: The giant piles of liquor bottles in two corners of the room are way over-the-top, but they capture the scene, and that whole vibe seems to be what the movie is going for.

📚 bookblog: Vanishing Pattern (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:12:10 -0400

Still good! Interesting themes, great art, fascinating take on a familiar premise, and compelling characters. You can see more of the seams on this volume, but I plan to keep reading, reading, reading.

📚 bookblog: Welcome, Nowhere (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:06:45 -0400

This series isn’t perfect—the shaman character has enough vague stereotype surrounding him to raise a concerned eyebrow—but it’s good. What’s more, I’m so happy to be returning to it after a month-long semi-accidental break that I’m giving this volume full marks.

It’s very weird, with beautiful art to back it up. It’s fast-paced in a way that could be annoying but is justified by the story in a way that works. The characters aren’t always sympathetic, but that usually works to the advantage of the story being told.

📚 bookblog: Apos (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 07:51:34 -0400

I backed this book on Kickstarter, intrigued by the idea of a graphic novel that documents and collects difficult experiences on Mormon missions.

When it arrived, I knew that actually reading it would be either healing or triggering for me, and I was happy to find that it was the former. There are a few improvements that could be made, but it met my hopes of being something that captured the Mormon mission experience as I know it (though there were a lot of COVID-19 stories, and how are these RMs so young!) but also spoke to the complex feelings that I and so many others have about those experiences.

📚 bookblog: The Cost of Discipleship (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 07:46:43 -0400

I first tried reading this in 2024 and kind of stalled out after a while. It’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer, though! The guy who was executed for resisting Nazis! I felt like I really needed to give this another go, and so I did.

I like what the book is going for: The idea of radical devotion to Christ is something that speaks to me on a deep level. However, for me to be fully comfortable with that, I need “devotion to Christ” to be defined (and mapped onto other values) in a clear, specific way, and I don’t know that this book does that.

I occasionally see copies of Eric Metaxas’s biography of Bonhoeffer when browsing religion sections at bookstores, and I feel like that’s a bit indicative of what’s going on here. I don’t know much about Metaxas except that I would surely disagree with his views on Bonhoeffer and his views on what “radical devotion to Christ” mean.

I don’t think it’s necessarily Bonhoeffer’s fault that a right-wing evangelical author would find him as compelling as I hope to, but I didn’t find that The Cost of Discipleship was specific enough to preclude those other readings of Bonhoeffer’s thinking than the one I hoped to find to motivate me in the year of this mess that is 2026.