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

🔗 linkblog: McClatchy guts Lexington Herald-Leader newsroom, among nationwide layoffs

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:13:46 -0400

🔗 linkblog: McClatchy guts Lexington Herald-Leader newsroom, among nationwide layoffs https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-09-10-this-sucks./

🔗 linkblog: Trump Claims He Was Falling Man

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:41:00 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Trump Claims He Was Falling Man https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-09-10-excellent-satire./

🍿 movieblog: Across the Spider-Verse (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 21:04:01 -0400

Earlier today, I wrote a review of the second season of Severance where I mentioned how hard it is to follow up on a stellar first take on an idea. I was really nervous about this sequel in the same way, but it really works!

Kiddo somewhat begrudgingly admitted she liked the first movie enough for us to watch this one over the long weekend. It was great! I have been giggling about Ben Reilly jokes for the past 24 hours. I also love how Reilly looks like he’s from a 90s comic book, and the whole movie does a good job of following up with the creative blend of animation styles (the LEGO joke was fine, but the Da Vinci Vulture was fun, as was the “-Ed.” joke, which I’m surprised they didn’t use in the first one.

Also, Spider-Man might be the best superhero for the great power/great responsibility thing (as much as it gets reduced to a cliché in some treatments), and seeing Miles wrestle with stepping up as Spider-Man while just trying to deliver a cake was great. Also also, specifically referring to “canon” and questioning who’s “supposed to be” Spider-Man is a good shot across the bow of fandom. Nice choices.

Even further, though, for all that Spider-Punk is mostly a source of jokes, the idea that it’s possible to defy “how things must be” has some real anarchism behind it, and it was fun to see that as implicitly present in the movie as it would have been in a Graeber book.

Can’t wait for June 2027.

📺 tvblog: Severance Season 2 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 18:09:18 -0400

It’s hard for a tv show to follow up on an amazing season 1 premise with a solid season 2. This definitely has some creaky spots in it at the beginning, but it works up to something that won my trust back. What a deliberately, excellently weird show this is.

🍿 movieblog: Judgment Day (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 18:06:47 -0400

I understand why this movie is well-regarded, and if I were watching it from the perspective of someone seeing it for the first time in 1991 (which I couldn’t have, because I was 3 and from a no-R-rated-movies Mormon family), I might have different thoughts.

Instead, though, I noticed all the obvious ADR, I learned the context for all the lines I already know from playground conversations and pop culture osmosis, I shrugged at the over-the-top action, and I thought about how much more banal the threats of AI are these days than Skynet and a T-1000. It was a real meh for me.

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 17:05:25 -0400

Look, I’m biased, but it feels like a self-own for a “school picture day” flyer to use an AI-generated approximation of a school picture instead of an actual photograph?

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:30:38 -0400

Wait, is there a distinctively Mormon way of pronouncing “nursery”? I feel like this dialect quiz is overemphasizing patterns (my “most like” is ~55% and my “least like” ~45%, which doesn’t seem enough to assign a location), but I would accept this particular tell.

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:18:10 -0400

Today is the first day I’ve ever had to think about how I pronounce the word “almond,” and it’s not how I expected.

🔗 linkblog: As outcry grows, Lexington mayor announces independent review of city's Flock cameras

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 10:55:58 -0400

🔗 linkblog: As outcry grows, Lexington mayor announces independent review of city's Flock cameras https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-09-04-review-is/

Graeber and Wengrow's indigenous critique, technical progress, and the Book of Mormon

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:47:27 -0400

I am repeatedly on record as being a fan of the Book of Mormon despite believing it’s ahistorical and despite recognizing how deeply problematic some of its ideas are. If there’s one problematic idea that I’m not totally sure can be redeemed even with a critical, willing-to-push-back reading of the text, it’s the appropriation of Indigenous history into the core narrative of the Book of Mormon.

Recently rereading Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything drew my attention some specific aspects of this relationship that I think are particularly interesting (and troubling). They are also professionally interesting to me since Graeber and Wengrow are fundamentally pushing back on narratives of technical progress. In fact, I nearly wrote this post for my “Work” sub-blog but am too lazy this morning to do the scaffolding needed to make the Book of Mormon narrative accessible to those not familiar with it; I recognize that someone can also read my “Communities” posts without being super familiar with the Book of Mormon, but I’m going to roll the dice on that one and answer questions as they come up.

In short, Graeber and Wengrow argue that narratives of technical progress are a response to Indigenous Americans’ critiques of European cultures and norms. Faced with the possibility of happy, thriving societies in the Americas that didn’t resemble their own (and who were happy to critique their own), European intellectuals responded to their indigenous critique by advancing a theory of inevitable technical progress that framed European societies as inherently superior (because they are further along that trajectory of progress) and framed the seeming advantages of American Indigenous societies as obstacles that must be overcome for progress. Here’s one example the two Davids give, referencing the French economist A. R. J. Turgot:

Yes, Turgot acknowledged, ‘we all love the idea of freedom and equality’ — in principle. But we must consider a larger context. In reality, he ventured, the freedom and equality of savages is not a sign of their superiority; it’s a sign of inferiority, since it is only possible in a society where each household is largely self-sufficient and, therefore, where everyone is equally poor. As societies evolve, Turgot reasoned, technology advances. Natural differences in talents and capacities between individuals (which have always existed) become more significant, and eventually they form the basis for an ever more complex division of labour. We progress from simple societies like those of the Wendat to our own complex ‘commercial civilization’, in which the poverty and dispossession of some — however lamentable it may be — is nonetheless the necessary condition for the prosperity of society as a whole.

As I was going through the Book of Mormon this morning to advance a side project of mine, I was struck how this passage in Alma 20 (CofC chapter divisions; also too lazy to look up the LDS equivalent) echoes this logic. Note the way that the European-coded Nephites are framed as technically superior to the Indigenous-coded Lamanites:

19 And Moroni took all the command, and the government of their wars. And he was only twenty-five years old when he was appointed chief captain over the armies of the Nephites.

20 He met the Lamanites in the borders of Jershon, and his people were armed with swords, and with cimeters, and all manner of weapons of war.

21 And the armies of the Lamanites saw that the people of Nephi, had been prepared by Moroni with breastplates, and with arm shields, and also shields to defend their heads; and also they were dressed with thick clothing.

22 Now the army of Zerahemnah was not prepared with any such thing.

23 They had only their swords, and their cimeters, their bows and their arrows, their stones and their slings; and they were naked, save it were a skin which was girded about their loins; all were naked, save it were the Zoramites and the Amalekites.

24 But they were not armed with breastplates nor shields; therefore they were exceedingly afraid of the armies of the Nephites because of their armor, notwithstanding their number being so much greater than the Nephites.

Here, like other places in the Book of Mormon, technical superiority is equated with being righteous and favored by God. I’m far from the first person to notice the way that the Lamanites are (often, but not universally) coded as primitive savages—or how problematic this coding is given the book’s suggestion that the Lamanites are the ancestors of Indigenous Americans. Sheepishly, though, I have to confess that it’s only (re)reading Graeber and Wengrow that has helped me see just how much this is true—and how often the Book of Mormon draws on 18th and 19th century ideas about Indigenous Americans in telling its stories.

This is important to me for three reasons. First, if I am going to make a case for the continued value of the Book of Mormon, I need to actively confront my settler colonial roots, listen to indigenous critiques of the Book of Mormon, and figure out what is worth redeeming and what isn’t. Second, though, I think that the Book of Mormon’s incorporation of narratives of technical progress makes it an interesting site for theological reflection: Not to accept at face value what the text has to say about technology and technical progress, but to start a conversation with the text as we figure out our own theologies. Third, in my professional life, if narratives of technical progress are baked into the founding text of Mormonism, that is worth looking more into if/as I continue to explore the relationship between Mormonism and technology.

🔗 linkblog: Nearly impossible? How Fairphone built the ethical, repairable Fairphone Gen 6+.

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:08:11 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Nearly impossible? How Fairphone built the ethical, repairable Fairphone Gen 6+. https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-09-04-one-day/

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 06:55:25 -0400

Some English words see a g-to-w difference when compared to French (e.g., gaufre ↔️ waffle, Galles ↔️ Wales) BUT in some cases, English has both the different AND original versions, so we have near synonyms like warranty/guarantee and warden/guardian.

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 15:41:12 -0400

The day after proudly announcing that Copilot Premium had been activated for all faculty and staff (no action required from us!), a university office has developed a form letter for how to disable it. Or at least my colleague and I got the same answer verbatim.

🔗 linkblog: Google Maps Introduces Crawling Directions For Cyclists Hit By Truck

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:55:00 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Google Maps Introduces Crawling Directions For Cyclists Hit By Truck https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-09-03-sometimes-the/

🔗 linkblog: Meta's $17 Billion Settlement is a Bad Deal for Teens and All Social Media Users

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 17:27:34 -0400

Only skimmed this—and it deserves a more thorough reading—but it’s a good reminder that “Meta is awful” does not justify all constraints on Meta.

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 13:45:05 -0400

Got an AI-generated flyer from kiddo’s Kentucky school today that put a Texas flag in the artwork, and I have questions.

🔗 linkblog: Trump says data center critics want to be ‘backwards and poor,’ drawing bipartisan rebuke in Kentucky

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:16:51 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Trump says data center critics want to be ‘backwards and poor,’ drawing bipartisan rebuke in Kentucky https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-31-living-in/

🔗 linkblog: Would The Next George Floyd Video Survive Meta’s New Teen Safety Rules?

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:10:43 -0400

Masnick always makes me think (even when I don’t fully agree with him), and this is no exception. (Though Heather Burns is the one who came up with the most important thing bouncing around my brain now).

🍿 movieblog: The Hunt for Red October (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:45:13 -0400

Look, to enjoy this film, I had to set aside a lot of concerns about the glorification of war and violence, uncritical U.S. patriotism, and more besides. I did set those (mostly) aside, though, and it’s a fun, well-done movie. I wish there were more Stellan Skarsgård (the actor) in it, but I really enjoyed Jerry Westerby (the character from another franchise) popping up as the Soviet ambassador.

📚 bookblog: Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And the Next) (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:40:36 -0400

I own a physical copy of this book but sold out to hoopla to listen to it over the weekend so I could say I’d finally read it. I appreciate just how practical this book is: outlining steps one can take rather than simply appealing to an abstract anarchist ideal.

I also felt a real tension while reading this. The ideals it sets out really speak to me, but the amount of work and commitment that it would take to actually follow these principles feels intimidating to me.

🔗 linkblog: Governor Hochul: AI should be “less evil”

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:00:26 -0400

Haven’t finished the interview yet, but so far, Hochul isn’t impressing me. Ghost guns terrify me, and I would celebrate Meta collapsing as a company, but I think there are reasonable critiques of these policies, and when confronted with them, she kind of shrugs?

Combined with her seeming celebration of AI and tech companies in general, this just feels a lot like “I am solving a problem” performativity rather than thinking deeper about what the issues are here.

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 11:44:18 -0400

Just double-checked a CFP deadline, and it’s a full month later than what was in my head. I will be riding this high for the rest of the week.

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 11:03:10 -0400

Looks like it’s another year of wondering why the ParentSquare school communication app’s website will show image previews to logged out visitors. Better than full-size images, I guess, but why can someone who isn’t logged in see anything?

🔗 linkblog: Could Trump’s diminished popularity in Kentucky affect how this year’s midterm races are run? • Kentucky Lantern

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 07:56:09 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Could Trump’s diminished popularity in Kentucky affect how this year’s midterm races are run? • Kentucky Lantern https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-31-if-andy/

🔗 linkblog: LDS cinema enters a new era as members turn to A.I. to tell the story of the Book of Mormon

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 09:33:18 -0400

🔗 linkblog: LDS cinema enters a new era as members turn to A.I. to tell the story of the Book of Mormon https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-29-so-much/

🔗 linkblog: I Asked 100 Companies for My Data. I Got Deletion Notices Instead

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 07:09:05 -0400

🔗 linkblog: I Asked 100 Companies for My Data. I Got Deletion Notices Instead https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-29-what-a/

🔗 linkblog: McDonald’s Built a 515-Page Dossier on Me. It Says I’ll Never Stop Eating There

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 07:07:55 -0400

Glad I went back to read this after originally missing the article. Here’s a heck of a paragraph:

While the sheer amount of data McDonald’s stored over the years caught me off guard at first, the way it was used by the company’s predictive algorithms was what I found most concerning. The company predicted how often I would visit in the next six weeks (2.16 times), what I would spend on average ($13.49), and what I would spend in total ($29.15). One reporter at WIRED joked that McDonald’s had created a Minority Report-style dossier to predict my next snack wrap purchase.

🔗 linkblog: Lexington residents push back against Flock cameras at council meeting

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 16:04:32 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Lexington residents push back against Flock cameras at council meeting https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-28-hell-yes./

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 15:00:04 -0400

Every time kiddo’s school does a fundraiser, I think about how much of a shame it is that there isn’t some system for automatically collecting funds from the local community to make sure schools have enough money to operate. It seems like there ought to be something there.

🔗 linkblog: Flock’s CEO Is Lying to Cops About 404 Media's Reporting on Abortion Case

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:51:16 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Flock’s CEO Is Lying to Cops About 404 Media's Reporting on Abortion Case https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-28-this-story/

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 10:53:43 -0400

I’m not proud that I’ve switched feed readers twice in six months (hi Tapestry, you’ve finally won me over), but I am thrilled to now have one interface filled with train pictures.

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 06:44:32 -0400

I have one question about the upcoming season of Slow Horses, and it is whether it will confirm my theory that one throwaway detail in the source material is a deliberate reference to the Franco-Belgian comic series XIII.

📚 bookblog: Crying Freeman, Volume 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 15:33:51 -0400

On one hand, this is the first manga I’ve read where I saw why the art form is as revered as it is. Good art, interesting premise (somewhat silly, but no more than XIII, which I love more than I should), and not too gratuitous (but still some).

On the other, I felt that it didn’t catch my attention for the whole volume, and I’m torn on whether I’d enjoy reading the next four.

🍿 movieblog: The Final Countdown (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 15:29:28 -0400

Top Gun is probably the better movie, but if I had to watch one US Navy aviation recruitment video dressed up as a blockbuster film, I think I’d pick this one. It wrestles with more interesting ideas, and more of it happens on a carrier, which is fun.

And yet, I am annoyed by two things that I recognize stand in tension with each other: 1) the jingoistic “look how cool our war toys are” vibes and 2) the shaggy dog nature of the story that ultimately rules out showing off those war toys and doesn’t do anything with the time travel premise that a short story couldn’t do better.

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 09:23:27 -0400

No idea how Queen albums (including live albums, which are something I’ve recently discovered I like) wound up on the fourth-tier streaming service my library provides access to, but I’m quite glad.

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 15:51:57 -0400

Looking at the program for an upcoming conference, I see a co-author on one paper who taught one of my undergrad classes when he was just getting started at my alma mater. This is a fun-but-weird feeling, and I hope he’s there in person so I can say hi.

📚 bookblog: Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 16:27:37 -0400

A lot of what I was looking for in this book is already available in other sources, and while I appreciated the normalizing of Latter-day Saint temples for a lay audience, it would also smack of apologetics if Stapley weren’t also so unflinching in addressing controversy and taboo. It’s a wonderful resource, and it’s accounting for important events of the last decade made it an invaluable read.

🍿 movieblog: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 16:24:05 -0400

This movie is a pure delight, and I’m glad I talked kiddo into watching it with me. Maybe it’s time to finally watch the sequel after three years of meaning to but never getting around to it.

📚 bookblog: Empowered, Volume 1 (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 16:21:34 -0400

I struggled with how to rate this one. I’m going to settle for this: Just because a series that knows it’s being dumb and fanservicey does not automatically elevate it above being dumb and fanservicey.

☕ teablog: Elmwood Inn, Southern Pecan (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 15:47:29 -0400

Need another cup of this before I make up my mind definitively, but that’s part of the fun story behind this blend.

Over the weekend, I discovered for the first time a place that serves Elmwood Inn by the cup, so that let me try a new blend without having to buy a bunch at once. This sounded interesting enough to give it a shot, and it was good! I may buy more of this the next time I’m buying from this company.

🔗 linkblog: They Dedicated Their Lives to Teaching. Then the Deepfakes Started

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:10:44 -0400

Nudifier technology is educational technology, and we can’t talk about generative AI in schools without talking about this.

🔗 linkblog: Meta glasses are a workplace menace

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:58:37 -0400

Hard article to read, but an important one. Here’s the thing: I know two people who own Meta “pervert glasses,” and I think if there is an innocuous use case for these glasses, they’re demonstrating it.

And yet, here’s Ellul on technical ambivalence:

And this technological nexus is characteristically ambivalent. Because the solution of one problem by technological means immediately raises a multitude of others, which result directly from those very means, it is impossible to say whether technique produces good or evil effects. It does both, simultaneously. We are confronted with a system in the strict sense of the word, what I will call the “technological system,” hence ethical issues may only be considered relative to the system as a whole, and not to specific instances.

This feels like a case where the problem is the existence of the technology and not its various uses. I recognize that I’m resistant to that idea with other technologies, like social media or the internet. When it comes to smart glasses or AI, though, I feel willing to say that we only solve the problems when we reject the technology altogether.

Jacques Ellul's technical morality in Mormon culture

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 11:09:28 -0400

Anyone following this blog for a while—even from a distance—will have noticed how frequently I reference Jacques Ellul, and anyone paying attention to what I’m reading these days will note that there’s been an uptick in the Mormon Studies books I’m reading recently. Without giving too much away, the idea for a book I mentioned a month ago brings these two ideas together. As evidenced by my recent presentation at the International Jacques Ellul Society, I think that Ellul’s writing is helpful for understanding Mormonism’s relationship with technology and media, and I expect to be writing more about this in the years to come.

In the meantime, though, I find it helpful to draw attention to specific examples of how Ellul’s writing is salient in Mormon contexts. Here’s an example that isn’t specifically about technology or media—but then again, Ellul’s technique is broader than just technology or media. Indeed, to quote Russell Willis in the most recent issue of The Ellul Forum:

Ellul was not offering a theory of machines, nor was he primarily concerned with technological artifacts. He was naming a social logic that had come to organize modern life: a pervasive orientation toward efficiency that shapes how institutions function, how decisions are made, and how possibilities are evaluated. (p. 5, emphasis added)

One of the aspects of this pervasive orientation is Ellul’s idea of technical morality. In The Ethics of Nonpower, a contribution to a 1980 book, Ellul argues that:

Technique itself has become a value. Technical progress appears to the average Western person as the guarantee of the future good and happiness, and technology assures him of the necessity of the kind of behavior favorable to this progress. Technique carries our hopes (thanks to technical progress, cancer will be conquered). Here it gives life a meaning. And the usual attitude, whenever there appear to be drawbacks in the use of technique, consists in declaring that it is not technique that is to be blamed, but rather man, who does not know how to use it. (p. 205, emphasis added)

Shortly thereafter, he writes:

Morals based on the behavior required by technique are dominant. Those who mean to support another ethical direction are forced to enter into conflict, not directly with technique, but rather with the ideology of technique, with technical beliefs and morals. (p. 206)

In short, technique is treated as a moral imperative—it must be adopted, other ethical values are downplayed, and any ethical problems cannot be assigned to the technique itself. Now, compare that with this excerpt from a recent Salt Lake Tribune article:

In a video clip that has ricocheted across social media about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a retired high-level leader chastises fellow members considering departing the faith, admonishing, “Darth Vader could be your bishop,” he states, “the culture could be like Alcatraz, and it will not drive you away.”

Lawrence Corbridge, who served as a general authority Seventy from 2008 to 2019, doesn’t stop there.

“Some claim church culture is driving people away,” he continues. “The members feel unseen, disconnected, empty and the solution they say is a transformation to a more open, inclusive, transparent, loving and tolerant culture wherein more people can comfortably gather.”

But that, he argues, misses the point entirely.

“The ultimate question is not, ‘Do I fit in?’” he explains in the video, part of a series produced by the independent advocacy organization Scripture Central.“The ultimate question is: Is the church true?”

If the answer is yes, he concludes, tears brimming in his eyes, “then you will stay — come what may.”

This follows a very similar “social logic,” and it’s one of many examples that I want to draw on to start conceiving of Mormonism as a technical phenomenon. There’s one thing that I want to add to this observation, though, and one that further demonstrates the value of Ellul’s thinking for understanding Mormonism. Corbridge uses the word “true” to describe the need to conform to the Latter-day Saint technical system, but in Ellulian terms, Mormons tend to care more about reality than truth.

As the translator-to-English of Ellul’s Humiliation of the Word puts it:

Reality deals with fixed things not open to discussion, things which one can only observe. It forces us to conform. Truth, like the word, is infinitely open-ended and invites reflection, response, relationship, and dialogue. Reality refuses to allow us to the distance necessary so that we can be critical of what we are considering. [p. xvi]

As I read it, Humiliation is an extended reflection on two epistemological stances: One that sees things as self-evident, fixed, and forcing conformity to those fixed ideas, and the other that sees things as harder to pin down, negotiable, and subject to dialectic dialogue (I was pleased to see this pop back up when rereading Graeber and Wengrow’s Dawn of Everything, which suggests some anarchist underpinnings to Ellul’s preferred stance). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mormonism is firmly rooted in the first of these two stances, and not the second. Corbridge’s comments are just one example of that, and I look forward to using this reality/truth dichotomy for further exploration of Mormonism and technique.

🔗 linkblog: From 'terror threat' to 'civilizational threat,' top Republicans escalate anti-Muslim rhetoric

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:10:45 -0400

🔗 linkblog: From 'terror threat' to 'civilizational threat,' top Republicans escalate anti-Muslim rhetoric https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-18-cannot-overstate/

📚 bookblog: Seeing Things: Technologies of Vision and the Making of Mormonism (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:30:00 -0400

I have been meaning to read this book for years and finally got to it. On one hand, it’s excellent, and I’m kicking myself for not having read it before. On the other, it’s so well-suited to a current project that I’m not sure I would have appreciated it earlier.

📚 bookblog: 47 Ronin (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:49:00 -0400

Not life-changing, but a pretty good comic. I didn’t know about this apparently legendary story, but it was fun to learn about.

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 18:32:37 -0400

“‘Gotta scratch ’em all!’ Yeah, it’s from when Ash had a lottery ticket phase.”

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 17:26:39 -0400

There’s nothing like subscribing to a new podcast with dynamic ad insertion to teach you about the two businesses in your area that do podcast advertising. (Though I did VPN to Bordeaux for the next set of episodes, so let’s see what that changes.)

🔗 linkblog: We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 15:24:48 -0400

🔗 linkblog: We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-17-amazing-reporting./

remembering ordination

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:03:24 -0400

I recently passed the second anniversary of my ordination in Community of Christ, and there are a couple of memories from that moment that feel significant enough to write down—and significant enough for them to affect the way that I think about my ministry. I don’t know that I’m doing great with ministry, but I am trying, and as I continue to try, these memories associated with the actual event of ordination are ones that I want to keep in mind.

When I was organizing my ordination, I specifically invited one person I knew I didn’t see eye to eye with to participate in the ordination. It seemed to me that if I was going to accept ordination in my new religious tradition, I ought to do so with an attitude that I was there to serve, even people that I didn’t see eye to eye with. I don’t want to overstate this: I genuinely liked this person, and they did wonderful things for me, so it’s not like I was asking a sworn enemy to help ordain me. Sure enough, though, after one of my first sermons, that person took me aside to challenge my suggestion that it isn’t productive to read Revelation as a prediction of the future. Yet, that person has since passed away, and I have thought a lot about conversations that I wish I had had with them during the last months of their life, even if it might have meant hearing some theological takes that I didn’t agree with. As I try to improve in ministry, I want to make sure I don’t forget (and, in fact, deliberately include) people whom I might not organically seek out because we see eye to eye on everything.

Another thing I want to remember from my ordination is that there was an error in it—the kind of error that would have derailed a Latter-day Saint ordination but that just kind of went forward anyway in a Community of Christ context. In short, one of the people participating in the ordination applied oil to my forehead as though they were about to minister to the sick. This confused me at the time, and one of my friends noted it after the fact as a curiosity. I kind of love that this happened, though. It serves as a reminder to me that I wasn’t chosen for ordination because I’m perfect, and ordination doesn’t magically grant divine power, even when performed correctly. Instead, priesthood in Community of Christ is a bunch of imperfect people imperfectly stumbling through our traditions and procedures to try to help other people. This isn’t a full-throated defense of priesthood—I’m sympathetic to the idea that even the most well-intentioned hierarchy is problematic in its own way—but more of an effort to both knock priesthood down a peg and remind myself that perfection isn’t necessary to minister to others. Mistakenly being anointed with oil during my ordination doesn’t invalidate my ability to minister to others—but it should be a reminder that I, too, am going to make plenty of mistakes along the way.

📚 bookblog: The Seed (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 12:42:14 -0400

Like the last volume, I’m less convinced by the plot as it continues, but there’s still so much about this that’s good. I appreciate the portrayal of faith without being preachy, I like the art, and there is still plenty of humor.

This is the last PDF I own, and I didn’t realize there was a fifth TPB that rounds out the story. I’ll have to track it down somehow…

📺 tvblog: Widow's Bay Season 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 07:59:28 -0400

Horror is not my genre, but this was funny and interesting enough in other ways that I (mostly) enjoyed the series anyway.

🎙️ radioblog: 57, rue de Varenne, Saison 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 07:54:20 -0400

J’aime bien un petit drame politique, et voici la première fois que j’ai eue la chance de rencontrer un tel drame à la française. J’avoue que je ne suis pas arrivé à tout suivre, mais j’ai été content d’avoir reconnu plusieurs détails qui auraient échapper à la plupart des Américains. J’aime le cynicisme des personnages, même si certaines parties de la série deviennent fantabuleuses.

📚 bookblog: Roots of All Evil (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 07:47:31 -0400

I’n pickier about this volume because it’s harder to follow up on a good premise than to set it up, but it hasn’t entirely jumped the shark, and I’m still enjoying it.

📚 bookblog: Thorne in the Flesh (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 18:54:50 -0400

This volume has some more obvious furniture moving so that important things can happen later, but it’s still great so far.

📚 bookblog: Reap What Was Sown (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 17:49:06 -0400

Uh, this is amazing—and in a way I never would have expected. I don’t usually do body horror, but it’s just restrained enough for me to work with. The concept is fascinating, the art is good, and there’s a sense of humor that has me checking every detail in every panel for a chuckle. Glad to be getting back into this huge bundle of comics (but also, I just bought a bunch of Dark Horse titles, sooooo).

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 11:09:49 -0400

Going over an assessment data report generated by my university, and while I don’t consider myself a data analysis expert, I have some complaints about how data are being presented here. Not doing much to challenge my suspicion that assessment data are often more performative than productive.

🔗 linkblog: Flock CEO: ‘We got this one wrong’

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 11:15:26 -0400

This response is such a CEO way to apologize for something:

“It took me maybe longer than it should have to realize the sheer impact of the company,” he says. “I’m still surprised. I got our July update a week ago, and we helped find almost a thousand missing people, over 22,000 stolen cars — in July. That’s crazy. That’s such a big impact on the world. And what I came to realize over time was that the responsibility that bears with it is an obligation to make sure that it’s creating a society that we both, you and I, and everyone around us, want to raise their kids in.”

Anyway, imo, the solution to Flock is for there not to be Flock. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 10:53:34 -0400

Because trademark bullying is in the news lately: Did you know that Intellectual Reserve owns the top-level domains .lds and .mormon, presumably for the sole purpose of preventing anyone else from using them?

🔗 linkblog: CBP Workers Allegedly Used Government Databases to Spy on Exes, Crushes, and Colleagues

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 07:08:29 -0400

🔗 linkblog: CBP Workers Allegedly Used Government Databases to Spy on Exes, Crushes, and Colleagues https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-13-oof-this/

🔗 linkblog: Grace After Institutional Betrayal

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 07:04:27 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Grace After Institutional Betrayal https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-13-lots-to/

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:29:03 -0400

Taken aback when I found some of my siblings listed within one of the systems where I work. There’s probably an “explainable creepy” rather than “inexplicable creepy” reason for this, but it’s still weird.

🔗 linkblog: Company Offering ‘100% Human-Written, Never AI’ Medical Research Is Entirely AI

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:23:51 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Company Offering ‘100% Human-Written, Never AI’ Medical Research Is Entirely AI https://spencergreenhalgh.com/work/2026-08-11-stories-like/

🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and the Misreading of Science Fiction

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:43:46 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and the Misreading of Science Fiction https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-11-i-could/

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:18:39 -0400

Nan, mais c’est qui le type qui a traduit “se tenir au drone de secours” comme “stand with the relief drone” en Heave Ho 2 ? Parce que c’est bien différent, ça.

🔗 linkblog: Dismiss Church’s Trademark Lawsuit Against “Mormon Stories” Podcast, EFF Urges Court

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 20:49:17 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Dismiss Church’s Trademark Lawsuit Against “Mormon Stories” Podcast, EFF Urges Court https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-10-good-work/

🍿 movieblog: Hundreds of Beavers (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 15:45:25 -0400

I hate a dumb movie, but I love a movie that is so intentionally dumb that it loops right around to genius. There are excellent jokes of all kinds in here—from riffs on video games to subtle musical jokes—and even if I could have done without an “Indian fur trader” character, I’m hard pressed to find anything (else) that gave me pause in this movie. I wish I hadn’t watched it on my phone while doing chores, because I’m sure I would have gotten even more out of it on a full screen.

📚 bookblog: Mormon Garments: Sacred and Secret (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 15:42:01 -0400

Such a helpful collection of data, and I’m pleased by how many echoes of Ellul are in there, as I move forward with trying to apply his thought to Mormonism.

🔗 linkblog: AI detectors are creating a new era of distrust

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 10:13:03 -0400

As I’ve said before, there’s something Ellulian in all of this AI/AI detection arms race. The creation of a different climate strikes me as more important than the utility (or problems) of any given tool.

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 16:53:16 -0400

J’ai déjà écrit sur combien j’aime le faux français dans Heave Ho 2, mais j’avais oublié mon exemple préféré : quand le chef de cuisine prononce « burger » comme un verbe du premier groupe.

« façon d'wich » : l'été du jeu vidéo français

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 13:37:46 -0400

Sans le faire exprès, il nous est arrivé (à ma fille et moi) de passer un été du jeu vidéo français. En début d’été, j’ai acheté « Rayman Legends ». On avait beaucoup aimé jouer à « Rayman Origins » sur notre Wii avant de nous offrir une Switch. Comme ça nous manquait un peu, j’ai décidé d’acheter la suite pour retourner à ces souvenirs-là. Rayman me paraît un jeu bien français, même si je ne suis pas sûr de pouvoir défendre cette impression. C’est surtout l’animation du jeu, qui me semble mise en vedette d’une façon qui est digne d’un pays qui valorise la bande dessinée et le dessin animé.

Plus tard dans l’été, j’ai été bien content d’apprendre que « Heave Ho 2 » sortirait bientôt. Depuis l’achat de notre Switch, on a passé des heures et des heures à jouer à Heave Ho, et découvrir qu’il y aurait une suite m’a bouleversé — pour le bien ! C’est aussi un jeu français qui valorise l’animation (encore plus dans la suite) et qui est vraiment digne comme suite à l’original. Malgré les heures qu’on a passées à jouer à Heave Ho, il faut avouer qu’on atteint vite les limites du jeu, surtout dans la mode compétitive, où il n’y a que quelques niveaux à jouer en boucle. Par contre, Heave Ho 2 est fidèle à la conception du jeu original mais élargit d’une manière impressionnante les façons de jouer. C’est vraiment amusant !

Ça fait quelques semaines que j’ai l’intention d’écrire ce post, et d’abord, je comptais l’écrire en anglais. (Vous remarquez peut-être que je dis très peu sur comment on joue à ces jeux, car il faudrait plus d’effort pour le faire en français, et moi, je suis fainéant). Pourtant, en rejouant à quelques niveaux de Heave Ho 2, j’ai remarqué un truc qui mérite être discuté en français. Dans ces niveaux-là, on est dans une cuisine, et on doit se servir de ses petits bonhommes bizarres pour préparer un plat désigné (et ensuite jugé) par un chef de cuisine.

Même si je parle d’un « été du jeu vidéo français », on joue à Heave Ho 2 (comme à Rayman Legends) en anglais, mais comme tout chef de cuisine digne de ce nom, celui de Heave Ho 2 paraît bien français. Même ses annonces sur le plat qu’on doit préparer sont évidemment en un français particulier. Au commencement, je croyais que le personnage disait du charabia pur et simple avec un accent français—c’est peut-être logique, vu qu’on veut évoquer le français sans donner l’impression que les jou.eur.euse.s doivent comprendre ce qui est vraiment dit. Pourtant, comme je me débrouille assez bien en français, j’ai remarqué après plusieurs répétitions (car il est facile de tout rater en Heave Ho 2, surtout si on veut finir tous les « défis » posés dans un niveau) qu’il y avait du vrai français, pas juste en accent plus ou moins français.

Fin, je dis « du vrai français », mais c’est justement ça qui m’intrigue. Quand on doit préparer un hot-dog avec de la moutarde, le chef de cuisine le décrit comme un « chien-chaud moutardé ». Il me semble que ce n’est qu’à la limite que cette phrase peut être considéré du bon français. D’autres recettes, par contre, sont décrits avec des mots qui me semblent du faux français, ce que je trouve bien amusant. Par exemple, un niveau exige la préparation d’un sandwich au poulet avec la phrase « cui-cui, façon d’wich » Ça se comprend, mais c’est évident que ce n’est pas du vrai français (en fait, il faut avouer qu’il y a d’autres mots dans la phrase que je n’arrive pas du tout à saisir).

Bon, c’est une petite chose toute bête, mais c’est quand-même une petite raison de plus d’être content de parler français—pour comprendre de petites blagues dans un jeu vidéo que j’aimais déjà.

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:15:18 -0400

Today’s as good a day as any for an “accept with minor revisions.”

🔗 linkblog: Antichrist Rolls Eyes Throughout Peter Thiel Lecture

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 10:11:17 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Antichrist Rolls Eyes Throughout Peter Thiel Lecture https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-07-love-this/

🔗 linkblog: Flock Pitched a Plan To Turn Uber and Lyft Drivers Into Roaming Surveillance Vehicles

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 10:09:55 -0400

Love a company response that comes down to “sure, we talked about it, but we didn’t actually do it.”

🔗 linkblog: Why does Apple keep banning Telegram, but never X?

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 10:07:54 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Why does Apple keep banning Telegram, but never X? https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-07-this-comparison/

🔗 linkblog: California Town Says Flock Cameras Misread License Plates 71% Of The Time

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 06:58:56 -0400

I was reading some Jacques Ellul yesterday, where he noted that in “technical morality,” technology cannot do wrong, only the humans using the technology.

Flock’s response here seems to be a variation on that: The technology cannot be inaccurate, only the humans using it.

🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk’s Grokipedia Quietly Stopped Updating In April. Basically No One Noticed.

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:36:23 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk’s Grokipedia Quietly Stopped Updating In April. Basically No One Noticed. https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-06-amazing-update/

🔗 linkblog: Cities Are Ditching Flock, Immediately Replacing It With Axon License Plate Readers

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 13:00:08 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Cities Are Ditching Flock, Immediately Replacing It With Axon License Plate Readers https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-08-06-look-some/

🍿 movieblog: The Imitation Game (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:57:21 -0400

This movie is well done, and Turing is a figure I’d love to learn more about, but I got the sense that these two observations were in tension with each other. In short, I’m so annoyed at how obviously the history has been made (and changed) to conveniently fit a movie that I can’t enjoy what is not a bad film otherwise.

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 16:42:09 -0400

Finally got my July 4th print edition of The Onion, and I don’t know if this fake ad is regular Onion absurdism or an under-the-radar Mormon-adjacent joke.

🍿 movieblog: Airplane! (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 16:37:37 -0400

A deserved masterpiece that I enjoyed watching despite much that’s aged—some things were just out of date while others were more problematic.

☕ teablog: Teavana, Classic Chai (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 16:36:20 -0400

☕ teablog: Teavana, Classic Chai (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤) https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-08-02-serviceable-chai/

☕ teablog: Living Water Tea House, High Mountain Rougui (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 16:35:25 -0400

I usually feel guilty about preferring corporate dessert-y teas to fancy blends, but this blend has dispelled some of that. It wasn’t bad at first, and I was glad to give a fancy tea a try, but the taste wound up being so strong that the next thing I steeped in my tea tumbler tasted of this rather than what I’d been hoping for. Meh.

📚 bookblog: Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 16:28:42 -0400

I thought for sure that I would be more critical of this the second time through, but I found (again?) that the last third of this is the interesting part, even if the leading up to it feels confusing.

It’s very interesting to read this after having reread Dawn of Everything and after reading There Never Was a West for the first time. I can better see the connections between those three pieces—and how they might inform my future writing.

🔗 linkblog: Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 10:59:49 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-31-missed-the/

🔗 linkblog: How a Yale AI-cheating dispute became a 13-count federal lawsuit

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 10:08:39 -0400

This story is full of twists and turns, and what I think is most important is how generative AI creates a new environment.

I think students using generative AI to cheat is super dumb. I also think that using AI detectors is super problematic. Independent of what did or did not happen here, I’m struck by the way that the mere existence of these kinds of technologies creates a multilayered climate of suspicion and distrust.

This student’s case sure seems fishy, but his distrust of AI detection tools isn’t wrong, but his university’s concerns aren’t wrong either. We can talk all we want about “right” and “wrong” uses of this tool, but the whole context had changed on a fundamental level, and that is creating problems for everyone.

A merely utilitarian perspective on technologies and ed tech doesn’t account for everything here. We need something more holistic, like Jacques Ellul’s technique to make sense of how generative AI has changed things.

🔗 linkblog: D&D is getting World of Warcraft and Star Wars crossovers

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 09:59:23 -0400

I first encountered TTRPGs through the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars game, which was a heavily reskinned version of 3.5. I would be very tempted to pick up a Star Wars sourcebook for 5e.

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: Better to beg forgiveness (31 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:38:13 -0400

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: Better to beg forgiveness (31 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-31-some-very/

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: The stupidest imaginable excuses for surveillance pricing (30 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 11:39:06 -0400

I just got rotated off my grad program’s data science class, where I spent a week on the importance of theory, etc. If I were still teaching it, I’d add in this gem of a paragraph on surveillance pricing:

It’s “theory-free.” You don’t have to discover why a group is willing to pay more under a given set of circumstances, you merely have to observe and weaponize this fact. You don’t have to know why one group of purchasers consistently accept higher prices between 6AM and 8AM – you can just automatically jack up prices on them without knowing or caring that you’re gouging parents of young children who are re-ordering essential supplies while trying to get their kids to school in the morning.

🔗 linkblog: Pluralistic: Discernment (28 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 07:36:46 -0400

I want to disagree with some of what Doctorow says here, but that’s precisely why I am bookmarking it. I want to make sure that my opposition to generative AI is principled rather than reactionary, and his defense of certain uses of it is something I need to keep in mind.

☕ teablog: Rare Bird Coffee Roasters, Hojicha Latte (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 10:39:27 -0400

☕ teablog: Rare Bird Coffee Roasters, Hojicha Latte (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️) https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-07-26-hojicha-is/

📚 bookblog: The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World... (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 20:29:15 -0400

Rereading The Dawn of Everything finally pushed me to use an on-hand Libro.fm credit to get this in audiobook so I could give it a try. I find Graeber to be a bit uneven (I appreciate most of what he writes, but I don’t find all of his arguments totally convincing), and so I waffled on whether to give this full marks.

Ultimately, I went with the more generous rating, because even if some of his ideas didn’t land with me, it’s useful to have so much of his thinking captured in one place. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ll need to get a print copy of this for the same research project that Dawn of Everything had me thinking about.

Of course, a lot of the essays here were good in their own right. There Never Was a West is helpful for fleshing out his idea of the indigenous critique, I find that Bullshit Jobs is stronger as an essay than it was a whole book, and the final essay on fun and play was very helpful for teasing out some of the anarchist-flavored similarities I find between his writing and that of Jacques Ellul.

📺 tvblog: Severance Season 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 20:17:29 -0400

I avoided this series for a while because I was afraid that it would provoke some existential angst, but wow is it ever good. Despite what I just said, existential horror is my favorite horror, and this series delivers; it also has analog horror vibes that I find delightful.

I would say that I regret not having watched this earlier except it’s nice not having to wait for the second season in real time.

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 20:10:26 -0400

Uh, tandoori paneer tikka is amazing. I did not know you could prepare cheese like this, and I love it.

🔗 linkblog: Meta just created a moderation nightmare for its smart glasses

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:39:05 -0400

Hard to pick a single killer line from this one. There’s this paragraph:

Appreciate for a moment the bind Meta finds itself in: Its product allowed customers to behave so objectionably that the company responded with a content ban, as if to say “Stop making us look bad.”

And then this conclusion hits hard:

In saying the company will police the creepiest version of smart glasses content but sidestepping deeper questions, Meta is trying to have it both ways: It gets to tout its enforcement while creating the conditions for this content to exist in the first place.

📺 tvblog: Un village français Saison 7 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 16:37:35 -0400

Cette dernière saison est un peu bizarre, car on voit bien qu’elle est divisée en deux parties, dont la deuxième n’est pas vraiment nécessaire pour conclure l’histoire de la série. Pourtant, j’aime bien ces personnages, et j’ai donc été content de leur dire au revoir comme ça.

C’est une jolie série à laquelle je m’intéressais depuis plusieurs années. Même si c’est bête de le dire, je suis fier de moi d’avoir enfin tout regardé !

new insight five years on

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 16:10:25 -0400

I’ve mentioned a few times recently across my different subblogs that importing my Twitter archive into the Day One journaling app has been interesting for my ability to go back into my past in ways that I wasn’t able to before. Yesterday, going through Day One’s “On This Day” feature turned up a tweet from five years earlier that stood out to me:

Also, this started as a silly idea while biking to campus one morning, but I increasingly want to write something on Mormonism, technology, and authority that a) discusses interplay between “tools” and “systems” (both as tech) and b) uses Hiram Page and seer stones as an example.

It’s not necessarily that I’d forgotten about the tweet—I can’t say for sure whether I specifically remember composing that post, but I do remember the feeling of having that idea. For several months, I had some rough ideas scribbled out on an office whiteboard, wondering how I might tackle that question. Rather, what stood out is the way that the post felt particularly relevant to me right now.

About a week ago, a mentioned that I had a rough idea for a book, and that rough idea is very much in the vein of my “silly idea” from five years ago. So, this is definitely an idea that has been percolating in my head for quite some time, but something important has changed in the past year or two. Rather than scribbled ideas on a whiteboard, I think I have a sense of the theoretical framework that I’d bring to bear on this question.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, that framework is an Ellulian one! I know that I’ve been a bit of a broken record about Ellul on this blog for the past year and a half, but one of the reasons for that is because his writing gives me language for things that I’ve been trying to puzzle out but didn’t have the words for. Coming across the journaled tweet is a nice way of seeing how things have come together over the past five years, and I’m excited to see where things go over the next five.

📚 bookblog: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 16:00:59 -0400

I wasn’t expecting to count this as a “work read” when I decided to reread it a couple of months ago, but wow, did it ever help make sense of some ideas I’m kicking around for a potential book project.

Like my last read, I have to admit that I’m ill-suited to evaluate the historical or anthropological claims. I really appreciate the framework it brings to its inquiry, though, not least for the way it echoes similar ideas in Jacques Ellul’s work. This gets me thinking about anarchist commonalities between these authors, which is something I want to explore more.

🔗 linkblog: “Digital Colonialism”: U.S. Demands To Access Africans’ Data Raise Privacy, Sovereignty Concerns

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 06:59:05 -0400

Looks like the Trump administration is responding to dumb decisions and cynical cuts with pure exploitation:

After withdrawing from the World Health Organization and losing access to its global network that tracks and combats disease outbreaks, the U.S. is attempting to obtain the information necessary to address potential pandemics through a patchwork of deals with individual countries

🍿 movieblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:27:00 -0400

Kiddo and I went to go see this at the library, and in the few minutes before they actually hit play, whoever was running the event played some of the Blu-ray special features to tide us over. One of them was about all of the “easter eggs” we were going to see in the movie. This annoyed me a bit, because if I’d heard one thing about the movie, it’s that it was stuffed full of (perhaps gratuitous) Nintendo references, and I don’t think it’s an “easter egg” if the movie is built around hitting you over the head with reference after reference after reference.

Indeed, that’s what much of the movie was, and while it delighted kiddo, I can’t say that it impressed me. Does Mr. Game and Watch have to appear in the climax of a Mario movie? The entire plot felt constructed around making as many Nintendo in-jokes (and by “in-jokes” I mean mostly obvious references, though I missed a number of them, too), and, well, meh.

It feels weird to give this the same rating that I gave Toy Story 5, because while I was disappointed with that movie, it at least tried to be meaningful in a way that I’m not sure this one did. That said, I’m cutting it some slack because I think what the movie set out to accomplish was to make kids like mine happy, and it worked at that! There were also some genuinely fun jokes and references that I actually enjoyed, despite going into it expecting to be grumpy.

The animation is also good, though (like Toy Story 5, though I don’t think I mentioned it in that review) that kind of annoyed me, actually. There were some parts (especially the ending credits) that felt like attempts to show off what Illumination knows how to do with animation, and while it’s technically impressive, I feel like generative AI has soured me on “hey, look what we can do” tech demonstrations, even when they’re cool. It got me thinking about how little some of the characters spoke, and how little the voice actors probably needed to spend in the studio to collect their checks. It’s a movie largely built around IP and not necessarily around humans, since animation lets you invoke a character without needing to put a human behind it. In a weird way, it made me want to listen to more radio dramas.

This is way more than I expected to write, and I’m confident I’m overthinking this review, so it’s time to save this post and publish it.

🔗 linkblog: The Rise of Anti-Flock Influencers Who Make Things Up for Clout

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 12:10:27 -0400

🔗 linkblog: The Rise of Anti-Flock Influencers Who Make Things Up for Clout https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/2026-07-23-flock-is/

🔗 linkblog: DOT cranks up its campaign to strip bike lane references from federal websites

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 07:05:34 -0400

🔗 linkblog: DOT cranks up its campaign to strip bike lane references from federal websites https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-07-23-what-a/

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 21:15:15 -0400

First impression of my new push mower: I get why they aren’t more popular, but I’m also mad that in decades of mowing lawns, I never knew it was a viable modern option and not just a prop for movies set in the 50s or whatever.

#bikedad reputation and other summer victories

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:59:34 -0400

I genuinely appreciate that my job is flexible enough that I get to be primary parent over the summer, but I’d be lying if I said that I enjoy every single moment of it. Enough of my self-conception is wrapped up in my professional identity (and enough of my anxiety is wrapped up specifically in parenting) that it has taken some real re-orientation over the past several years to turn this into a more positive experience. This summer has not been without bumps in the road, but it feels like it has gone particularly well.

This morning felt like it was full of victories. There are storms predicted for Central Kentucky today—though the prediction keeps changing on when they’ll actually get here—so we began the day with a trip to the grocery store to make sure we had a couple of things on hand. On our way there and back, we listened to an episode of The Re-Slayer’s Take, a kid-friendly (and, frankly, more me-friendly) Critical Role spin-off that we’ve really enjoyed these past few years. This will be our third full listen-through, and we continue to hope for a third season one of these days.

That was nice enough, but the real highlight of the day was heading to “open library” at kiddo’s elementary school. We had fun checking out books and chatting with the school librarian. We talked to them about how district budget cuts are affecting the job, chatted about what kiddo might get up to in school next year, and talked about books, books, and books. On our way out of the library, another family was coming in, and it turned out to be one of kiddo’s friends, which led us to stay just a bit longer to chat.

I swapped numbers with kiddo’s friend’s dad, because one thing I’m lousy at over the summer is getting kiddo together with school friends, and I want to do better at that. I also got a kick out of a comment he made—that he saw two bikes locked up at the bike rack and thought for sure that it must be the two of us. I’m always pleased to get a reminder that I have a #bikedad reputation, especially over the summer, when we (perhaps unintuitively) don’t bike as much as we do during the regular schoolyear. He took the time to tell me about their latest bike adventures and how a new helmet just arrived in the mail today.

It’s a silly little moment, but I appreciate any moment that makes me feel like I’m doing things right. Between this, recently fixing a curtain rod in kiddo’s room, having a reel mower on its way to try out Thursday morning, trying out pickleball with kiddo earlier this week, and recently ordering a new wallet, I feel like I’m living a good dad life this week, and I hope it keeps up.

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.