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📚 bookblog: Woodland Creatures (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 21:38:49 -0400

This volume seemed to depart so drastically from the first that I had to make sure I hasn’t skipped something by accident. The stories are mostly recognizable as part of a shared universe, but the worldbuilding feels overly ambitious and underserved by the actual plot. The topless Galatea robots are unnecessary, and the lampshading of their luridness by attributing it to an in-universe pervert doesn’t help. I was willing to give the first volume in this series the benefit of the doubt, but I’m glad I don’t have any more of this to read.

🎙️ radioblog: Day of the Vashta Nerada (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 21:34:05 -0400

See, this one I should have loved: I really want to like Paul McGann’s Doctor, and I do like the Vashta Nerada. This felt like excessive EU riffing, though, and I just couldn’t get excited about it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🎙️ radioblog: The Carrionite Curse (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 09:41:54 -0400

I shouldn’t like this! It took a trip to YouTube to remember who the Carrionites even were, and there are so many Doctor-Who-dumb, audio-play-dumb, and just generally dumb elements to this play. Yet, it somehow came together into something that I enjoyed listening to during a stressful week.

☕ teablog: Tazo, Organic Chai (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 09:36:45 -0400

☕ teablog: Tazo, Organic Chai (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤) https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-03-12-doesnt-knock/

☕ teablog: The Republic of Tea, Vanilla Almond (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 09:35:51 -0400

I hesitated to give this full marks because I know it gets less interesting with time, but that’s also true of my chocolate mint tea that I love, and it’s been a while since I’ve had any of this, so my taste buds are very happy.

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 09:21:15 -0400

Just checked up on the results of a web scrape that worked so, so much better than expected only to find that I hadn’t updated the base URL correctly, so all the results were wrong.

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 09:08:09 -0400

Since I’ve been posting about Doctor Who and Tinker Tailor: I had heard of the Valeyard before (my Classic Who knowledge is limited 😬), but I only recently learned that he was portrayed by the actor who played Peter Guillam, and this is really messing with my head.

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 07:22:04 -0400

I would never claim that Käärijä and Baby Lasagna’s #eurodab is a good song, but having it stuck in my head the morning after poor sleep is doing more help than harm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 20:04:18 -0400

I like the actor who plays Jim Prideaux in the Tinker Tailor miniseries, but even though I don’t speak a word of Czech, it’s very clear that he doesn’t either.

🎙️ radioblog: Empire of the Racnoss (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 08:43:21 -0400

The Racnoss struck me as dumb in their first appearance, and this play hasn’t done much to disabuse me of that impression. That said, this played enough with interesting Doctor Who themes of peace and conflict that it won me over anyway.

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 19:39:07 -0400

Look, I’ve heard some good orchestral versions of the Doctor Who theme, but that song was meant to be as electronic as possible.

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

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

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

📚 bookblog: Tooth and Claw (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 16:36:04 -0400

Interesting art, and some interesting ideas (like a foulmouthed human being transported to a land of animal wizards). I think there’s something here, even if I’m not totally hooked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

📚 bookblog: La nouvelle sorcière (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 10:00:06 -0400

Ce tome n’est pas moins mignon que les précédents, et il y a des cases qui nous ont bien fait rire ! Pourtant, alors que les trois premiers tomes ont été une seule trilogie bien conçue, ce tome ressemble plutôt aux suites qui arrivent après un succès médiatique, qui sont peut-être bons mais qui n’ont pas forcément la même qualité ou plan organisateur.

on anarchist themes in Pluribus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

📚 bookblog: Autonomous (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

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

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

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

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 14:45:20 -0400

The art is good, and there are elements of a rollicking time travel romp hidden in here, but the story ultimately comes down to tech bros doing what they want because they have the power to, and we’re lucky that they decided to have a conscience at the end. That is not the kind of story I want to read in 2026.

📚 bookblog: Superman: Red Son (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 14:42:50 -0400

I’ve read this too many times in the past two decades for it to feel as innovative and interesting as it once did, but it remains good!

🔗 linkblog: Grammarly is using our identities without permission

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

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

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 21:04:55 -0500

La bd que je lis en ce moment avec ma fille fait un petit clin d’œil aux fameux pirates d’Astérix. Je l’ai donc envoyée chercher un album pour lui expliquer la blague—sauf que j’avais oublié combien l’un des pirates est un caricature raciste, et tout a fini dans la malaise 😬

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🎙️ radioblog: Night of the Vashta Nerada (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 09:44:08 -0500

“Classic Doctors, new monsters” is such a fun concept for an audio play series, and hearing Tom Baker face off against the Vashta Nerada was a delight. Don’t know if I’ll enjoy the upcoming stories as much, but this was fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🔗 linkblog: Les premiers trams prêts à circuler dès mardi à Lausanne pour des tests | RTS

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 13:54:53 -0500

Si je comprends bien, la ligne du tramway est tout près de l’appartement à Renens où j’ai vécu pendant quelques mois, et cette nouvelle fait donc plaisir même si je n’ai pas mis pied à Lausanne depuis 2010.

thinking about (French) resistance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

📚 bookblog: La source des secrets (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:38:29 -0500

Après avoir fini les quatres tomes « Bergères guerrières », on revient maintenant à Brume, relisant le troisième tome avant de commencer le quatrième qu’on vient de recevoir.

On aime bien cette série dans notre famille ! Elle est mignonne, bien dessinée, et marrante.

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

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

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

Polymarket as the ultimate unethical abstraction game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🎙️ radioblog: Theatre of War (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 15:47:20 -0500

Sylvester McCoy is delightful, and I’m glad I got to experience a story with his Doctor and Sophie Aldred’s Ace. It’s goofy in the way that most expanded universe material is, but there’s enough there to be interesting, and I enjoyed the listen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 12:19:30 -0500

When did YouTube start autodubbing videos into the language it assumes you want? No, thank you!

🔗 linkblog: What’s the Point of School When AI Can Do Your Homework?

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 11:55:14 -0500

🔗 linkblog: What’s the Point of School When AI Can Do Your Homework? https://spencergreenhalgh.com/work/2026-02-25-the-headline/

🎙️ radioblog: Sweet Salvation (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 20:46:28 -0500

It’s real neat that the Eighth Doctor has had such a presence in Big Finish and other ancillary media, but this is another story that entirely dissuades me from trying to get into any of that, because I cannot follow what’s going on. Hard to say whether it’s continuity lockout, poor writing, or both.

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

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

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

🎙️ radioblog: World of Damnation (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 11:53:38 -0500

This story is the hardest to follow radio drama I’ve ever experienced. It did turn out that I’d accidentally skipped over the first few tracks, but even going back to listen to them didn’t help much. I couldn’t tell characters apart, I wasn’t sure what was a flashback and what was the main story, there was some serious continuity lockout, and I found the whole thing confusing. There were some fun ideas in there, but they were buried under a persistent feeling of being lost.

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

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

📺 tvblog: Au service de la France Saison 2 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 09:49:52 -0500

Je me souvenais de ne pas aimer cette saison aussi bien que la première. Si ça reste vrai (je n’aime pas trop ce qu’on fait avec André, ce qui me semble trop compliqué), il y a des moments marrants qui ont lieu dans cette saison, et je suis triste de savoir que même la plus compliquée des histoires ne trouveront pas de résolution dans une troisième saison.

🎙️ radioblog: How to Make a Killing in Time Travel (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 09:44:59 -0500

There was some passing around of the idiot ball in this story, and it felt surprisingly dark for a Doctor Who story, but I appreciated the layers of disaster piling up, and the villain was compelling in a pathetic way (in multiple senses of the word). I don’t know the Eighth Doctor well, so it’s interesting to get to know him here.

🎙️ radioblog: Their Finest Hour (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 09:41:05 -0500

Battle of Britain Doctor Who would really have appealed to me at some point, but it’s the sort of thing now where I find myself wondering if the story is uncritically pedestalizing an important moment of history that is actually much more complicated.

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

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

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

📚 bookblog: L'abîme (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 08:14:40 -0500

Comment dire que j’ai tant aimé une bd qui a fait pleurer ma fille ? C’est vrai qu’il y a des moments tristes à la fin de cette série impressionnante, mais je suis content qu’il y ait des œuvres pour enfants qui osent ne pas tout résoudre. En plus, l’histoire continue à être intéressante et l’art jolie.

📺 tvblog: The Diplomat Season 3 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 08:10:09 -0500

Enjoying this series less and less the more that it goes on. I think I’d still watch a Season 4, but what began as a smart series with interesting drama has felt with each season that it’s leaning more into the drama and willing to set aside the smarts. Some fun moments in this series but also some headscratchers.

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 08:06:05 -0500

Worms: The Board Game is exactly what I was hoping for. No, it isn’t an elegant work of high strategy, but it captures the feel of the source material even in abstracting it to board game format. Really enjoyed my first play and looking forward to more.

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 20:36:28 -0500

For the past three weeks, we’ve been doing “daddy translates a French kids’ comics series” at bedtimes. We just finished the last volume, and it did not end the way kiddo wanted, so we had a conversation about fanfic and fixfic.

🎙️ radioblog: The Neverwhen (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 16:43:04 -0500

Some silly stuff in here, but enough of a compelling story (and enough John Hurt and core Doctor Who vibes) that I’m willing to forgive it.

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 15:58:01 -0500

WAIT. Read the letter more carefully, and my “health plan” gave this third party printing/mailing service my SSN and address. This is even dumber.

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 15:55:16 -0500

Just got word from a “third-party printing/mailroom services” provider whose name I don’t recognize that they had a data breach involving my SSN and address. Literally no idea how they got those data. Did I sign up with them? Does my employer work with them? What a stupid world we live in.

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

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

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

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

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

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 13:14:55 -0500

There are so many layers of unearned, inaccurate, and problematic chatbot anthropomorphism here that I honestly don’t know where to start.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 10:25:36 -0500

Grading anxiety (“am I not teaching this right? is my rubric unclear?”) has been a persistent part of my academic career for so long that I’ve had to deliberately embrace that Simpsons Skinner meme and tell myself that sometimes “no, it’s the [students] who are wrong.”

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 07:28:30 -0500

TFW a special issue deadline gets extended by a month after you dropped everything for a week to meet the original deadline. Alas.

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

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

🔗 linkblog: 'Students Are Being Treated Like Guinea Pigs:' Inside an AI-Powered Private School

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 11:30:06 -0500

🔗 linkblog: 'Students Are Being Treated Like Guinea Pigs:' Inside an AI-Powered Private School https://spencergreenhalgh.com/work/2026-02-17-so-many/

🎙️ radioblog: A Thing of Guile (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 09:22:48 -0500

🎙️ radioblog: A Thing of Guile (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤) https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-02-17-more-fun/

🎙️ radioblog: Legion of the Lost (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 13:59:17 -0500

Expanded universe material can get very dumb very quickly, but sometimes, it’s a great way to explore stuff that the main canon didn’t have time for. Just like it was a delight to have Christopher Eccleston back as the Ninth Doctor, getting more from John Hurt as the War Doctor is a treat. The story is interesting enough, but it’s really just fun to play with these action figures for a bit,

introducing the next generation to Numa Numa

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 10:28:02 -0500

Kiddo and I often play a little bit of Switch together right before or after dinner. Last night, she was humming what my spouse and I both thought was a nonsense melody that she was making up—but that immediately reminded both of us of the Romanian dance song Dragostea Din Tei as featured in the classic internet meme Numa Numa.

It turned out that kiddo was humming Dragostea Din Tei—the adults had both forgotten that a version (or sample? I dunno) of the song features in Mitchells vs. the Machines, but she’d watched it recently on her own, and that’s what she had in her mind when singing during Switch time.

Anyway, that turned into explaining to kiddo how we knew the song and watching the meme video together, which she found a lot of fun. We chatted about internet video before YouTube and looked up together how the guy in the video felt about his memetic status, to make sure that we weren’t exploiting him for our own amusement à la Lightsaber Kid. Over the past 18 hours or so, we’ve also basically just had the song permanently stuck in our heads, which we haven’t helped by bringing it up to listen to just one more time.

This has been one of a few moments where my spouse and I have enjoyed reminiscing about 2000s internet culture and trying to explain it to the next generation, and I’m looking forward for the next unexpected opportunity to do so.

☕ teablog: Chaotic Good gaming café, Chai Latte (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 07:12:41 -0500

When one is at a gaming café, one pays one’s dues to help keep the place open, but the chai latte was a bad choice. It tasted like warm milk with some cinnamon mixed in, and maybe that works for some people, but it’s not what I’m looking for. I might just go for some “regular” tea the next time I’m there—or support the café in some other way.

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 18:06:03 -0500

All parents should introduce their kids to D&D so that all parents can hear their kids say things like “I don’t think it’s worth it to have the spider fall in love with me.”

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

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

Like Dr. Strangelove, but dumber. Gift link.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🎙️ radioblog: The Auntie Matter (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:11:33 -0500

Clever genre blending is one of my favorite things, so setting a Doctor Who story in what I presume is the style of a P. G. Wodehouse story is delightful (even if I clearly don’t know the genre it’s being blended into!).

🎙️ radioblog: The Ravagers (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 10:02:54 -0500

Doctor Who is not often high art, and neither are radio plays, but this was good enough. Besides, I didn’t realize how damn much I missed Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor, and I would have struggled through a much worse story just to hear his “lots of planets have a north” voice.

📚 bookblog: Le périple (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 09:59:55 -0500

Cette série continue à être jolie et intéressante. J’ai déjà dit combien je trouve l’histoire innovante (alors que des contes d’aventure pour enfant, il y en a des milliers qui se ressemblent), mais je le répète ici.

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 09:45:01 -0500

In a Zoom meeting with the dean, with my X-Wing and Enterprise-D posters clearly visible in the background. Living my most professional life.

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 16:45:13 -0500

Torn between enjoying Kagi’s machine translation tool and grumpiness about using something LLM-based. Still can’t get over digital labor, but I might(?) be less hostile to generative AI if it were more often deployed in these targeted, careful ways instead of as get-rich-quick chatbots.

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 19:50:43 -0500

Leveling up from Doctor Who Short Trips to full-length Doctor Who radio plays, and they’re only affirming my belief that a well-done radio play might as well be television.

🎙️ radioblog: Quantum Heresy (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:33:08 -0500

Maybe I shouldn’t have listened to this while trying to find parking on campus at a very inconvenient time, but even though there’s an interesting time travel bit at the center of the story, it just didn’t pay off for me.

🎙️ radioblog: The Shadow Trader (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:33:07 -0500

This was a fun example of a lot of worldbuilding crammed into the background of a short Doctor Who story, and it gets a lot of points for that.

🎙️ radioblog: To Cut a Blade of Grass (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:33:06 -0500

This story is maybe the most heartwarming and beautiful that I’ve heard in the entire collection! The Sixth Doctor visits a stroke patient in the hospital and takes him into his own future to see a few important events that he’ll miss because he never recovers from the stroke. It really emphasizes that you don’t have to be important to matter and encourages the listener to be kind in small ways. I really liked it.

🎙️ radioblog: The Lions of Trafalgar (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:33:05 -0500

This particular story is just so very British that it didn’t really connect with me. I normally appreciate Doctor Who’s very Britishness, but this one just didn’t work for this American.

🎙️ radioblog: The Old Rogue (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:33:04 -0500

Loved this one. It tells the story of The Fourth Doctor and Romana visiting a café owner who is actually a galactic tyrant who got body swapped with a café owner forty years ago and now lives out a much more meager existence on earth. The Doctor checks in on him every decade or so, and even though he resents the whole thing, it’s kind of working for the villain’s rehabilitation. It was clever, funny, and made me want to watch Tom Baker-era Doctor Who, so full marks.

🎙️ radioblog: Lost in the Wakefield Triangle (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:33:03 -0500

There have been a couple of these audio stories that felt like someone read a Wikipedia article about something they found interesting and decided to build a Doctor Who story around it. I… have not really enjoyed them.

🎙️ radioblog: Penny Wise, Pound Foolish (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:33:02 -0500

There’s an interesting, even Ellulian, moral to this story about falling in love with the means and not thinking about the ends, but I think the story surrounding that moral could have been better done.

🎙️ radioblog: A Star is Born (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:32:58 -0500

It took me three times to start and follow through on this one. The science was too wibbly wobbly, and I’m not invested enough in the First Doctor to care about it on those terms.

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

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

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

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

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 18:02:04 -0500

Local schools have been out for so long that I occasionally forget that they have had class since winter break.

☕ teablog: Tazo, Green Ginger (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 15:02:32 -0500

A friend offered me a cup of this when I dropped by to visit briefly. It was good! I’d drink more green tea if it tasted like this!

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

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

a sermon in which I implicitly call Tim Cook a coward

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

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

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

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

Anyway, here’s the text of the sermon:

sermon text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

📺 tvblog: Junior Taskmaster Series 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 07:24:00 -0500

I don’t think a kid’s version of the show can compete with the sweary semi-sadism of the original, but I’m glad there was a series I could use to introduce a currently-too-young-for-all-that kiddo to the concept. Plus, the kids were cute and funny and most of the tasks genuinely enjoyable to watch.

🎙️ radioblog: Seven to One (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 07:20:04 -0500

It took me a while to cotton on to some of the premise of this story—again, not being a Classic Who fan means mixing up characters means missing important details—and I’m still not sure I get all of it, but it was fun enough to give it some benefit of the doubt.

🎙️ radioblog: All the Fun of the Fair (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 07:17:51 -0500

Silly and fun, this story wasn’t life changing (and I have a lot of questions about the fictional logic of things), but I enjoyed listening to it.

🎙️ radioblog: The Riparian Ripper (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 07:15:29 -0500

At first, I thought this was going to be gruesome and dumb, but it ended up turning into that special Doctor Who genre of the wildly misunderstood monster, and I really enjoyed listening to it while shoveling ice out of our cul-de-sac.

☕ teablog: The Republic of Tea, Coconut Cocoa (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 15:26:56 -0500

While I’m in a “reevaluating tea” mood today, I want to confess that this tea is not as mind-blowing as it was when I first discovered it years ago. It’s good, but it’s not Smores or Dubai Chocolate-tier good.

☕ teablog: Elmwood Inn, Indian Chai (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 07:58:07 -0500

I badmouthed this in my first review, but I’ve since remembered what I like about it even if it isn’t what I expected from a chai, so it deserves a review update.

🎙️ radioblog: Murmurs of Earth (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 15:53:40 -0500

The Voyager record as inspiration for a Doctor Who story really ought to work for me, but it didn’t land. Maybe I’m tired of this series, or maybe I should have paid more attention instead of listening while cleaning.

🎙️ radioblog: Wet Walls (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 15:50:41 -0500

I can’t say this one worked for me. I can kind of see the vibe that the author was going for, but I wasn’t a fan.

🎙️ radioblog: The Wondrous Box (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 15:45:35 -0500

TARDIS dematerializing is responsible for famous elephant death (which I didn’t know about before listening) is not the fun Doctor Who story the author thinks it is. This felt like it was an extended excuse to riff on a historical anecdote, and it didn’t land at all for me.

🎙️ radioblog: Pop Up (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 15:42:28 -0500

The idea behind this one is fun—not least a BASIC interface on the TARDIS—but it doesn’t really deliver.

🎙️ radioblog: The Five Dimensional Man (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 15:40:17 -0500

Fun homage to 50s sci-fi and old-timey radio shows. The performance and the conceit got me more than any of the plot did.

🎙️ radioblog: Letting Go (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 15:37:48 -0500

It can be surprising how dark and melancholy Doctor Who is sometimes, but this story does an excellent job of capturing that vibe in audio. Really enjoyed this one.

📚 bookblog: La menace (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 15:35:01 -0500

J’aime beaucoup le dessin dans cette série. Le scénario est fort intéressant, lui aussi, mais il y tant d’histoires de ce genre qui se ressemblent toutes, et je suis content de combien ce monde imaginé ne leur ressemble pas du tout au niveau visuel.

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 15:58:05 -0500

One of the best things I’ve done recently in terms of feeling good about myself as a parent is draw my attention to how often I “show up” as a parent rather than insist on evaluating “how I do” when I show up. (This reflection brought to you by two weeks of snow days).

🎙️ radioblog: Critical Mass (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 21:57:36 -0500

Yet another story that doesn’t really land with me because I don’t know Classic Who that well.

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

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

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:56:11 -0500

One of our favorite Eurovision 2024 songs was Finland’s “No Rules!” When tomorrow was announced as our tenth snow day in a row, spouse decided to Weird Al it as “No School!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

🎙️ radioblog: The Doctor's Coat (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 09:49:55 -0500

Good mix of a clever idea that holds the story together, alien world-building (including an alien comics shop, which earns full marks on its own), and some semi-meta reflection on the importance of wardrobe in this franchise.

🎙️ radioblog: Sock Pig (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 09:47:27 -0500

I like parts of this, but there’s also some nonchalantness about grief that doesn’t work for me—and maybe a vibrator joke?

🎙️ radioblog: Chain Reaction (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 09:44:40 -0500

Even by Doctor Who’s famously wibbly wobbly standards, the rules of time travel make zero sense in this story, but it’s so fun that I don’t care.

🎙️ radioblog: Walls of Confinement (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 09:43:04 -0500

Some fun gags, but this is another case where I think not knowing the classic series prevents me from appreciating this. Or maybe it’s just not that interesting?

🎙️ radioblog: The Way Forward (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 11:51:46 -0500

Sometimes silly is good, and this story features a gorilla quoting Monty Python within a goofy but interesting premise, so I’m here for it.

🎙️ radioblog: 1963 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 11:50:09 -0500

This didn’t wind up being as meta as I’d hoped when I first realized where it was going, but it was fun and interesting.

🎙️ radioblog: Running Out of Time (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 19:28:24 -0500

Wondering if I should be reviewing these a volume at a time instead of a story at a time, but it’s too late now. This one felt like a Doctor Who story—if a bit darker than what we might see on TV—but that’s not entirely complimentary. Not bad, but nothing impressive in my book.

Ellul strikes again

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:54:29 -0500

I began my sudden but immediately sustained interest in Jacques Ellul about a year ago now, and I’ve found his work to be terribly influential on my personal thinking and my professional work. I’m currently working on a manuscript that makes the argument that Ellulian thought is useful for drawing our attention in certain ways when considering artificial intelligence in education. I see theory as serving an analytical and rhetorical purpose for the way that it makes suggestions that a certain phenomenon works in certain ways and invites us to consider whether or how that is true.

One of the consequences of all of this is that I tend to see things through an Ellulian lens right now, asking myself what in such-and-such a news story corresponds with arguments he made about technology (or, more accurately, technique). If you scroll through the “Jacques Ellul” tag on my website, you’ll see that that’s happening a lot recently.

This post is sparked by a microblog post that someone wrote over the weekend about the Moltbook “social media platform for AI agents” that’s been in the news a lot lately. Here’s the text that stood out to me:

I’m not saying it’s good or bad… Value judgements don’t even matter right now.

This is a remarkably Ellulian turn of phrase—or at least one that he attributed to others and then critiqued. Here he is in a 1980(!) book chapter, “The Ethics of Nonpower”:

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. This means, by implication, that it is man who produces evil and that technique therefore stands for good.

He writes more on this in other sources as well, but a lot of it comes down to this: That technological development is seen as a self-evident good that somehow transcends considerations of good and evil. I don’t want to read too much into a single microblog post, especially since I respect its author even when I disagree with his takes, but it’s remarkable to me to see the attitude that Ellul was criticizing reproduced so faithfully 45 years after Ellul wrote that paragraph.

🎙️ radioblog: Police and Shreeves (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:51:19 -0500

Up until the twist, this was a fun story—after the twist, it was fantastic. I really like the idea of filling the universe of Doctor Who with people who have their own stories and agency, and this did a good job of it.

🎙️ radioblog: The Wings of a Butterfly (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:48:58 -0500

Pretty fun story, but nothing you couldn’t have done outside of the Whoniverse. Time travel tropes galore, which I don’t mind but wasn’t particularly new either:

🎙️ radioblog: The Deep (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:46:46 -0500

Meh. The TARDIS turning into a whale is a fun idea, but not enough of one to really intrigue me.

📚 bookblog: Une forêt (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:43:30 -0500

Habitant au Kentucky, ce n’est pas souvent que j’éprouve un coup de cœur pour un livre francophone. Pourtant, j’ai lu un article sur ce livre à la RTS, et il arrivait qu’on fasse une commande chez Fnac quelques jours après, et c’est comme ça que j’ai décidé de commander ce livre au lieu sans trop le connaître,

Je ne dirais pas que je regrette l’avoir lu. J’avoue pourtant que j’ai eu des moments difficile avec lui. Mon vocabulaire n’était pas toujours à la hauteur, et puis ce n’est pas mon genre préféré, le roman très, mais très littéraire. Je me suis demandé quelques fois au cours de la lecture si j’avais fait un mauvais choix.

En plus, je vis dans un pays qui ressemble de plus en plus à l’Allemagne des années 1930 (même si on essaie de nous châtier pour oser dire une telle chose), et sans ce contexte-ci, il est difficile d’aborder la question de si la dénazification peut être absurde, voire aller trop loin.

(Il s’agit dans le livre d’un tribunal de dénazification qui veut tuer des oiseaux qui ont appris les chansons nazies—c’est vrai que c’est absurde, et le livre ne fait pas du tout d’apologie du nazisme, mais chez moi certains commencent à parler de faire des tribunaux de Nuremberg quand on aura enfin rejeté le Trumpisme, et ça complique la lecture de ce livre, quoi.)

Pourtant, j’ai beaucoup apprécié le ton mélancolique du livre, en le finissant hier soir, j’ai été assez content de l’avoir lu.

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

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

🎙️ radioblog: The Death Dealer (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 12:20:30 -0500

I wonder if I’d feel stronger about this if I knew Classic Who better. As is, it’s an interesting scifi concept that isn’t bad but doesn’t capture my attention as much as some of these other stories.

🎙️ radioblog: A True Gentleman (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 12:18:27 -0500

Doctor Who is a great series because it is vast enough to slot tiny stories of all shapes, sizes, and styles into the bigger universe. This fun story about the Doctor fixing a bike and bargaining with an alien ambassador was a great fulfillment of that potential.

🎙️ radioblog: A Stain of Red in the Sand (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 12:16:22 -0500

Okay, now this is perfect. It feels like a high quality “Doctor lite” tv episode would. Creepy as heck, fun playing with mundane presentations of sci-fi-concepts, and a lot that I like in fiction. I really, really enjoyed this.

🎙️ radioblog: Rise and Fall (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 12:13:40 -0500

🎙️ radioblog: Rise and Fall (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤) https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2026-02-02-interesting-idea/

📺 tvblog: Au Service de la France saison 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 12:10:28 -0500

Bon, c’était le fait de reregarder cette série qui m’a poussé à regarder tant de films français en janvier, mais c’est cela qui m’a empêché de finir cette série, ce que j’ai fait pendant le week-end.

Ce que j’aime le plus de cette série, c’est que les Français savent se moquer des Français beaucoup mieux que les Américains ce croient capables de faire. Il y a des ressemblences entre les deux façons de taquiner la France, mais ce qui serait une blague stupide faite par un Américain fait vraiment marrer quand elle est faite par un Français.

Il y a quelques petites choses qui m’empêchent de la trouver parfaite, mais je trouve cette série hilarante et même éducative. J’ai un aimantin « tamponné, double tamponné » dans mon bureau au travail, et il y a tant d’autres moments dans la série qui restera toujours avec moi.

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 08:18:23 -0500

Kiddo got excited when the number 67 came up in the D&D actual play podcast we’re listening to. I thought at first that it was a “six seven” joke, but it turns out she liked that it sounded like 6d7.

🔗 linkblog: Tim Cook is destroying his own legacy

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

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

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 18:17:50 -0500

It is very strange to go back and read Shortpacked after a couple of years of reading Dumbing of Age, and now I wonder how people felt doing things in the opposite order.

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 09:47:59 -0500

Can’t even start a lazy Saturday archive binge of a decades-old webcomic without coming back to Jacques Ellul, concerns about quantification and metrics, etc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:52:57 -0500

One consequence of tracking my reading over the past few years is seeing which authors and artists I read most—and realizing that the list is dominated by white dudes. Need to make a deliberate effort to diversify my reading.

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

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

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

📚 bookblog: La relève (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:46:00 -0500

Mon épouse s’intéresse à cette série depuis un an, et on a donc commandé le coffret complet en faisant notre grande commande de livres français il y a quelques semaines. C’est une histoire intéressante, j’aime bien l’art, et ça fait rire notre fille.

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

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

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

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 15:10:50 -0500

Look, I genuinely appreciate my university employer sending this out in their daily email, but it would be cool if they also acknowledged how much data they and their various platform partners are collecting on faculty and students. Because it’s a lot.

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

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

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

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 18:41:54 -0500

A faculty candidate visit for tomorrow just got moved 100% virtual, and while this sucks for all of us in so many ways, it also means I don’t have to clean out my car for fear of being embarrassed by the mess when giving the candidate a ride.

📚 bookblog: Dim Sun (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 13:12:06 -0500

I don’t regret pitching in $5 to support a webcomic I have loved for almost twenty years, but even after years of listening to The Incomparable’s Dark Sun campaign, I just don’t know if I know/like that setting enough to really enjoy this story. Alas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

sermon on dreaming of a better world

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

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

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

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

sermon text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🔗 linkblog: An American Murder

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

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

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

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

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

🔗 linkblog: A Mormon drag queen in the Queen City

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 08:33:33 -0500

Kiddo has decided that she can get away with ignoring requests so long as it’s because she’s reading something. The most annoying part of it is that she’s right that we’ll grant a lot of latitude for that in particular.

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

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

What a story:

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

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

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 17:41:28 -0500

Kiddo was asking me questions about the manuscript I was writing, that got us talking about science fairs, and then she basically reasoned her way into the idea of a meta-analysis.

🔗 linkblog: Google’s work in schools aims to create a ‘pipeline of future users,’ internal documents say

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 15:36:49 -0500

Wish I’d had this to cite in some recent publications. What a great(?) example of saying the quiet part out loud:

One internal November 2020 presentation slide said acclimating children to Google’s ecosystem in school would hopefully lead them to use its products as adults: “You get that loyalty early, and potentially for life.” Another undated slide deck suggested imagining a world where “Parents ask their children ‘Why aren’t you watching more YouTube?’” and “School Administrators shift budgets from Textbooks to YouTube subscriptions.”

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

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

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

📺 tvblog: Tu préfères (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 12:16:18 -0500

Je ne sais plus comment j’ai découvert cette micro série Arte il y a plusieurs années, mais je l’ai trop aimée à l’époque, et cela m’a bouleversée quand elle n’était plus disponible sur YouTube. J’essaie de la retrouver depuis des années, et après avoir regarder Intouchables, j’ai essayé une fois de plus.

Heureusement, elle est maintenant disponible sur le site d’Arte, et grâce à mon VPN, j’ai pu lui convaincre que j’étais à Bordeaux et que j’avais donc le droit de la regarder.

Bon, je n’ai jamais été adolescent (encore moins adolescente) dans la banlieue parisienne, et je ne peux donc rien dire de combien la série est représentative de cette expérience. Pourtant, tout me semble réel, et c’est ça qui m’attire le plus. Il y a des choses qui me troublent dans la série (des méchancetés, des commentaires homophobes), mais elle paraissent comme des décisions stupides du genre que font tous les ados dans le cadre d’une série qui a comme premier but de montrer l’expérience ado, et je peux donc accepter… fin, un tout petit peu.

Pour moi, anglophone de naissance, c’est surtout l’expérience linguistique de regarder cette série qui m’intéresse. Ce sont des conversations qui ne ressemblent pas du tout à ce qu’on m’a appris lors de mes études, mais elle sont plus intéressantes pour ça. Des « wallah » partout, du verlan, des façons de parler qui doivent être propre aux ados français, je préfère tout ça au français « à l’Académie ». C’est fascinant.

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

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

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

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

What callousness. What cruelty.

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

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

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

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

🔗 linkblog: Trump Appears to Confuse Iceland and Greenland

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

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

🔗 linkblog: New AI-Generated Content Derived from Your Work Posted on Academia.Edu

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 13:15:22 -0500

I guess I should be reading this for the jokes, but I hadn’t realized Academia.edu had done this, and I’m so angry at the inspiration for the jokes that I haven’t made it any further.

🍿 movieblog: Intouchables (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 11:05:16 -0500

Il est sympa ce film ! Il est émouvant tout en faisant rire aussi. J’avoue qu’avec un oeil plus critique, je trouverais des choses qui me gênent (d’abord, il n’est pas hyper féministe comme film, et puis on préfère une histoire « feel-good » au lieu d’interroger les relations entre les hyper riches et les immigrés pauvres), mais c’est vraiment un film qui me plaît et qui me permet d’apprendre un français un peu plus courant que ce que j’ai appris pendant mes études.

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

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

A few thoughts:

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

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

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

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

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

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 14:42:37 -0500

Thinking about how 90% of what I post to social media is links back to my blog and how that’s probably not great for attracting followers but also it’s exactly what I want.

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

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

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

🍿 movieblog: Astérix et Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 14:02:59 -0500

Bon, d’abord j’avoue que c’est difficile d’évaluer un film de 2002 sachant tout ce qui est maintenant connu sur Depardieu et Dieudonné (entre autres), mais je mets tout ça à côté pour ce post.

Je voulais regarder ce film parce que je savais qu’il est (était?) bien aimé des Français de ma génération. Je le trouve amusant et une bonne adaptation du sens d’humour des albums Astérix. Comme avec Les visiteurs, il y a beaucoup de blagues qui sont difficile à traduire, mais j’ai eu moins de mal avec ce film-ci.

Le même service qui m’a permis de regarder Mission Cléopâtre a aussi les deux autres films de la série, et je vais peut-être revenir les regarder un jour.

the paradox of YouTube recommendations

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 12:10:13 -0500

Over the past several months, I’ve noticed something funny about what kinds of video recommendations I get when I watch something on YouTube. I have watch history turned off on both my personal and professional Google accounts, so if I’m logged in to Google in the browser where I’m watching the video (usually on a desktop/laptop), I get pretty generic recommendations, with an obvious connection to the video at hand but no awareness of my past viewing. On my phone, though, I’m not logged into Google in my main browser, so if I bring up a video there, I get way more personalized recommendations that are very tied in to what I’ve previously watched on my phone.

None of this is terribly surprising, I suppose, but there are a couple of observations that have emerged from this that are worth making. First, YouTube’s algorithmic recommendations are actually pretty good, and I resent it. The number of times that I’ve clicked on algorithmically recommended videos on my phone demonstrates not only the quality of the recommendations but also how clearly the purpose of the recommendations is to get users to stay on the site longer. It’s creepy, and I hate it. Second, though, there’s a seeming paradox at the center of these differing experiences. If I want YouTube to be less creepy about my watch data, I have to create an account with them to register that preference. Not only is it opt out, but it’s “hey, register with us so that you can opt out.”

Again, I can see with some distance how this all makes some kind of sense, but it feels wrong—enough that I finally got cranky enough today to write a short blog post about.

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

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

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

🍿 movieblog: Superman (2025) (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:13:47 -0500

Not a perfect movie but a really fun one. I appreciate a lot of the choices that went into this (techbro Lex Luthor, bowl cut Nathan Fillion, Hall of Justice in Cincinnati Union Station), and I look forward to seeing what else this iteration of Superman movies comes up with.

🔗 linkblog: Remembering Beyond Vietnam on MLK Day

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

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

☕ teablog: Taylors of Harrogate, Yorkshire Gold (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:02:30 -0500

I got this a while ago, when I was first trying to get into “real” black teas instead of the flavored stuff that’s my favorite.

It’s very strong, so I have had a hard time getting used to it, but I think I finally cracked the right way to steep it, and now I’m not dreading finishing the box.

🔗 linkblog: Under Musk, the Grok disaster was inevitable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:39:21 -0500

There are scenes in Superman 2025 that are very, very funny if you have spent time at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

🔗 linkblog: The Campaign to Destroy Renee Good

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

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

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

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

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

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 15:54:07 -0500

Kiddo objected to my using the word “enshittification” in a family conversation just now—not because it contains a swear, but because it was too complicated a vocabulary word.

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 11:09:13 -0500

Me, a weakling who has just started doing regular 6-12 minute bodyweight workouts: “Ah, yes, now I too understand why people talk about ’leg day.'”

📚 bookblog: Farthing (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

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

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

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

🍿 movieblog: Les Visiteurs (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 10:44:13 -0500

J’ai des souvenirs très précis du monent où un ami Suisse m’a conseillé ce film et m’a fort déconseillé la version américaine. Cette conversation a eu lieu il y a 17 ans, et je suis enfin arrivé à regarder le film.

Bon, je crois que je ne suis pas suffisamment français (ou bien francophone, si c’est un Suisse qui me l’a recommandé) pour apprécier le film. J’avoue que le regarder en faisant la vaisselle ne fait pas meilleure impression, et j’assume. Pourtant, bien que je me débrouille assez bien en français, j’ai plus du mal à comprendre le dialogue d’un film qu’une conversation face à face. En plus, les sous-titres en anglais n’aidaient pas trop, et je n’avais pas le choix de les mettre en français. Il y a plein de blagues qui ne se traduisent pas bien, et j’ai attendu la moitié du film avant de comprendre la blague Jacquouille, Jacques Ouilles, M. Ouille, qui est assez marrant en fin de compte.

En plus, j’ai l’impression qu’il y avait plein de références culturelles que je n’ai pas compris, et puis, je sais bien qu’il y a un sens d’humour du cinéma français (voir aussi Louis de Funès) que je ne partage pas en tant qu’américain barbare.

Je dis pas donc que c’est un mauvais film—juste que ce n’était pas pour moi, même si je suis content de l’avoir regardé.

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

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

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

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 09:40:53 -0500

« Chéri, t’as pas déjà assez de livres de ce type Ellul ? T’as vraiment besoin d’en acheter un autre ? »

« Ah, mais tu vois, chérie, celui-ci, c’est un livre SUR Ellul, c’est pas lui qui a écrit ! »

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

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

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