April 4, 2025

spencergreenhalgh.com posts digest for Apr 04 2025

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Here are long-form blog posts I published this week:

• Jacques Ellul's technique and Brian Daley's Alderaan

• some brief notes on the theme song to The NeverEnding Story

• two things that bug me about arguments that generative AI is inevitable or whatever

Here are microblog posts that I published this week:

• Unlike LDS General Conferences, Community of Christ World Conferences involve debate and voting, so you can’t just stream it. A European friend of mine has told me how panicked they and some other int’l delegates are feeling about travel to the U.S. right now. This all sucks.

• We keep talking about generative AI as though it’s a tool that can be used for good or bad when I think it’s better to think of it as an entire system that benefits some at the expense of others. It’s not that I want to put a tool back in a box—it’s that I want to live in a better world.

• The NPR radio adaptation of Star Wars would be a lot worse if the movie’s sound design and music weren’t so dang good.

• Love a 2:30am tornado warning family huddle in the pantry during a week where I was already not getting enough sleep.

Here are photos that I published this week (or at least their descriptions):

• It took an embarrassing amount of trying to figure out the business model my VPN provider was going for—and its implications for my privacy—before I remembered the date.

Here are news articles and podcasts I commented on this week:

• 🔗 linkblog: Nintendo’s new system for sharing digital Switch games, explained

• 🔗 linkblog: Trump’s Secret Police Are Now Disappearing Students For Their Op-Eds

• 🔗 linkblog: OpenAI's Studio Ghibli meme factory is an insult to art itself

• 🔗 linkblog: The Design of the New Swiss Passport

• 🔗 linkblog: The Gleeful Cruelty of the White House X Account

• 🔗 linkblog: How crawlers impact the operations of the Wikimedia projects

• 🔗 linkblog: 'I Want to Make You Immortal:' How One Woman Confronted Her Deepfakes Harasser

• 🔗 linkblog: Best printer 2025: just buy a Brother laser printer, the winner is clear, middle finger in the air

• 🔗 linkblog: Trump’s new tariff math looks a lot like ChatGPT’s

• 🔗 linkblog: Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic

• 🔗 linkblog: OpenAI and Anthropic are fighting over college students with free AI

Here are my reviews of books and other media I consumed this week:

• 📚 bookblog: Star Trek: Deviations (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)

• 📚 bookblog: Star Trek: Boldly Go, Volume 1 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

• 🎙️ radioblog: Star Wars: The Original Radio Drama (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

• 📚 bookblog: When the Moon Hits Your Eye (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

• 🎙️ radioblog: The Dispossessed (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

• 🎙️ radioblog: Call for the Dead (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

• 🎙️ radioblog: A Murder of Quality (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

If you have thoughts about anything I've posted, feel free to comment directly on my website through Hypothesis or to reply to this email with what you have to say.

Thanks for reading!

Spencer