April 11, 2025

spencergreenhalgh.com posts digest for Apr 11 2025

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

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

• moral surrender, the environment, and generative AI

Here are microblog posts that I published this week:

• One of my favorite tea brands is a local one that imports its own leaves. I think one of my weekend projects is going to be to bulk order from them to get ahead of tariffs.

• I hate doing anything that seems to give Skinner any credit—especially after seeing how critical of him Ellul has been—but associating cleaning off our breakfast bar with lighting a scented candle has worked some behaviorist magic on me.

• I think I’ve finished my IDW Star Trek comics binge. I was hoping to conclude with their TNG/Doctor Who crossover that I bought for Kindle years ago, but reading comics in that app is so much worse than I remember.

• How about a sequel to “The Measure of a Man” where some future tech bro (Trek bro?) uses the events of the original episode to argue that his LLM is sentient, and so Picard, Riker, and Data team up to respond “wtf, no.”

• [Bon, je regrette pas avoir commandé un livre depuis la Suisse juste avant l’annonce des taxes douanières, mais j’espère quand-même qu’il arrive avant la prochaine folie américaine.] (https://spencergreenhalgh.com/myself/2025-04-09-bon-je/)

• I admit to having peculiar tastes in fiction, but I’m completely serious in my belief that one of the best things Mormon literature has produced is a short story about unicorn-riding knights on Mars.

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

• Setting up iMessage on an iPad for kiddo to use has immediately turned into Homestar Runner references, and I’m okay with that.

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

• 🔗 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

• 🔗 linkblog: Parents Gently Explain To Child That Their Money In Heaven Now

• 🔗 linkblog: Swiss Indignant to Make the Top 10 of Trump’s Tariffs List

• 🔗 linkblog: Trump delays TikTok ban again

• 🔗 linkblog: Amadou Bagayoko, one half of Malian duo Amadou & Mariam, dies at 70

• 🔗 linkblog: Murderbot is going through it in the first trailer for Apple’s sci-fi series

• 🔗 linkblog: Trump says the future of AI is powered by coal

• 🔗 linkblog: OpenAI helps spammers plaster 80,000 sites with messages that bypassed filters

• 🔗 linkblog: Take It Down Act nears passage; critics warn Trump could use it against enemies

• 🔗 linkblog: Trump administration’s attack on university research accelerates

• 🔗 linkblog: They’re putting A1 in the classrooms.

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

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

• 📚 bookblog: Star Trek: Boldly Go, Volume 2 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

• 📚 bookblog: Star Trek: Boldly Go, Volume 3 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

• 📚 bookblog: The Space Between (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

• 🎙️ radioblog: The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

• 🎙️ radioblog: The Looking Glass War (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

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