August 15, 2025

spencergreenhalgh.com posts digest for Aug 15 2025

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Here are long-form blog posts I published recently:

• practicing anarchist utopia at church camp

• why I think labor, not copyright, is the foundational problem with AI scrapers

Here are microblog posts that I published recently:

• Current levels of home maintenance confidence: Feeling like a god for taking a pocket door off its track and feeling utterly intimidated by needing to eventually put it back on.

• I’m glad I have my files organized enough to retrieve preprints of about a decade’s worth of research, but I really wish I’d been doing this as I went.

• From its earliest paragraphs, All Systems Red is helping clarify my feelings about the Murderbot TV show. I don’t know that it’s a bad adaptation so much as I think that some of my favorite parts of the book just can’t be adapted to screen.

• Love that moment in academic writing where you can find five rejected versions of a paragraph below the version I’m currently working on.

• Je viens d’entendre à la RTS une définition des « digital natives » comme la génération Z. On a commencé à employer cette phrase aux années 2000 pour décrire ma génération, et son usage continu pour signifier « les jeunes d’aujourd’hui » révèle combien elle est inutile.

• I’m very much on team “alternate voting systems in the U.S., please,” but it’s also wild how much of what’s happening in Gaza right now can arguably be traced back to proportional representation with low thresholds.

• Spent some time exploring Tapestry last night (and stayed up too late doing so, boo). Really appreciate what it’s going for, but it’s not quite what I want, so going to stick with Reeder.

• In the name of practicing a growth mindset, I am choosing to pat myself on the back for addressing an issue in the kitchen that I likely created through previous inattention.

• Kiddo’s school district has gotten rid of ClassDojo (hooray!) and replaced it with what looks like a homebrew platform (tentative hooray?) that still datafies student behavior (boo!) and frames the whole thing in terms of employability and workforce development (super boo!).

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

• This, but for communication platforms the local school district uses. 

Here are news articles and podcasts I commented on recently:

• 🔗 linkblog: The White House orders tech companies to make AI bigoted again

• 🔗 linkblog: Is Including Hidden AI Prompts In Academic Papers Gaming The Peer Review System — Or Keeping It Honest?

• 🔗 linkblog: Un adolescent espagnol accusé de créer des images dénudées de ses camarades de classe par intelligence artificielle et de les vendre

• 🔗 linkblog: SCOOP: Substack sent a push alert promoting a Nazi blog

• 🔗 linkblog: Substack’s Algorithm Accidentally Reveals What We Already Knew: It’s The Nazi Bar Now

• 🔗 linkblog: Quand la presse glorifiait la bombe atomique après l'attaque sur Hiroshima

• 🔗 linkblog: Statement Regarding 80 Years Since the First Use of Nuclear Weapons | News | Community of Christ

• 🔗 linkblog: Dumping Google’s enshittified search for Kagi

• 🔗 linkblog: Grok’s ‘spicy’ video setting instantly made me Taylor Swift nude deepfakes

• 🔗 linkblog: OpenAI to Open-Source Some of the A.I. Systems Behind ChatGPT

• 🔗 linkblog: Google would like you to study with Gemini instead of cheat with it

• 🔗 linkblog: Nouveau modèle d'IA: ChatGPT-5: «C’est comme parler à un expert de niveau doctorat»

• 🔗 linkblog: New executive order puts all grants under political control

• 🔗 linkblog: AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified

• 🔗 linkblog: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposts video of pastors saying women shouldn't vote

• 🔗 linkblog: Grok's 'Spicy' Mode Makes NSFW Celebrity Deepfakes of Women (But Not Men)

• 🔗 linkblog: Sex is getting scrubbed from the internet, but a billionaire can sell you AI nudes

• 🔗 linkblog: Why A.I. Should Make Parents Rethink Posting Photos of Their Children Online

• 🔗 linkblog: What Does Palantir Actually Do?

• 🔗 linkblog: Phénomène mondial sur les réseaux sociaux, que sont les Italian Brainrots, ces personnages absurdes générés par IA ?

• 🔗 linkblog: Reddit will block the Internet Archive

• 🔗 linkblog: The Trump Administration Is Using Memes to Turn Mass Deportation Into One Big Joke

• 🔗 linkblog: UK government suggests deleting files to save water

• 🔗 linkblog: Google Scholar Is Doomed

• 🔗 linkblog: Hommage à Mix & Remix à la station de métro lausannoise de Bessières

• 🔗 linkblog: The Fairphone (Gen. 6) Is the Antidote to Yearly Phone Upgrades

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

• 🎙️ radioblog: Smiley's People (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

• 📚 bookblog: All Systems Red (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

• 📚 bookblog: Invincible, Compendium One (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

• 📚 bookblog: Artificial Condition (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

• 📚 bookblog: Invincible, Compendium Two (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

• 📚 bookblog: Invincible, Compendium Three (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

• 📚 bookblog: Rogue Protocol (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

• 📚 bookblog: Le réveil du dragon (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

• 📚 bookblog: Slow Horses (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)

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