December 6, 2024

spencergreenhalgh.com posts digest for Dec 06 2024

Hello! Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter. You can also get these posts through RSS, Micro.blog, or Mastodon.

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

• communion, tarot, and Lavina Fielding Anderson: some thoughts on sacraments

• new publication: Canvas and student privacy awareness

Here are microblog posts that I published this week:

• I (someone who doesn’t really believe in a literal resurrection) have been scheduled to preach in February on Paul’s “if there’s no resurrection, this is all in vain” in 1 Cor. 15. Gonna have to think about this one.

• Some Sundays, you cancel your church plans so you can Zoom into a relative and her girlfriend’s spur of the moment “let’s at least get legally married now in case things get bad before our September wedding” service.

• Kiddo’s describing defeated Pokémon as “dying” is really forcing me to confront the premise of the series.

• Kiddo is expressing her distaste for her “read aloud” homework by putting a lot of obviously false enthusiasm into her performance.

• Some of my recent posts that I like the best have naturally been to the one part of my site for which my Micro.blog POSSE relay isn’t working. Guess it’s time to teach myself some JSON in hopes of building a more reliable set of feeds.

• Duolingo is one of those apps I really loved once but now can’t see as anything but creepy adware. It’s hard to complain when it’s teaching kiddo more French than I ever managed to, but I still worry I’ve sold her soul to that little green owl.

• In the spirit of scientific inquiry (and getting my colleagues off my case about the color of my fingers when I get to the office), let’s see how much protection these expired-in-2022 hand warmers provide against this morning’s freezing temperatures.

• Scientific inquiry report: Hand warmers work well enough that I feel dumb that I haven’t been using them, but they don’t fix the main problem of numb fingers. My current winter gloves usually do the trick, but it’s time to invest in some “lobster claws” for really cold commutes.

• Next self-imposed challenge for improving my website-first approach to social media: How can I “repost” content from either Mastodon, Bluesky, or Micro.blog in a way that embeds it in the post on my site but then links to (or otherwise shares) it when that post goes out to those platforms?

• For the first time in a few years, I’m sorting feed subscriptions into folders instead of having a “monofeed.” Combined with Reeder’s lack of unread counts, I’m pleasantly surprised how this has encouraged more mindfulness in subscribing and checking feeds.

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

• Today’s bike commute getup. One more distant colleague didn’t know who I was until I spoke to her. Other folks who see me more often could recognize me by my helmet alone. 🚲

• This is a friendly reminder that DRM sucks and that corporations have perverted the digital technologies that should make things easier for libraries and their patrons into ways to squeeze more money out of us while giving us less control.

• This semester, I have learned that: 1) if I have building toys on my desk, I will turn them into a robot, and 2) if I have a robot on my desk, I will fiddle with it during Zoom meetings.

• Kiddo did lots of fuse bead art with cousins over Thanksgiving. When I complained that the train in the instruction manual was out of the 19th century and that kids’ stuff never acknowledges awesome modern trains, she improvised this high speed beauty for me.

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

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Redbox Removal Team'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Twitter Board made a historic mistake and the World will pay the price. '

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump Doubles Down on Defiance After the Collapse of the Matt Gaetz Selection'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Certain names make ChatGPT grind to a halt, and we know why'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'A Faculty Member’s Self-Evaluation at the End of the Semester'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Six hours under martial law in Seoul'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Gender Is Determined by God, Biology, and the Highest Governing Body of Some Random Sport'

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

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Spill, by Cory Doctorow

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, by Douglas Rushkoff

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