February 7, 2025

spencergreenhalgh.com posts digest for Feb 07 2025

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

• Jacques Ellul's technique and generative AI

• watching Star Trek: Lower Decks

Here are microblog posts that I published this week:

• Testing a new post-forwarding service for my POSSE setup. Wish me luck!

• “Someday My [Chance To Sleep Deeply for An Indefinitely Long Time] Will Come”

• If current events continue to echo the Twitter takeover, we’re about a year out from Elon Musk telling a gathering of world leaders to go fuck themselves for not supporting his agenda.

• Some Bluesky posts are reminding me of what I wrote about how my LDS mission sometimes played fast and loose with immigration documents: https://spencergreenhalgh.com/communities/the-missionary-with-the-expired-visa/

• It’s obviously not the most worrying thing about it, but a very specific tragedy about Musk’s DOGE nonsense is that it may end up being the largest (indirect) influence Homestar Runner has had on the world.

• Love to be living in a world where a blog I read for tech commentary—and that is more reserved than I would be on a lot of that commentary—is running articles describing current goings-on as “a coup in progress.”

• Today is “getting siblings and parents on Signal” day.

• Tea steeping times should always be printed in digits (“4 minutes” not “four minutes”) so that I can scan for digits on the tin instead of having to read through words.

• (Now that I think about it, scanning for digits in a wall of tea tin text is like the brain’s natural regex, and I think that’s beautiful.)

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

• Tonight’s ethics lecture for my internet research class this semester will include a brief discussion of protecting researchers, so I got to go through my collection of screenshots of when a reactionary Mormon group took issue with our studying their posts.

• My first print copy of The Onion came today, and it’s the only news I’ve been happy to read for days.

• J’ai commandé un album de Guy Delisle juste pour ajouter à ma petite collection de bd francophone, et j’espère que cette case ne sera pas trop, TROP utile pendant les quatres années à venir aux USA.

• Currently reading David Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5,000 Years,” and while it’s really dense, one clear theme is how money has the power to abstract our moral thinking in dangerous directions. This NYT blurb seemed relevant.

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

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump Admin Deletes Video Explaining Grammatical Concept of Pronouns in War Against DEI'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Top 10 moments of RFK Jr.’s reality-bending confirmation hearings'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Treasury official retires after clash with DOGE over access to payment system'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Exclusive: Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency, sources say'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'FCC demands CBS provide unedited transcript of Kamala Harris interview'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon’s Twitter Destruction Playbook Hits The US Government, And It’s Even More Dangerous'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Acting on Trump's order, federal officials opened up two California dams'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump To Victims’ Families: ‘I’m Doing Everything Possible To Resegregate Flight Schools’'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'I Don’t Have Words'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The NTSB chooses Elon Musk’s X to update the press on plane crashes'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Twitter Files Playbook Comes For The US Government'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'A 25-Year-Old With Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment System'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Can anyone stop President Musk?'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'AI-Generated Slop Is Already In Your Public Library'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'First Cracks Appear: Some Conservatives Admit We’re In A Constitutional Crisis'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Far Right Has a New Hero: Elon Musk'

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

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (Volume 1), by Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber

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