January 13, 2024

spencergreenhalgh.com posts digest for Jan 12 2024

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

• another upcoming sermon for Toronto Congregation of Community of Christ

• assessment statements in my Spring 2024 graduate syllabus

Here are microblog posts that I published this week:

• It’s been a feature for ages, so I feel silly that I’m only now beginning to appreciate the ability to take Markdown notes in Things 3 tasks and projects.

• It’s that time of year where I have a text editor open alongside Canvas so that I can strip out all the extra HTML tags that LMSs like to add to my content.

• Two minutes into her first experience with a main-series Pokémon game, kiddo realized she could name her rival “Chicken,” so I’d say we’re off too a good start.

• One of my favorite perks of academia is finding a personally interesting book through the university library.

• Normalement, je me débrouille assez bien en français, mais quand il s’agit d’une conversation au téléphone, j’ai vraiment du mal !

• I didn’t learn to swear until I was in my 30s, so I have a lingering suspicion that I wind up sounding like Captain Kirk in Star Trek IV.

• I have unexpectedly hit a point in my life where I associate the voice of Alec Guinness with George Smiley instead of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

• I have lots of concerns about LLM training, but I think it’s better to think of the issue in terms of digital labor, not copyright. My blog is licensed for reuse, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less exploitative for someone to scrape it all to develop software that will make them rich off my work.

• I like peer reviewing manuscripts that cite my work, and I especially like correcting manuscripts that misunderstand my work, but my favorite is reviewing a manuscript that gives my work too much credit so that I can say “hey, this guy doesn’t know as much as you think he does.”

• TNG episode where Picard realizes that all voice interactions with the Enterprise’s computer are being sent to servers in Cupertino to be processed there; and that Future!Apple employees listen in on some for quality control.

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

• 🔗 linkblog: mes pensées sur 'La première église urbaine de Suisse romande ouvre ses portes à Lausanne - rts.ch - Vaud'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Wife of Investor Who Pushed for Harvard President’s Exit Is Accused of Plagiarism - The New York Times'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Are education and learning engineering problems? – George Veletsianos, PhD'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'TikTok Quietly Curtails Data Tool Used by Critics - The New York Times'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Open Infrastructures and the Future of Knowledge Production, part 1 – Platypus'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Open Infrastructures and the Future of Knowledge Production, part 2 – Platypus'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pluralistic: Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s “A City On Mars” (09 Jan 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Substack Realizes Maybe It Doesn’t Want To Help Literal Nazis Make Money After All (But Only Literal Nazis) | Techdirt'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Substack keeps the Nazis, loses Platformer - The Verge'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'I’m sorry, but I cannot fulfill this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy - The Verge'

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

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Standing By the Wall: The Collected Slough House Novellas, by Mick Herron

• 📺 tvblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Slow Horses (Season 3)

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, by Bart Ehrman

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