February 1, 2025

spencergreenhalgh.com posts digest for Jan 31 2025

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

• another sermon text: believing in a God who doesn't intervene

• hoopla and other apps that make digital books worse than physical ones

• pushing back against and testing limits with kiddo's school projects

Here are microblog posts that I published this week:

• Kiddo just told me to “make an Insight check” after fibbing to me about something, so it sounds like that D&D actual play podcast we’ve been listening to is making an impression.

• I like bookshop.org and I’m glad they’re selling ebooks—it’s a much better option than Amazon or Apple. Yet, so long as DRM is still the default, there’s still a problem, and you still don’t own what you buy from them.

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

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

• It turns out I find “associated with PRC = inherently good” just as annoying as “comes from China = inherently bad.”

• I know I shouldn’t back crowdfunding campaigns just because they touch on two of my favorite things (Franco-Belgian comics and the public domain), but this is going to be hard to resist.

• I started reading Doonesbury reruns a while ago. I’ve forgotten exactly when they date from (maybe 2002?), but this panel felt very contemporary.

• 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.

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

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk, Video Game King? Well, Maybe Not.'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Technological Poison Pill: How ATProtocol Encourages Competition, Resists Evil Billionaires, Lock-In & Enshittification'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole From Us'

• 🔗 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'

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

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