May 3, 2025

spencergreenhalgh.com posts digest for May 03 2025

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

• going semi-viral on Bluesky just made me miss blogging

• new publication: documenting a teacher group on far-right social media

• preaching on Revelation: hope, weirdness, and being anti-empire

Here are microblog posts that I published this week:

• Matthewdown is an implementation of Markdown that has cleaned up the Greek some and included some popular features from Qdown.

• Every fake ad in this month’s print issue of The Onion is making fun of Elon Musk. All of them. What a great news source.

• Remaking Star Wars would be unpardonable, but once enough hits the public domain, I want alternate sequels and prequels. Riff on the original in new ways. Give me a follow up where Darth Vader was never Anakin Skywalker. Bring back human, Irish Jabba. Go wild.

• Ebike adventure of the day: Taking a speed bump so fast it disconnected an important cord, and I spend a couple minutes trying to figure out why I lost power.

• Today, a student from across campus explained that they used ChatGPT to identify me as a potential thesis committee member, and I am shallow enough to have had a very brief flicker of positive feeling toward the technology.

• Aw, heck yes, there’s a Eurovision internet radio station.

• That feeling when you write an article for a lesser journal’s special issue but actually find a home in a stronger journal after the special editors reject it.

• I doubt I have time today for a longer, more nuanced post, so please enjoy this subtweet: Anyone whose takeaway from the University of Zurich Reddit study is “AI is good at convincing people!” and doesn’t even mention the HUGE ethical issues in passing is missing the point.

• When my post-bike commute helmet hair starts looking like Norman Osborn’s weird comics haircut, it might be time for a trim.

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

• 🔗 linkblog: How the War in Gaza Drove Israel’s A.I. Experiments

• 🔗 linkblog: Researchers Secretly Ran a Massive, Unauthorized AI Persuasion Experiment on Reddit Users

• 🔗 linkblog: Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI

• 🔗 linkblog: Reddit Issuing 'Formal Legal Demands' Against Researchers Who Conducted Secret AI Experiment on Users

• 🔗 linkblog: Instagram's AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists

• 🔗 linkblog: Open Letter to the Guy with “Dad” in His LinkedIn Headline

• 🔗 linkblog: Trump Admits He Could Get Abrego Garcia Back, But Angrily Insists Non-Existent Tattoos Are The Reason He Won’t

• 🔗 linkblog: Firefox could be doomed without Google search deal, says executive

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

• 📺 tvblog: Ludwig (Series 1) (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)

• 📚 bookblog: Visions in a Seer Stone: Joseph Smith and the Making of the Book of Mormon (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)

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