November 15, 2024

spencergreenhalgh.com posts digest for Nov 15 2024

spencergreenhalgh.com posts digest for Nov 15 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:

• on the performativity of teaching

• some thoughts on joining Bluesky, maintaining platform independence, and tweaking Mastodon

Here are microblog posts that I published this week:

• “Your browser settings are preventing an optimal experience with Microsoft 365.” Yes, and that’s how I know they’re set up properly.

• Il arrive que je passerai bientôt quelques jours en Alsace, et j’accepterais avec plaisir des conseils pour quoi faire pendant mon séjour.

• My most recent research compliance completion certificate was clearly thrown together in a few lines of HTML. Not only does that feel especially phoned in, but it also makes it harder to save for my records, which is the only useful aspect of one of these certificates.

• I teach in a tech-focused program, and I think it’s reasonable to ask how we’re going to address generative AI in our curriculum, but I still resent the expectation that we must jump on this bandwagon simply because it’s there.

• Il y a beaucoup plus de photos de train sur mes fils Mastodon et Bluesky qu’il y en avait sur mon fil Twitter, et ça donne de la joie.

• One of the biggest gaps in my current website-first approach to social media is an inability to snap a picture and quickly post it. I’ve wanted to tackle this for a while, but an upcoming cool vacation has me thinking I should really go for it.

• … and as long as I’m posting about fun-but-unnecessary website hacks I don’t have time for, I’d also love to redo the taxonomies and templates on my site to make it easy to navigate media reviews by author, title, series, etc. No one would use it but me, but I’d have a lot of fun with it.

• Finally subscribed to the excellent, non-creepy Tinylytics service, and now I’m getting distracted trying to figure out why a couple dozen people clicked a Facebook link to my CV earlier this month. I’m not on FB, and I don’t know who else would be posting my academic credentials there.

• Back in 2020-2021, I made the decision to pivot from Twitter as a research site in case data ever became less available—and so I could focus more on right-wing online spaces. It was a good call but still hilariously mistaken at the same time.

• I expected Naomi Alderman’s The Future to be good, but I didn’t expect an interesting, responsible reading of the destruction of Sodom to be a throughline of the story.

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

• It’s been messy, but pretty sure I’ve finally figured out how to post images to my website (and from there to social media) from my phone.

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

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'A classic that really made me laugh this morning: Pachelbel’...'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'I Miss What The Mandalorian Was'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Refuge In Kakistocracy'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Bluesky, the Fediverse, and the future of social media'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on '[Article] – Alex'

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

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Jesus and the Abolitionists: How Anarchist Christianity Empowers the People, by Terry Stokes

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction, by Colin Ward

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Jesus for President, by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw

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