October 18, 2024

spencergreenhalgh.com posts digest for Oct 18 2024

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

• bad faith uses of scientific 'rigor'

• family's first comic con

• funerals, business meetings, and church futures

• confessing transport sins

• I think the conference hotel wi-fi is blocking competitors' websites?

Here are microblog posts that I published this week:

• The spookiest things in our house right now aren’t the Halloween decorations, they’re the ultra high visibility vests we keep by our bikes and startle me with an eerie glow every time I open the door into the dark garage.

• Between a work conversation a few days ago and a podcast I’m listening to this morning, I’ve spent a lot of time this week wishing I were a regular comic book shop customer.

• I have made so many sneering comparisons between sports fandom and blind nationalism as someone who doesn’t really care about sports, but now that I’ve got a team (my kid’s) to be super invested in… yeah, I actually feel the comparison more, just with more self awareness.

• I usually do too much qualitative work for them to be useful, but .Rmd-based slides are a delight to work in.

• Over the weekend, I bought a print of a Biggs Darklighter portrait from a local artist, and every time I walk past it, I feel better about the purchase.

• I am 100% on team POSSE, but it can approach Rube Goldberg levels of complexity, and I don’t always know right away how to fix things that break.

• You know you’re working in the right place when you casually bring up Squirrel Girl in the copy room, and someone replies “oh, yeah, she defeated Thanos.”

• That feeling when data you’re coding is just so bizarre that you don’t know what to make of it. Online communities are a heck of a thing to study.

• The Mastodon bot that posts random Homestar Runner screenshots is back, and I’m so happy. Refusing to unfollow it despite it not having posted since July was a wise choice.

• The RSS feeds for my local newspaper don’t seem to be compatible with my current feed reader, and I’m torn between building myself a web-scrape-to-RSS workaround for the fun of it or just pivoting to another local news source.

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

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk's Robot Tricks Were Used on Soviets in the 1950s, Too'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Twitter Barred Them. What Happened When Elon Musk Brought Them Back?'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'We watched 20 Trump rallies. His racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker.'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'WordPress.org’s latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Invitation to Commit Scientific Fraud – Ryan and Debi & Toren'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump Escalates Threats to Political Opponents He Deems the ‘Enemy’'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pluralistic: You should be using an RSS reader (16 Oct 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'McConnell called Trump 'stupid' and 'despicable' in private after the 2020 election, a new book says'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Baseball Baptisms and the British Mission'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Employees Describe an Environment of Paranoia and Fear Inside Automattic Over WordPress Chaos'

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

• 📺 tvblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Slow Horses (Season 4)

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Animal Man 30th Anniversary Edition (Book One), by Grant Morrison

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Animal Man 30th Anniversary Edition (Book Two), by Grant Morrison

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