September 22, 2023

spencergreenhalgh.com posts digest for Sep 22 2023

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

• the Christian symbolism of the name 'Mormon'

• more unfinished thoughts on games and living one's values

• is the Mistborn Adventure Game the ethics TTRPG I've been looking for?

• Leo Tolstoy and Nephi

Here are microblog posts that I published this week:

• I often gripe that Markdown doesn’t have as much functionality as HTML, but I just had to hand-convert a short .md document to .html, and it emphasized just how much easier it is to write Markdown on the fly.

• I have seen some unwieldly proofing software in my short career, but the one they’re having me use for my newest acceptance really takes the cake. I’d rather (re)learn InDesign and fix it there.

• Journal copyeditor changed a bunch of first-person language in our abstract to third-person “the authors,” and I am peeved.

• Journal copyeditors are great when they fix things, but when they break my sentences and don’t ask questions about “[information removed for blinding]”, I wonder what the point is.

• Another paper, another fight with copyeditors about not capitalizing danah boyd’s name.

• If some tea (well, tisane) purist wants to tell me that smores tea shouldn’t be a thing, I don’t really have a great counterargument, but it’s delicious, so I have no plans to stop drinking it.

• It’s already indefensible that ClassDojo promises greater access to teachers for parents willing to pay, but these features also translate into letting richer parents put more pressure on teachers. This business model is awful.

• Si vous voyez ce message, j’aurai réussi à refaire mes raccourcis pour poster depuis mon portable.

• One of the Vice journalists currently reporting on the Tim Ballard allegations just followed me my (now dormant) Twitter account, and I’m going to take that as validation of my research on far-right Mormonism.

• Unborking my blogging automations has been a pain, but on the upside, changing how I do it in Siri Shortcuts has fixed something small in my linkposts that’s bugged me for years.

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

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Terraforming Mars team defends AI use as Kickstarter hits $1.3 million - Polygon'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Willingham Sends Fables Into the Public Domain'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'WordPress blogs can now be followed in the fediverse, including Mastodon | TechCrunch'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pluralistic: Bill Willingham puts his graphic novel series “Fables” into the public domain (15 Sept 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'

• 🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Opinion | I Was Attacked by Donald Trump and Elon Musk. I Believe It Was a Strategy To Change What You See Online. - The New York Times'

• 🔗linkblog: my thoughts on 'Why Do Video Games Want Me to Be a War Criminal: WIRED'

• 🔗 linkblog: mes pensées sur 'Lyon-Barcelone avec la RENFE. ça vaut quoi ? - YouTube'

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

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Fables: The Deluxe Edition (Book One), by Bill Willingham

• 🍿 movieblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Barbie

• 📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Fables: The Deluxe Edition (Book Two), by Bill Willingham

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