Ben S

My dissertation is now available! A history of creation/evolution conflict in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 20th century. Honestly, some ground-breaking stuff. benspackman.com/2024/12/disser…

Let me get this straight. The federal government held a legal auction for the right to build offshore wind farms. A company won those auctions fair and square, paying nearly a billion dollars into the U.S. Treasury. The projects went through years of review. Courts repeatedly upheld their legality. Everything was above board. Then the Trump administration tried five separate times to kill other wind projects in federal court and lost every single time. Judges reviewed the administration’s supposed “national security” justification and weren’t persuaded.  So now they’ve landed on a new plan: pay the company nearly ONE BILLION DOLLARS of your tax money to just walk away. Because, and I am not making this up, the president thinks offshore wind turbines are ugly and claims without evidence that they “drive whales crazy.”  He’s been nursing this petty grudge since 2012, when he tried to block a wind farm visible from his golf course in Scotland. Fourteen years later, American taxpayers are footing the bill for it. This is stupid policy. It’s fiscally reckless, strategically blind, and driven entirely by a personal vendetta rather than any coherent vision for American energy or competitiveness. Meanwhile, China is racing ahead, building offshore wind at a staggering pace and positioning itself to dominate the global clean energy economy for decades to come. None of this is America First. nytimes.com/2026/03/17/cli…

This is unhinged. The President of the United States went on a late-night rant, making clear he believes the Supreme Court justices he appointed owe him their loyalty and should always rule in his favor. The President of the United States is openly attacking the independence of the judiciary, the very institution that stands between every American and unchecked executive power. Courts don’t work for the President. They work for the Constitution. And a president attacking the judiciary for doing its job is telling you he believes he is above the law.

Hear me out on this, maybe gambling is… bad? For individuals AND families AND society writ large

Everyone burn as much oil as possible! For the economy!

Password rotation or Forced changes lead to "password hedging," where users just add a number or change one letter (e.g., Summer1! becomes Summer2!). It is biologically impossible for most people to memorize a high volume of complex, random strings every few months, leading to "sticky note" security risks. When security is a hassle, users find dangerous shortcuts, like reusing the same "strong" password across every site they own. The most important fact is that NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), the global authority on cybersecurity standards, officially retired this method In its Digital Identity Guidelines (SP 800-63B), NIST now explicitly states that organizations "SHALL NOT require" periodic password changes. They’ve shifted the focus to Length over Complexity. They recommend allowing passphrases of up to 64 characters and only requiring a change if there is actual evidence of a compromise.

The irony of "Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" is that none of the women seem particularly good at being Mormon, keeping secrets or remaining a wife.

The stories we tell about the history of English are shaped as much by what was burned, thrown away, or eaten by worms as by what anyone actually wrote. Beowulf barely survived into the modern period: it comes down to us in a single, slightly scorched manuscript. The problem extended well into the Elizabethan period. Scholars estimate that nearly half of the printed books, 82% of plays, and over 99% of the broadside ballads of the era have been lost to history. We like to imagine we know what the Elizabethans wrote. We have Shakespeare, Marlowe, and the King James Bible. It feels like a rich archive, but it’s only a fraction of what once existed. And the stories we tell about Elizabethan English are mostly stories about what happened to survive. One of these stories is the claim that Shakespeare invented around 1,700 words.

Actually, the guy who was the point person for Iran at the White House and was fired by the Trump Administration after being Loomered wrote EXACTLY that warning 4 days before the war started. The article was titled “Why Iran Will Escalate.” But who needs experts… foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/wh…

We were told NIH funding cuts were about eliminating DEI. But the data now shows grants are down across nearly every field of medicine: cancer, diabetes, mental health, brain disorders. With the greatest cuts hitting Alzheimer’s research, down more than 50%.

This is not normal. Americans are dying. We’re burning $1 billion a day overseas while families struggle at home. And now Trump is trying to cover it up by threatening to revoke broadcasters’ licenses for reporting on the war he doesn’t like. nytimes.com/2026/03/14/wor…

This illustrates a fundamental difference that we don’t always understand about how we define terms. To a Latter-day Saint, being a Christian means being a follower/disciple of Jesus Christ. We don’t need the approval of another group, but we do want it clearly understood that everything we believe points to Christ - and Christ is the center of our worship and the center of the lifestyle we strive to live. When someone tells a Latter-day Saint they’re not a Christian - a Latter-day Saint hears that person denying the most central belief they hold. On the other hand, when some Christians define Christianity it isn’t centered on Christ - it’s centered on a creedal definition of Christianity and a trinitarian understanding of who God is - and those people are right - we don’t meet that definition and don’t claim to. Most of the confusion by Christians and Latter-day Saints around this is a difference in how they think the term should be used. We’re not trying to be in some club - we do emphatically want it understood that Christ is the center of our lives.

A reminder to my fellow Latter-day Saints that every law used against Muslims will eventually be used against us. We will eventually be subject to the level of abuse we tolerate in others. Pluralism is our shield.

This should be a bigger story. Pete Hegseth systematically dismantled the offices responsible for protecting civilians in wartime, cutting staff from 200 to fewer than 40 and leaving exactly one person at Central Command to handle civilian casualties before launching the largest US air campaign in decades. That is a deliberate decision by a man with no business running a corner store, let alone the most powerful military in the history of the world. politico.com/news/2026/03/1…

The first sit down interview the President of United States grants after launching his regime change War in Iran is with Jake Paul. We are not a serious country. This is not a serious administration. You don’t hate this timeline enough.

“No quarter” isn’t some wanna be tough guy line - it means something. An order to give no quarter would mean to take no prisoners and kill them instead. That would violate the law of armed conflict. It would be an illegal order. It would also put American service members at greater risk. Pete Hegseth should know better than to throw around terms like this.

Wow. Scary. Reminds me of Putins early years of reshaping Russian media.

Trump’s a blood purist?! Does he know he’s a muggle?

Credit where due: "High gas prices are good actually" is a brilliant midterms message, and the president should definitely keep hammering it

Last year, The Atlantic gave me $10K to gamble with. What started as a journalistic gimmick turned into something more... unnerving. My cover story on the online betting boom warping sports, culture, politics, and the psyches of millions of young men: theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/…

I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public. I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are. 1/ Here's what I can share: