Every word of this is enraging and disgusting.

I appreciate Masnick’s pushing back against Haidt-like discourses about social media, but I haven’t taken the time to dig into the weeds myself. I’m bookmarking this for my own reference.

Bookmarking in case I need to reference this in conversation.

Earlier this week, I got to meet with Margaret Olsen Hemming to record an episode of the Dialogue Out Loud podcast about my recent article in Dialogue on rethinking sexual ethics through Jacob’s temple sermon. It feels like a real accomplishment to have something theological published in this journal, and being interviewed by someone I cite in the article only makes it more surreal. It was a good conversation, and I’m happy to see that it’s already available for listening!

Just so gross.

When Musk brags about Grok not being “woke” or whatever, he is signaling that he’s implicitly okay with this kind of edge case.

Self-driving cars are surveillance machines.

This is good!

So gross.

How cruel we are being as a country.

Wait, what?

This is good.

Comme il m’arrive de lire un peu sur l’anarchisme, comme les écrits anarchistes parlent souvent de la Commune de Paris, comme je ne savais pas beaucoup sur cet évènement, et comme j’avais besoin de quoi écouter ce matin, j’ai choisi cette série pour approfondir un peu mes connaissances. J’ai toujours l’impression de ne pas savoir grand-chose (et de ne pas connaître la réponse à la question posée par cette petite série), mais elle a été bien faite.

I’m very pleased to share that the latest issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought includes an exegetical essay (available here as webpage, PDF, and audio recording) that I wrote arguing for reading Jacob 2 in the Book of Mormon as an example of reinterpreting scripture and rethinking sexual ethics. I’ve published in Dialogue before, but with my secular social scientist hat on, and it feels like a personal accomplishment to have published something more theological in nature.

I had another chance to preach for the Beyond the Walls ministry based out of Toronto yesterday. I went a bit off-script in emphasizing passages other than the one I was assigned to, but I’m pretty happy with the result, and I hope it worked out for others, as well. There are a lot of people (Jacques Ellul, Pete Enns, Thomas Römer) whose ideas are floating in the background of this sermon without ever getting mentioned—it channels a lot of thoughts that I’ve had over the past decade or so. Here are the recording and the script:

Some insightful comments here. I don’t know if they capture the whole picture of what’s going on here, but I think they’re an important part of it.

This book deserves all the honors, and if it gets made into a movie(?!), I would be thrilled.

Mormon Stories has never been my thing, and the more I learn about Dehlin, the less sure I am about him—but I couldn’t agree with him more here.

I like John Hodgman, and I liked this book. It’s well-written, nerdy and funny in the right places, and does a good job (or at least I think so) of valorizing his own lived experiences while also candidly acknowledging the mountain of privilege that serves as their foundation. Listening to him narrate the audiobook was even better.

Discourse in the modern American right often understands free speech as protecting the right to say objectionable things but not the ability to criticize people who say objectionable things. While a “one true church” mentality is less problematic than racial slurs or transphobic language (though there’s also some of the latter in Oaks’s full remarks, according to the Church Newsroom release), this excerpt strikes me as embodying a similarly selective view of religious freedom:

Had no idea this book was going viral, and I was just gushing about it last week. One of my favorite pieces of fiction ever, and it deserves all the accolades.

Important update on Grok nonsense.

Pretty compelling example of digital labor issues (both subtle and explicit) related to AI. Surely letting Google shape our questions and provide all the answers won’t be an issue?

Cette série continue à faire des bêtises que je trouve gênantes: Il n’y a que quelques personnages « importants » qui doivent vivre toutes les expériences d’un.e Français.e de cette époque, et il y a plein de choses qui se passent pour des raisons dramatiques et non logiques.

Pourtant, cette saison en particulier montre la saleté de la guerre, et je suis impressionné par combien on ose critiquer les Français.e.s même au lieu de croire que tout le monde a été des héros pendant la guerre.

Walking disaster.