Non-theist Christian and elder in Community of Christ. I have Mormon roots and aspirations to do better with justice and peacemaking—especially in the digital sphere but also in Lexington, Kentucky, the U.S., and the world more broadly.
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- kudos:
I have always thought the TikTok ban was dumb, and it just seems to get dumber with every new development. It’s not that there aren’t salient arguments in there, it’s that they’re all buried under vibes and nonsense.
posting last month's sermon about hope in spite of *gestures at everything*
- kudos:I… didn’t mean to wait until the day before the Inauguration to post the text of my sermon on hope in the face of despair. The weekend I gave the sermon was also the weekend of a funeral and near a very busy end of semester, so blogging was on the backburner. Even if I had had more time, my website-to-social media setup was a bit borked and I’m just vain enough to not post things if I think my audience is going to be diminished.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Who Said It: Donald Trump or Martin Luther King Jr.?'
- kudos:Darkly hilarious. link to “Who Said It: Donald Trump or Martin Luther King Jr.?”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Donald Trump Has Mark Zuckerberg By the Balls'
- kudos:Not the headline I would have chosen, but very interesting argument here. link to “Donald Trump Has Mark Zuckerberg By the Balls”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Meta Is Blocking Links to Decentralized Instagram Competitor Pixelfed'
- kudos:Directly out of Musk’s playbook. All the more reason to ditch Meta for the fediverse. link to “Meta Is Blocking Links to Decentralized Instagram Competitor Pixelfed”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'An Amazon Delivery Confirmation Photo Is the Last Time a Palisades Resident Saw Her Burnt Down House'
- kudos:The headline doesn’t really make the point, but the article is interesting; of course Amazon drivers would be sent into areas evacuated for fire. link to “An Amazon Delivery Confirmation Photo Is the Last Time a Palisades Resident Saw Her Burnt Down House”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Meta Deletes Trans and Nonbinary Messenger Themes'
- kudos:Meta’s cynicism and groveling is pretty appalling. link to “Meta Deletes Trans and Nonbinary Messenger Themes”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Meta’s Moderation Modifications Mean Anti-LGBTQ Speech Is Welcome, While Pro-LGBTQ Speech Is Not'
- kudos:Some more good writing on a bad situation. link to “Meta’s Moderation Modifications Mean Anti-LGBTQ Speech Is Welcome, While Pro-LGBTQ Speech Is Not”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on '‘We’re Fine’: Lying to Ourselves About a Climate Disaster'
- kudos:Chilling read. link to “‘We’re Fine’: Lying to Ourselves About a Climate Disaster”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Facebook Is Censoring 404 Media Stories About Facebook's Censorship'
- kudos:I especially appreciate this article in the wake of Meta’s recent announcements. There are cases in which content moderation is inconsistent or overreaching, and there are cases in which less moderation fixes the problem. However, it’s the arbitrary distinctions and self-serving nature of the changes that make the “free expression” argument so flimsy. link to “Facebook Is Censoring 404 Media Stories About Facebook’s Censorship”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Researcher Turns Insecure License Plate Cameras Into Open Source Surveillance Tool'
- kudos:Uggggggh, ALPRs suck. link to “Researcher Turns Insecure License Plate Cameras Into Open Source Surveillance Tool”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Jawboning Double Standard: Brendan Carr’s Threats Are Way Worse Than What Biden Was Accused Of'
- kudos:Yet more to demonstrate that “free speech” often means “right-wing speech.” link to “The Jawboning Double Standard: Brendan Carr’s Threats Are Way Worse Than What Biden Was Accused Of”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Facebook Deletes Internal Employee Criticism of New Board Member Dana White'
- kudos:Moderating employees but not users seems telling to me. link to “Facebook Deletes Internal Employee Criticism of New Board Member Dana White”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Meta abandons fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram in favor of Community Notes'
- kudos:Personally, I’ve come around to the idea that fewer restrictions, “Community Notes”-style responses, and lots of personal control over what one sees could work better as content moderation. It’s interesting to see Bluesky take some of these approaches, for example! Here, though, this seems like it’s bending the knee to the Trump administration, and I can’t imagine any of this being done in good faith. What a disappointment Meta continues to be.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Instagram blocked teens from searching LGBTQ-related content for months'
- kudos:See, this is the kind of content moderation we ought to worry about (and why “keep the kids safe” narratives can go horribly wrong). link to “Instagram blocked teens from searching LGBTQ-related content for months”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Corporations as Paperclip Maximizers: AI, Data, and the Future of Learning | Punya Mishra's Web'
- kudos:There are some helpful thoughts in here. I think most of my concerns about generative AI are less about the technology itself and more about the corporate interest in and control of it. link to “Corporations as Paperclip Maximizers: AI, Data, and the Future of Learning | Punya Mishra’s Web”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk Uses Cybertruck Explosion to Show Tesla Can Remotely Unlock and Monitor Vehicles'
- kudos:Modern cars are creepy. link to “Elon Musk Uses Cybertruck Explosion to Show Tesla Can Remotely Unlock and Monitor Vehicles”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia'
- kudos:This is an excellent and detailed overview and I’m better for having read it. link to “Elon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on '‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Elon Musk Suspends Critics On ExTwitter, Asks People To Be Nicer'
- kudos:Bookmarking as yet another example of Elon Musk’s free speech reputation being undeserved. link to “‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Elon Musk Suspends Critics On ExTwitter, Asks People To Be Nicer”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump told SCOTUS he plans to make a deal to save TikTok'
- kudos:What a stupid thing this whole “banning TikTok” thing has proved to be. link to “Trump told SCOTUS he plans to make a deal to save TikTok”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'I’m Tired of Pretending Physical Media Isn’t Still Better Than Streaming Digital'
- kudos:I’m not terribly attentive to music or film quality, but the complaints about access to streaming media resonated with me. link to “I’m Tired of Pretending Physical Media Isn’t Still Better Than Streaming Digital”
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, by James Carse
- kudos:I bought this book well over a decade ago. Preparing for grad school, where I expected to study games and learning, I was fascinated by the idea of a work of philosophy that used games as its central metaphor. Well, it isn’t the easiest book to get through, so I made some progress and some notes (most of which missed the point) and then let it drop for a long time.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Death Of A Forum: How The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Killing Communities'
- kudos:I don’t like Big Tech, but I’ve become more wary of regulation in recent years because folks like Masnick have compellingly made this argument over and over: It’s the smaller, better companies and sites that suffer the most from it. link to “Death Of A Forum: How The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Killing Communities”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pregnant Kentucky woman cited for street camping while in labor'
- kudos:Horrific story; not sure why we’re so eager to punish the unhoused. link to “Pregnant Kentucky woman cited for street camping while in labor”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Christ in the Rubble: A Liturgy of Lament (2023 Christmas Message by Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac) | Red Letter Christians Podcast'
- kudos:I’m bookmarking this so I can sit with it and return to it. It is powerful, searing, and condemning. link to “Christ in the Rubble: A Liturgy of Lament (2023 Christmas Message by Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac) | Red Letter Christians Podcast”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pluralistic: Nurses whose shitty boss is a shitty app (17 Dec 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'
- kudos:I don’t think I’ve ever been more angry about the gig economy than when reading this post. link to “Pluralistic: Nurses whose shitty boss is a shitty app (17 Dec 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'To Log Into WordPress, You Now Have To Agree Pineapple on Pizza Is Good'
- kudos:Look, I don’t know all the finer points of this debate, but Mullenweg has repeatedly struck me as petty and juvenile, so it’s hard to imagine taking his side on any of the more substantive issues here. link to “To Log Into WordPress, You Now Have To Agree Pineapple on Pizza Is Good”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pluralistic: Social media needs (dumpster) fire exits (14 Dec 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'
- kudos:Some more reflection by Doctorow on Bluesky and Mastodon. link to “Pluralistic: Social media needs (dumpster) fire exits (14 Dec 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow”
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for The Liars' Gospel, by Naomi Alderman
- kudos:Some of my favorite stories are those that are big and well known enough that they have invited us to retell them over and over in new ways. This is why I will never tire of new takes on Spider-Man even if I agree that cinematic takes on the character have been rebooted too many times recently (also, put classic Marvel characters in the public domain!). It’s also why, after reading The Future, I was drawn in by Naomi Alderman’s take on the four gospels, writing four stories that barely intersect with each other and barely intersect with Jesus, retelling the gospels in a new way.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'A Message Of Hope From Global Tetrahedron'
- kudos:This is the best possible response to a bad situation. link to “A Message Of Hope From Global Tetrahedron”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Some Other America, One I Do Not Know'
- kudos:Some good observations here. link to “Some Other America, One I Do Not Know”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'TCL TVs will use films made with generative AI to push targeted ads'
- kudos:Well put: TCL plans to get more into original content, fueled by a dystopian strategy that seems largely built around minimizing costs and pushing ads. link to “TCL TVs will use films made with generative AI to push targeted ads”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'I Went to the Premiere of the First Commercially Streaming AI-Generated Movies'
- kudos:This is a solid article. I think the opening is reflective and that there’s an effort to be open minded (more than I would be). It’s also amazing to me, though, how explicitly the goal here seems to be profiting from a surveillance-supported content mill. link to “I Went to the Premiere of the First Commercially Streaming AI-Generated Movies”
- kudos:
All the guilt I felt about cancelling our local news subscription vanished during the corporate slog I had to go through to actually make it happen. Looking forward to redirecting funds to news orgs with a little more respect for their subscribers.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pluralistic: Predicting the present (09 Dec 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'
- kudos:Like anyone who’s read Cory Doctorow’s Radicalized (now free to read here, and you should go read it), I’ve thought a lot recently about its central conceit of an online message board where people stiffed by insurance radicalize each other into gruesome acts of violence. The story is hard to read: It’s vicious in its implied critique of U.S. healthcare companies, but the people being radicalized are also ugly in their response to those companies’ callousness.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'New KOSA, Same As Old KOSA, But Now With Elon’s Ignorant Endorsement'
- kudos:Post election is a great time to realize the dangers that KOSA poses. link to “New KOSA, Same As Old KOSA, But Now With Elon’s Ignorant Endorsement”