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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🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'DOGE Puts $1 Spending Limit on Government Employee Credit Cards'
DOGE continues to insist on the dumbest way to carry out its dumb goals. https://www.wired.com/story/doge-government-credit-cards/
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump State Department official has called for mass sterilization of ‘low-IQ trash’'
It’s all bad right now, but it’s still important to call out the particularly bad stuff. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/darren-beattie-trump-state-department-b2696297.html
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump firings cause chaos at agency responsible for America's nuclear weapons'
One more thing right out of the Twitter playbook from DOGE: Firing people without understanding how important they are. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/14/nx-s1-5298190/nuclear-agency-trump-firings-nnsa
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy, by David Graeber
When I was in grad school, I was pretty centrist: more liberal than most of the students from BYU (where I’d just finished my bachelor’s) but more conservative than most of the students at MSU. I had an odd experience one day when a fellow student far, FAR to the left from where I was teasingly chided me for a Facebook post I’d made defending Common Core from one of my BYU friends who was convinced it was a communist plot.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump Is Just Threatening to Do Something Stupid as a Terrible Negotiation Tactic'
Bookmarking this in case I need to show it to a family member. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/trump-is-just-threatening-to-do-something-stupid-as-a-terrible-negotiation-tactic
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Joseph Smith and the Mormons, by Noah Van Scriver
This is an excellent graphic novel adaptation of the earliest of Mormon history. The art is good, the story is compelling, and I enjoyed reading it. I came close to buying this twice in the past year after finding it in comics shops, and I was delighted to find that my local library had a couple of copies. I do wish that I either knew a lot more history or a lot less history going into this.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Normalizing Indian Hate Makes Me a Good Father and Husband'
McSweeney’s pulls no punches, but Vance has earned no mercy. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/normalizing-indian-hate-makes-me-a-good-father-and-husband
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible, by Mitri Raheb
This book has been on my radar for a few months, and I’m glad to have found an audiobook I could check out (though I doubt I’d have regretted an impulse buy—this would be a good book to have on hand). Palestinian Christian ministers and theologians always call me to account in a way that I appreciate. I don’t think I should need someone from my own faith tradition (broadly speaking) to tell me how bad the situation in Palestine is (i.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'How close is Elon Musk to controlling a nuclear weapon?'
The headline is a little provocative, but it’s scary that we live in a world where it makes some sense. More broadly, though, I found that the first Trump administration converted me to nuclear disarmament—yes, this president is scary, but that any president has access to that much destructive power is scarier still. I expect I’ll go further in that direction this time around. https://www.theverge.com/policy/609110/elon-musk-doge-department-energy-nuclear-weapon-waste-cleanup-access
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Staffer with Elon Musk's DOGE amplified white supremacists online'
Starting to sense a pattern. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/staffer-with-elon-musks-doge-amplified-white-supremacists-online-2025-02-07/
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump’s FBI Pick Kash Patel Took Up to $5M in Stock From Chinese Ecommerce Giant Shein'
The rules seem to be that it’s okay to do whatever in the GOP, but no Democrat can even seem to be in a sticky situation. What a joke. https://www.wired.com/story/kash-patel-elite-depot-shein/
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber
Like everything I’ve read from Graeber, I appreciate the overall argument that he’s making and I find the evidence he marshalls compelling. At the same time, there’s a density to the latter that I admit having trouble following, so I don’t always see how it leads to the overall argument. Even with those caveats, I’m happy to endorse this read. I’m interested in how Graeber explores the relationship between moral thinking and economic modeling—as I posted earlier, I also find his thoughts on the moral dangers posed by abstracting interpersonal obligations into quantifiable debt with the help of money.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Far Right Has a New Hero: Elon Musk'
Bookmarking for… sigh… teaching purposes. https://www.wired.com/story/far-right-new-leader-elon-musk/
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'First Cracks Appear: Some Conservatives Admit We’re In A Constitutional Crisis'
As usual, lots to like in this post from Mike Masnick. https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/04/first-cracks-appear-some-conservatives-admit-were-in-a-constitutional-crisis/
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'A 25-Year-Old With Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment System'
Resubscribed to WIRED because despite my efforts to focus more on tech news than political news, THEY HAVE BECOME ONE AND THE SAME IN REALLY WORRYING WAYS. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-associate-bfs-federal-payment-system/
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Twitter Files Playbook Comes For The US Government'
More good writing from Masnick on scary stuff coming out of DC. https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/03/the-twitter-files-playbook-comes-for-the-us-government/
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The NTSB chooses Elon Musk’s X to update the press on plane crashes'
Lots of bad things are happening right now, but this one stands out. There’s no good reason for this except to make Musk happy. https://www.theverge.com/news/604740/ntsb-x-elon-musk-media-communication
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'I Don’t Have Words'
I always appreciate Sam’s writing and especially here. I’m waiting to see what—if anything—my current church has to say about the current mess, but I have a deep fondness for the church I grew up in, and it’s deeply disappointing for a rich church that is willing to throw those resources behind its interests to decide that combatting the present cruelty is not one of those interests. https://bycommonconsent.com/2025/02/01/i-dont-have-words/
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump To Victims’ Families: ‘I’m Doing Everything Possible To Resegregate Flight Schools’'
I’m grateful for The Onion right now. https://theonion.com/trump-to-victims-families-im-doing-everything-possible-to-resegregate-flight-schools/
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Acting on Trump's order, federal officials opened up two California dams'
Bookmarking this because with the sheer quantity of nonsense that’s happened in just the last couple of weeks, I feel like I will eventually need reminders of just how dumb some of it has been. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-01-31/trump-california-dams-opened-up
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon’s Twitter Destruction Playbook Hits The US Government, And It’s Even More Dangerous'
Masnick pulls no punches. https://www.techdirt.com/2025/01/31/elons-twitter-destruction-playbook-hits-the-us-government-and-its-even-more-dangerous/
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'FCC demands CBS provide unedited transcript of Kamala Harris interview'
Government overreach is scary, but it can also be really, really petty. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/fcc-demands-cbs-provide-unedited-transcript-of-kamala-harris-interview/
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Exclusive: Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency, sources say'
Oh, he really is doing this like he did Twitter. That was a nightmare by itself. Exclusive:%20Musk%20aides%20lock%20government%20workers%20out%20of%20computer%20systems%20at%20US%20agency,%20sources%20say%20%7C%20Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-aides-lock-government-workers-out-computer-systems-us-agency-sources-say-2025-01-31/
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Treasury official retires after clash with DOGE over access to payment system'
Anyone who hasn’t should read one of two excellent books—Extremely Hardcore or Character Limit—on Musk’s takeover of Twitter, because I’m getting similar vibes here. Remember when Musk just refused to pay money Twitter owed because he didn’t feel like it? link to “Treasury official retires after clash with DOGE over access to payment system”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Top 10 moments of RFK Jr.’s reality-bending confirmation hearings'
What a mess. link to “Top 10 moments of RFK Jr.’s reality-bending confirmation hearings”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump Admin Deletes Video Explaining Grammatical Concept of Pronouns in War Against DEI'
This headline would be hilarious if it weren’t so infuriating. link to “Trump Admin Deletes Video Explaining Grammatical Concept of Pronouns in War Against DEI”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole From Us'
Yeah, it’s really hard to have any sympathy here at all. link to “OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole From Us”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Technological Poison Pill: How ATProtocol Encourages Competition, Resists Evil Billionaires, Lock-In & Enshittification'
Saw someone link to this and remembered I should probably read the whole thing instead of just the first few paragraphs. I fall somewhere between Doctorow and Masnick on Bluesky optimism, but I really appreciate their dialogue on it. link to “The Technological Poison Pill: How ATProtocol Encourages Competition, Resists Evil Billionaires, Lock-In & Enshittification”
