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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recent sermon text on finding the Ultimate in the ordinary
Just over a week ago, I preached for the Beyond the Walls online ministry up in Toronto. I wanted to post the text of my sermon (I’ll also link to the video recording just before that text begins). I was excited about this particular topic, since it fit nicely with some thinking I’ve been doing in recent years, includingwhile reading Cédric Lagandré’s book Dieu n’existe pas encore and writing up some subsequent thoughts.
🔗 linkblog: Rural hospitals in Kentucky brace for financial hits or even closures under GOP's $1 trillion Medicaid cut
Shame on me for not realizing just how badly this would affect my home state. Shame on all the Kentucky reps in Congress who voted for it anyway.
📚 bookblog: Country of Ghosts (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
This book isn’t the best of the anarchist fiction I’ve read—it feels a bit stilted or maybe even too didactic at points—but it grew on me, and I enjoyed the story a lot. (It’s also not the worst anarchist fiction I’ve read—looking at you, V for Vendetta). Cory Doctorow mentioned Killjoy’s most recent book on his blog, so I’m giving some of her older stuff a try, and so far, I think it’s pretty good.
🔗 linkblog: Laid-off workers should use AI to manage their emotions, says Xbox exec
I can’t find the right words for how this story makes me feel.
🔗 linkblog: Le système de bonus social à la chinoise menacerait-il des démocraties comme la Suisse?
C’est bien inquiétant, cette idée de social scoring. Jacques Ellul trouverair beaucoup à critiquer. Et ce n’est pas le seul—j’ai beaucoup aimé ce resumé des critiques d’Adam Knight, à l’Université de Leyden:
En réduisant les personnes à des profils algorithmiques, cela menacerait la vie privée, l’égalité et les procédures régulières. Ce n’est pas juste la surveillance qui est à craindre, mais également une “discrimination automatisée”, estime le chercheur.
🔗 linkblog: Kids are making deepfakes of each other, and laws aren’t keeping up – The Markup
This problem makes me so angry, and while I appreciate this article’s exploration of different policy solutions, they also feel overwhelming to me because so many of them come with problems of their own.
🔗 linkblog: Radio Télévision Suisse La bataille perdue par Genève contre les locations Airbnb illégales
J’avoue que je fais partie du problème, vu que j’ai souvent loué des Airbnb, y compris lors de mon dernier déplacement en Europe.
Pourtant, vu les bêtises qui se déroulent actuellement aux É.-U., il m’est arrivé récemment de regarder les loyers à Genève, et j’ai pu voir combien la pénurie des logements pose un problème pour les locataires. Je dois revoir ma relation avec les Airbnb…
📚 bookblog: Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
This is a good book, with a powerful thesis and a great epilogue that ties things together. It isn’t perfect, but I think most of my quibbles are related to the subject matter and the genre. It’s hard to write a book about a contemporary subject of such importance, and I think it’s tricky to write a book that combines history with more of a critical take on the AI ecosystem.
📚 bookblog: 1776 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Maybe I’m dumb—or not reading closely enough—but I just cannot follow the twists and turns of this series. I love the back of the envelope idea of Indigenous time travelers trying to set things right, but I am very confused by the execution.
🔗 linkblog: Facebook is starting to feed its Meta AI with private, unpublished photos
What. The. Hell. Is. This. Nonsense.
Ellul on technique and turning stones to bread
I have long felt that it was important to recognize that technological development does not improve human lives as much as social change does. Reading through Jacques Ellul’s Théologie et technique (Theology and Technique), I liked the way that this passage (on p. 35) seemed to capture that idea:
La technique a enfin permis à l’homme de changer les pierres en pain. Et il est bien content. Mais il ne comprend pas pourquoi il n’est pas encore dans le Paradis après ce miracle.
📚 bookblog: Ice Age (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
This feels a lot like the first volume: great premise, great art, but very hard to follow. Maybe it’s me not paying close enough attention, but it just feels twisty and turny without enough signposts to keep the reader on track.
📚 bookblog: Kill Columbus (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
There’s a lot going for this book: A compelling premise (Indigenous survivors of a climate apocalypse send someone back in time to kill Columbus, hoping that no America will avert said apocalypse), a willingness to interrogate the premise (violence begets violence, can the past be changed, etc.), and great art.
I felt like it didn’t live up to that potential, though. I had trouble following the timey wimey twists, there were a lot of shortcuts, and the dialogue and characters sometimes felt flat.
🔗 linkblog: Bezos Wedding Guests Given Monogrammed Plastic Bottles To Urinate In During Ceremony
The Onion has once again done what only The Onion can do.
🔗 linkblog: Fanfiction writers battle AI, one scrape at a time
Fanfiction is one of the most compelling examples of the labor issues related to generative AI.
📚 bookblog: Arca (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Arca isn’t perfect—the plot moves at the speed of convenience, the characters aren’t terribly deep, and the twists are either predictable or “huh?”
Even with those critiques, though, I nearly gave it full marks, because it’s really good. I love the art and panel design, and the dystopia as metaphor for modern social problems lands really well. I really enjoyed the read!
📚 bookblog: Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
I wasn’t sure if I was going to read this—not that I wasn’t interested, but so many books, so little time, etc. However, a friend introduced me to NetGalley, where she was reading it prior to publication, and that pushed me into following her example.
I did wait until the end of my time limit with the book to really make progress, and between that rush and my familiarity with Smith’s life, I still wasn’t sure how much I’d get out of it.
🔗 linkblog: GOP Lawmakers Clarify Their Hate-Filled Rhetoric Only Meant To Stoke Fundraising
The Mike Lee banner picture is perfect.
🔗 linkblog: The LDS historical department just published an 1886 polygamy revelation
This is a big story, and I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten more news, even if it is a recent development.
📚 bookblog: The Mormon Jesus: A Biography (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
This wasn’t quite what I was expecting (I think the “biography” subtitle is misleading), but it’s good! It’s organized around specific understandings or depictions of Jesus in Mormonism, and while it isn’t afraid of exploring the weird and controversial (I may be citing this at some point for a paper that touches on arguments about a polygamist Jesus), it’s also good about contextualizing Mormon beliefs within broader trends, thereby making (some) things (slightly) less weird.
🔗 linkblog: Noem Announces Military Will ‘Liberate’ LA From Democracy, Then Watches Security Throw Senator To Ground
Finally read the full quote from Noem and it’s so bad. Scary times.
🔗 linkblog: A Texas Cop Searched License Plate Cameras Nationwide for a Woman Who Got an Abortion
So scary, so gross. Lexington needs to ditch Flock now.
🔗 linkblog: Doing Justice by Providing Sabbath for Others
Lots of interesting ideas in here. Certainly a different approach to “Sabbath” than the one I grew up with.
🔗 linkblog: ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows
Flock sucks, and I’m so mad that Lexington drank the Kool-Aid instead of resisting local surveillance. Just wrote my city council representative, the vice mayor, and the two at-large representatives.
Jacques Ellul and success as the only techbro metric
When I was in grad school, a faculty member in my program told me a story about his then-quite-young son, who was having a grand old time climbing on top of the kitchen table and then leaping off of it to the floor below. (Truth be told, my memories of this conversation are fuzzy, and the son might have been engaged in some otherwise dangerous behavior.) The father tried to tell the son to stop doing this, warning: “You could have hurt yourself!
🔗 linkblog: Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry
The sheer hubris of this attitude! The AI industry must exist, even if it means that it will put others out of business, and therefore any moral standard that would put the AI industry out of business must be abandoned. Very Ellulian.
📚 bookblog: Presence in the Modern World (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I’m glad I found this book through the UK library. I had read that it’s foundational for the ideas Ellul would explore through the rest of his career, and that pans out. I don’t agree with everything, and I think he overreaches sometimes, but I did find this book compelling, and a good addition to my Ellul studies.