This is such a frustrating story. I never wanted to work at a BYU, but as a Mormon earning a PhD, I often told myself I couldn’t afford to rule it out. This adds to the pile of reasons that I’m glad there weren’t jobs open for me to apply to. link to ‘BYU-I instructors fired for failing ‘ecclesiastical clearance.’ They can’t find out why.’

In recent years, my faith has become less literal, my marriage has become mixed-faith, and we’ve both committed to letting kiddo choose her own future as she gets older. This has meant revisiting family ritual and tradition for end of year holidays, but it’s kind of fun!

Infertility sucks, and stories like this make me even more upset about Musk’s callous and chaotic Twitter takeover. link to ‘They Wanted a Baby, Then Twitter Fired Them | WIRED’

I’m glad I began reading Techdirt before this whole mess started… Masnick’s persective has been a helpful guide. link to ‘Elon Admits His Content Moderation Council Was Always A Sham To Keep Advertisers On The Site | Techdirt’

Is he serious? Does he really think this is a good idea? Also, I love the increasing sass that The Verge and other outlets are putting into their comments about Twitter no longer having a communications team to respond to requests for comment. link to ‘Elon Musk proposes letting nearly everyone Twitter banned back on the site - The Verge’

This seems petty, immature, and misguided. link to ‘Elon Musk tries to blame ‘activists’ for his Twitter moderation council lie - The Verge’

Hearing Black Friday commercials on French radio reminds me that I’m totally fine with the secularization of religious holidays and that the real problem is the commercialization of our holidays, whether always secular or originally religious.

What a load of garbage. link to ‘‘Most Dangerous Person In the World’ Is a Teacher Union Leader, Former CIA Director Says’

Growing up, I was taught to graze at religious texts, focusing on anecdotes that supported what we already believed. One of the great pleasures of my adulthood has been learning to read them more critically: wrestling with their problems and learning deeper lessons.

I sometimes wonder how I’d react if I were put through a ‘Peggy Sue loop’: made to repeat an earlier part of my life with all my knowledge of how things turned out. I have major disagreements with my past self, but I also owe him a lot, so there would be difficult decisions.

I didn’t expect 1,200 resignations! link to ‘Elon Musk’s Twitter Teeters on the Edge After Another 1,200 Leave - The New York Times’

Oh good, so on top of the unexpected chaos, the expected chaos is also still happening. link to ‘Elon Musk begins reinstating banned Twitter accounts, starting with Jordan Peterson and the Babylon Bee - The Verge’

I’m a teetotaler, so some of my microbrewing grad school friends once declared that I would make a good “beer eunuch”—I could be trusted to hold onto a barrel (or whatever—I don’t know how this stuff works) without abusing that trust.

The midterms could have been a lot worse, but this is a reminder that there’s still real danger lurking out there. link to ‘The Far-Right Is Convinced Kari Lake Won: ‘Now Is the Time to Fight’’

Helpful summary of the current state of QAnon. link to ‘Q is Dead, Long Live QAnon’

This doesn’t surprise me at all. So much of the current Twitter chaos is predictable. link to ‘Elon Musk ignored Twitter’s internal warnings about paid verification - The Verge’

Is to adopt a new religious identity necessarily to leave the old one behind? Many—justifiably and understandably—use that language, but it’s never quite fit my own experience. I feel like I’m nitpicking when I try to explain it, though.

What an absolute mess this whole thing has been. link to ‘Twitter reactivated the new ‘Official’ gray checkmark for accounts that are actually verified - The Verge’

Move fast and break things, indeed. Checks as verification and checks as business model are inherently at odds with each other, and I get the vibe that Musk (team business model) is unhappy with internal pushback from team verification. link to ‘Musk-led Twitter rolls out new “Official” tags, removes them hours later | Ars Technica’

I love that I got to vote early this year, but it also means I keep forgetting that today is Election Day.

This reminds me of all the pastors doing guest posts on the official Gab blog. Also, of course Glenn Beck was involved in this somehow. link to ‘Meet the ‘Black Robe Regiment’ of Extremist Pastors Spreading Christian Nationalism’

A mentor in Community of Christ is encouraging me to attend the April 2023 World Conference—and even to register as a voting delegate. The idea of a church conference that asks for bottom-up consensus is very different than my previous, top-down ecclesiastical experience.

They’re so obvious as to almost not be worth pointing out, but two points: First, this is why making verification a paid feature is dumb; and second, penalizing parody because your business model is dumb is not what free speech absolutism looks like. link to ‘Elon Musk’s first Twitter moderation change calls for permanent bans on impersonators - The Verge’

I worry about how often events in my country seem to echo the Dreyfus Affair of late 19th/early 20th century France. As one author put it, truth and justice were set aside by those who perceived them as threats to their vision of the country.

Finished reviewing my ballot for early voting tomorrow!

Choosing not to do business with someone isn’t an assault on free speech—it’s the very definition of the marketplace of ideas. link to ‘Elon Musk tries to distract from Twitter layoffs by claiming advertisers are fleeing the platform - The Verge’

Yesterday, I wrote a post on Jephthah, a figure in the book of Judges who makes a commitment that if God helps him out in battle, he’ll sacrifice the first thing that exits the door of his house when he returns home. Robert Alter notes that there’s been a lot of rabbinic and scholarly effort to make sense of this but that in “any case, it is a rash vow.” Indeed, the vow goes wrong, and Jephthah winds up in a situation where’s he believes he’s committed to offer up his daughter in sacrifice.

To get my current driver’s license, I was asked to take off my glasses for the photo and told it had something to do with facial recognition. That terrified me, but my hope is that since I ALWAYS wear my glasses, the software is going to struggle matching me to that photo.

Someone’s paying the price for the convenience of shopping on Amazon. link to ‘Amazon Drivers Are Still Peeing in Bottles’

Some of the most troubling passages in the Christian canon have to do with the sacrifice of children in the name of God. Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac is perhaps the most obvious example of this, but there are other examples that (ought to) raise as much concern in the mind of the believer. Perhaps the most interesting (to me) story along these lines is found in Judges 11:31 (I’m using Robert Alter’s fantastic translation throughout this post), where one of the eponymous judges, a man by the name of Jephthah:

Republicans’ reaction to this just makes the story more and more tragic. We have a real problem on our hands, and while I don’t believe all Republicans are this far gone, I’d like to see more from them condemning this behavior instead of trying to keep the party together and ahead. link to ‘With Falsehoods About Pelosi Attack, Republicans Mimic Trump - The New York Times’

Just sickening. link to ‘Republicans Continue to Spread Baseless Claims About Pelosi Attack - The New York Times’

McDaniel can say what she wants—and its true that not all criticism of Pelosi is violent in nature—but in my mind, there’s no denying that two decades of GOP demonization has had a role to play in this terrible attack. link to ‘Nancy Pelosi, Vilified by G.O.P. for Years, Is a Top Target of Threats - The New York Times’

The fediverse is great and all, but for me, it won’t be complete until there’s a Mormon instance of Mastodon at curelom.social.

Content moderation is a good thing, and not all viewpoints deserve a seat at a table. link to ‘Antisemitic campaign tries to capitalize on Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. - The New York Times’

Interesting read here from Masnick. I’m not familiar with everything he writes about here, but I always appreciate his perspective. link to ‘Elon Musk’s First Move Is To Fire The Person Most Responsible For Twitter’s Strong Free Speech Stance | Techdirt’