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.
You can subscribe to this content through this RSS feed or this Mastodon account.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk tries to distract from Twitter layoffs by claiming advertisers are fleeing the platform - The Verge'
- kudos: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’
further thoughts on Jephthah's daughter
- kudos: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.
- kudos:
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.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Amazon Drivers Are Still Peeing in Bottles'
- kudos:Someone’s paying the price for the convenience of shopping on Amazon. link to ‘Amazon Drivers Are Still Peeing in Bottles’
on Jephthah, Jeremiah, and David Archuleta
- kudos: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:
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'With Falsehoods About Pelosi Attack, Republicans Mimic Trump - The New York Times'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Republicans Continue to Spread Baseless Claims About Pelosi Attack - The New York Times'
- kudos:Just sickening. link to ‘Republicans Continue to Spread Baseless Claims About Pelosi Attack - The New York Times’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Nancy Pelosi, Vilified by G.O.P. for Years, Is a Top Target of Threats - The New York Times'
- kudos: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’
- kudos:
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.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Antisemitic campaign tries to capitalize on Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. - The New York Times'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk’s First Move Is To Fire The Person Most Responsible For Twitter’s Strong Free Speech Stance | Techdirt'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Talking about the church president over the pulpit | LDS Data Analysis'
- kudos:Some neat data analysis here—both in terms of methods and in findings. Hat tip to Jana Riess for bringing my attention to this in today’s column. link to ‘Talking about the church president over the pulpit | LDS Data Analysis’
a conservative case for a modern language edition of the Book of Mormon
- kudos:I’ve written a fair amount already on my rereading the Book of Mormon project, where I’m entertaining the idea of what a modern language edition of the book (or at least the Book of Mosiah) might look like. In my work thus far, I’ve been proceeding under the assumption that this is an inherently liberal project: In both the LDS and RLDS traditions, there has been considerable resistance to large-scale changes to the English language text of the Book of Mormon, largely because the English text is held to be translated through divine power and therefore unassailable.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Right Wingers ‘Fight’ AT&T By Embracing ‘Anti-Woke’ Cell Carrier…That’s Just Rebranded AT&T | Techdirt'
- kudos:Don’t know whether to laugh or cry. link to ‘Right Wingers ‘Fight’ AT&T By Embracing ‘Anti-Woke’ Cell Carrier…That’s Just Rebranded AT&T | Techdirt’
- kudos:
Pretty sure the sermon I heard this morning had undercurrents of British Israelism in it and 😬😬😬
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Report: Internet providers offer Louisville residents unequal speeds for similar prices – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville'
- kudos:I’d skipped over the story when the Markup reported it, but seeing local coverage of how it plays out locally makes it even worse. Municipal broadband ought to be more common! link to ‘Report: Internet providers offer Louisville residents unequal speeds for similar prices – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'On Choosing Each Other and Eating the Fruit | By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog'
- kudos:Fantastic post here. One of the first calm moments for me in a very messy faith transition was leaving the Louisville Temple and thinking about how central Adam and Eve’s “disobedience” is in Latter-day Saint theology. link to ‘On Choosing Each Other and Eating the Fruit | By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Texas Sues Google Over Use of Facial Images - WSJ'
- kudos:I don’t like Paxton, and I can’t imagine this is much more than performative railing against a strawman version of Big Tech, but this is a real issue, so I’m interested to see where it goes. link to ‘Texas Sues Google Over Use of Facial Images - WSJ’
gratitude for models of being imperfect but 'good enough'
- kudos:Yesterday, I listened to a new episode of the Project: Zion podcast, the semi-official podcast of Community of Christ. This episode was an interview with Shandra Newcom, one of two apostles-designate who will begin their service after the April 2023 World Conference of the church. It was a delightful episode, and I posted something to the Community of Christ subreddit that I wanted to repeat here: What a great episode! I loved getting to know Shandra, and I appreciated her opennness and vulnerability.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Ye’s ‘Buyout’ Of Parler Looks Very Much Like A Failed Company Taking Advantage Of Troubled Rich Guy | Techdirt'
- kudos:Insightful speculation by Masnick. Ye’s said some horrible things recently, but that doesn’t mean Parlement can’t be taking advantage of him. link to ‘Ye’s ‘Buyout’ Of Parler Looks Very Much Like A Failed Company Taking Advantage Of Troubled Rich Guy | Techdirt’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump Is Already Boosting Election Conspiracies Ahead of the Midterms'
- kudos:I’ve been worrying about 2024, but 2022 is going to be bad enough. GOP needs to do something about this. link to ‘Trump Is Already Boosting Election Conspiracies Ahead of the Midterms’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Kentucky’s county clerks deal with misinformation as election approaches – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville'
- kudos:We’ve had it better than some states, so it’s disappointing to hear all of this. link to ‘Kentucky’s county clerks deal with misinformation as election approaches – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Kanye West is buying ‘free speech platform’ Parler - The Verge'
- kudos:Oh no. This can’t be good. link to ‘Kanye West is buying ‘free speech platform’ Parler - The Verge’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Meta’s VR Headset Harvests Personal Data Right Off Your Face | WIRED'
- kudos:I had not thought this much about the privacy implications of VR, and ooooof. link to ‘Meta’s VR Headset Harvests Personal Data Right Off Your Face | WIRED’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Watch the Disturbing Kanye Interview Clips That Tucker Carlson Didn’t Put on Air'
- kudos:Wild story, and heck of a scoop. Says far more about Tucker Carlson than about Ye. link to ‘Watch the Disturbing Kanye Interview Clips That Tucker Carlson Didn’t Put on Air’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Arizona GOP Secretary Of State Candidate Insists ‘Deep State’ Google Is Blocking His Website; Turns Out He Requested It Not Be Indexed | Techdirt'
- kudos:Politicians need to better understand the internet. This is just as dumb (and perhaps more devious) than the nonsense the governor of Missouri was up to. link to ‘Arizona GOP Secretary Of State Candidate Insists ‘Deep State’ Google Is Blocking His Website; Turns Out He Requested It Not Be Indexed | Techdirt’
thoughts on recent Mormon Land podcast
- kudos:The Salt Lake Tribune’s Mormon Land podcast is one of my favorites—I’ve gone so far as to support it on Patreon so that I can get all the Tribune’s religion coverage without having to subscribe to the entire newspaper. Mormon news interests me a lot, but Utah news doesn’t interest me at all. Yesterday’s episode on age and Latter-day Saint leadership was one of the most interesting episodes that I’ve listened to.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Who is ready for a fleet of cubesats flying over cities, displaying ads? | Ars Technica'
- kudos:This is a terrible idea, and it is wildly irresponsible to do research like this. link to ‘Who is ready for a fleet of cubesats flying over cities, displaying ads? | Ars Technica’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Talk of ‘Civil War,’ Ignited by Mar-a-Lago Search, Is Flaring Online - The New York Times'
- kudos:I am growing more and more nervous about our future. link to ‘Talk of ‘Civil War,’ Ignited by Mar-a-Lago Search, Is Flaring Online - The New York Times’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Onion Files Hilarious Amicus Brief In An Important Case, And Actually Makes A Key Point In The Best Way Possible | Techdirt'
- kudos:Amazing stuff here. link to ‘The Onion Files Hilarious Amicus Brief In An Important Case, And Actually Makes A Key Point In The Best Way Possible | Techdirt’
on distinctions between 'church' and gospel'
- kudos:During the last few years I spent as a practicing Latter-day Saint, one recurring pet peeve that I had was the overbroad use of the term “gospel” to refer to all Latter-day Saint doctrines, teachings, and beliefs. In hindsight, learning to separate the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ from everything that I believed was a major part of my faith transition—and my ability to continue in Christianity even when the version that I was used to started to no longer work for me.
the problem with Gadianton robber rhetoric
- kudos:After recently finishing an excellent biography on Brigham Young, I’m starting to make my way through some other Mormon Studies books that I own but have not yet read. This has brought me to Paul Reeve’s Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness. It’s very good so far, and I regret having waited until now to read it. I’m currently working through Reeve’s chapters describing Mormons’ relationship with American Indians, and I just now read a paragraph that really surprised me.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'In Washington, Putin’s Nuclear Threats Stir Growing Alarm - The New York Times'
- kudos:Russia is currently demonstrating just how powerful and dangerous nuclear weapons are—and, unfortunately, how complicated disarmament is. link to ‘In Washington, Putin’s Nuclear Threats Stir Growing Alarm - The New York Times’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Rand Paul declines to debate Charles Booker on KET – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville'
- kudos:Unsurprising but disappointing. link to ‘Rand Paul declines to debate Charles Booker on KET – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk’s Starlink Satellites Won’t Fix Iran Internet Censorship'
- kudos:Good read on the emptiness of recent Musk bluster. link to ‘Elon Musk’s Starlink Satellites Won’t Fix Iran Internet Censorship’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Gab Founder Andrew Torba Wants to Build a Christian Nationalist Internet'
- kudos:Good reporting on a scary but important subject. I’ve been collecting Gab blog posts to eventually study some of this Christian nationalism. link to ‘Gab Founder Andrew Torba Wants to Build a Christian Nationalist Internet’