I'm a citizen of Lexington, Kentucky, the United States, the world, and the digital sphere. Politically, I care about equality (and changing structures to support it), elections (that is, making them more fair and representative), and electronics (or, rather, their impact on society).

I am a believing agnostic in Community of Christ with a (mostly) cherished past as a (mostly) literalist Mormon.

You can subscribe to this content through this RSS feed or this Mastodon account.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Dendo: One Year and One Half in Tokyo, by Brittany Long Olsen



It’s weird to rate this so highly given how much anxiety it gives me to read it. Reading it four years ago is what forced me to confront how much baggage I had from my own Mormon missionary experience, but I know the author has her own complicated feelings about the book, and that helps some. At any rate, the book is so well done that I can’t help but rate it highly.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome | Ars Technica'



Team Firefox foreverrrrrr link to ‘Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome | Ars Technica’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Musk shut off Starlink to prevent Ukraine attack on Russian ships, report says | Ars Technica'



Don’t love the idea of a fickle billionnaire having this much influence in world affairs. link to ‘Musk shut off Starlink to prevent Ukraine attack on Russian ships, report says | Ars Technica’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/07/govern-yourself-accordingly/'



Appreciate Doctorow’s thinking here. link to ‘https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/07/govern-yourself-accordingly/’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Top French Court Upholds Abaya Ban in Schools - The New York Times'



A secular state is good, but French laïcité consistently goes too far. link to ‘Top French Court Upholds Abaya Ban in Schools - The New York Times’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'How Elon Musk’s Impulses Transformed Twitter - WSJ'



What a mess this whole thing has been. link to ‘How Elon Musk’s Impulses Transformed Twitter - WSJ’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Marsha Blackburn Makes It Clear: KOSA Is Designed To Silence Trans People | Techdirt'



I’ll admit that I’ve been wary of Masnick’s hostility to KOSA, but Blackburn’s comments justify his stance. This ought to kill support for KOSA. link to ‘Marsha Blackburn Makes It Clear: KOSA Is Designed To Silence Trans People | Techdirt’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on '*privacy not included | Shop smart and safe | Mozilla Foundation'



Well, this sucks. [link to ‘*privacy not included | Shop smart and safe | Mozilla Foundation’](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/what-data-does-my-car-collect-about-me-and-where-does-it-go/

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'As X bleeds cash, Musk threatens Anti-Defamation League with defamation lawsuit | Ars Technica'



This feels like a page out of Gab’s playbook. link to ‘As X bleeds cash, Musk threatens Anti-Defamation League with defamation lawsuit | Ars Technica’

🔗 linkblog: mes pensées sur 'En France, près de 300 élèves se sont présentées en abaya à l'école, malgré l'interdiction - rts.ch - Monde'



C’est bien stupide, une telle interdiction. Je suis pour un état séparé de la religion mais contre un état qui essaie de supprimer une religion minoritaire. link to ‘En France, près de 300 élèves se sont présentées en abaya à l’école, malgré l’interdiction - rts.ch - Monde’

who has the power to bind on earth?



One of this week’s lectionary passages includes Matthew 18:18-20, which David Bentley Hart renders: Amen, I tell you, whatever things you bind on the earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever things you unbind on the earth will have been unbound in heaven. Again, [amen,] I tell you that if two among you agree on earth concerning everything they request, whatever it is, it shall come to pass for them, coming from my Father in the heavens.



It’s not that I didn’t enjoy church, but what really fed my soul today was a family trip to some beloved indie bookstores. And some listening to a radio adaptation of Les Misérables. And, okay, yes, the smores cookies and cream ice cream I snitched from spouse’s cone.



Today, I’m remembering the family friend from a Latter-day Saint congregation I grew up in who heard me in a church settng quote some scripture on the need for the rich to give to the poor and then took me aside to ask how liberal my school friends were and give me some cautionary advice.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Gizmodo’s owner shuts down Spanish language site in favor of AI translations - The Verge'



Gizmodo’s owner seems way too optimistic about AI. link to ‘Gizmodo’s owner shuts down Spanish language site in favor of AI translations - The Verge’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Meta May Offer Ad-Free Subscriptions for Instagram and Facebook in the E.U. - The New York Times'



I’m in no way Team Meta, but this may not be a terrible thing? link to ‘Meta May Offer Ad-Free Subscriptions for Instagram and Facebook in the E.U. - The New York Times’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Persecution, Truth and the Trans Agenda – Wheat & Tares'



Solid post. I think it’s often helpful to ask whether Latter-day Saint logic applies to things that don’t get Latter-day Saint approval. link to ‘Persecution, Truth and the Trans Agenda – Wheat & Tares’

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Walkaway, by Cory Doctorow



I just read this earlier this year, but it was too good not to revisit and it’s just as good in epub as it was in audiobook. Love this book.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Chroniques de Jérusalem, by Guy Delisle



It’s been less than a month since I read the English translation of this, which I already gave full marks. Yet, the original French version was even better. Delisle captures this city and its conflicts in a comic book better than any news story ever could.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present, by David Treuer



In a way, I’m not in a great position to evaluate this book, because I’ve read shamefully little about indigenous populations in the Americas. That learning experience here, though, was a good one. Treuer doesn’t sugarcoat the past, but he celebrates the indigenous present and is even hopeful about the future. I have a lot more to read and learn, but this was a solid start.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'You Are Not Responsible for Your Own Online Privacy | WIRED'



Some important—if disheartening—observations from Marwick. link to ‘You Are Not Responsible for Your Own Online Privacy | WIRED’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Lexington KY police start using Fusus camera software | Lexington Herald Leader'



Ew, gross, no. link to ‘Lexington KY police start using Fusus camera software | Lexington Herald Leader’

40 books that have shaped my faith



A friend of mine recently asked whether I had a list of books “that have been particularly impactful or interesting,” especially in the realm of spirituality and religion—and suggested that if I didn’t already have such a list, I could put one together for one of my next blog posts. It took me a while to actually put the list together, but it’s ended up being a really interesting exercise. Of the forty books that I’ve picked, some have been more influential than others.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Scammers Used ChatGPT to Unleash a Crypto Botnet on X | WIRED'



Three cheers for ChatGPT or whatever. link to ‘Scammers Used ChatGPT to Unleash a Crypto Botnet on X | WIRED’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Why this chaplain sees her atheism as a gift : NPR'



Vanessa Zoltan is great, and I love what she shares here. link to ‘Why this chaplain sees her atheism as a gift : NPR’

🍿 movieblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Oppenheimer



Fascinating subject matter, great acting, beautiful visuals, and lots to keep you thinking after you watch it.



This is an admittedly fuzzy memory, but I was thinking today about the time some unit at BYU brought in a French thinker to speak on the importance of “the family,” but instead of the conservative religious arguments I was expecting, the guy’s talk had monarchist vibes.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Legislature’s Transportation Budget Cuts Contributed to the JCPS Bus Debacle - Kentucky Center for Economic Policy'



I hadn’t thought about this before, but of course the same General Assembly complaining about the JCPS bus crisis is responsible for underfunding their bus system. link to ‘The Legislature’s Transportation Budget Cuts Contributed to the JCPS Bus Debacle - Kentucky Center for Economic Policy’

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Les Trois Néphites, Le Bodhisattva et le Mahdî, by Jad Hatem



I don’t remember how I discovered this book, but when ordering some books from France early in the pandemic, I couldn’t pass up the chance to read a Lebanese scholar’s treatment of the Three Nephites in the original French. That said, while there were interesting bits in here, I just don’t know that I follow academic French well enough to really get this. I have a PDF of the English translation that may be worth briefly revisiting.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk, Once Again, Tries To Throttle Links To Sites He Dislikes | Techdirt'



I’ve instinctively never liked t.co links, and this demonstrates what the problem with them are. link to ‘Elon Musk, Once Again, Tries To Throttle Links To Sites He Dislikes | Techdirt’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'OpenAI wants GPT-4 to solve the content moderation dilemma - The Verge'



Look, if an automated process could save human moderators from the awful work they have to do, I’d be all for it. I’m unconvinced that GPT-4 could do it, though. link to ‘OpenAI wants GPT-4 to solve the content moderation dilemma - The Verge’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk keeps getting creepier - The Verge'



I think this is two weeks in a row that I’ve shared Casey Newton’s Platformer column, but that’s because it’s two weeks in a row he’s written something important. link to ‘Elon Musk keeps getting creepier - The Verge’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Case of the Internet Archive vs. Book Publishers - The New York Times'



Good coverage of a worrying development. I’m sympathetic to authors’ worries here, but I also think they’re wrong. If digital is different than the physical, copyright considerations need to be more generous, NOT stricter. The Internet Archive is an important service, and I’m worried about the future. link to ‘The Case of the Internet Archive vs. Book Publishers - The New York Times’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The U.S. Government Wants To Control Online Speech to “Protect Kids” | Electronic Frontier Foundation'



There’s so much inane blathering about free speech on the internet that it’s easy to sometimes forget that it can be a real concern. Here’s one such example. link to ‘The U.S. Government Wants To Control Online Speech to “Protect Kids” | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

which Jesus?



In his closing sermon at the 2019 Community of Christ World Conference, prophet-president Steve Veazey asked a guiding question for the church: Are we moving toward Jesus, the peaceful One? It’s pretty clear from the formatting of this question—and even clearer from its translation into French and Spanish, the other working languages of Community of Christ—that Veazey’s phrase “the peaceful One” is meant to describe Jesus as a being who is inherently peaceful and who exemplifies peace for the whole world.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'AI hysteria is a distraction: algorithms already sow disinformation in Africa | Odanga Madung | The Guardian'



So many important points in this piece. link to ‘AI hysteria is a distraction: algorithms already sow disinformation in Africa | Odanga Madung | The Guardian’

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Generative AI Is Making Companies Even More Thirsty for Your Data | WIRED'



This is not a future I look forward to (or a present I want to live in). link to ‘Generative AI Is Making Companies Even More Thirsty for Your Data | WIRED’