Over the past several weeks, I’ve been putting a lot of work into adjusting my online presence, a project that I expect to last through most of the summer. In dividing my website into distinct subareas and pivoting from a single Twitter account to a number of Mastodon accounts, I’m trying to do something about the context collapse that’s been keeping me from sharing some of the big things going on in my life lately.

This is unbelievably dumb. School shootings can’t be solved by technology—it’s a social and political problem. Shame on Axon.

Some good thoughts by Masnick on a good op-ed by Wheaton.

I have long been skeptical of gas prices as a talking point. Some interesting thoughts in here.

Thanks to a recommendation from BoingBoing, I just finished reading a Business Insider article describing a recent video in which Marjorie Taylor Greene: predicted that identifying as heterosexual will be a thing of the past within a period of less than 200 years thanks to LGBTQ-inclusive sex educators, who she called “trans terrorists.” More specifically, Greene was quoted as saying that heterosexual extinction would come about “probably in about four or five generations.

GOP has some reckoning to do.

Content moderation is a good thing, and ‘free speech’ should not be our primary concern when it comes to social media platforms.

Listening to The Aquabats tonight and remembering how I pegged the Mormon connection when I was first listening to them because of subtle allusions to food storage and pioneer hymns.

This is difficult but important to read. As gut wrenching as these shootings are, I am still distant enough from them that they don’t always stick with me. It’s helpful if depressing to read about what sticks with others who are closer to them.

Disappointing but unsurprising. I wish McConnell would show as much willingness to call out Republicans on guns as he does for Ukraine.

Tom the Dancing Bug is usually just the right level of dark.

This book me far too long to read. I started (and finished) a lot of books while supposedly reading this one, and it’s just a massive book with a lot to get through. I’m also unclear on how much I’ll take from the book in particular. I got a lot from the overall arc of the story, but given the timeframe of my reading it and the sheer amount of material—not to mention Schlosser’s interweaving of a particular nuclear accident and other historical details—it was hard to keep track of who was who and what had happened.

It makes me sick and angry to read all of this. We have so badly failed the children of this country.

Imagine thinking that this is the price we pay for American exceptionalism. Imagine thinking that mourning these children and wanting to do something about it is a partisan agenda.

I suspect that there is nothing as damning in Mormon history as Mormons’ failure to own up to that history, and Jana’s writing here captures that nicely.

This is one of the best things The Onion has ever done.

Love this.

Fascinating (if worrying) article on just how important the basic mechanics of an election are.

Lots of interesting ideas in this interview. I particularly like libraries running Mastodon instances.

Let’s do the same in the U.S., please.

I don’t think I want a Pence presidency any more than another Trump one, but I do want to see the GOP wrestle with what it’s going to be going forward.

Glad that there hasn’t been much conversation about this in Kentucky, but it’s still really worrying stuff.

It’s a bit of a truism to say that the Book of Mormon is dependent on Biblical language, but one thing that’s been on my mind for the past few years (especially since reading Thomas Wayment’s excellent The New Testament: A Translation for Latter-day Saints) is how specifically dependent it is on the particular language of the King James Version of the Bible. Over the past year or so, as a personal project, I’ve been toying around with what a modern-language version of the Book of Mormon would look like.

Pretty upset about these results from the primary. I voted for the other candidate and was shocked to find Young won. At least I have a few months to figure out who to write in.

Last night, I had a bizarre dream that I was telling Ted Cruz that he was a jerk but that I didn’t mind when it was directed at Madison Cawthorn. Don’t know if that fully reflects my waking views, and don’t know anything about the victor here, but I am glad to see Cawthorn lose.

Content moderation is (sometimes) a good thing.

Religious freedom isn’t worth anything if it’s only a shield for conservative Christianity.

What a troll. Even if the deal falls through, the way in which a sole rich dude can mess around with Twitter is souring me on the platform.

Like its predecessors, this volume was interesting, and I appreciated what it had to say, but there was just too much that was weird about it for me to really love it. I don’t regret reading it, but I have no plans to buy the physical versions like I thought I might in the past. The story seemed to get more and more speculative over time, and while I appreciated the intent, it just felt like more and more of a stretch, which felt like it weakened the goals of the author.

If QAnon is excited, the rest of us should be worried—though I think there is a possibility that Musk realizes just how bad his ideas re: limiting moderation are and fails to deliver.

Et bien oui, ça me paraît très évident.

Say it together now: Content moderation and free speech are different things.

The quotes in here underline how often ‘free speech’ is used to mean ‘problematic right-wing talking points.’

EFF cares about and actually understands free speech and content moderation, so their voice is especially important today.

Not excited about this, but the good news is that I’ve already been thinking about revamping my web presence, and this is a push to do something about it.

Yet another reason to revisit my social media presence.