The digital could have been used to expand access to content, but we’re using it to actually restrict that access. What a crappy future.

I try not to post too much about this campaign because I find it overwhelming, but this is worrying stuff. Really worrying.

Over the weekend, I watched The Muppet Christmas Carol with kiddo for the third year in a row. That makes three years that I’ve been meaning to read the source material, so I went to LibriVox and found a free audiobook.

It was an excellent read! It’s aged, and not always well, but the message is just as biting, and I appreciate the Muppet adaptation all the more. Dickens has clever writing, which I appreciated, and it was nice to read the original after seeing so many adaptations.

I’ve been wanting to learn more about the Quaker faith, and this example only reinforces that.

I knew Kissinger’s name, but I was embarrassingly unfamiliar with his record (especially given the many international relations and poli sci classes I took in college). This was a helpful—and difficult—read.

It’s especially jarring to read this while reading up on non-violence and consuming fiction on the brutal cynicism of the cold war. There was a time in my life where I would have acknowledged the complexity behind these decisions, but I can’t see how anyone could accept that complexity as somehow justifying the loss of life and other tragedies.

Earlier this year, I read Guy Delisle’s excellent comic Chroniques de Jérusalem twice in the course of two months. I began by finally checking out the English translation from a local library to give it a try (I like Delisle, but I’d had trouble getting into this particular comic in the past). Then, as I was getting into it, my brother-in-law texted me from New York to say he was stopping by a local French bookstore and ask if I wanted anything. I wanted the original French version, he picked it up, and I immediately reread the book (is it rereading if it’s in two different languages?) as soon as it arrived.

I haven’t been following this debate, but Doctorow and White’s points resonate with me.

Thomas Merton believed that he could (and should) advocate for a clear cause even in understanding that the actual solution would be complex and that he did not therefore know the details. The most prominent of these causes was an abolition of war, and I feel like that’s more relevant than ever.

I had been reading and thinking about non-violence for months before the 2023 Israel-Hamas war started, but its outbreak is making me more committed to the idea than any abstract philosophical argument.

I’m more inclined than ever before to believe that military force can never be justified, and I think that’s especially true in cases where civilians are deliberately targeted (or allowed to be caught in the attack). Hamas’s attack on Israeli civilians is unjustifiable, the IDF’s seeming disregard for Gazan civilians is unjustifiable, the U.S.’s bombing of German and Japanese cities during World War II was unjustifiable, and the list goes on.

Seeing an official publication of my church advocate for public transit is a beautiful combination of two of my favorite things. I’m very pleased!

This morning, a Michigander friend of mine texted to wish me a Happy Thanksgiving. Her husband and their roommate work at Walmart, and so I asked her whether they had to work today. It took my friend a few hours to respond, but I already knew the answer—as long as I’ve known them, they’ve both had to work on and around most major holidays. Their Thanksgiving has traditionally been on Thursday morning or Wednesday evening to make sure that they have some time to celebrate as a family before they get called in to work to get things ready for the capitalist rush that will come on Black Friday—and increasingly, on Thursday night.

Anyone who doesn’t accept that gender is socially constructed needs to explain to me why one of the cartoon turkeys on my Thanksgiving 5k shirt is wearing lipstick and a pearl necklace just so we know the race is open to women.

What a joke.

Masnick’s frustration here is fun to read.

Love this article. This year, I’ve been craving Advent since Halloween ended, and I’ve seen a justice and peace element to Advent since I first started celebrating it, so there’s a lot for me here.

I’ve read a LOT of Doctorow in 2023—including Walkaway twice, Red Team Blues twice, and relistening to Little Brother—so I can’t help but place this hopeful solarpunk novel in the context of these others.

Even though The Lost Cause touches on some of the same themes as Walkaway, I like the latter book a lot better, though perhaps because it feels less “real” than a book about paramilitary Maga Clubs and impending climate catastrophe. Yet Red Team Blues is also more grounded than Walkaway, but I enjoyed it more than The Lost Cause, so it’s hard to say why this book didn’t click with me as some of Doctorow’s other writing.

I’ve been reading a number of these stories as they’ve been coming out but without posting about them. This is as good a chance as any to express my concern.

I’ve been waiting for Masnick’s response to this, and it’s good.

Over the summer, I wrote about a favorite Community of Christ hymn. Without repeating the entire post here, one of my favorite things about it is that it was never written as a hymn. Rather, it was a song written by a folk song as a call for peace that got adopted into the Community of Christ hymnbook in 2013.

I thought about these details last weekend as I was listening to Ici-bas, a favorite song by French Canadian folk rock band Les cowboys fringants—I figured that this song would make for a pretty good hymn, too, even if it probably has a bit more swearing than your typical hymn. I’ve taken inspiration from this song for quite a while. Back in May 2022, I actually submitted the following story to Community of Christ’s Daily Bread series of morning devotionals (though it has not yet appeared, so maybe folks at World Church don’t agree with my evaluation):

What the hell, Musk.

What a mess Musk has made Twitter into.

Rereading this book after a few years, and it continues to be great! The organization could be more clear, and it sometimes feels repetitive, but it provides important historical detail that allows the reader to understand Latter Day Saint priesthood in new ways.

This is an excellent, thorough book on the purity system of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the excommunications of the “September Six” and many others for their violations of that purity system. I bought the book out of personal interest, but I think it will be professionally valuable as well. I knew much of what was in the book, but what I didn’t know was important, and I am grateful for the volume and hope that many will read it to learn about this important period in Mormon history. As Patterson notes, though, it’s not just history; her conclusion reflecting on how these episodes have their echoes in the present is especially good.

Torn on this article. I think you can choose to patronize a platform without being associated with its worst users, so I wonder if the Fuentes connection is overstated. That said, choosing to livestream on Rumble is absolutely pandering to Fuentes-type right-wingers, so it’s a bad, bad move.

Yesssss! Andy Beshear, governeer! So very happy about this.