Is this the same feature Elon says will be sufficient for keeping Alex Jones in check?

This… this is even worse than just giving him an account back. Ugh.

Good observations by Masnick here.

Kiddo’s grade is learning about how “other countries celebrate the holidays,” but I’m afraid the result will be reinforcing US Christian supremacy. Framing Hanukkah as Israeli suggests that it is foreign to the US, no? I also worry that there will be a class assigned to do Kwanzaa “from Africa.”

Musk keeps digging his hole deeper and deeper.

Remembering my sister’s BYU roommate who called ketchup and mustard “toppings” because she was deeply uncomfortable pronouncing the first two syllables of the word “condiment.”

Kiddo has a very non-literal father and an atheist mother, so we pay close attention to what happens during Zoom children’s ministry. It’s always a bit tricky, but this week’s combination of Elf on the Shelf stories and non-critical approaches to the Book of Daniel was probably the hardest yet.

I’m an Apple user, but that never stops me from agreeing with Doctorow’s critiques.

The phrase popped into my head before the article could even get to it: We are the product.

Some worrying information here.

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.