Don’t know if this is better or worse than what I worried about.

Love this.

I backed this Kickstarter project several years ago, when a comic about Mormonism felt like it was right in the center of the Venn diagram of my interests. That’s still not far from the truth, but my relationship with Mormonism—and my experience as a Latter-day Saint missionary—is a lot more complicated than it was then.

In fact, I’ve been thinking about rereading this for ages but have bounced off of it a few times. I have big theological disagreements with some comics in the anthology, and I’m not a huge fan of the implicit queerphobia in at least two comics.

I’ve wanted to get a seminary degree for a while, and I’ve often wondered if my seminary thesis would be on theology and technology, but I never expected to be in dueling theologies with Peter Thiel.

Pour vraiment atteindre l’égalité, il faut non seulement ouvrir « le masculin » mais aussi valoriser « le féminin »

Wow! Sure, coming from outside the LDS tradition, I have some theological quibbles with parts of this book, but what an amazing example it is of what I love about this series. It uses a close reading of the Book of Mormon—and some of the most obscure and overlooked parts of the Book of Mormon—to draw lessons that I can really get behind. It makes me want to already revisit the book and to the passages that it’s working with.

Il est souvent utile de lire une perspective étrangère sur tout ce qui se passe actuellement aux États-Unis, même quand ça me déprime.

Nick Fuentes is trouble.

I can’t remember how much of this series I’ve actually read, but I remember this one being my favorite of those I have read, and wow does it deliver on that memory. It’s a powerful example of what responsible, justice-oriented Book of Mormon theology can look like. It takes more effort to engage with than some of the previous volumes (especially considering how sleepy I was as I finished it this afternoon), so I think I need to revisit some of these arguments in more detail, but even though I was predisposed to enjoy this reread, I was still surprised at how many parts of the Book of Mormon it warmed me up to.

Rand Paul continues to be right on this.

Ça faisait des années que j’avais l’intention de lire cette bande dessinée, et j’ai enfin trouvé un exemplaire en français il y a quelques semaines, grâce à mon beau-frère.

On a tellement l’habitude de diaboliser l’Iran aux États-Unis qu’il est même facile d’oublier qu’il y a de quoi diaboliser ! L’histoire personnelle de Satrapi est très émouvante, et je suis bien content de l’avoir lu. Je vois pourquoi c’est une classique parmi les bd.

More money for libraries, less for LLMs.

If I didn’t like the first book in this series as much as I remembered but was generous in my rating because I appreciate what it’s doing, I liked this second book more than I remembered but am harsh in my rating because I don’t appreciate what it’s doing. This book reads less as an extended conversation with 2 Nephi than as a wide-ranging, largely apologetic treatment of Latter-day Saint theology that happens to frequently reference 2 Nephi.

I love it when different books I’m reading come together in interesting ways. That happened recently while rereading Joseph Spencer’s 1st Nephi: A Brief Theological Introduction and restarting (this, time, in English) Jacques Ellul’s The Humiliation of the Word. In this post, I want to take up a distinction that Spencer makes in his book, suggesting that:

Question’s about the Book of Mormon’s truth tend to be of two sorts. First, we want to know whether it all really happened. Second, we want to know whether it really shows us who God is.

There’s a really interesting quasi-theological question at the heart of this book, and I’m rereading it for the first time in over a decade because I think it will be useful for a sermon I’m scheduled to give in a couple of months. What “imaginary versions” of Jesus do we create for ourselves and how do they get in the way of our connecting with the heart of Christianity.

There’s also a goofiness to the book that almost works. I don’t think it quite lands, coming off as what I imagine a trying-too-hard youth pastor might deliver, but if it did land, it would be right up my alley.

It is September 13th. I am already buying myself a tea advent calendar and hating myself for it. I am thinking about how much more offensive capitalist Christmas should be to Christians than secular Christmas.

I remembered liking this book a lot when I first read it five or so years ago, so it was actually kind of disappointing to reread it now. There was a lot of it that didn’t feel relevant to me or that I felt I disagreed with. That said, I appreciate Spencer’s work a lot, and there are some great observations in here, so I’m trying to give it some grace in my rating.

If there’s one cause I truly aspire to be more radical about, it’s non-violence.

Good overview of recent Grok nonsense.

Better grab these while I can.

I frequently disagree with Rand Paul, but when he’s right, he’s usually really, really right.

Wild read. It’s as if the right is an alliance between the most dangerous coddling of Big Tech and the dumbest criticisms of it.

Ugh, this article makes it sound even worse.

What a depressing story.

TFW a webcomic punchline is more or less your actual theology.