Non-theist Christian and elder in Community of Christ. I have Mormon roots and aspirations to do better with justice and peacemaking—especially in the digital sphere but also in Lexington, Kentucky, the U.S., and the world more broadly.
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I sometimes write in French! To only see the French content (which is also available below, alongside English content), please click on [fr]
in the site header.
🔗 linkblog: Pope Leo tells cardinals they must continue 'precious legacy' of Pope Francis
I haven’t done all the homework on the new pope, and I don’t know how much it makes sense as a non-Catholic to have a take on the new pope, but I’m here for religious leaders who express skepticism about AI specifically as a labor issue, not just in vague spiritual terms.
🔗 linkblog: Pentagon Furthers Crackdown on DEI With Order to Review Library Books
So, arguing that people of color are genetically less intelligent is fine, but criticizing that argument is radical woke? What a dumb, dumb world we live in. [Gift link]
🔗 linkblog: He's the key person behind the most notorious deepfake porn site in the world. And he's Canadian | CBC News
Some really good reporting from the CBC on a gross site (that thankfully appears to be done).
🔗 linkblog: The AI Slop Presidency
My feelings toward generative AI are strong and negative, and I try not to share everything critical I read so that I’m not beating that drum over and over. This is worth a read, though: Generative AI is a great tool for trolling and Bannonesque “flooding the zone,” and the Trump administration’s use of it in these petty ways is arguably just as worrying as DOGE’s irresponsible appeals to AI. I just don’t like what these tools are doing to us—and as its supporters point out, this is the least powerful they’ll ever be.
🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk Tried Keeping Issues at His Texas Mansion Private, Emails Show
That Elon Musk would abuse his government position for his own benefit isn’t at all surprising. That he would use it to argue for an exemption to public records laws to hush up a neighborhood dispute is petty enough to catch my attention. [gift link]
🔗 linkblog: Elon Musk's Grok AI Will 'Remove Her Clothes' In Public, On X
Oh look, it’s all my least favorite things about tech right now, combined in a single, enraging story.
movie posters and sacramental living
I just spent way too long (even longer because I insisted on doing it in French) writing up a post about movie posters I remember seeing in France and Switzerland while living there as a Latter-day Saint missionary. I have final grading to do and a lawn to mow, but those specific memories of movie posters pop up every once in a while (despite, as I explain in the first post, not really being much of a movie buff?
🔗 linkblog: Firefox could be doomed without Google search deal, says executive
Look, I have some sympathy for Mozilla because it’s Mozilla… but Mozilla’s dependence on Google is a real problem.
🔗 linkblog: Trump Admits He Could Get Abrego Garcia Back, But Angrily Insists Non-Existent Tattoos Are The Reason He Won’t
I finally read about the whole tattoo thing. It’s so dumb that it makes me angry. I don’t want to think about it, but I’m bookmarking it because if I don’t, my brain will refuse to remember that Donald Trump made such a dumb assertion. It will get drowned out by so many other dumb things.
preaching on Revelation: hope, weirdness, and being anti-empire
Last Sunday, I preached in my Community of Christ congregation, beginning five weeks of messages from Revelation. This sermon came together with more difficulty than the last few that I’ve done, but I took advantage of being the first person preaching on Revelation by setting the stage for a responsible reading of the book as about the past, not the future. I attend a relatively conservative Community of Christ congregation, so it was unsurprising to get some pushback on that, I guess.
📚 bookblog: Visions in a Seer Stone: Joseph Smith and the Making of the Book of Mormon (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
This book makes an interesting, important, and compelling argument. I find it personally interesting, and it will be useful for a conference paper that I’m thinking of putting together next fall (it turns out that Jacques Ellul’s ideas overlap with the Book of Mormon in interesting ways!).
If I’m hard on the book, it’s because that argument feels scattered. While I appreciate the mountain of sources that the author draws on, I feel like a shorter, tighter book (or even article!
🔗 linkblog: Instagram's AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists
I started the day grumpy about generative AI, but articles like this just make it worse.
🔗 linkblog: Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI
I have already been skeptical about Duolingo (as a company—the app is mostly not bad) for a while, but this is the sort of thing that makes me want to find an alternative for kiddo to use fast.
🔗 linkblog: The Man Who Wants AI to Help You ‘Cheat on Everything’
Everything in this article makes me sad.
🔗 linkblog: Marco Rubio’s Family Values: Preventing Mahmoud Khalil From Witnessing His Child’s Birth
Solid post with damning critiques.
🔗 linkblog: Louisville officials defend proposal to take Churchill Downs money from JCPS
I’m sure this is more complicated than I appreciate, but what stands out to me is that every time I watch the Kentucky Derby, I’m overwhelmed by what a display of wealth it is. That’s not what I see when I look at public schools.
📚 bookblog: Dieu n'existe pas encore (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Il faut peut-être que j’arrête d’essayer de lire des œuvres philosophiqies ou théologiques en français (même si je n’ai payé que 10€ chez Cultura), car j’avoue avoir du mal à tout comprendre dans de tels livres.
Pourtant, ce que j’ai compris dans ce livre j’ai beaucoup aimé. Lagandré distingue entre le théisme et la religion d’une manière fort intéressant, et il arrive à exprimer plusieurs pensées qui m’arrivent d’une manière bien moins mûre depuis des années.
🔗 linkblog: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin flop is bigger than Katy Perry
I haven’t paid much attention to gestures at all this before now, but this critique convinces me.
📚 bookblog: Lawful Interception (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
This was fine. I’m glad I read it, so I can continue my Doctorow completionism, but I’m not sure I would have missed much if I didn’t. You can see the beginnings of Walkaway in here, but it just makes me want to reread that yet again.
the upside-down Blue Marble and imagining other worlds
One of the most famous photographs in the world is the Blue Marble, a picture of Earth taken from Apollo 17 as it made its way to the Moon.
I learned something interesting about the photo today, though: Apparently (see here, among other sources, though I wish I could find a NASA comment on this), the photo was originally taken with the South Pole facing the top of the photo—and with the Earth not exactly centered.
🔗 linkblog: The Tactics Elon Musk Uses to Manage His ‘Legion’ of Babies—and Their Mothers
Creepy as hell. Gift link.
📚 bookblog: Anarchie et christianisme (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Ça faisait plusieurs mois que je voulais lire ce livre, et j’ai été content de pouvoir en commander un exemplaire—surtout avant la folie actuelles des taxes douanières. Je dirais pas que le livre m’a deçu, car il y a plusieurs passages qui m’ont impressionné. Pourtant, il me semblait peu organisé et trop concentré sur des « preuves » que la Bible est un livre anarchiste. J’aime assez bien les inteprétations qu’Ellul a proposées, mais toute insistence que la Bible doit forcément dire telle ou telle chose m’agace.
🔗 linkblog: Trump Officials Renew Opposition to Ruling on Maryland Man Wrongly Deported to El Salvador
What moral bankruptcy. Gift link.
Star Trek V, the Liahona, and Jacques Ellul's technique
Despite what my recent Star Trek comics binge might lead you to believe, my Star Trek fandom is actually kind of spotty in its coverage. It’s not so complete that I’ve ever actually seen Star Trek V (though I hear I’m not missing much), but it’s absolutely complete enough to be familiar with its most famous line. A being claiming to be the ultimate, galaxy-wide monotheistic deity asks for transport on the Enterprise, prompting a skeptical Kirk to ask “what does God need with a starship?
nontheism in one of Steven Peck's short stories
I recently reread Steven Peck’s Wandering Realities, a collection of short stories on Mormonism. One of the more moving stories in the collection is “Two Dog Dose,” which features two old friends, one of whom is still a practicing Latter-day Saint while the other is not. That second character is one of those characters who is more interesting than the brief format has room for: We never learn exactly what led to his loss of faith, but we do learn that he had served as a bishop at some point before that happened.
🔗 linkblog: 'My Entire Life Is Political': Trans Fencer Attacked by Conservative Outrage Machine Speaks Out
Incredible levels of bad faith manufactured outrage here. What a dumb world we live in.
📚 bookblog: Wandering Realities: The Mormonish Short Fiction of Steven L. Peck (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
I may no longer be a practicing Latter-day Saint, but this is the kind of cultural artifact that keeps me thinking of myself as Mormon. Peck’s writing—see also Heike’s Void, which I’d love to reread—depicts a beautiful Mormonism that I still feel connected to and that represents what the religion can be at its best.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have complaints about these stories. They’re very male-centered (I’m not sure any of them pass the Bechdel Test), and even though it’s one of my favorites in some ways, the story of the crafting of the Liahona bugs me for the way that it imposes Mormon theology on first temple Israelite religion, as Mormons tend to do.