During the last few years I spent as a practicing Latter-day Saint, one recurring pet peeve that I had was the overbroad use of the term “gospel” to refer to all Latter-day Saint doctrines, teachings, and beliefs. In hindsight, learning to separate the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ from everything that I believed was a major part of my faith transition—and my ability to continue in Christianity even when the version that I was used to started to no longer work for me.

After recently finishing an excellent biography on Brigham Young, I’m starting to make my way through some other Mormon Studies books that I own but have not yet read. This has brought me to Paul Reeve’s Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness. It’s very good so far, and I regret having waited until now to read it. I’m currently working through Reeve’s chapters describing Mormons’ relationship with American Indians, and I just now read a paragraph that really surprised me.

Russia is currently demonstrating just how powerful and dangerous nuclear weapons are—and, unfortunately, how complicated disarmament is. link to ‘In Washington, Putin’s Nuclear Threats Stir Growing Alarm - The New York Times’

Unsurprising but disappointing. link to ‘Rand Paul declines to debate Charles Booker on KET – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville’

Good read on the emptiness of recent Musk bluster. link to ‘Elon Musk’s Starlink Satellites Won’t Fix Iran Internet Censorship’

Good reporting on a scary but important subject. I’ve been collecting Gab blog posts to eventually study some of this Christian nationalism. link to ‘Gab Founder Andrew Torba Wants to Build a Christian Nationalist Internet’

Very interesting article on how Tolkien can inspire far right thinking. [link to ‘How ‘Lord of the Rings’ Inspires Italy’s Giorgia Meloni - The New York Times’](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/21/world/europe/giorgia-meloni-lord-of-the-rings.html?action=click

This is juvenile enough that I feel guilty finding it funny, but it’s a good demonstration of the problems with this backlash against content moderation. link to ‘https://www.techdirt.com/2022/09/26/subreddit-discriminates-against-anyone-who-doesnt-call-texas-gov’

Ooof. AI-generated art is fun, but it comes at a price, and we can’t afford to forget it. link to ‘AI Is Probably Using Your Images and It’s Not Easy to Opt Out’

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to preprare a “focus moment” for today’s worship service in my Community of Christ congregation. There are some things I might change for a different audience (putting more nuance into my current view of God, for example), but I’m still pretty happy with what I came up with. I’m particularly happy about the translation of the song—I didn’t bring it up when sharing, but this is a French Canadian song that I translated for today’s purpose.

Lots to love in this article, but I especially appreciate the point that God and Creation resist binaries. link to ‘Transgender religious leaders use the Bible to make churches more inclusive : NPR’

Great movie, great example of the difficulty of content moderation. link to ‘The Most Famous Blunder Of Content Moderation: Do NOT Quote The Princess Bride | Techdirt’

I had heard about this kind of software at a conference last year, but reading about it just makes it scarier. link to ‘The Ungodly Surveillance of Anti-Porn ‘Shameware’ Apps | WIRED’

What a dumb allegation. Just makes me want to vote for Wu even more. link to ‘Asian American council candidate fights Communist rumors | Lexington Herald Leader’

This article provides good examples of how the efficacy and efficiency of a given technology is often less important than deeper questions of reliance and roles. link to ‘Too much trust in machine translation could have deadly consequences.’

I missed the vertical integration aspect of this in earlier reporting I’ve read. It makes this story even worse. link to ‘‘Ring Nation’ Is a Terrible Idea That’s Unstoppable Because Amazon Owns Everything’

We need to do more work to divorce free speech from content moderation. The world without content moderation would be a much worse world, and we don’t want to live in it. Sure, social media platforms are too powerful, but this is not the answer. link to ‘Texas has teed up a Supreme Court fight for the future of the internet - The Verge’

This is a gross idea for a TV show, and I’m glad people are pushing back against it. link to ‘Dozens of civil rights groups are calling on Amazon and MGM to cancel Ring Nation reality show - The Verge’

I ride an e-bike into work, and because an e-bike is expensive, I bring it into my office rather than lock it up at one of the bike racks on University of Kentucky campus. Because an e-bike is heavy, I also take it up the elevator to get up to the third floor, where my office is. My e-bike takes up a lot of space, but I’ve figured out how to share the elevator with others as I make my way up to my office.

Trump’s leaning into Q is not a good sign for the future. link to ‘Trump Rally Plays Music Resembling QAnon Song, and Crowds React - The New York Times’

Look, Parler isn’t as bad as Gab, but this kind of softball, uncritical approach to the platform is not helpful. WSJ should know better. link to ‘Social Network Parler Restructures, Focuses on ‘Uncancellable Economy’ - WSJ’

I am a big fan of the Book of Mormon. It’s one of the reasons that I stuck with Community of Christ when transitioning out of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I know the book is problematic, and I doubt its historicity, but I’m still an advocate for making some religious meaning out of it. There are diverse opinions about the Book of Mormon in Community of Christ, and while there’s plenty of room to believe lots of different things, the default institutional view tends to be either indifferent or suspicious of the text.

What a cheap, cynical about-face. The fact that candidates think this is something they can do to drum up voters and then change strategy is worrying. link to ‘Right After Primary Win, Bolduc Reverses Support for Election Lies - The New York Times’

Dallin Oaks, the second highest-ranking apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gave a speech at Brigham Young University yesterday where he touched on the “two great commandments” identified by Jesus in the Book of Mark. Unsurprisingly for anyone who’s been following recent signals of retrenchment at BYU (or anyone familiar with the apostle for that matter), Oaks put the two commandments in a particular order. Here’s how the Salt Lake Tribune quotes him:

Currently reading John Turner’s excellent biography of Brigham Young, and I keep wanting to highlight passages and then send them to Brad Wilcox.

Caring about privacy ought to be common sense. It’s difficult to push back, but that doesn’t mean those of us who do are crazy. link to ‘Everyone should join the “cult of privacy.”’

I’ve never had qualms about listening to Christmas music outside of December, but it still surprises me that I’ve been listening to parts of Handel’s Messiah during my morning routines over the past couple of weeks. I’ve never been the biggest fan of the music of Messiah, and in recent years, I’ve let go of my attachment to King James language and learned that a lot of the passages quoted in Messiah represent Christian prooftexting of the Hebrew Bible (here’s a great post on the subject by Pete Enns—and here’s another).

I hope the Fairphone will be sold in the U.S. one day. It’s an awesome project. link to ‘A Smartphone That Lasts a Decade? Yes, It’s Possible. - The New York Times’

Americans should be more worried about the NSA than they are. link to ‘New Book Says NSA Pressured GCHQ To Shut Down Publication Of Snowden Leaks By UK Journalists | Techdirt’

This is a tragic detail in an even more tragic story. Government can absolutely be good, and our allergic reaction to spending, laws, and policy only makes these situations worse. link to ‘West Virginia, Kentucky officials repeatedly ignored plans to prepare for catastrophic floods. Residents are paying the price. – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville’

It isn’t that TikTok doesn’t pose a real threat, it’s that it’s not alone in doing so. In particular, I appreciate that this article points out that U.S. border agents REGULARLY SEARCH COMPUTERS AND SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS. So, yes, raise concerns, but be consistent instead of creating a moral panic around thus one app (which, by the way, would be a privacy threat even if it were totally owned by a U.

A good case for why the edit button probably isn’t as good as everyone thinks. link to ‘Twitter’s edit button: You don’t really want it.’

Intellectual property is a social justice issue. link to ‘The Public Paid For Moderna’s mRNA Vaccine Tech; The Fact That Moderna Is Suing Over The Patent Is A Travesty | Techdirt’

What a story. I knew how awful the TSA could be to passengers, but I never knew how bad it also was for its own employees. link to ‘The Humiliating History of the TSA’

This is very interesting—it gives me some hope that I haven’t had over the past couple of months. link to ‘Republicans Have Realized That Forcing People to Give Birth Is Wildly Unpopular’

Speaking personally, I’d be happy to pay extra taxes to better support our local schools. link to ‘Fayette board asks which option for local revenue citizens prefer | Lexington Herald Leader’