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.

You can subscribe to this content through this RSS feed or this Mastodon account. You can also subscribe to all of the content on this website through this RSS feed, this Bluesky account, or this newsletter.

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: just read 'In Iowa, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz Take Trump's Baton - The New York Times'



Every time I read a story like this, I think of how much we need ranked-choice voting in the US. I’m not inclined to vote for any Republican right now, but there are plenty I’d rank above these two if given the chance. I also wish I could have ranked Charles Booker AND Amy McGrath above Mitch McConnell back in November.


🔗 linkblog: just read 'Now that machines can learn, can they unlearn? | Ars Technica'



Gotta admit that I’d never thought about what we should do about algorithms trained on data that’s subject to a deletion request. Interesting article.


🔗 linkblog: just read 'Facebook, Fearing Public Outcry, Shelved Earlier Report on Popular Posts - The New York Times'



This is quite the read.


🔗 linkblog: just read 'Don’t overthink it: Elon Musk’s Tesla Bot is a joke - The Verge'



Good read.


🔗 linkblog: just read 'OnlyFans Says It Is Banning Sexually Explicit Content - The New York Times'



This is the sort of thing that Gab will decry if they’re serious and consistent about their supposed pro-free speech, anti-deplatformization stand. My bet, though, is that Torba writes a blog post in the next week arguing that porn isn’t free speech and good on banks for cracking down on OnlyFans.


🔗 linkblog: just read 'Pluralistic: 19 Aug 2021 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'



Cory Doctorow has THOUGHTS about data. I may use this in my data science class this semester.


🔗 linkblog: just read 'Amazon reportedly plans to open its own department stores - The Verge'



Amazon is just too big. This line stood out: “Amazon is now in the odd position of replacing stores that it helped kill off.”


🔗 linkblog: just read 'Opinion | The Illusion of Privacy Is Getting Harder to Sell - The New York Times'



This blurb stood out to me: “Apple says, relentlessly, that privacy is the central feature of its iPhones. But as the photo scanning demonstrates, that’s true only until Apple changes its mind about its policies.” Seems to me we shouldn’t be dependent on tech companies’ decisions to ensure privacy.




Please also give me the confidence of an Apple exec explaining how scanning all your photos is “an advancement of the state of the art in privacy.”




Give me the confidence of a FB employee wringing hands about researchers’ allegedly “put[ting] people’s data or privacy at risk.”




Looking forward to the “speed limits are government overreach, we need to rely on drivers’ personal responsibility” phase of the culture wars.




Spent my morning commute today thinking about how U.S. Christian nationalism and French laïcité (secularism) sometimes end up serving similar functions.




Reading or listening to other countries’ coverage of U.S. news has long been helpful for me. For example, I like using what the Swiss deem important enough to report on in American politics to gauge what I should pay extra attention to.




Despite the underlying problems with the Barabbas story, this seems like a good Friday to remember that we shouldn’t prefer violent insurrectionists over those wrongfully killed by the state.




You cannot understand online Mormonism without understanding Mormon feminism. The more I read, the clearer that becomes.




First time I’ve read this much into Inauguration Day happening around the same time as my birthday.


Thinking about the Dreyfus Affair



This passage about the anti-Semitic Dreyfus Affair (from a book I’m reading on the French Third Republic) is coming to mind today: Long before the end of the Affaire, as the French called it, the question of the guilt of Dreyfus became almost lost in the melee, giving way to a fundamental conflict over the very moral concepts of French society which cast its shadow over the Third Republic from then on to the end.




I do not have any data to back this up, but it sure seems like Francophone news outlets have transitioned over the past two years from translating “impeachment” to just using it as a loanword.




Remembering Governor Andy Beshear’s comments from last May: “You cannot fan the flames and then condemn the fire.” I can think of lots of people who need to hear that this morning.


first thoughts about Capitol riot



I had a friend in Michigan with whom I disagreed on a great deal but who was still an important and supportive mentor for me. On November 9, 2016, we had a very tense conversation where he told me that I would see: The candidate’s bluster might be worrying, but he wouldn’t actually act on any of it. I haven’t talked to him in a few years, but I’m wondering what’s going through his head today.


une Épiphanie de 2021 très particulière



Pour le 6 janvier, Urban Federer, l’abbé d’Ensiedeln (Suisse), écrit au sujet de « la peur d’être perdant » de Hérode et Saül, qui a inspiré « une jalousie, laquelle les a poussés a la haine meurtrière ». C’est un message pour l’Épiphanie pour tous les temps et tous les lieux, mais ça fait bizarre de le lire en particulier aux États-Unis ce 6 janvier 2021.




First line of this morning’s France Inter news broadcast: “A phone call worthy of an American crime novel.”




The Georgia transcript reads like a student calling after I’ve submitted grades but before the registrar’s deadline has passed, arguing that he’s earned a perfect score but is willing to settle for my bumping him up a couple points to get an A.




I am not sure what I was expecting when I started looking for Mormon* content on Gab, but “we should get the missionaries on this platform” wasn’t it.




It amazes me that we all agree autocorrect spectacularly and regularly fails and yet believe that we can trust fundamentally the same tech to do harder work like grade homework, flag content, and suggest prison sentences.




Every day that goes by in this election cycle just makes me more frustrated that we don’t have ranked-choice voting.




The thing about getting in the habit of reading privacy policies is that it sometimes changes your behavior, but it ALWAYS ups your anxiety about the impossibility of ever changing your behavior sufficiently.




Maybe the Cylons were a prescient metaphor for all that is terrible about the Internet of Things, and we ought to be adopting the Colonies’ aversion to networked technologies.




Yet another Grammarly ad has me thinking… I think my skepticism about AI is not so much the mistakes it makes so much as it is the assumption that human experiences are so well-structured that they can be reduced to an algorithm.




I want to live in a world where I can travel by train from Cincinnati to Chicago without it being a 9-hour trip that leaves at 1am.




Today is the primary for the 2019 state elections here in KY, and I’m really missing Michigan’s open primaries. Not being able to vote today may be what finally pushes me to declare a party affiliation after more than a decade of not doing so.




A U.S. Rep from Kentucky recently criticized John Kerry for having a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science; I’m afraid he’ll come for me soon when he finds out I’m teaching technology courses despite only having a Doctor of Philosophy.




Today I learned from first-hand experience that Latter-day Saint services aren’t the only ones with cringeworthy messages on Mother’s Day. 😤 Not sure whether that’s comforting or disappointing! 😜




Reading Cory Doctorow’s “radicalized,” and it’s great so far. Funny how a story like “Unauthorized Bread” can make me angry in a way that reading news stories and blog posts on the same subject just can’t compete with.




Il y a une cathédrale magnifique qui brûle, et le président américain se permet de donner des conseils aux sapeurs-pompiers. Je n’en peux plus.




I’m trying to succinctly describe a Latter-day Saint “solemn assembly” in an academic manuscript, and it’s a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.