A good glimpse at content moderation, and why it’s important to do it correctly.

Look, this is the kind of book that I bought knowing already that I’d agree with its thesis, so maybe you shouldn’t read my review of it. Nonetheless, I think Caine does an excellent job of bringing together many of the arguments against Amazon. This company is bad news, and while it’s hard to escape it entirely, I think the world would be a better place if more of us did less to support it.

Really loving this (six year old) podcast episode. I don’t care much about the Trinity except when it’s understood in the ways that Karin Peter and Susan Ocley describe here.

Last paragraph here is an important one: I’ve seen a lot of headlines about OpenAI calling for regulation, but it’s noteworthy that it’s hypothetical future regulation.

Masnick makes a good point here. I’m sympathetic to “for the kids” motivations, but I’m increasingly convinced that Masnick is right, that it’s meant to make bad policy sound impossible to argue against.

Bookmarking this for later. Community of Christ isn’t very big in Kentucky, and I wonder how digital technologies could help connect us and provide people easier ways to visit us. This seems like an interesting model.

I was not familiar with the term “glass cliff,” so this was an insightful read.

I picked up a copy of this book at the 2023 World Conference of Community of Christ, after it being on my wishlist for some time. It does an excellent job of examining the subjectivity of Restoration scripture by tracing its evolution over time. I remarked to a friend earlier this week that it’s a shame it was written in the 90s (and originally, the 60s) rather than now, when there’s so much more available to do this kind of work. In some ways, large parts of the book feel like they’ve been replaced by the Joseph Smith Papers project; yet, there’s still a lot to gain from this take.

Can’t believe it’s been ten years; can’t believe we’re not collectively furious about this.

I have been furious with Intuit since ProPublica did their great reporting on this, but I’ve continued to use TurboTax because the system is broken. Very excited for this news, and I appreciate Doctorow’s passionnate take.

Good podcast episode; what stands out the most is the authors’ comments at the end that merely researching the book gave them nightmares.

My alarm woke me from a dream in which I was trying to recruit Latter-day Saint missionaries as pilots for the Rebel Alliance, and I have a lot of questions about that worldbuilding.

Bellingcat does good work; Twitter continues to be a joke.

Using AI for customer service is the stuff of my nightmares.

I know I can always count on Masnick to write this article when a story like this comes up.

Some good comments in here—especially on how AI enforces and normalizes certain kinds of writing instead of allowing us to determine what writing should look like.

A great column from Jana. It’s hard to believe that it’s been ten years—or that I’ve changed so much in my own Mormonism over that time.

This sounds worrying to me. Surveillance can and will be abused, and we should be wary about embracing it on this scale.

One of this week’s lectionary readings in Community of Christ (and presumably elsewhere) is in 1 Peter 3. As I was reading the NRSVUE rendering of this passage this morning, verses 13-17 stood out to me:

13 Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? 14 But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, 15 but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you, 16 yet do it with gentleness and respect. Maintain a good conscience so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil.

This is indefensible, and no amount of spin from a comms director can change how harmful this is.

Content moderation is hard, and it’s especially hard at scale. Because AI makes doing things at scale easier, it necessarily makes content moderation harder.

All right, black tea, let’s see how we get along.

I feel like I say this whenever I post a link to a Twitter story, but I honestly can’t believe how dumb this stuff gets sometimes. Also, is Musk going to give someone else control of @ldschurch?

One of the more interesting passages of scripture produced by Joseph Smith Jr. is in Section 36 of the Community of Christ Doctrine and Covenants (or the Book of Moses in the Latter-day Saint Pearl of Great Price):

And it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the residee of the people, and he wept, and Enoch bore record of it, saying, How is it the heavens weeps and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains? And Enoch said unto the Lord, How is it that you can weep, seeing you are holy, and from all eternity to all eternity?

I read a passage in Wil Gafney’s A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church this morning that really stood out to me—especially as it related to two things I’ve recently written. A few weeks ago, I wrote about Easter hope, acknowledging that

[a literal] resurrection is something that’s hard for me to wrap my head around, but I figure that if I can try to muster the belief in the impossibility of the resurrection, I can have the belief that we can overcome racism, fix poverty, and solve other seemingly impossible tasks facing us.