I don’t know that any of this is surprising, but it remains worrying. link to ‘On Truth Social, QAnon Accounts Found a Home and Trump’s Support - The New York Times’

The inconsistency here is infuriating. When I was in grad school, I had the philosophy that I (a Mormon working toward a PhD) couldn’t rule out the possibility of working at BYU. There’s still a lot that I like and respect about BYU, but seeing the way they’re putting the squeeze on their employees makes it clear that I could never have survived there. link to ‘BYU requires new hires to waive their right to clergy confidentiality’

BYU is really on a roll this week. link to ‘A BYU fan repeatedly called Duke volleyball player a racial slur during match in Utah, family says’

Learned about the Trib article from this blog post, which I think also makes some solid points. It’s one thing to prefer that outside organizations not provide materials, but if BYU isn’t doing anything itself… link to ‘BYU Tramples Queer Students, Again – Wheat & Tares’

What a disappointment. link to ‘LGBTQ groups say BYU trashed their resource pamphlets’

Great example of how automation often makes things easier but not better. The former can be good so long as we don’t lose sight of the latter. link to ‘Lost in Transcription: Auto-Captions Often Fall Short on Zoom, Facebook, Others - Consumer Reports’

See, this is censorship. link to ‘How YouTube’s Partnership with London’s Police Force is Censoring UK Drill Music | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

What an epic—if illegal—rickroll. The best part in my book is repurposing student monitoring software. [link to ‘Inside the World’s Biggest Hacker Rickroll | WIRED’](https://www.wired.com/story/biggest-hacker-rickroll-high-school-prank/?mc_cid=b5e6da334c

Interesting read on privacy-focused phones—and related scams. link to ‘Erik Prince wants to sell you a “secure” smartphone that’s too good to be true | MIT Technology Review’

McConnell gets so close to recognizing the danger other Republicans pose to democracy, but he always stops just short. link to ‘McConnell Dismisses the Threats to U.S. Democracy - The New York Times’

I appreciate the way that Masnick uses examples from the news to call out how dumb some of these laws are. link to ‘Twitter Removes Florida Political Candidate Advocating Shooting Federal Agents; If DeSantis Won His Lawsuit, Twitter Would Need To Leave It Up | Techdirt’

I read Torba’s blog post last week but hadn’t been aware of the context. Interesting read. link to ‘Gab Users Somehow Astounded To Discover Gab Will Comply With FBI Requests For User Information | Techdirt’

This is why the EFF and others have concerns about overreach of even clearly well intentioned content moderation. CSAM is clearly despicable, but automated content moderation can make mistakes, and consequences for those mistakes aren’t small. link to ‘A Dad Took Photos of His Naked Toddler for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal. - The New York Times’

Masnick makes two good points here: The GOP seems to only care about content moderation in self-serving ways, but also we should be wary of political mandates for content moderation. link to ‘Google Maps Is Misleading Users Searching For Abortion Clinics… And The GOP Is Threatening The Company If It Fixes That | Techdirt’

I want to be more involved with and aware of what the FCPS school board is up to—livestreaming seems like a good idea to me. link to ‘Fayette school board members ask to stream meetings online | Lexington Herald Leader’

These numbers sound great, but what cost are we paying? I’m not talking about the $70,000, I’m talking about the hard to quantify costs of surveillance—which, as the ACLU of KY points out, are likely to disproportionately target communities of color. Except we can’t know that because the city won’t tell us where the cameras are. link to ‘Lexington KY looking to address more crime, safety issues | Lexington Herald Leader’

This may be the most fascinating episode of Mormon Land I’ve ever listened to. It’s amazing how much the Latter-day Saint understanding and practice of temple rituals has changed over time. link to ‘Streamez l’épisode A law professor explains “temple divorces,” and how they changed through the years | Episode 246 du podcast Mormon Land | Écoutez en ligne gratuitement sur SoundCloud’

On one hand, I strongly believe Trump should be held accountable for all laws he’s broken or flouted. On the other, I believe that the Espionage Act has been used as a crude cudgel by several presidential administrations, and it’s really important not to be sloppy here. The second doesn’t outweigh the first, but just like one can defend the FBI raid without putting the FBI on a pedestal of infallibility, we need to be critically minded about all this.

Interesting development here. link to ‘FBI Standoff Suspect Posted ‘Call to Arms’ on Trump’s Truth Social’

Such a bad idea. Normalizing Ring won’t make it any better—only worse. link to ‘‘Ring Nation’ Is Amazon’s Reality Show for Our Surveillance Dystopia’

I was not aware of this episode of history, and I feel more informed for it. It’s an example of where a Democratic president should be held to the same standard as Trump is being held right now—not out of any kind of whataboutism, but because both presidents crossed lines. In fact, “both” isn’t right here: Nixon comes out of this looking as bad as (if not worse than) Johnson.

Doctorow convinced me years ago that Audible was terrible, but here, he showed me just how bad they are. link to ‘Why none of my books are available on Audible | Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com’

Appreciate Jana’s perspective on this horrible story. link to ‘How Mormons are addressing sex abuse: Too little, too late’

Lots of directions to go with this one, but “based” is the red pill red flag for me. Lee is (unsurprisingly) borrowing the language of the far right. link to ‘No cap, Sen. Mike Lee’s personal Twitter account is called ‘BasedMikeLee’ - The Verge’

Compelling example of the need for digital privacy in a post-Row world. link to ‘This Is the Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion’

I’ve been thinking this since yesterday. It’s telling how so many “law and order” conservatives who make a big deal about being pro-police reverse on those positions as soon as law enforcement is inconvenient for them. link to ‘Republicans Are Suddenly Very Eager to Defund the Police’

A worrying look at CPAC. What is happening to the Republican Party? link to ‘Even Before the FBI Search, MAGA World Was Saying It’s at War’

McCarthy isn’t saying the same thing as these Telegram channels, but he’s making it easier for them to say what they’re saying. link to ‘Trump Supporters Are Calling for Civil War After FBI Search of Mar-a-Lago’

Disappointing but unsurprising. link to ‘Kentucky candidates struggle when describing 2020 election | Lexington Herald Leader’

I’ve long lacked confidence in my own opinions (as a general rule—I can also be an opinionated jerk), so even the simplest disagreement with a position I’ve taken can take some wind out of my sails. When I read the official Latter-day Saint response to the recent AP story, I didn’t agree with it, but it still slowed me down some. “Maybe I should consider things from another point of view,” I thought.

Why do we let inkjet printers get away with this nonsense? link to ‘Pluralistic: 07 Aug 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow’

This reporting is from a couple of years ago, but I wasn’t paying enough attention at the time, and recent events make me regret that. link to ‘The Teen Who Helped Expose the Boy Scouts’ Pedophilia Epidemic, and the Mormon Church’s Cover-Up’

Musk continues his trolling. This is a dumb proposal, and Twitter shouldn’t accept it. link to ‘Elon Musk challenges Twitter CEO to a ‘public debate’ about bots - The Verge’

Some good points about how Amazon owning Roomba is scarier than just Roomba existing on its own—even if I didn’t realize that Roomba was creepily mapping houses. link to ‘Amazon Buys Roomba Company, Will Now Map Inside of Your House’

I haven’t attended the Latter-day Saint congregation I officially belong to since March of 2020, and I’m coming up on one year of being an official member of Community of Christ. It’s pretty clear to me—and, likely, to others—where my religious future is headed. Yet, I’ve always expected that I would remain a de jure—if not de facto—member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Even if it’s not the right spiritual home for me or my family any more, and even if I have major disagreements with it, this church has been an important part of my life, and I’ve always wanted to preserve that by retaining my official membership.

Amazon keeps getting bigger, and I don’t think that’s for the better. link to ‘Amazon Buying Roomba Maker iRobot for $1.7 Billion - WSJ’