I'm a citizen of Lexington, Kentucky, the United States, the world, and the digital sphere. Politically, I care about equality (and changing structures to support it), elections (that is, making them more fair and representative), and electronics (or, rather, their impact on society).
I am a believing agnostic in Community of Christ with a (mostly) cherished past as a (mostly) literalist Mormon.
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🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Q is Dead, Long Live QAnon'
Helpful summary of the current state of QAnon.
link to ‘Q is Dead, Long Live QAnon’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk ignored Twitter’s internal warnings about paid verification - The Verge'
This doesn’t surprise me at all. So much of the current Twitter chaos is predictable.
link to ‘Elon Musk ignored Twitter’s internal warnings about paid verification - The Verge’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Twitter reactivated the new ‘Official’ gray checkmark for accounts that are actually verified - The Verge'
What an absolute mess this whole thing has been.
link to ‘Twitter reactivated the new ‘Official’ gray checkmark for accounts that are actually verified - The Verge’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Musk-led Twitter rolls out new “Official” tags, removes them hours later | Ars Technica'
Move fast and break things, indeed. Checks as verification and checks as business model are inherently at odds with each other, and I get the vibe that Musk (team business model) is unhappy with internal pushback from team verification.
link to ‘Musk-led Twitter rolls out new “Official” tags, removes them hours later | Ars Technica’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Meet the ‘Black Robe Regiment’ of Extremist Pastors Spreading Christian Nationalism'
This reminds me of all the pastors doing guest posts on the official Gab blog. Also, of course Glenn Beck was involved in this somehow.
link to ‘Meet the ‘Black Robe Regiment’ of Extremist Pastors Spreading Christian Nationalism’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk’s first Twitter moderation change calls for permanent bans on impersonators - The Verge'
They’re so obvious as to almost not be worth pointing out, but two points: First, this is why making verification a paid feature is dumb; and second, penalizing parody because your business model is dumb is not what free speech absolutism looks like.
link to ‘Elon Musk’s first Twitter moderation change calls for permanent bans on impersonators - The Verge’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk tries to distract from Twitter layoffs by claiming advertisers are fleeing the platform - The Verge'
Choosing not to do business with someone isn’t an assault on free speech—it’s the very definition of the marketplace of ideas.
link to ‘Elon Musk tries to distract from Twitter layoffs by claiming advertisers are fleeing the platform - The Verge’
further thoughts on Jephthah's daughter
Yesterday, I wrote a post on Jephthah, a figure in the book of Judges who makes a commitment that if God helps him out in battle, he’ll sacrifice the first thing that exits the door of his house when he returns home. Robert Alter notes that there’s been a lot of rabbinic and scholarly effort to make sense of this but that in “any case, it is a rash vow.” Indeed, the vow goes wrong, and Jephthah winds up in a situation where’s he believes he’s committed to offer up his daughter in sacrifice.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Amazon Drivers Are Still Peeing in Bottles'
Someone’s paying the price for the convenience of shopping on Amazon.
link to ‘Amazon Drivers Are Still Peeing in Bottles’
on Jephthah, Jeremiah, and David Archuleta
Some of the most troubling passages in the Christian canon have to do with the sacrifice of children in the name of God. Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac is perhaps the most obvious example of this, but there are other examples that (ought to) raise as much concern in the mind of the believer. Perhaps the most interesting (to me) story along these lines is found in Judges 11:31 (I’m using Robert Alter’s fantastic translation throughout this post), where one of the eponymous judges, a man by the name of Jephthah:
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'With Falsehoods About Pelosi Attack, Republicans Mimic Trump - The New York Times'
Republicans’ reaction to this just makes the story more and more tragic. We have a real problem on our hands, and while I don’t believe all Republicans are this far gone, I’d like to see more from them condemning this behavior instead of trying to keep the party together and ahead.
link to ‘With Falsehoods About Pelosi Attack, Republicans Mimic Trump - The New York Times’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Republicans Continue to Spread Baseless Claims About Pelosi Attack - The New York Times'
Just sickening.
link to ‘Republicans Continue to Spread Baseless Claims About Pelosi Attack - The New York Times’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Nancy Pelosi, Vilified by G.O.P. for Years, Is a Top Target of Threats - The New York Times'
McDaniel can say what she wants—and its true that not all criticism of Pelosi is violent in nature—but in my mind, there’s no denying that two decades of GOP demonization has had a role to play in this terrible attack.
link to ‘Nancy Pelosi, Vilified by G.O.P. for Years, Is a Top Target of Threats - The New York Times’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Antisemitic campaign tries to capitalize on Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. - The New York Times'
Content moderation is a good thing, and not all viewpoints deserve a seat at a table.
link to ‘Antisemitic campaign tries to capitalize on Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. - The New York Times’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk’s First Move Is To Fire The Person Most Responsible For Twitter’s Strong Free Speech Stance | Techdirt'
Interesting read here from Masnick. I’m not familiar with everything he writes about here, but I always appreciate his perspective.
link to ‘Elon Musk’s First Move Is To Fire The Person Most Responsible For Twitter’s Strong Free Speech Stance | Techdirt’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Talking about the church president over the pulpit | LDS Data Analysis'
Some neat data analysis here—both in terms of methods and in findings. Hat tip to Jana Riess for bringing my attention to this in today’s column.
link to ‘Talking about the church president over the pulpit | LDS Data Analysis’
a conservative case for a modern language edition of the Book of Mormon
I’ve written a fair amount already on my rereading the Book of Mormon project, where I’m entertaining the idea of what a modern language edition of the book (or at least the Book of Mosiah) might look like. In my work thus far, I’ve been proceeding under the assumption that this is an inherently liberal project: In both the LDS and RLDS traditions, there has been considerable resistance to large-scale changes to the English language text of the Book of Mormon, largely because the English text is held to be translated through divine power and therefore unassailable.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Right Wingers ‘Fight’ AT&T By Embracing ‘Anti-Woke’ Cell Carrier…That’s Just Rebranded AT&T | Techdirt'
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
link to ‘Right Wingers ‘Fight’ AT&T By Embracing ‘Anti-Woke’ Cell Carrier…That’s Just Rebranded AT&T | Techdirt’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Report: Internet providers offer Louisville residents unequal speeds for similar prices – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville'
I’d skipped over the story when the Markup reported it, but seeing local coverage of how it plays out locally makes it even worse. Municipal broadband ought to be more common!
link to ‘Report: Internet providers offer Louisville residents unequal speeds for similar prices – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'On Choosing Each Other and Eating the Fruit | By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog'
Fantastic post here. One of the first calm moments for me in a very messy faith transition was leaving the Louisville Temple and thinking about how central Adam and Eve’s “disobedience” is in Latter-day Saint theology.
link to ‘On Choosing Each Other and Eating the Fruit | By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Texas Sues Google Over Use of Facial Images - WSJ'
I don’t like Paxton, and I can’t imagine this is much more than performative railing against a strawman version of Big Tech, but this is a real issue, so I’m interested to see where it goes.
link to ‘Texas Sues Google Over Use of Facial Images - WSJ’
gratitude for models of being imperfect but 'good enough'
Yesterday, I listened to a new episode of the Project: Zion podcast, the semi-official podcast of Community of Christ. This episode was an interview with Shandra Newcom, one of two apostles-designate who will begin their service after the April 2023 World Conference of the church. It was a delightful episode, and I posted something to the Community of Christ subreddit that I wanted to repeat here:
What a great episode!
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Ye’s ‘Buyout’ Of Parler Looks Very Much Like A Failed Company Taking Advantage Of Troubled Rich Guy | Techdirt'
Insightful speculation by Masnick. Ye’s said some horrible things recently, but that doesn’t mean Parlement can’t be taking advantage of him.
link to ‘Ye’s ‘Buyout’ Of Parler Looks Very Much Like A Failed Company Taking Advantage Of Troubled Rich Guy | Techdirt’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump Is Already Boosting Election Conspiracies Ahead of the Midterms'
I’ve been worrying about 2024, but 2022 is going to be bad enough. GOP needs to do something about this.
link to ‘Trump Is Already Boosting Election Conspiracies Ahead of the Midterms’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Kentucky’s county clerks deal with misinformation as election approaches – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville'
We’ve had it better than some states, so it’s disappointing to hear all of this.
link to ‘Kentucky’s county clerks deal with misinformation as election approaches – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Kanye West is buying ‘free speech platform’ Parler - The Verge'
Oh no. This can’t be good.
link to ‘Kanye West is buying ‘free speech platform’ Parler - The Verge’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Meta’s VR Headset Harvests Personal Data Right Off Your Face | WIRED'
I had not thought this much about the privacy implications of VR, and ooooof.
link to ‘Meta’s VR Headset Harvests Personal Data Right Off Your Face | WIRED’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Watch the Disturbing Kanye Interview Clips That Tucker Carlson Didn’t Put on Air'
Wild story, and heck of a scoop. Says far more about Tucker Carlson than about Ye.
link to ‘Watch the Disturbing Kanye Interview Clips That Tucker Carlson Didn’t Put on Air’