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.
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📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life, by Scott Branson
- kudos:I defined myself for a long time as a moderate or centrist, and despite my leftward march in recent years, it still feels weird to be aspirationally reading a book on anarchism. As Branson points out early in this book, there are plenty of people who would never identify with the word but agree with anarchist ideas in science fiction, and I guess that’s how I got here. Twice in 2023, I read Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway, and on the second read, I realized that there were some strong anarchist themes in that book.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming, by Peter Enns
- kudos:I owe Pete Enns a lot. Reading his books in the years before I hit a faith crisis helped that experience go a lot more smoothly, as did continuing to read his stuff and listen to his podcasts during the process of faith transition. Around the time this book was coming out, though, I needed a break. I felt like I knew most of his stuff, his media efforts felt like they were getting bigger and more corporate, and as much as I owed him, I wasn’t feeling it anymore.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?, by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
- kudos:This is a fascinating book written by two authors who began the project wanting to write about how cool it would be to settle space… but after consulting all the evidence, concluded that it might not be a great idea. It’s kind of a downer book in a way—I’ve always been excited about space, and it’s a bummer to think of it as an awful place where we might not have a future.
- kudos:
I’d love to complete a seminary degree one day, but I’m also having to convert the ten hours of video lectures for the non-credit church class I’m taking to audio so I can squeeze them in at 2x speed while I do dishes, so I doubt I’ll get to that part of my bucket list anytime soon.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Why does Nephi keep the sword? | By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog'
- kudos:Interesting Book of Mormon reading here. link to “Why does Nephi keep the sword? | By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Spotify accuses Apple of ‘extortion’ with new App Store tax - The Verge'
- kudos:I don’t like Spotify, but they’re not wrong here. link to “Spotify accuses Apple of ‘extortion’ with new App Store tax - The Verge”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Mozilla says Apple’s new browser rules are ‘as painful as possible’ for Firefox - The Verge'
- kudos:C’mon Apple. link to “Mozilla says Apple’s new browser rules are ‘as painful as possible’ for Firefox - The Verge”
text for recent Beyond the Walls sermon
- kudos:Last Sunday, I gave a sermon on the Temptation of Jesus for a Beyond the Walls service by the Toronto Congregation of Community of Christ. The whole service was great, and I was happy to make my small contribution to it. It’s been recorded and archived here: As I did the last time that I gave a sermon, though, I wanted to share the text I preached from: This week, as we follow Jesus into the wilderness, we might wonder what the purpose of this journey is.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Taylor Swift deepfakes are a warning'
- kudos:Good thoughts from Newton here. “Who could have predicted this?” indeed. link to “The Taylor Swift deepfakes are a warning”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'N.S.A. Buys Americans’ Internet Data Without Warrants, Letter Says - The New York Times'
- kudos:Well, this sucks. Appreciate Ron Wyden’s diligence in this area. Gift link. link to “N.S.A. Buys Americans’ Internet Data Without Warrants, Letter Says - The New York Times”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Apple is bringing sideloading and alternate app stores to the iPhone - The Verge'
- kudos:Sideloading for Americans, too, please. link to “Apple is bringing sideloading and alternate app stores to the iPhone - The Verge”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk Spreads Election Misinformation on X Without Fact Checkers - The New York Times'
- kudos:I was already fed up with Twitter before election season started. C’mon, Musk. Gift link. link to “Elon Musk Spreads Election Misinformation on X Without Fact Checkers - The New York Times”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'X is being flooded with graphic Taylor Swift AI images - The Verge'
- kudos:I don’t get what’s missing from a world without generative AI—and examples like this don’t make me any more convinced. link to “X is being flooded with graphic Taylor Swift AI images - The Verge”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Haine en ligne : Elon Musk promet de payer les recours en justice contre la future loi irlandaise'
- kudos:Musk ne s’intéresse à la liberté d’expression que quand il peut en profiter. link to “Haine en ligne : Elon Musk promet de payer les recours en justice contre la future loi irlandaise”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'OpenAI went back on a promise to make key documents public | Ars Technica'
- kudos:If OpenAI is going to be an influential company, it would be nice for it to be more transparent. link to “OpenAI went back on a promise to make key documents public | Ars Technica”
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for The Courage to Be, by Paul Tillich
- kudos:I was recently complaining about religious books that I felt were below where I am in my thinking, so this was a slice of humble pie. I don’t do great with dense philosophical or theological works, and my rating is more a reflection of that than anything else. I made it through with an audiobook, but I don’t know how much I’ll retain. Tillich came highly recommended by other authors, but I think that most of what I wanted to get out of it was concentrated in the final chapter of the book.
the Bible—not the Book of Mormon—as weak point of Mormon apologetics
- kudos:Almost a year ago now, Stephen C. at the Mormon blog Times and Seasons wrote a post asking what might be an “extinction-level event” for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There’s a lot of interesting speculation in the post, but the passage that I copied down at the time was this one: Of course, the truly fatal circumstance is if the President of the Church stopped believing in the truth claims.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Palestinian death toll in Gaza soars past 25,000 with no end to war in sight : NPR'
- kudos:1,200 deaths is an enormous tragedy. What does that make 25,000 deaths? link to “Palestinian death toll in Gaza soars past 25,000 with no end to war in sight : NPR”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Ubisoft Says It Out Loud: We Want People To Get Used To Not Owning What They’ve Bought | Techdirt'
- kudos:So. so gross. link to “Ubisoft Says It Out Loud: We Want People To Get Used To Not Owning What They’ve Bought | Techdirt”
an 'enmediated' God
- kudos:Mormon theology doesn’t really do incarnation. Latter-day Saints believe in an embodied God and that (nearly) all humans will be resurrected to perfect bodies after this life and inevitable death. Latter-day Saints are also not Trinitarian and see Jesus and God the Father as more distinct than most Christian traditions do. Between those two beliefs, Jesus’s taking on a mortal body is not really a big deal—it’s kind of par for the course for any human, whether or not they are the Savior of the world.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Macron Shifts Rightward, and Charts a New Course - The New York Times'
- kudos:My political views have shifted a lot over the past decade, and I think my attitude toward Macron demonstrates that pretty well. When he was first elected, I was pretty excited. I was fed up with the American right but not ready to identify with the left, and the idea of a new centrist party emerging out of nowhere was inspiring. In the years since, though, I’ve moved steadily leftward—not least because Macron has demonstrated the ways that centrism tends to cede ground to the right on important issues.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Cat and Girl'
- kudos:Generative AI has a digital labor issue, and we aren’t paying enough attention to it. link to “Cat and Girl”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'What is the Annotated Book of Mormon? – From the Desk'
- kudos:Grant Hardy is doing great work with the Book of Mormon. I don’t see the text the same way that he does, but I’m deeply grateful for what he’s contributed to new readings of it, and I’m glad I have a copy if this. It surprised me in this interview to learn that the LDS Church forebade a reprinting of the semi-official study edition Hardy had recently worked on. I found that to be a tremendously helpful text, and I’m glad I have a copy since it’s apparently doomed to go out of print.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'AI to hit 40% of jobs and worsen inequality, IMF says'
- kudos:Even if AI would be beneficial for humanity in the aggregate, it’s important to ask how that benefit would be distributed. link to “AI to hit 40% of jobs and worsen inequality, IMF says”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'I’m sorry, but I cannot fulfill this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy - The Verge'
- kudos:Yeah, but don’t worry, this is definitely the only way that generative AI will be used to overwhelm us with useless content. link to “I’m sorry, but I cannot fulfill this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy - The Verge”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Substack keeps the Nazis, loses Platformer - The Verge'
- kudos:Good for Platformer. link to “Substack keeps the Nazis, loses Platformer - The Verge”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Substack Realizes Maybe It Doesn’t Want To Help Literal Nazis Make Money After All (But Only Literal Nazis) | Techdirt'
- kudos:As usual, I find Masnick’s recap of this recent nonsense helpful in terms of summary and interpretation. link to “Substack Realizes Maybe It Doesn’t Want To Help Literal Nazis Make Money After All (But Only Literal Nazis) | Techdirt”
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, by Bart Ehrman
- kudos:Kind of like the Spong book I recently finished, I enjoyed this book, but I think I would have gotten about as much from a condensed version. I’ve gotten to a point after nearly a decade of this kind of reading that I don’t need to be eased into a lot of these arguments and just want the crux of them. I think the academic in me (though this is certainly not my area of training) also wants more sources and footnotes.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pluralistic: Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s “A City On Mars” (09 Jan 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'
- kudos:I’ve wanted to read this book for a while, but Doctorow has really sold me on it. link to “Pluralistic: Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s “A City On Mars” (09 Jan 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow”
- kudos:
I have lots of concerns about LLM training, but I think it’s better to think of the issue in terms of digital labor, not copyright. My blog is licensed for reuse, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less exploitative for someone to scrape it all to develop software that will make them rich off my work.
- kudos:
I didn’t learn to swear until I was in my 30s, so I have a lingering suspicion that I wind up sounding like Captain Kirk in Star Trek IV.
🔗 linkblog: mes pensées sur 'La première église urbaine de Suisse romande ouvre ses portes à Lausanne - rts.ch - Vaud'
- kudos:De quoi s’inspirer pour imaginer de nouveaux avenirs chrétiens. lien pour “La première “église urbaine” de Suisse romande ouvre ses portes à Lausanne - rts.ch - Vaud”
another upcoming sermon for Toronto Congregation of Community of Christ
- kudos:Last July, I gave my first sermon for a Community of Christ congregation, preaching on the Parable of the Samaritan. I guess I didn’t do too badly, because their pastor reached out in December to ask me to give another sermon this month. On January 21st, I’ll be preaching on Matthew 4:1-11, covering the Temptation of Jesus. This has been a fun passage to revisit and see with new eyes. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to say just yet, but I’ve got plenty of notes and ideas and am looking forward to nailing things down over the next week and a half.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Welcome to the public domain, Mickey Mouse - The Verge'
- kudos:Happy Public Domain day! link to “Welcome to the public domain, Mickey Mouse - The Verge”
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Jesus for the Non-Religious, by John Shelby Spong
- kudos:I have a lot of small irritations with this book: I feel like Spong takes too long deconstructing before reconstructing (though that may reflect my own personal stage of faith), like his arguments are sometimes sloppy, and like he can be awkward (but clearly sincere) to modern eyes in his commitment to non-discrimination. He also seems more sure than I am that this is the obvious and only way to read Jesus; I agree with his reading, but I’m not sure it’s as straightforward as he makes it.
- kudos:
I don’t understand why Buc-ee’s has such a following. Every time I enter one, I feel like I’ve entered my personal hell.