Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Communities”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'How YouTube’s Partnership with London’s Police Force is Censoring UK Drill Music | Electronic Frontier Foundation'
- kudos:See, this is censorship. link to ‘How YouTube’s Partnership with London’s Police Force is Censoring UK Drill Music | Electronic Frontier Foundation’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Inside the World’s Biggest Hacker Rickroll | WIRED'
- kudos: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
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Erik Prince wants to sell you a secure smartphone that's too good to be true | MIT Technology Review'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'McConnell Dismisses the Threats to U.S. Democracy - The New York Times'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Twitter Removes Florida Political Candidate Advocating Shooting Federal Agents; If DeSantis Won His Lawsuit, Twitter Would Need To Leave It Up | Techdirt'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Gab Users Somehow Astounded To Discover Gab Will Comply With FBI Requests For User Information | Techdirt'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'A Dad Took Photos of His Naked Toddler for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal. - The New York Times'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Google Maps Is Misleading Users Searching For Abortion Clinics… And The GOP Is Threatening The Company If It Fixes That | Techdirt'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Fayette school board members ask to stream meetings online | Lexington Herald Leader'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Lexington KY looking to address more crime, safety issues | Lexington Herald Leader'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on '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'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump is Being Investigated for Potentially Violating the Espionage Act'
- kudos: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.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'FBI Standoff Suspect Posted ‘Call to Arms’ on Trump's Truth Social'
- kudos:Interesting development here. link to ‘FBI Standoff Suspect Posted ‘Call to Arms’ on Trump’s Truth Social’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on ''Ring Nation' Is Amazon's Reality Show for Our Surveillance Dystopia'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'It’s Not Just Trump — LBJ Took Classified Documents Too'
- kudos: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.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Why none of my books are available on Audible | Cory Doctorow's craphound.com'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'How Mormons are addressing sex abuse: Too little, too late'
- kudos:Appreciate Jana’s perspective on this horrible story. link to ‘How Mormons are addressing sex abuse: Too little, too late’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'No cap, Sen. Mike Lee’s personal Twitter account is called ‘BasedMikeLee’ - The Verge'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'This Is the Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Republicans Are Suddenly Very Eager to Defund the Police'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Even Before the FBI Search, MAGA World Was Saying It's at War'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Trump Supporters Are Calling for Civil War After FBI Search of Mar-a-Lago'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Kentucky candidates struggle when describing 2020 election | Lexington Herald Leader'
- kudos:Disappointing but unsurprising. link to ‘Kentucky candidates struggle when describing 2020 election | Lexington Herald Leader’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'A Few Minor, and Hopefully Helpful Editing Suggestions on the LDS Church’s Recent Statement about Abuse | By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog'
- kudos: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.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pluralistic: 07 Aug 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'
- kudos:Why do we let inkjet printers get away with this nonsense? link to ‘Pluralistic: 07 Aug 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Teen Who Helped Expose the Boy Scouts’ Pedophilia Epidemic, and the Mormon Church’s Cover-Up'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Elon Musk challenges Twitter CEO to a ‘public debate’ about bots - The Verge'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Amazon Buys Roomba Company, Will Now Map Inside of Your House'
- kudos: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’
should I stay or should I go?
- kudos: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.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Amazon Buying Roomba Maker iRobot for $1.7 Billion - WSJ'
- kudos: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’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Mormon church sex abuse: AP investigation | AP News'
- kudos:This is a horrifying, sickening story. When it’s marriage equality, the Church is eager to say that being legal doesn’t make something right (a bad take, for the record), so to hear “it was fine because it was legal” as a defense for bishops’ failure to report child sexual abuse (at Salt Lake’s encouragement) is sickening. link to ‘Mormon church sex abuse: AP investigation | AP News’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Study Says Trump’s Truth Social Is Much More Aggressive, And Much More Arbitrary, In Moderating Content | Techdirt'
- kudos:Unsurprising, but still a valuable read. link to ‘Study Says Trump’s Truth Social Is Much More Aggressive, And Much More Arbitrary, In Moderating Content | Techdirt’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Hiroshima and Nagasaki Are Not Just History: The Horrors of Nuclear Weapons Live On | Friends Committee On National Legislation'
- kudos:I don’t believe nuclear disarmament will be easy, but I’m increasingly convinced that it must be done. Just a single mistake or miscommunication could doom our entire planet. link to ‘Hiroshima and Nagasaki Are Not Just History: The Horrors of Nuclear Weapons Live On | Friends Committee On National Legislation’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Voters in Kansas decide to keep abortion legal in the state, rejecting an amendment – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville'
- kudos:There’s a similar amendment on the ballot in Kentucky in November; here’s hoping for similar results. link to ‘Voters in Kansas decide to keep abortion legal in the state, rejecting an amendment – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville’
'Belgian French' and the intentional awkwardness of LDS Book of Mormon translation
- kudos:This week and last, I’ve been reading up on Mormons’ commitment to both the language of the King James Version (Philip Barlow’s Mormons and the Bible is a fantastic read) and what is seen as the authoritative text of the Book of Mormon. In Paul Gutjahr’s The Book of Mormon: A Biography, he quotes the official Latter-day Saint Scripture Translation Manual as including the following guidelines for translators of the Book of Mormon:
believers who rob others of belief
- kudos:Nearly a year ago, a friend gave me a copy of Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation as a gift for my confirmation into Community of Christ. It (obviously) took me a while to start it, and it’s taking me some time to read through it, but there’s a lot in there that I like. This afternoon, this passage stood out to me: Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God, for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice, your mediocrity and materialism, your sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith.