Next month, I’m flying to Salt Lake City to attend the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion to present some of my work about social media, religion, and the far right. I’ll be presenting on three different projects at SSSR—this was biting off more than I could chew, but since two of them connect with Mormonism, Salt Lake suggested the possibility of a larger-than-usual audience for that work, so there you go.

I don’t remember how I discovered this book, but when ordering some books from France early in the pandemic, I couldn’t pass up the chance to read a Lebanese scholar’s treatment of the Three Nephites in the original French. That said, while there were interesting bits in here, I just don’t know that I follow academic French well enough to really get this. I have a PDF of the English translation that may be worth briefly revisiting.

We decided to stuff this weekend full (early anniversary dinner and movie, then visit to friends across the state, then family visit to water park) so naturally kiddo tested positive for COVID-19 tonight.

Next Sunday, I’ll be giving the sermon for the Community of Christ Toronto Congregation’s Beyond the Walls inclusive online congregation, speaking on the Parable of the Samaritan (more often called the Parable of the Good Samaritan, but my sermon will explain why I’m going for that name instead). I had been planning to post about the sermon after the fact, but the links for the YouTube live events went up today, so I thought I might share them ahead of time.

Il y a quelques années, dans les premiers mois de la pandémie du COVID-19, j’ai décidé de mettre mes ordinateurs (y compris mon smartphone) en français pour m’entrainer un peu. C’était une belle expérience, mais il y a quelques mois, pour une raison dont je ne me souviens plus, j’ai décidé de tout remettre en anglais. L’anglais, c’est ma langue maternelle, mais entre quelques années d’expérience de tout faire en français et ma passion pour cette langue, je trouve qu’il est parfois difficile de m’habituer à ce changement.

I’m very excited to share that I’ve just had an article published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, a historically and culturally important journal in Mormonism. My article is entitled “The correct [domain] name of the Church: Technology, naming, and legitimacy in the Latter-day Saint tradition.” The title is a riff on Russell Nelson’s use of the phrase “The Correct Name of the Church” when leading a renewed emphasis on the full name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints early in his ministry as President of the same church.

I grew up in a faith tradition that—with the exception of major holidays like Christmas and Easter—didn’t follow the Christian liturgical calendar. So, shortly after I began attending Community of Christ regularly (and, given the circumstances, virtually) in 2020, I decided I was going to learn more all of the seasons and holidays that I wasn’t familiar with. A few months earlier, I’d heard an interview with the Swiss abbot Urban Federer on the Babel podcast by Radio Télévision Suisse.

Since the beginning of COVID-19, I’ve been dismantling a lot of my productivity and organization systems, trying to put less pressure on myself to get things done and be more mindful in how I spend my time. Several months ago—I cannot remember exactly when—this culminated in taking email off my phone and pivoting away from the excellent Things 3 task management app to a more paper notebook-driven approach to keeping track of what I need to get done.

There was a brief period of publisher generosity early in COVID times where I snagged so many PDFs of books my uni library usually doesn’t have access to. Still making my way through them.

Intellectual property is a social justice issue. link to ‘The Public Paid For Moderna’s mRNA Vaccine Tech; The Fact That Moderna Is Suing Over The Patent Is A Travesty | Techdirt’

A week ago today, my MacBook Pro suddenly stopped being able to communicate with its SSD. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I spent most of my Tuesday afternoon wiping everything from the drive and reinstalling macOS so that I could get back to work. While I haven’t kept a physical backup for a couple of years (I accidentally fried mine when moving back into my campus office in Fall 2020), I have all of my most important documents scattered between three cloud services, so this wasn’t too painful of a process.

I’ve been getting “Welcome to Canvas during this difficult time, here’s some documentation” pop-ups for nearly 2.5 years now. Only way to dismiss it is to accept a cookie, and I use relatively locked-down Firefox, so I may just see it for eternity at this point.

It’s helpful to hear that the university is theoretically willing to bring back a mask mandate… but I don’t know that I see it happening. link to ‘University of Kentucky COVID guidelines for fall 2022 semester | Lexington Herald Leader’

I’ve been blogging about ClassDojo enough over the past few weeks that I think it’s time for a quick recap before sharing some of the latest developments. I heard about ClassDojo being used schoolwide back in late July and started wondering what approach I should take as both a student’s parent and an edtech researcher. On Monday of this week, I talked to kiddo’s teacher about it and wrote up some thoughts the next day about teachers’ diminished agency in the realm of edtech.

When I was growing up, our family had a three-VHS set of the original Wallace and Gromit shorts, and while “Wallace and Gromit fan” was never at the forefront of my identity, I have always loved The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave. Naturally, things that I loved as a kid are near the top of my list of things to introduce to kiddo. I showed them to her a couple of years ago—probably near the beginning of the pandemic—but she had no memory of them, so this weekend, I had the pleasure of reintroducing her to the series.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been putting a lot of work into adjusting my online presence, a project that I expect to last through most of the summer. In dividing my website into distinct subareas and pivoting from a single Twitter account to a number of Mastodon accounts, I’m trying to do something about the context collapse that’s been keeping me from sharing some of the big things going on in my life lately.

Kid’s elementary school principal claims COVID is over, but pretty clear that’s not the case. Glad we can get her boosted now. link to ‘Kids 5 to 11 get FDA OK for COVID-19 booster doses | Ars Technica’

Contract tracing is good, but apps for it are scary. Ugh. link to ‘German Police Caught Using COVID-Tracing Data To Search For Crime Witnesses | Techdirt’

Hooray for sports? link to ‘Kentucky county sees COVID-19 surge tied to ball games. | Lexington Herald Leader’

We do not value child care—including unpaid child care—in this country. It is shameful, especially considering how many of us proclaim to value children. link to ‘Parents and child care providers of unvaccinate kids say they’ve hit rock bottom : NPR’

A wake up call and compelling story. link to ‘Refugees Held With Djokovic in Australia Briefly in Spotlight’

So tired of this pandemic. link to ‘Children’s hospitals are filling nationwide amid tidal wave of omicron | Ars Technica’

One confirmed fever in the family the day before we’re supposed to drive to family holiday gathering, just in case anyone was wondering if COVID anxiety still sucks.

I traditionally get a mild cold every beginning and end of semester, which has always been a pain but has become anxiety-inducing these past two years.

Beautiful gesture and a perfect name for it. link to ‘A new monument in Frankfort will honor the Kentuckians who died from COVID-19 – 89.3 WFPL News Louisville’

Glad local reporters are looking into this; when the measures were announced, I was wondering what responses would be. link to ‘24 UK employees placed on leave for breaking COVID policy | Lexington Herald Leader’

Crossing fingers! link to ‘Pfizer Says Vaccine Trials For Kids Show Its Shots Are Safe : Coronavirus Updates : NPR’

Oh good, we’re making the national news on this. link to ‘Kentucky Schools Struggle With Coronavirus Outbreaks - The New York Times’

Happy to say that my local indie bookstore does not have this problem. link to ‘Ivermectin misinformation has poisoned Amazon’s platform, with few fixes planned - The Verge’

The Onion wins again. link to ‘Vaccine Skeptic Does Own Research By Enrolling 45,000 Friends In Double-Blind Clinical Trial’

Beginning of semester stress dreams, Fall 2021 edition: Dani Rojas is enrolled in my content management systems class but is refusing to comply with the mask mandate.

I agree that it’s difficult to define misinformation in cases like this, but “cleaning house before inviting company” is absolutely a problem if the mess is what we’re coming to evaluate. Even a fact-based article can be used to misinformative ends, and it’s important that we know things like that are happening. link to ‘Facebook’s Most Viewed Article In Early 2021 Raised Doubt About COVID Vaccine : NPR’

Looking forward to the “speed limits are government overreach, we need to rely on drivers’ personal responsibility” phase of the culture wars.

Got on a bike today for the first time in months. COVID has shown the flipside of tying my exercise so closely to my commute.

TIL that Star Trek’s “warp speed” is translated as the vastly inferior “distortion” in French and that at least one French news outlet has therefore adopted the translation “Operation Lightning Speed” for the U.S. vaccine effort.

I recently ordered a book directly from a French publisher, and thanks to COVID, watching the FedEx tracking updates is the closest thing I’ve had (or will have) to vacation travel for a long time.

Weird Thanksgiving. 1st since 2008 w/o family (b/c COVID) and 1st since 2013 w/o a morning run (b/c return of chronic back issues). Still so much to be grateful for—but also conscious this year how much “being thankful” isn’t quite enough. It helps me better appreciate what I have but doesn’t change what others lack. I could stand to do better with the former, but I have much more work to do for the latter.

Lunchtime conversation: “Daddy, how long have we lived in this house?” “Well, we moved in right before the sickness, so over six months now.” “No, Daddy, it’s been nine billion months. I’m right.” “… Yeah, you are.”

Sick family member, so I moved my blended class to 100% asynchronous online this week. Almost definitely not COVID, but it’s a slower week in class, and this seems like the kind of semester to be overly cautious.

Bike commuting today for the first time in 5 months, Also, commuting today for the first time in 5 months.

The apparent significance of particular numbers is largely a factor of culture and our choice of number system—that is, more arbitrary than actually significant. That said, this is still a bummer of a summer for a tenth wedding anniversary.

Rewriting a syllabus + recurrence of a particular, ongoing personal anxiety + general pandemic stuff = some high levels of pre-semester stress today.

Pandemic parenting is full of frustrating moments—but also gems like this morning’s inventing games using the pieces to Ticket to Ride while listening to Indochine.

Lots of talk right now about students dissatisfied with online teaching. While those voices shouldn’t be ignored, I’ve also already had three students (of thirty) in my fall hybrid class specifically ask to take it fully online.

Hearing a lot of things today that are reminding me why I find utilitarianism totally unsatisfying as a moral philosophy.

Listening to public Swiss radio (as I do) and got chills when I heard a new, prerecorded gov’t COVID-19 safety message played before the hourly news update. Felt like I was in disaster fiction.

Perk of having ed tech degree/experience in the era of COVID-19: I’m currently walking my mom through Zoom to allow for possibility of her offering distance piano lessons.