Personally, I’ve come around to the idea that fewer restrictions, “Community Notes”-style responses, and lots of personal control over what one sees could work better as content moderation. It’s interesting to see Bluesky take some of these approaches, for example!

Here, though, this seems like it’s bending the knee to the Trump administration, and I can’t imagine any of this being done in good faith. What a disappointment Meta continues to be.

What a stupid thing this whole “banning TikTok” thing has proved to be.

Here’s hoping the Senate shows some spine. Gift link.

I’ve seen this argument floating out there, but this is the first time I looked at some of the numbers.

Interested by Ken’s take here, even if it doesn’t necessarily make me feel better about gestures at everything.

Also, this line cracked me up:

Pete Hegseth’s chief qualification to be Secretary of Defense is that Trump saw him on the teevee a lot and his tattoos are not, technically, Nazi symbols.

I don’t agree with Ken on everything, but I always appreciate his perspective. I could quibble about some of his finer points here, but I think this is worth a read.

Sure looks like someone finally got fed up with the majority of Harris signs in our cul-de-sac and decided to swipe them all overnight.

There are countless GOP politicians and voters who believe Harris is unqualified for the job for lesser (and often exaggerated or fabricated controversies), and yet none of this seems to bother them. gift link

McConnell comes so close to having a conscience and then seems to always bail when it becomes inconvenient to him. That makes him more of a disappointment than if he showed no moral awareness at all.

Like so many other things, this alone should disqualify him. Gift link.

This is terrifying—but needs more attention.

How is this guy a legitimate candidate?

After being ordained earlier this summer, I was added to my home congregation’s preaching rotation. Today was supposed to be the day that I gave my first sermon there, but once I started to make plans to attend a family funeral, I reached out to ask if someone could sub for me. Before getting the bad news, though, I’d already written most of the sermon, and so I figured I should post the text here so that I get some use out of it. That said, I don’t want to post the text as my last draft had it—while reading the news today, I came across a story about the 2024 U.S. presidential race that would have made a better addition to my sermon than what I had written at the time, and I want to think about that connection.

Taking cues from neo-Nazis is a great look for the GOP ticket.

Good for the dad, and shame on the politicians being this terrible.

It is wild—and worrying—just how close this race is.

Got a good chuckle from this.

This is one of these stories where I’ve been waiting to get Masnick’s take on it, and he does not disappoint.

Look, I’ve been trying to approach the SCOTUS decision with an open “I’m not a legal expert” mind, but I think this quickly demonstrates how dangerous the decision is. There’s no way this is an official act, and Trump’s insistence that it could be shows his confidence that he can get away with what he wants as president. This is not good for democracy.

I’ve only skimmed this so far, but while I firmly believe that the fetishizing of freedom of expression is causing real issues in our world, I appreciate Masnick’s critique. I expect I’ll always be more keen on regulation than he is, but that doesn’t make him wrong in the points he’s making here.

This is pretty good.

I don’t understand how this has a chance to win in November. gift link

Some worrying information here.

I try not to post too much about this campaign because I find it overwhelming, but this is worrying stuff. Really worrying.

Over the past few years, I’ve been slowly digitizing a bunch of analog letters, keepsakes, and other things that I think are worth keeping a copy of in the Day One journaling app (and, more importantly, in a PDF export from Day One). My current project is copying over a bunch of old emails that I sent friends during the two years I served as a Latter-day Saint missionary, and in the email I was copying this morning, I wrote about a time when I was working as the legal secretary for the mission and had to do an audit of our legal documents because: