I haven’t watched Stranger Things 4, but it’s interesting how media depictions of Mormonism often get some of the details wrong, folding it in with broader conservative Christianity instead of focusing on its unique weirdness. This often confused me as a kid, especially when adults would wonder if I were allowed to play games with supernatural themes or… sing songs?

Who is allowed to watch the watchmen? This is why I’m grumpy about Lexington being hush hush about its new automated license plate readers—it sets a precedent for secretive use of even more invasive surveillance.

Worrying days ahead. There’s a lot being said on Gab that’s spilling out into “mainstream” GOP discourse.

Intellectual property is important, but copyright filters are an absolute mess.

What cynicism to support people you once literally ran away from because you think it’s politically advantageous.

Some more coverage of the (possible) photo find. This is the only news I’ve ever read related to facial recognition software that I’ve been happy rather than grumpy about 😂

Whoa. Big news here. My feelings about Joseph Jr. are complicated, but it’s very cool to see a possible photograph of him.

Libraries are a key part of a democratic society, and this is a very worrying development.

Look, there may be less of a coordinated defense, but ignoring the Jan. 6th hearings is almost as bad as defending Trump from them.

Here’s the EFF pointing out that “free speech” on these platforms means something very particular rather than a broad, deep commitment to legally-protected expression.

Opting out of location sharing is a good and important step, but there are no tech solutions to this horror—only political ones. We need good legislation, and we need it now.

It’s funny how conditional the GOP’s concerns about free speech are. That’s not to say that free speech isn’t a complicated topic to be weighed in conjunction with other concerns—it absolutely is. But if a party wants to use a simplistic view of free speech as a rallying cry, stunts like this show how just how simplistic that view is.

So, here’s a case where TikTok’s Chinese ownership is actually a really big deal—though, of course, YouTube and other U.S. companies have also been quicker to moderate than to archive material that could be valuable in a similar way.

I’m glad the article identifies Art as an apostle for Community of Christ, to emphasize that it’s entirely possible to be affirming and Christian. Coming from Mormonism, I’m not used to the idea of apostles standing up for queer causes, so as gross as the book removal is, I’m grateful for Art’s example here.

Ugh. We “buy” too many things this way.

This strikes me as weaselly logic. It absolutely is an abortion, and it’s absolutely why it’s shamefully ridiculous to make simplistic claims about abortion as murder or to set up “zero abortions” as an ideal to be attained through legislation and jurisprudence.

I didn’t realize there’d been so much right-wing pushback against this awful, awful story. There’s always room for good faith critical appraisals of the news, but what critics seem to me to miss here is that even if it weren’t true, the mere hypothetical possibility of something like this happening is shameful. That said, the emergence of more evidence supporting the claims is not a great look for those who called it into question.

This is such a dumb development. Why are we letting technology whittle away at ownership instead of increasing access to things?

It’s concerning to see private surveillance prop up public surveillance like this.

Just the idea that NYC feels like it needs to keep people educated about what to do in case of a nuclear attack is enough to add some existential dread to my Tuesday.

Disappointing to see academics implicated in the Uber Files. It’s a compelling example of how research funding is contingent on public and private interests. Of course, public interests are generally less worrying than Uber funding research perceived to be positive and profitable, but there are still times I have questions about the NSF’s priorities.

I haven’t read Limón’s poetry (I don’t read much poetry at all), but I’ll have to change that. Happy for some Kentucky and Lexington representation in this way.

A deep dive on a worrying military technology. The U.S. has already done a lot of damage with drones, and as more countries start to use them, more damage is going to be done.

Look, I’m not opposed to expanding computer science education, but if the motivation is to fill jobs and keep tech giants thriving, that seems to me to be a red flag. Education ought to focus on democracy above the economy; we need to be producing citizens, not employees. There are ways to teach tech in a way that supports democracy and produces citizens, but if I get grumpy about computer science educstion, it’s because we rarely talk about it that way.

This is why I’m trying to buy more physical copies of things—or at least DRM-free stuff. I have lots of regrets about the size of my Kindle library, for example.