One of the most interesting parts of teaching information communication technology classes despite not being formally trained in that field is picking up terms and concepts that I never learned as part of my degrees. One of the most interesting concepts I’ve picked up along the way is the formal distinction between digital and analog phenomena. I often use clocks or thermometers as examples of this in class: Analog phenomena can take on any number of values within certain bounds, whereas digital phenomena are limited to discrete values within those bounds. Thus, an analog clock technically displays every fraction of a second between two seconds, whereas even the most precise digital clock is going to limit its representation to particular fractions (and same goes with thermometers).

Last week, I was interviewed by a reporter at WEKU about social media and content moderation in the context of the horrific recent shooting in Buffalo, and I was pleased to see the interview appear on the WEKU website this morning.

I wish that the headline didn’t frame this as a question of “free speech”—and that I’d perhaps been more forceful in emphasizing that these really aren’t questions of free speech so much as content moderation. I’m also a bit disappointed that our conversation about 4chan in the early part of the interview got cut; I get why (probably not as interesting to the average viewer than some of my more generally-reaching comments), but I also think it’s important to understand that there are these dark places out there on the internet and that they are leading to tragedies like Buffalo.

It’s a bit of a truism to say that the Book of Mormon is dependent on Biblical language, but one thing that’s been on my mind for the past few years (especially since reading Thomas Wayment’s excellent The New Testament: A Translation for Latter-day Saints) is how specifically dependent it is on the particular language of the King James Version of the Bible.

Over the past year or so, as a personal project, I’ve been toying around with what a modern-language version of the Book of Mormon would look like. In short, I found a document complaining the complete text of the Book of Mormon, and chapter by chapter, I’ve been tweaking the language. I’m currently working on Mosiah 8 (as measured by the original chapter breaks; also, I should specify that I started with Mosiah 1—a story for another time).

Since April, I’ve gotten sucked into the Slow Horses British spy series after really enjoying the Apple TV+ adaptation. I’ve been powering through all the full-length novels and am now reading 2021’s Slough House, which features a character who’s survived a bullet wound to the head. Her description stood out to me for one particular detail, though:

Her hair was different. Maybe that’s what death does to you. I twas still mostly red but now punkishly short, with a white stripe across her left temple where the bullet had passed…

I’ve been a big fan of audio-only media for a big chunk of my life. I grew up listening to NPR radio shows like Car Talk and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me on Saturdays while my dad drove us around to do errands. TV wasn’t allowed in my family on Sundays, but the NPR Sunday Puzzle was—depending on what time church was that year, we’d listen to it on our way to Sunday meetings. I discovered podcasts in their infancy, during my final years of high school, and started really getting into them near the end of college.

Last week, I got the chance to chat with Salt Lake Tribune religion reporter Peggy Fletcher Stack about Latter-day Saint missionaries use of social media videos, and I was pleased to see the article published on Sunday. I hadn’t been paying attention to online missionary videos, but the subject fit nicely with the reading I’ve been doing on platform and platform values recently:

Both kinds of accounts “are drawing from the internet/influencer cultures of these platforms,” [Greenhalgh] says. “On one hand, that’s a smart move, and it makes a lot of sense, but online platforms have their own embedded values, and they may not always be compatible. The church has long been nervous about assimilating too much into the cultures it goes into, and I wonder how much concern there is here.”

This passage about the anti-Semitic Dreyfus Affair (from a book I’m reading on the French Third Republic) is coming to mind today:

Long before the end of the Affaire, as the French called it, the question of the guilt of Dreyfus became almost lost in the melee, giving way to a fundamental conflict over the very moral concepts of French society which cast its shadow over the Third Republic from then on to the end. For to the Army leaders and their backers in the Church, and among the conservative classes, the supreme issue became not whether Dreyfus was guilty (though they believed he was) but that even if he was innocent it were better that he suffer the tortures of the damned (as he was literally doing on Devil’s Island) than that the prestige and the honor of the French Army, on which the defense of the country depended, be impugned. Of what significance was the life and honor of one individual compared to the life and the honor of la patrie? Of what significance indeed were naked truth and naked justice for the individual and even respect for the human personality regardless of race or religion if adhering to them undermined the confidence of the people in the leaders of the Army and sapped their faith in the constituted authorities and thus weakened the fiber of the nation? Above everything else lay the national interest and throughout history individuals had been sacrificed for it, as had truth and justice.

Pour le 6 janvier, Urban Federer, l’abbé d’Ensiedeln (Suisse), écrit au sujet de « la peur d’être perdant » de Hérode et Saül, qui a inspiré « une jalousie, laquelle les a poussés a la haine meurtrière ». C’est un message pour l’Épiphanie pour tous les temps et tous les lieux, mais ça fait bizarre de le lire en particulier aux États-Unis ce 6 janvier 2021.

Missing teaching French today for a few reasons. First, my first time teaching FREN 102 began ten years ago this month 😱. Second, my kid insisted this morning on pronouncing “sept, huit” as “sept, tweet,” and even though that’s not really liaison, it’s close enough that I could have used it in a lesson. Third, this is the time of year where I could have shown Gad Elmaleh’s great “Happy new year!” sketch, which always makes me laugh no matter how many times I watch it.

I once had a neighbor who argued that because it had higher fidelity, 3-D was the future of cinema. To prove his point, he asked “who would prefer an audio adaptation to a video one?” and was surprised when I, a big radio fan, raised my hand. To be honest, I don’t know that I’d prefer radio to TV/cinema in every instance, but I believe firmly that it’s more about how you use a medium than it is about what medium you use. Dangerous to think one is inherently better than another.

I have five months left in my twelve-month planner, which naturally means I’m already thinking about my next one. I’m only half-joking. I spent a lot of time last summer setting up productivity systems, and this semester is showing their weak spots. Eager to revisit.