Canned Dragons

Canned Dragons is a weblog about faith, noise and technology, written by Robert Rackley.

"For the memory can both provoke the dragon and the memory can also subdue him."

~ St. John Chrysostom

I used to have a well-worn VHS cassette of Sonic Youth’s tour video, 1991: The Year Punk Broke. It featured a just-experiencing-stardom phase of Nirvana, but that wasn’t the reason I watched it over and over. I was more interested in the Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. performances that were recorded at these giant European music festivals. Until Lollapalooza sprang forth from the mind of Perry Farrell, we didn’t have bands like Sonic Youth playing huge outdoor venues in North America.

The song "Heaven's On Fire" by the Radio Dept. starts out with a clip from the movie. It's a sample of Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth talking about the record industry.

In one sense, it's just Thurston being Thurston, spouting off nonsense that sound like a stoner's Doritos-fueled dorm room philosophical insights. In another sense, though, he does a fairly good job capturing the zeitgeist of the time: major labels were ruining punk rock. The aging punk rock principle of not "selling out" was being stretched a bit thin after the success of Nirvana's Nevermind. How did underground bands take their shot at success and avoid the heavy criticism that came with making it big and potentially making artistic compromises to do so?

Thurston to fan: People see rock and roll as youth culture and when youth culture becomes monopolized by big business, what are the youth to do? Do you have any idea? I think we should destroy the bogus capitalist process that is destroying youth culture by mass marketing and commercial paranoia behavior control - and the first step is to destroy the record companies. Do you not agree?

Damon Krukowski, formerly of Sonic Youth contemporaries Galaxie 500, uses The Year Punk Broke as a reference point in a piece that despairs of the state of the music industry. Krukowski contrast the musical landscape in 1991 with what musicians are facing now. He comes to the conclusion that, despite the pessimism about corporate interests invading punk rock at the time, musicians had it much better than they do today. At least the major record labels cared about music (certainly as their ticket to making money, if for no other reason).

Now that you have companies like Apple and Spotify with a vise grip on the industry, there is truly no vested interest at the top looking out for the survival of music and the artists who make it. Although they are more invested in services now, Apple's core business is still centered around selling high-margin devices. Spotify takes for granted that music is a loss-leader, bringing in customers while their strategists figure out how they really want to make money. Krukowski doesn't miss the fact that Spotify has had their stock price drop 70% in the past year.

It's an uncertain time to be a musician. This is taking a toll on the mental health of the artists who make music for a living. It doesn't help to have Daniel Ek from Spotify telling them they just need to make more music. Something has to give here. As a consumer, though, it's difficult to know how to contribute. We can start, though, by buying music from services like Bandcamp and going to shows when we can catch our favorite artists touring. Beyond that, it feels like we have to sit back and watch the fallout, hoping and praying that the people who bring us so much delight through their work have safety and stability.

I generally don't do year-end lists, but I like to share a couple of my favorites things from the past year. In this interstitial time between Christmas and New Year's, I get a chance to reflect back on what I've enjoyed, while having very few demands on my time.

I first wrote about Scout Gillett earlier in the year, when she covered a Broadcast song, before her debut record No Roof, No Floor was released. I was looking forward to the full-length, but since Americana/country/folk is not my most-loved genre, I wasn't sure how much I was going to get into it. Though I enjoyed it at first listen, it's taken me a few months to come back to it and really give it the attention it deserves. The title track is my pick for my favorite song of the year. The song has stuck to me in a way that no others in 2022 have. It doesn't hurt that it follows familiar patterns set by the Angel Olson song "Sister" from 2016's My Woman.

"No Roof No Floor" starts of slowly and softly, carefully welcoming the listener into Gillett's world and letting them get settled. It rumbles along at a steady pace, convincing us that, as Gillette says, "lovin' should be this easy if we just would believe it," until a break in the middle. It's just enough time for Gillett to catch her breath along with a simple strum before belting out the chorus with her powerful voice, with all emphasis on those lines that she keeps coming back to. It's as if she's spent almost all of her lyrics in the first part of the song, and she has to put the full force of her emotional energy into those particular words.

In this live version of "No Roof No Floor" from the Chicken Shack, you really get a sense for the physical effort performing the song takes. While Gillett stretches her mouth as wide as it can possibly go to give the chorus the punch it has in the studio recording, Athena from her backing band shreds the guitar solo that makes it feel like the whole room is going to implode. Nothing actually comes down, and you still have a roof as well as a floor, but the space is changed from all that has transpired.

Mastodon was created in 2016, and the site still harkens back to its origins, a time when Gamergate and the atrocious harassment of women in tech on Twitter was still very fresh in our minds. The platform was in a way a reaction to that and the rising toxic atmosphere on social media. At the time, Twitter was also in the throes of dealing with the side effects of a Donald Trump candidacy and subsequent presidency. As such, one of the primary features of Mastodon was to stamp out hate and harassment. It's a laudable goal, and very much needed in today's technology landscape. There's a problem there, though, in that Mastodon seems to define itself, at least in part, as the anti-Twitter.

But because so much news happens on Twitter — and because Twitter itself is such a news story — the social network symbolized by a tiny bird casts a very large shadow over the social network named after a giant prehistoric beast.

Users of Mastodon spill a lot of digital ink writing about what is commonly referred to there as "the bird site." The overall environment on Mastodon is very meta. It's social media about social media.

You would be forgiven for thinking that perhaps Mastodon is an overcorrection for the sins of Twitter. Joining most Mastodon instances (servers) is an exercise in immediately learning what types of people and speech they will not permit. Literally, that's the screen that appears first. The prohibitions list usually consists of made-up pathologies you might find in a fake DSM. Ever heard of a terve? If I have to look up the meaning of words just to know what is tolerated, I'm not super likely to join. From what I've seen, Mastodon users and moderators seem more interested in policing speech they don't like than in having interesting discussions with diverse viewpoints. It doesn't initially sound like much fun.

You have to apply for membership in some Mastodon servers. It seems pretty exclusive. Presumably, if Steve Rubell lets you behind the velvet rope, then you are in the Studio 54 of social networks. However, you need to watch what you say. Many Mastodon users seem to spend their time trying to get each other banned. From the article in the NYT quoted above — on journa.host, a user was banned for referring to someone trying to get him banned as an "activist." The woman who successfully got him banned was shortly thereafter banned herself. It all sounds a bit like an early season of Survivor, minus the lush tropical surroundings. If the goal is not to get voted off the island, you have to play a very political game.

Raspberry parade

More recently, there was a firestorm of controversy around Raspberry Pi hiring a guy who was a surveillance officer in a previous life. When people objected, the Raspberry Pi folks were dismissive, calling the accusations "childish," and telling people who were critical "bye bye." As a result, the agitators worked to get Raspberry Pi "defederated." To be defederated in Mastodon terms is to have other servers in the fediverse refuse to talk with the one you are on. It's the modern equivalent of being excommunicated from the techno-church. This GitHub Gist outlines the chain of events that led to Raspberry Pi getting defederated. It takes the stance that users who objected to the company's hiring decisions were "insulted." It also implies that those making the complaints were made unsafe by the responses.

The business instance being defederated will be a huge blow to any reach that might have been gained, as administrators and moderators seeking to ensure safety for their users are able to remove tens of thousands of their users in a few clicks.

This is a part of a growing phenomenon, whereby people are framed as being put at risk by exposure to speech with which they disagree.

Mastodon is still defined by its relationship to Twitter

In a sense, Mastodon seems frozen in time, a reactionary monument to an ugly time in internet history. Now that Twitter is trending to become more of a right-leaning network, Mastodon, in defining itself as the anti-Twitter, seems on the way to becoming more left-wing. On both networks, users that don't follow the dominant belief system there are getting "blocked and reported." It's a shame, because people from different perspectives interacting is what we need more of, not less. As these spaces become even tighter echo chambers, the extent to which we spend time in them may govern our view of those on the other side. We already know that partisans on both sides have vastly unrealistic views of those on the other side. If social networks keep people from straying outside of their comfort zones by purging users, polarization is going to keep getting worse.

In a worship service recently, our pastor explored the genealogy of Jesus as presented in the book of Matthew. It was a thought-provoking homily about family ties. Alastair Roberts writes for Plough magazine about how we fit our own lives into the continuum of people that have come before us.

Moderns have become dulled to our own place in the generations, to the ways that we receive, bear, and pass on legacies, to the ways we are the harvest of former generations’ labors and how our own labors await the harvest of future generations. In Matthew’s genealogy, Jesus is introduced to us through the patterns of a long succession of earlier generations, as the fulfillment of their hopes, and their redemption from tragedy, frustration, and death.

It was interesting for me to read this passage at almost the same time I read a different article about how we must mentally disassociate ourselves from our predecessors. Lora Burnett seeks to help us separate from the past simply by changing the pronouns we use when referring to history.

The pronouns of history are not we, our, and ours, but they, them, and theirs. In classroom lectures and class discussions, using they, them, and theirs when examining the actions or beliefs or circumstances of historical subjects is absolutely essential to grasping the pastness of the past and the vast temporal distance that separates that time from this time, their world from ours.

It seems to me that in grappling with the past, we must admit, for better or for worse, our historical place in that past. That admission doesn't mean we believe that our ancestor's actions have the same weight on us as our own actions. It doesn't mean we are primary movers in the events of history from before we are born. However, it does acknowledge that our places in life have benefitted from, or been hindered by, the place of our families, churches, nations and other groups to which we belong. This gets at what Roberts is putting forth.

I think it matters that my Mennonite ancestors fled Ukraine after persecution from Russia and ended up in Minnesota. Perhaps a change of events would have meant that I would not have been born, or would have been born in a different country, or — at the very least — had less of an understanding of current events illuminated by the light of historical perspective. In an age where identity stems from many different aspects of our being, I don't think we should be closed to the traditional view of that identity being influenced by our lineage.

I was already a fan of the angular and noisy Truman's Water, Glen Galloway's former band, when he launched Soul-Junk. The new group was conceived after Galloway had a tour van conversion to Christianity. My friend, who was not a believer, but was a fan of Shrimper Records, made me a mix tape with Soul-Junk's "I Turned My Back On You." I listened to the mix tape while I was exploring a return to Christianity. The lyrics spoke to me about my own wandering away from faith and subsequently finding my way back.

Though many of Soul-Junk's songs take their lyrics directly from the Bible, "I Turned My Back On You" merely riffs on biblical themes. It reminds me of the Psalms.

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. (Psalm 139: 7-10)

Soul-Junk started out as lo-fi, but began experimenting with higher fidelity sounds and completely new genres a few years after their start. By the album 1953, they were bringing in elements from genres outside of indie rock. Their rock still had some of the sharp points and strange tunings that characterized the Truman's Water canon, but mixed with stuttering beats and hip-hop vocals for a strange and satisfying concoction. 1953 album opener "Junca De Sol Andromeda" is perhaps the best example of this marriage of styles. It's energetic, reverent and even explosive, characteristics that mark some of Soul-Junk's best work.

Perhaps the definitive cover of My Bloody Valentine’s “When You Sleep,” from their seminal album, Loveless, is Memoryhouse’s version from their 2010 Yours Truly live session. The song was breathlessly passed around the internet and gained Memoryhouse a fair amount of attention. When I saw Memoryhouse play live, I asked the band’s Even Abeele if they were ever going to record a studio version of the cover. He told me they were setup to do just that, in New York, with James Iha from the Smashing Pumpkins, no less. Unfortunately, someone contributing to the session got in a car accident on the way to record. What a missed opportunity.

As compensation, I’ll take DIIV’s live album, recorded in 2017 at the Murmrr Theatre. The live recording is more hushed, introspective and slower than the band’s studio recordings. With the more languid pace, you can actually understand the lyrics. Singer Zach Cole jokes at the beginning that it’s DIIV’s piano recital. The fourth song is a cover of “When You Sleep” that ranks up there with the Memoryhouse version. With it’s sparse atmospherics harkening back to the 2010 Yours Truly Sessions, the DIIV version almost sounds like a cover of a cover, with the piano bearing a similarly heavy load.

The My Bloody Valentine cover is followed directly by my favorite song by DIIV, a heroin fix called “Dopamine.” With this version and other songs on the recording, you get a more relaxed and starker realization of the songs than appear on the proper albums. It’s done to gorgeous effect and is perfect for this time of year. Just huddle under a blanket by the fire and let it sink into you.

via Space Echo

Side note: Not to get all big business monkey when talking about a piece of art, but this release is the kind of content strategy that makes sense done through Bandcamp. Release your primary albums through all available channels, but keep collector’s artifacts off the all-you-can-eat streaming platforms and release them through independent paid download channels. If an artist is concerned about exposure and revenue streams, this seems like the best strategy.

After 14 years and over 10,000 tweets, I've deactivated my Twitter account. I've been critical of Twitter for a long time now without actually leaving the platform. Obviously, things have changed rapidly for the worse. When, on Saturday, Elon Musk let DT back on the platform, while including a little blasphemy with his announcement, that was the last straw. Almost all of my tweets were syndicated from Micro.blog, anyway. I thought about pinning a tweet that pointed to where you can find me now, but if you have been following my account for any length of time, you already have that information.

I should no longer be tempted by the urge to scroll endlessly. I realized that I don't have to subordinate my principles to the twitch. I will miss people that I only heard from on Twitter, though. Corey Doctorow writes about the hardest thing regarding leaving social media.

Online, a lot of us have been unhappy with our social media platforms for a long time, but we hang in there, year after year, scandal after scandal, because as much as we hate the platform, we love the people who use the platform.We don’t leave because we don’t want to lose them. They don’t leave because they don’t want to lose us. It’s a hostage situation, and we’re all holding each other hostage.

There were so many times I almost pulled the plug on Twitter. The first time was after they changed their API to put impediments in front of third-party developers. I almost quit when things got rancorous in the run-up to the 2016 election. I almost quit — earlier this year — when bullies forced Elizabeth Bruenig off the platform and I saw user after user gloating about it. Finally, I almost quit after hearing that Elon Musk was buying the platform.

I'm usually terrible about prognostications and the guessing of ulterior motives, but I did a pretty good job back in April, when I guessed that Elon Musk was planning on taking over Twitter because the conservative commentary site The Babylon Bee was banned.

Last week, Twitter banned the conservative satirical site The Babylon Bee for what it termed “hate speech.” Specifically, the “satire” involved misgendering U.S. Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine as a man. I’m not sure what’s satirical about that, but it seems cruel and certainly not at all funny. As a sign of the coming apocalypse, Elon Musk was interviewed by the Babylon Bee in December 2021. Is it possible that this ban was the act which spurred Musk into thinking of buying into Twitter to change its direction?

It appears now, based on texts with his ex-wife, that Musk initially decided to buy Twitter for just that reason. I would link to what I've read, but well, it's on Twitter. I won't go back into the burning building just to grab it. Was this incredibly insightful on my part? Nah. It's better attributed to the predictable petulance of the billionaire who now owns the technology platform with the largest mindshare.

I don't know if or when Twitter will go down. I think you can run Twitter with a lot less people than the company had prior to the Musk takeover. However, I also believe that you can't and shouldn't alienate your employees and cause the best to quit without repercussions.

My degree is in psychology, and though I focused on family and child counseling, industrial/organizational psychology was a close second in my affections. I loved taking a case study from a disaster at NASA — like the Challenger shuttle explosion — and looking at what went wrong organizationally to allow that to happen. So, as you can imagine, I’m riveted by the Twitter saga. The twists and turns. The overall smugness of the CEO in the face of a serious threat to the product’s existence. The ultimatums and the promises that staying at the company could be at the expense of any life outside your job. The employees wandering the virtual halls of Slack, trying to figure out if they still have a manager, but who can’t check with HR because HR is gone.

One worker who wanted to resign said she had spent two days looking for her manager, whose identity she no longer knew because so many people had quit in the days beforehand. After finally finding her direct supervisor, she tendered her resignation. The next day, her supervisor also quit.

The press requests go unanswered by a communications team that was one of the first to get the axe when layoffs came swiftly following acquisition. Just when there are soooo many questions. Users are trying to decide if the jig is up and saying goodbye to the platform and their followers. Maybe Twitter was just the friends we made along the way?

At any given time, Twitter employees may be asked to come into the office to work, upon threat of termination or may be shut out of working at the office. Badge access denied. Oh, and let’s not forget about badges. There are all kinds of badges floating around Twitter now. Badges you can buy, badges you are given and badges that are rescinded. Badges even change color. It’s chaos badging.

One of the most fascinating things about this whole process is that, while employees get discarded or flee like rats from a sinking ship, many users of Twitter seem to think that doesn’t make a difference. Well, this site’s still running, so they must not have needed those people. Folks, humans aren’t literally powering the site. There aren’t employees running on a hamster wheel to generate electricity to keep the servers on.

A building doesn’t just collapse when the people leave. It rots, over time, from neglect. Just because the app hasn’t crashed (yet) doesn’t mean you can run it in the long-term without platform engineering and site-reliability experts. The infrastructure is still there, after all, and it’s architected to handle spikes in traffic through elasticity. It won’t just fail, if the engineers have done their job. At least, not initially. At some point, there will be a crisis. It might happen pushing new code for that mega-blue badge that allows you to DM a celebrity in exchange for cash money. It may happen during a targeted attack. Newton’s First Law of Physics is, “an object in motion stays in motion in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.” In software, there are many unbalanced forces. It’s just a question of when one pops up.

For a few years now, I’ve followed a “read the Bible in a year” program. Last year, I used the plan from Bible Class Material, which presents the readings in a more-or-less chronological order that I’ve found extremely helpful for following the Old Testament material.

Every year that I have read the Bible, I have gained new insights and different passages have stuck out to me in different ways. It’s been a new experience, each time. Heraclitus said that “a man never stands in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” This has perhaps rarely been more apparent to me than when wading through the river of life-giving waters that is holy scripture. When I bring to the reading fresh experiences from my own life, I see the verses through different eyes.

This year, one of the books I have discovered anew is the book of Jonah. Famous as being one of the most kid-friendly books of the Bible, Jonah has a lot more to it than the children’s adaptations present. Most of us are familiar with this Sunday School depiction of Jonah as the reluctant prophet, called to a foreign city to preach about God, attempting to run away from the task to which he is called and ending up in a “big fish.” After his encounter with the fish, Jonah realizes he can’t escape God’s will for him and does indeed travel on to Nineveh. However, most of the “Jonah and the whale” stories for younger children omit the the fourth and final chapter of the book completely. If you can put aside the whole guy getting swallowed by a big fish and having a change of heart thing, the last chapter is where the book of Jonah really gets interesting.

It is well understood from any reading of the story that Jonah fiercely resisted God’s command to go to Nineveh. If we put ourselves in the place of Jonah, the command from God was like being asked to go to Mosul under ISIS control and preach repentance. In fact, the city of Nineveh, to which Jonah was called, was located in the area of the modern day city of Mosul. The Ninevites had been brutal to the Israelites, as the carvings from Lachish attest (be sure not to miss the guys getting flayed alive). Not only did Jonah not want to go, but, as is revealed in the fourth chapter, Jonah didn’t actually want the Ninevites to repent. He wanted them to end up as toast, deserving recipients of the righteous wrath of God.

However, surprisingly enough, the Ninevites did heed the prophecy from the Lord that their city would be destroyed if they didn’t repent and turn from their ways. Jonah was far from being happy about this outcome. The successful prophet turns his back on God again, this time angry that the citizens of Nineveh actually listened to his warnings and were spared from the punishment they so richly deserved. Jonah’s despair causes him to wish for his life to end, there in the desert, under the hot sun. Instead, in a single day, God makes a tree that grows to a height that shields Jonah from the scorching rays. After having endured the sun’s punishing heat, Jonah is more than happy to accept God’s gift. However, the next day, the tree has withered, causing Jonah to complain bitterly. God responds by reminding Jonah that he has made the people and animals of Nineveh just as he has made the tree.

The message that we can take away from the book of Jonah is that the creator God makes, and yes, even cherishes, our enemies. It’s a bold and disconcerting lesson. It likely brings us no more comfort than it brought Jonah. We should keep the book of Jonah in mind when we read that Jesus taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. There is a consistency of thought there stretching from the prophets of the Old Testament to the teachings of the Son of God in the New Testament. It’s almost as if, though not many people, if any at all, can actually follow these teachings, they help us to understand the heart of God. They help to shape our perception of who God is and what He values.

This was originally published on Medium, a few years ago. Since we are about to begin a class focused on Jonah at church, I wanted to republish it on my current blog.

This week I got the latest issue of Presbyterians Today, the periodical from the Presbyterian Church USA. The magazine, like the denomination itself, has a pretty progressive slant. It's not filled with numerous biblical references, or spiritual content, but with social justice activism. I'm not pointing this out to condemn social justice activism. After all, the prophets and Jesus remind us constantly of the value of social justice. In fact, I think it's sad that if you look up "Christian social justice" on Amazon, many of the books the search pulls up are negative. Titles like Why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice: An Urgent Appeal to Fellow Christians in a Time of Social Crisis and Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict are bestsellers.

Social justice is an important part of a well-rounded and robust Christian faith. The prophet Isaiah frames this well for Jews and Christians in the first chapter of the book bearing his name:

Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1:17)

To translate that passage into modern parlance, the oppressed, the fatherless and the widow are what we would call the marginalized. Those who have a place in life that makes it more difficult to succeed in numerous ways. From front to back, the Bible makes the case for why we owe service to these people. This is an exhortation from the prophets, and perhaps pleaded most strongly by the gospels.

The fruits of this emphasis on charity are manifest. In his book, The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt notes that people who are religious are among those who are most charitable with their resources.

Studies of charitable giving in the United States show that people in the least religious fifth of the population give just 1.5 percent of their money to charity. People in the most religious fifth (based on church attendance, not belief) give a whopping 7 percent of their income to charity, and the majority of that giving is to religious organizations. It’s the same story for volunteer work: religious people do far more than secular folk, and the bulk of that work is done for, or at least through, their religious organizations.

The problem, for Christians at least, occurs when we start to develop ideologies that innovate, or go beyond the mandate given by the progenitors of our faith. It is in this effort that we start to frame even that we worship in a modern, secular conception of what it means to be a human guided by the true, the good and the beautiful. My fear for some time has been that the idea of progress can become an idol that we chase. This chase of whatever is currently the cause célèbre comes at the expense of timeless wisdom on the subject of justice.

Vibe Shift

Samuel Son has been writing a series for Presbyterians Today on the hot subjects of our time — diversity, equity, and inclusion — and how those concepts apply within the church. In his latest column, my fears for the eventual trajectory of this line of questioning come to pass. Even Christ (the "author and perfecter of our faith") is not exempt from the author's critique around inclusion. In his latest column, Diversity isn't inclusivity (not yet available on the web), Son praises Jesus' group of followers for including women and being diverse in this way. However, he laments that women were not usually part of the inner circle.

Scripture also shows us that Jesus' inner circle was men only. Jesus' entourage looked like the most diverse gathering of any movement, but when it came to the core, it was your typical boys' club. This is diversity without inclusion.

Son reminds us that, "we shouldn't be anachronistic with our morality, judging ancestors by our standards." However, then he goes on to say of Jesus and the Twelve, "what they took for granted is exactly how we fail at inclusion." In using Jesus as a negative example, Son is doing exactly what he asks the reader not to: he is judging an ancient people by a modern conceptual framework.

In the Christian conception, we come to view the world through the eyes of Christ. That is, with compassion and grace. To invert that process and view Christ through the eyes of the world, and its ever-changing standards sets a dangerous precedent. Instead of letting Jesus be the template for our understanding of what is good, we let contemporary popular thought become that template. It is in this exercise that we shed our Christianity and conform instead to secular notions of an improved humanity, which lead to hubris. We rob the church of its authority, leaning instead on partially formed ideas with a very modern genesis. Is it any wonder, then, when people leave the church, believing it no longer has a claim on truth? If you can get the wisdom you need from the latest trend in collective thought, or the current zeitgeist, what does the church have to offer you?

On the opposite page from Son's column is a piece by Derrick Weston about charity. Weston questions the willingness to feed people without tackling the injustices at the root of their hunger. He refers to this using a phrase taken from a book published in 2012: Toxic Charity. Weston brings up an important point that is anchored in ancient notions of justice and enabling sustainability. However, he is wrong in going after works of charity. Would Weston attack Jesus feeding of the 5000 (Matthew 14:13-21) as "toxic charity?" Yet again, you have a writer who finds fault with the way that Christ comported Himself. It's another erosion of the authority of the Son of God. To be clear, Weston is not advocating for us to cease doing works of pure charity, but in questioning the way in which we pattern our deeds after Christ, he is casting doubt on the fundamentals of the church.

In the Christian conception, we come to view the world through the eyes of Christ. That is, with compassion and grace. To invert that process and view Christ through the eyes of the world, and its ever-changing standards sets a dangerous precedent.

Many have suggested that people are turning away from Christian churches because those in the churches do not seem to be living in a Christian way. Their hypocrisy presents a barrier to belief in onlookers who want to see genuine expressions of faith in a God of love. I have no doubt that this true. Unfortunately, I find myself disgusted regularly by the actions of those who are carrying the banner of Christ. However, I would also add that those who are within the church and attacking the very foundations on which it stands are driving people away. Jesus teaches us, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand" (Matthew 12:25). This is not an exhortation to avoid criticism of those within the church. Goodness knows, Paul the Apostle teaches us time and again to turn our focus inwards when we look for fault. However, I would make an appeal not to take a novel conception of what human flourishing looks like and retroactively apply it critically to the works of Christ Himself. To do so undermines the effectiveness of our beliefs and our witness. We need our True North, perhaps especially in a time of changing values.

So, the deal has finally gone through, and Elon Musk is the new owner of Twitter. The first thing I wanted to do when I heard this was check on those who swore to get rid of Twitter if Musk ran it. Would they have fidelity to their promises? My lady friend pulled down all of her data and said she was cancelling her account. This would be a big move for her, as she is a fairly voracious Twitter consumer. No more cute cat videos or political snark. Predictably, when I asked her about it again, she just hadn't gotten around to it and then the next time I saw her, she was doomscrolling on the site.

I'm not a fan of Mr. Musk, but I'm not dropping off Twitter just yet. It seems like a situation where you can wait and see where it goes. However, I don't trust the new proprietor, even if he has been saying some of the right things in the past couple of days (while carrying a sink and insisting that his presence at Twitter HQ will have to "sink in").

Manton Reece, the owner of Micro.blog, has some words on the subject.

The common digital “square” should be the entire web, with a diverse set of platforms. There should be common APIs but many communities with their own rules, goals, and business models. Concentrating too much power in only a couple social media companies is what created the mess we’re in. The way out is more platforms, free to make the best decisions for their users knowing that there are options to leave and less lock-in for developers.

He's absolutely right. Like it or not, though, Twitter is the common digital town square we have right now. I'd love it if more people decamped from the fractious confines of the dominant microblogging platform and gave Reece the business his network deserves. I don't envision a mass exodus, though. People who are more technically literate and aware than most are still just now discovering the 5-year-old microblogging service.

Charlie Warzel goes through all sorts of scenarios in which Musk actively destroys Twitter with incompetent meddling, but then eventually concludes with a different outcome.

Living, breathing things do one thing quite reliably: They eventually die, for all kinds of reasons. They die of natural causes, or because of direct harm. They die because of unforeseeable events. Musk very well could kill Twitter out of malice or hubris, or through calculated, boneheaded decisions. But one possibility seems more likely than others. If Twitter dies at the hands of this billionaire, the cause is likely to be tragically banal—neglect.

Predictions aren't usually my stock-in-trade, and I'm not going to speculate too much on what will happen with a Musk-owned Twitter. I am pretty sure Musk is too addicted to hearing his own voice on a global platform to neglect it. In the end, I'm just glad I'm no longer tethered to Twitter, as an investor or as a user. Every so often, I think maybe we should all just move over to Mastodon.

Several times a week, I get an email from my son's high school with a link to a newsletter-type of page that details events at the school. To be honest, I don't often read it. I assume that if there's anything important going on, my son will tell me. One thing I'm not concerned about is the newsletter informing me that the school is installing litter boxes for students who identify as furries. That may sound crazy, but some parents are truly worried about it.

Why on earth would parents think a school would install litter boxes in bathrooms? Some Republican politicians and Republican-adjacent types like Joe Rogan are claiming this is a thing. Although they don't have any evidence, they hardly need it to penetrate the overactive imaginations of their constituents and listeners. Tyler Kingkade has the story (and a wonderfully surreal image to go with it) for NBC News.

But the claim has taken on a life of its own among a growing number of Republicans, conservative influencers and political commentators. In an episode of Spotify’s “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast this week, host Joe Rogan told former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard that a litter box was installed in a school that his friend’s wife worked at for a girl who “identifies as an animal.” A clip of the discussion quickly began to circulate on social media. Rogan did not name the school, and his publicist did not respond to a request for comment.

As usual, you have Rogan taking part in this cultural controversy, with his, "aw shucks, I'm just an everyman who heard about this and I don't have to research it" nonsense. This is your music tax dollars (AKA, your Spotify subscription fees) hard at work. While artists are paid fractions of pennies, this guy gets unholy amounts of money to spout whatever comes off the top of his dome.

I used to laugh at this rumor, but instead of dying out like I expected, it only seems to have picked up steam, with people unthinkingly repeating it seemingly everywhere in the U.S. and Canada. When politicians were putting this stuff out there, it was bad enough, but now you have the host of the most-listened to podcast in history repeating it. I know Rogan has incredible numbers of listeners because his supporters are always touting the stats like they somehow confer legitimacy upon his show. I guess you're supposed to just accept — prima facie — that large numbers of people can't be wrong.

Theoretically, the proliferation of media should have brought about easy dismissals of stories like this after simple fact checking. Many news outlets have looked into these claims and found no evidence of their veracity. However, that is not a barrier to the spread of even the silliest rumors in a post-truth society. This isn't totally new. As P.T. Barnum once said, "Many people are gullible, and we can expect this to continue." Now, though, false beliefs appear to be moving faster than ever.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go clean my personal litter box.

If you are as interested in media trends and their implications as I am, an article in The New Atlantis about how Jon Stewart laid the foundations for the type of show we see from Tucker Carlson may be the most fascinating thing you read all year. Its author, Jon Askonas, an assistant professor of politics at the Catholic University of America, makes the case in a provocative and insightful way. He takes aim at polarization in new media and how Stewart unintentionally built-up this polarization.

You can flatter your audience over and over every day by showing them proof of how insane the people they despise are becoming. You can tell them what they want to hear about how everyone else is just hearing what they want to hear. You can even build an entire new media business model on this.

Askonas nails how The Daily Show effectively ridiculed other new shows and always portrayed itself as above-the-fray because it was billed as a humor show on a comedy network. The fact that the show was preceded by fare like Crank Yankers gave them plenty of license to get away with things that no one else could. Under Stewart, the Daily Show perfected the art of nailing their opponents with a well-guarded secret process of digging up just the right archival footage to humiliate them. Tucker Carlson learned his lesson when Stewart came on Carlson's show Crossfire and savaged the hosts. It was after that encounter that he began to hone his craft.

Carlson hosts hard-hitting interviews, field segments that underline the outrages and absurdities in American life as his audience sees it, and clip compilations that emphasize the show’s underlying themes. He is a master at sifting through masses of information to find the material that shows how hypocritical, foolish, and insane his adversaries are. Just like Stewart, Tucker has the receipts.

Though I'm admittedly not a fan of consensus comedy, I think Stewart is ultimately less culpable for the rise of Carlson than Askonas would have you believe. Stewart legitimately believes in what he broadcasts. The same cannot be said of Carlson, who manipulates the news and his audience for his own popularity. He is a performer, and he knows fully well what he is doing. Stewart may have come up with the process, but it's Carlson who truly weaponized it in ways that are dangerous for the republic.

This is a long piece (40 pages printed), but it's well worth the time it takes to get through it.

This week's Friday Night Video is a bit of a departure from other recent entries in the series. There's no electroclash or spunky cover reworkings. It's a new track from Welcome Wagon. Welcome Wagon are label mates of Sufjan Stevens and purveyors of a similar religiously-tinged folky aesthetic. With lyrics taken mostly from the gospel of Matthew and featuring comforting additions like "God holds your hand," the song centers around the passage in Matthew in which Jesus assures us that God knows how to give good gifts to His children. The text comes a chapter after Jesus tells his followers not to be anxious about anything, that God will provide for our needs. The title of the track specifically references the verse in Matthew that implores us to pray.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. (Matthew 7:7)

The words from the passage are repeated in spoken word at the end of the song, giving emphasis to their power and hopefulness. There's no irony here, and, as a comment on YouTube stated, Welcome Wagon "lean straight up."

The new Welcome Wagon album, Esther, will be out 11/4 on Asthmatic Kitty records.

I feel blessed to have come across a clean recording of Chvrches' version of Prince's messianic "I Would Die 4 You." I was blown away the first time I heard this cover years ago on Soundcloud. It's such a perfect rendition of a groundbreaking song. There is no video of the actual in-studio performance of this track, so the YouTuber who posted this substituted a montage of concert footage. It is heavily centered on front woman Lauren Mayberry (I barely saw the dudes in the band), but it's a nice collection of clips and syncs up pretty well with the audio.

This is my favorite cover Churches has done, and they've got quite a few to choose from.

I never stop wanting to love the New York Times and they never stop stopping me by publishing dopes like Ross Douthat, David Brooks and Maureen Dowd.

We typically don't want to hear from those with whom we disagree. I use the word "we" very deliberately because I'm just as guilty as anyone else. I'm likely to rage-quit a publication or even a whole network after encountering too many views that don't jive with mine. Encountering opposing views is necessary, though. We should encounter different opinions in the same publication — and not just to get us out of our echo chambers.

Publications should feature different voices because it's the only way they can engender widespread trust. I've been critical of Ross Douthat in the past, but frankly, the New York Times needs the views of someone like Douthat. Without the people named in the above post, the publication risks becoming a monoculture.

Why has trust in journalistic institutions dropped so much in the past few decades? People don't trust them because their reporting has become one-sided and normative. Andrey Mir calls this post-journalism. People realize when they are not just reading news reports, but spin in favor of the publication's preferred ideology. I can't take reporting on hot button issues from Fox News or NPR at face value because I know they've got an agenda.

By including a variety of opinions, the NYT insulates itself from at least some of that criticism. They aren't shy about admitting this, and as long as they give voice to different perspectives, their claim will have credibility. The message that they post at the end of opinion columns by writers like David Brooks says it clearly.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles.

It may sometimes be a bitter pill to swallow, but I'm coming to the understanding that we need to hear from all different kinds of people.

Men I Trust return with a new single to accompany their tour of the states. This one surprised me by beginning with a Factory Records sound and progressing into a chugging, propulsive post-punk ripper. A new wave guitar line comes up about a minute and a half into the track. Keyboard flourishes show up later on to add a bit more to the era-specific sounds. The video features lead singer Emma Proulx swinging in front of an intentionally crummy video backdrop with some haunting vibes.

With the exception of the vocals, this hardly seems like the same band that put out the breezy, danceable Oncle Jazz record a few short years ago. I'm not sure if this is a one-off or whether Men I Trust has a new sound, but I'm here for it. This is easily one of my favorite tracks that they have recorded. I wish I didn't have to drive to the mountains to see them on tour because I would love to catch this song live.

I have been on a sort of crusade to get more people to blog recently. If I come across a person who is interesting and has something worthwhile to share, I urge them to start a blog. I have a friend at work who, in the early days of the Ukraine war, was sending updates about the conflict to a large group of people via an email distribution list. I suggested he commit his ideas to a blog instead. At first, he wasn't into the idea. One of the reasons he gave me was that he had too much going on and he needed self-care time, in addition to all the craziness in life. I remarked to him that the activity of blogging is my self-care time.

Seriously, I can think of few things more relaxing than tinkering with my home on the web. I'm not alone. Greg Morris writes about feeling the same way in My Blog, My Escape. He finds the way for him to "switch off" is through blogging.

Some people find this in computer games, some find it in reading, but mine is writing and tinkering with my blog. I can only truly escape from the world for a bit whilst typing away on my keyboard doing my thing, and I only figured this out because I haven’t been doing it so much lately.

I know my wife wonders why I'm tinkering so much when she sees me working on my blog, but I feel justified in the fact that I am actually writing in addition to tinkering. Many people have fun setting up a blog but hardly ever post to it. I’ll admit, though, that designing the look and feel of a fresh weblog is almost half the fun. In fact, I’m revamping my blog with a new coat of paint right now (the accent color is called “Fresh Blue of Bel Air”). Pruning your blog, like gardening, is its own kind of zen. Something like tweaking the decoration of your links can inspire a feeling of craftsmanship.

Sharing your blog with others, whether it’s through a dedicated blogging network like Micro.blog or a dominant social platform like Twitter, is a method of expression that can be gratifying. You never know what is going to land with people. As I’ve read many times, and also experienced, sometimes the posts you worked the hardest on hardly seem to get any notice, while the thoughts that clutter your brain until you bang out quick statements simply to release them can pick up serious traction. It keeps things interesting when you have no idea what will resonate. The feelings that brings up are probably based on the fact that humans respond to variable reward structures by continuing or even intensifying the behavior that brings the rewards.

Can Blogging = Journaling In Public?

Blogging doesn’t have to completely shut the world out, though. It can bring the world into your frame of reference. In that respect, it’s like journaling. If you do an internet search for “keeping a journal mental health” you’ll come up with no shortage of articles extolling the benefits of journaling to improve your mindset. The following passage is from an article on WebMD.

Journaling about your feelings is linked to decreased mental distress. In a study, researchers found that those with various medical conditions and anxiety who wrote online for 15 minutes three days a week over a 12-week period had increased feelings of well-being and fewer depressive symptoms after one month. Their mental well-being continued to improve during the 12 weeks of journaling.

Therapists prescribe journaling to help their clients process their thoughts. Blogging can be a similar exercise. Some people blog as they would journal and the only difference is that the journal is for the public to view. Jack Baty, for example, does this quite a bit on his blog. Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, which makes Wordpress, the internet’s most popular blogging software, describes journaling in the app Day One as keeping a “local blog.”

However, blogging doesn't necessarily have to be about self-disclosure. For example, one of my favorite types of content to publish is the link post. With link posts, you find things that interest you online and attempt to convey that feeling with others. Link posts force you to look outside yourself for material but also help you to analyze and make sense of what is being discussed. Then there are blogs that focus on a particular subject. I was just going through the Ghost blog directory the other day and you wouldn't believe how many blogs about tech are out there (or maybe you would). Your blog is yours, and you should feel free to publish the kind of posts that suite you.

The Mission Continues

I'm currently trying to get my 16-year-old son to take up blogging. He showed some interest, but hasn't yet made his first post. He keeps mumbling something about being busy. As a junior in high school in an accelerated IT program, he does have a lot to keep up with. I really think the practice would benefit him, though. If you can fit a hobby like blogging into your schedule, it's usually time well spent.

I will start by showing my cards here and admitting that I can’t wait to see Andor, the latest of the Star Wars shows to premiere on Disney+. The only reason I haven’t already dipped back into the Star Wars universe is that my imagination is currently in Middle Earth, where the harfoots are undertaking a perilous journey and Sauron and his juicy, sunscreen-hoarding orcs are on the move. If I weren’t so deep into the story that Rings of Power is weaving, I would have settled down in front of the big screen with the lights off and watched for that familiar Star Wars logo that has brought joy to me since I was a kid. I’ve been waiting for a while for Andor to come out and I have greater expectations for this show than any of the previous Star Wars episodic TV shows (although I ended up enjoying them all).

The main reason that I’ve got such high hopes for Andor is that I loved the movie Rogue One, on which it is based. I enjoyed Rogue One so much that I read the prequel, Catalyst (which was the best Star Wars novel I’ve read). While Catalyst as a prequel focuses on the earlier history of the character Galen Erso and his friend who became his enemy, Orson Krennic, Andor focuses on the titular character of Cassian Andor. In Rogue One, it was hinted at several times that Andor had an eventful and adventurous backstory. Now audiences get to find out exactly how adventurous that backstory was and what events shaped Andor’s character.

For me, modern Star Wars movies peaked with Rogue One. Not longer after it debuted, we’ve now come to expect more television-style shows from the franchise than actual films. Moviegoing and television watching are completely different experiences. I remember vividly going to view the newer movies at Cinebistro, one of those theaters where you are served dinner before reclining in a luxurious oversized chair to watch the film you came to see. We would go as a development team from work and take up a few rows of the theater. I would always get the richest chocolate lava cake you can ever conceive of and deal with the stomach ache to go with it later. I loved seeing the movies as a group and then gathering around in the lobby later to discuss the merits of the films. We introduced more than one Star Wars newbie to the franchise that way, giving them homework of seeing the original trilogy.

Rogue One, a story of how the resistance against the Galactic Empire won its first victory, hit at a time when resistance seemed like a real thing that was brewing. Donald Trump had just been elected president, and already there were concerns about his ties with Russia and potential criminality. As I drove home from the theater, I heard then president Obama speaking about the allegations. “Resist” became a slogan, and the sci-fi story of the resistance that became a rebellion seemed timely and frankly, somewhat inspirational. Opposing a tyrannical government no longer seemed so abstract to those in America.

In a post for The Verge, Charles Pulliam-Moore summarizes Andor by way of describing how its preceding film set the stage.

Rogue One, director Gareth Edwards’ harrowing, shell-shocked, but ultimately optimistic story about the small group of freedom fighters who won the Rebel Alliance’s first victory against the Galactic Empire, was unlike any other Star Wars story when it debuted in 2016. As part of a franchise that — at the time — felt increasingly incapable of escaping the gravitational pull of its nostalgia-logged core mythology and its players, Rogue One was a sophisticated and hard-edged reminder that there’s always been so much more to Star Wars than the Skywalker saga. Andor, from Rogue One writer-turned-showrunner Tony Gilroy, doesn’t at all stray too far from the tone, scale, or frankness about the human costs of warring with fascists that defined the film it’s building up to.

Since becoming an adult, I've felt like war and violence are often depicted in a very glossy way on screen. Either that or they are gratuitously showcased. So war is glamorized or gritty, with reality settling somewhere outside the bounds of the cinematic universe from which the films come. Rogue One changed the way a Star Wars property treated war, with its painful casualties and disappointing losses. It felt like the first Star Wars film for adults. In a time when many "fans" accuse the changes in the Star Wars universe of retroactively ruining their childhoods, a subsequent series that's unashamedly aimed at adults seems almost necessary.