Signal is moderation.

Generating signal is moderating noise. The first moderator of any message is the person converting ideas into language. Understanding the interplay of how messages get moderated by the various layers they pass through is what media literacy is.

I miss when signal-to-noise ratio was common parlance of the Internet.

Making usable spaces is tough work, but having worthwhile content drowned in an ocean of noise is seemingly the default of corporate controlled media anymore, so much have they abandoned paying attention to what they publish. That you don’t know who is editorializing and moderating the places you frequent and have opinions on the job they’re doing says to me that you’re not doing the work that being media literate requires, which is all the more important when so much of it is generated content with no consideration given to reality.

Not so much on the fence between Harris and Trump, but on the bench, because apparently a significant demographic in my state is apparently not all that important to winning the swing state, and have been being iced out since before Harris was on the top of the ticket. Perhaps it is a failing of character to be unable to look past the continuing apologetics and support for a genocide and the emphasis on courting the “good” Republicans over the Progressives, but I can’t just set that aside and pour my energy into cheerleading the presidential race. I don’t have an option that I want, I have a choice between the status quo (which we know is leading us into bad places) and actively making things worse.

I’m not sure how “tens of billions of dollars of military aid” counts as not intervening in a foreign conflict.

It is a bit galling to be told endlessly that we must shut up and choose when the choice is “genocide or more genocide”, even when the reason Harris is on the top of the ballot at all is as a result of speaking up about the issues with Biden. I’m not all that comfortable merely accepting that, to escape the chopping block myself, I must remain silent about my family members. I’m sorry that Harris is so tied to Israel’s expansionist agenda that my inability to stomach rampant slaughter is threatening her and the Democratic party’s chances against Trump and the Republican party, but I can’t let some tens of thousands of killing go.

Perhaps they should have left Western style Manifest Destiny in the past.

Not my point. You absolutely can point to homophobic passages of the Bible. You can also point to passages of the Bible that are not talking about homosexuality in specific, but that are commonly interpreted as such. My point is that expecting even Christians to agree with other Christians about what texta constitute the Bible let alone what those specific texts actually say is an exercise in futility.

This is the why of the existence of all the various sects and denominations of Christianity. There are theologians who have done lots of academic work to show how the Bible does not need to be homophobic. There are others who have worked just as hard to justify doing grievous harm to homosexuals. Trying to explain both of those with the One True Reading of the Bible is committing the same error they do.

For my queer ass, if Christians all spontaneously decided to follow the theology of Rev. Fred Rodgers tomorrow, I’m gonna breathe a sigh of relief and leave them alone to be just the nicest people and hope they stay that way.

Expecting Christians to follow a given text to the letter will always be setting yourself up for failure. Not only do people pick and choose the doctrine they follow (or more often have it picked and chosen for them by their spiritual leader), different traditions have different emphasis and even different texts they’re operating off of. Expecting an legalistic following of a specific interpretation will leave you expecting far different behavior that most of your observations will show.

Sorry, but it’s actually pretty hard to dismiss the Romans passage, but it is something that can be chalked up to Paul being sex negative, going so far as to exhort people to be chaste or get married if they can’t control their passion if, as he noted, they were not free from such passion as he claimed to be. The other passages commonly cited don’t reference homosexuality nearly as directly, but it would not be a difficult argument to make that the word choices were specifically defaming homosexuality (especially given how common it is for people to use the same sort of defamation). Which isn’t to say that every denomination adheres to the same interpretation of these passages, but they aren’t on as theologically shaky ground as we might hope.

The Heritage Foundation is wild, and one of the most significant public policy groups with deep ties to American conservatism. Basically, any crazy policy that the Republican party has taken on as a major party plank in the past 50 years has a distressing high chance of having its roots in Heritage’s recommendations.

For example, in 1981:

Among the 2,000 Heritage policy recommendations, approximately 60% of them were implemented or initiated by the end of Reagan’s first year in office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation

Yeah, given how much Trump and Republicans lean on Heritage, and Trump has been talking about doing some “light” tyranny on day 1, it’s ridiculous to attempt to write off the Heritage Foundations’ plan to Christian Fascism.

Now tell us how many Heritage Foundations recommendations do the Republicans and Trump take on board! Distancing the Heritage Foundations from them rather undersells the position of one of the most influential public policy organizations particularly within conservative politics.

Sounds like a reason for Biden to set a whole bunch of legal precedent while he’s still president.