For almost a decade now, I’ve followed the story of Josh Weed, who first came onto the public scene as a gay Mormon happily married to a woman. I last wrote about him shortly after he announced his divorce, focusing on the role his initial post played for me as…

Elsewhere, I dive into a study that, as it turns out, basically says the opposite of what it claims in its abstract. The study made me more angery than I initially expected, which means it’s time for a mini-rant about what I’m calling Drunk Mormon Hypotheses. In short: If a…

And other misadventures — Recently, you may have heard reddit banned a forum for “Texas Abortion Bounty Hunters”. The ban was reported triumphantly in Vice and Business Insider after health advocate Kendall Brown blew the whistle on Twitter. Thousands of people, such as New York Times bestselling author Steve Silberman (author of a book…

Author’s Note: I was asked to write a viewpoint focus for an ongoing series on The Motte, and wrote more than I expected. The result is probably the most comprehensive introduction I’ve yet written to what I believe, so I’m publishing it here so I can more easily refer back…

The other day, Tumblr user whitehotharlots broke the news that Kieran Bhattacharya, a University of Virginia med student expelled after expressing skepticism at a seminar on microaggressions a couple of years ago, would be allowed to proceed with his legal complaint against the university. …

Election Day stretched into two days, then three or four, but the dust is clearing and the immediate future begins to come into view. Joe Biden is poised to be the 46th President of the United States. The Democrats will hold the House, but face an upswell of Republican support…

“The purpose of this subreddit is to be a working discussion ground for people who may hold dramatically different beliefs. It is to be a place for people to examine the beliefs of others as well as their own beliefs; it is to be a place where strange or abnormal…

I. When I was in grade school, I read this great book called The Mysterious Benedict Society. It started with a bunch of kids taking an absurdly difficult test to obtain entrance into a shadowy organization, which I appreciated as a kid who thought far too highly of his own…

This post is part of my “Speedrunning College” series. If you’d like to see the background, start here. Bookending the last class I wrote about (and still have more to say on), I had the great pleasure and frustration of taking two courses on database design: one providing an overview…