iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Reed C. Hepler

McKay Coppins @mckaycoppins.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

This past weekend, senior LDS Church leader D. Todd Christofferson did something that has become surprisingly rare: He made an unapologetic moral argument against gambling. I wrote about the religious leaders pushing back against the sports-betting boom. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

theatlantic.com

Churches Are Finally Making the Moral Case Against Sports Betting

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the most recent faith community to come out strongly against online gambling.

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Reposted by Reed C. Hepler

Micaela Baranello @micaelab.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

“This class has shattered my sense of truth” -student in my opera seminar I want to use this to advertise future course offerings

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

This is more interaction than I've had in a month, and I have no idea what I did lol.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Join me in two hours to talk about 10 ways to avoid intrusive AI, from search engines to desktop apps to agents to consumer interfaces. The recording and chat will be available tomorrow! www.library20.com/ai-sessions/...

library20.com

10 Ways to Avoid AI

10 Ways to Avoid AI A Library 2.0 / Learning Revolution Webinar with Reed Hepler OVERVIEW: In this departure from his usual topics, Reed discusses ways to completely avoid AI in all its forms… and so...

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Steve Lambson @kremlincardinal.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

One of the recurring themes I took away from #GeneralConference is that each of us would do well to assess our relationship with tech, be it our devices, the apps we use, and how we treat each other in digital spaces. I can do better and I am going to try.

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Reposted by Reed C. Hepler

The Church of Jesus Christ 🤖 @churchofjesuschrist.social · 04/10/2026

"We are welcoming the world, in person or virtually, to the Salt Lake Temple Celebration. On April 5, 2027, the temple doors of the Salt Lake Temple will open to the public—the first such opening since 1893." —President Dallin H. Oaks (@OaksDallinH) #GeneralConference

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Reposted by Reed C. Hepler

David T @improvementera.com · 04/10/2026

For Elohim, it is an uptick, because it hasn't been used in General Conference in almost 10 years, and then it was by ... Elder Dallin H. Oaks. #GeneralConference #ldsconf #lds www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/genera...

churchofjesuschrist.org

The Godhead and the Plan of Salvation

Elder Oaks teaches that because we know the truth about the Godhead and the plan of salvation, we have the road map for our mortal journey.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

No, they haven't recently, but the taboo against speaking about this stuff is relatively new, too. My great-grandmother spoke openly about the clothes, even to great-grandkids. My grandma and my parents never talked about it. There was even talk about the promises and the prayer circle etc.

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Reposted by Reed C. Hepler

Jesse Harris @elforesto.coolestfamilyever.com · 04/10/2026

Gordon B. Hinckley said the same 21 years ago. I guess everyone needed a bit of a reminder that gambling is a very bad idea, both personally and societally. #lds #genconf #generalconference www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/genera...

churchofjesuschrist.org

Gambling

If you have never been involved in poker games or other forms of gambling, don’t start. If you are involved, then quit now while you can do so.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Oh okay! That wheel turn at the end looked all too smooth.

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Reposted by Reed C. Hepler

Liminal LDS @liminal-lds.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

I encourage the use of hashtags when posting about General Conference 1) because the feed will be better if you use them, and 2) it allows people who don't want to see a bunch of posts about General Conference to mute those tags. #ldsconf #genconf #generalconference

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I do the same thing with the pumpkin bread my wife and I make.

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Reposted by Reed C. Hepler

Dave Calder @ldsfn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Doug Wilson is the same pastor that Pete Hegseth platforms and states that Mormons shouldn’t be allowed to vote. www.sltrib.com/religion/202...

Small-town Idaho may seem like a strange place for an ambitious young coder, but he stayed there for a compelling reason. As Taylor explained on X in 2023, he lived in Moscow "in order to be part of a medium-sized church community." That community was the fiefdom founded by Doug Wilson, the self-proclaimed Christian nationalist pastor of Moscow's Christ Church. In a 2023 tweet, Taylor described Wilson as a huge influence on me regarding wealth." In an email to Mother Jones, Wilson said he first met a teenage Taylor when his family relocated to Moscow; Wilson described Taylor as "a go-getter." Taylor didn't respond to our request for comment on his relationship with Wilson and other details of this story.

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Davis Eastwood @davis-eastwood.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Considering the crisis of the time, I'm surprised more people aren't talking about how prescient this was, especially as a debut novel. Do people not read Player Piano in high school anymore?

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Reposted by Reed C. Hepler

Aprilcots @aprilcots.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

“Their arguments are a potent combination of Latter-day Saint scripture, Cold War paranoia, and free-market principles that bare the marks of their era while simultaneously claiming to capture eternal truths.” 🔥 Thank you, @benjaminepark.bsky.social . I’m so excited for your upcoming book!!!

sltrib.com

Commentary: Cold War may be over, but anti-communism is hot again — and Latter-day Saints are in the thick of it

Latter-day Saints have played a crucial role in the fight against communism, a fight that has resurfaced again.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

How's THAT for a long-winded answer.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The only person I have seen consistently examining LLM/agentic behavior and explicitly discussing its errors and the process of refining a product is @mikecaulfield.bsky.social with his movie plot &c tool, and he moves so fast I can't keep up. Plus, he is NOT using it to process student data...

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I have even TRIED to talk about agents, and offered trainings and posts about agents, but all of my colleagues everywhere basically say that I would be on my own. They do not want to give a training or endorse a video, and then have people misunderstand the video, commit errors, and blame us.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I also got a lot of people telling me that "I am not talking about agents, so I am WAY behind, and my trainings are lacking because I am not talking about how agents can be used for [X]." Do you REALLY want agentic browsers giving feedback? There are SO many opportunities for violations of FERPA.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Image generators (diffusers) are almost NEVER mentioned, and many people are dismissing them because of arguments centered on LLMs, as if they are built on the same process. They are not. Not even close.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

to "I tried (one small part of) AI (in a poorly designed execution, ONE time), and it was not all that impressive." and back we are again to "LLMs are stochastic parrots," without considering the multi-modal nature of these tools. a lot of this conversation centers on text. -->

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

and either the agentic workflow is 1. deeply flawed, or 2. not accompanied by explicit cautions one should consider before adopting said workflow. Thus, you get a workflow that considers privacy, FERPA, efficiency, human oversight implicitly, but then people "duplicate" it with NONE of these. -->

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It's more like, "LLMs are stochastic parrots, let's remember that," to "here's a brand-new prompt engineering framework that subconsciously plagiarizes three other ones," to [misunderstood copyright argument, for or against, that misrepresents or ignores Alsup] to "here is how I use Agents" -->

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

What people don't realize is that the #stochasticparrot argument is NOT the only conceptualization of how LLMs work! There are at least two others, and I talk about one of them in this post: reedhepler.substack.com/p/parrots-an... Another writer posited another explanation, I will try to find it.

reedhepler.substack.com

Parrots and Octopi vs. Domain Models

Two Ways of Thinking about AI Tools and Their Implications

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Every month or so, I get on here and see how the conversations re:AI and Copyright and Education and Libraries go. They very often intersect, and every three or four months, the same type of "pattern" restarts.

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Reposted by Reed C. Hepler

i have no oats @ihavenooats.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Sure, I'm sure a linguist is totally qualified to frame her comments as fact regarding what are now multimodal models. It's a shame; her criticisms were much more reasonable in '23 when LLMs weren't multimodal, but now it's just grifting nonsense.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Join me a month from today to talk about avoiding intrusive AI! October 6th, Noon MT, $99/person.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

What's even more insane is that Claude DOESN'T have this feature. He's just trying to normalize doing things like this. I don't get why they have to so blatantly lie about features that don't really exist, just to intrude on every aspect of living.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is what I said two years ago...

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

How do we get away from intrusive AI? The AI we don't even know is there? The AI we want to use occasionally, but insists on being used continuously, for everything?

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

We all have used AI for something or other, OR have had it demonstrated to us, OR have had a general website or tool we use incorporate AI, OR have had a website use AI to— You get the idea.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

No, it's more like "it's in the public domain, so no one will sue us." It also doesn't hurt that it's in almost every #MusicAppreciation class ever, so it is *cultured* to like it, because everyone thinks THEY discovered it themselves.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

One of my favorite episodes, obviously, is the #Mormon -centric one, when #Frasier gradually realizes to his HORROR that his new agent is a Mormon. He was even a member of the #TabernacleChoir. "When there's a dirty job to be done, you can't go wrong with a *Mormon*!" has me dying every time.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

"You know I've always wanted to do this--make a trip around the Greek islands!" [waiter laughs and gets absolutely pummeled in the face]

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I was very excited for this project, until I realized that the Church was "Mormonizing" the whole thing. It does not, in my view, validate acceptance or inclusion of other cultures if you are editing their offerings in the background before you transmit them to your own members.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

To be fair, though, this trend of changing the text follows historical precedent. For example, in the 1980s the church had versions of major choral anthems by #Bach and #Mozart in its choir books... But they had internal translators significantly alter the German words.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I found it especially interesting that the church seems to be TRYING to follow the trend suggested by this #exponent2 post: exponentii.org/blog/guest-p... Note, I say TRYING, not necessarily SUCCEEDING. With every external hymn they use, they find some "doctrinal" reason to change the text.

exponentii.org

Guest Post: Church Music - What Does "In Keeping With the Spirit of the Hymns" Really Mean? - Exponent II Blog

I am sure I am not the only one who has puzzled over this. The music section in the Church Handbook of Instructions (and posted on LDS.org) suggests hymns as

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Did you know that the #mormon #lds Church History Department kept a collection of all the internal and external publications that influenced the new hymnbook's creation? You can browse the metadata for 200 records at catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/search/_simp... #music #faithsky #mormonsky

catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Didn't they push "minimal announcements" as a rule like 10 years ago?

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Reposted by Reed C. Hepler

In Quires and Places where they meme @quiresandplaces.com · 22/09/2026

***NEW PUBLICATION*** If you've had a browse round the new website as well as spotting some new music you may have seen this little number coming soon... Introducing The Collect for the Rail Replacement Service.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I only say that, because ONLY missionaries would ever put their info on a flyer. If it is from the ward, or the stake, hardly ever would they put missionary info on the flyer.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

At the bottom, you see that there were names of "sister missionaries." I would imagine that they made these themselves and thought it was a good idea to spread them around, without asking anyone else for approval. As elders, we did stuff like that ALL THE TIME, and then we got in trouble for it lol.

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Penguin School & Library @penguinschoollib.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Andrea, an elementary school librarian, is sharing the stunning new picture book from award-winning and acclaimed creators Traci N. Todd and Vashti Harrison! THAT YOU ARE HERE IS NO SMALL THING is an honest and empowering read to add to your shelves 💜🐧 #ad #edusky #penguinclassroompartner

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Note that these resources are for FINDING preexisting resources, not a statement that these sites are for CREATING resources, or that these sites are the OWNERS of said content. I also am not endorsing these sites' content. Bad OERs do exist.

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Reed C. Hepler @bringthehuman.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I created this list of #OER -finding resources that I have come across in my 4-ish years working in the #Open and #openaccess ecosystem. Let me know of any sites I should add, or if you have any questions! docs.google.com/document/d/1...

docs.google.com

Resources for Finding OERs

The Big List of OER-Finding Resources Remember: just because something is copyrighted does not mean it is not Open Access! OA includes copyrighted materials that have been made available for free by t...

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In Quires and Places where they meme @quiresandplaces.com · 16/09/2026

Huge kudos to David Whitworth for coding this majestic timesuck. Enjoy. www.davidwhitworth.co.uk/app-developm...

davidwhitworth.co.uk

App development | David Whitworth

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