Vort

I think if you have a Liahona you can create circles. Alma said it was a compass.

They're a part of me.

That sounds like a good, practical solution for people with money to burn. I have found that two-liter bottles are cheap (free) and easily used to store water. It's a bit of work up front to clean the bottles and fill them two liters at a time with water, but as you say, water doesn't have a shelf life, so if you're careful with your bottling and keep the bottles in a dark place, you should have water easily available. If you're not so careful, you might have interesting biology experiments in closed ecosystems, so it's still not a total loss.

Fixed that for you I love animals.

This is the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" dilemma that socially/economically conservative would-be Republicans have. It's hard to vote Republican in good conscience, at least until you see what the Democrats offer. I did not vote for Trump in 2016, and for exactly that reason—I thought he was corrupt and that his taint would corrupt the government. I was astounded to see that it was the media corrupting the process, openly and without shame, with Trump often seemingly taking the role of white knight. Astounded, but somehow not overly surprised, if that makes any sense at all. I voted for Trump in 2020 with some enthusiasm, and if he wins the Republican nomination, I will almost certainly vote for him next year.

Have you looked into flow batteries, such as vanadium or zinc-based flow batteries? Not much of a portable solution, but it seems ideal for home power storage.

EXERCISE FOR CAT LOVERS 1. google.com 2. "cats" 3. 4. Click screen You are welcome.

Obviously. My "juice ain't worth the squeeze" comment is, in the long view, clearly contrary to the very plan of salvation itself. We may assume that if the result of mortal life, sinning, choosing evil, and then possibly repenting were not "worth the squeeze", then we would not be experiencing mortality at the moment. On the other hand, it's hard to make a rational and coherent argument that her evil works as a writer had any good outcome. Saying otherwise is essentially proclaiming, "I'm so glad for my sins and the evils I have committed toward others, because it led me to be the repentant person I am today." That attitude does not seem justified or justifiable. To what extent do you take that? Abuse? Rape? Murder? Genocide? At what point are you willing to say that, no, the evil was not justified or somehow good just because you said you were sorry?

No. I would have been happier if she hadn't been complicit in lying to two generations of women and guilty of killing her baby. Of course, that's water under the bridge at this point. But avoiding the evil action is always better than doing it and then saying you're sorry. If this woman were alone in her responsibility for the evils she promoted, or even if she were one of a small cabal of evildoers, such a comparison would make sense. We might then regard her similar to how the Lord regarded Laban, and say that it is better than one [wo]man be lost than an entire generation. There are two obvious problems with this: (1) We aren't God, and (2) if it had not been Sue Ellen Browder, it would surely have been someone else, someone just as convincing and just as duped. Ms. Browder was, in the cynical words of conspiracy theorists, a useful idiot. Perhaps we all are at some point.

Sure. It means that you're to be trusted because you're not one of those awful conservative Republican evil subhumans. But at what cost? Sacrifice a hundred million so that the one can finally come to some bitter self-realization? Seems the juice ain't worth the squeeze.

A now three-year-old article about the regrets of an old '70s feminist who wrote propaganda (her word) for Cosmopolitan. Murdered her unborn child as a sacrifice to her unholy god. Thank (the real) God she has attempted to repent and turn back her evil, but of course that genie can never be stuffed back into the bottle. https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/05/26/she-wrote-fake-news-for-cosmopolitan-and-now-regrets-misleading-women-on-feminism/

I'm not worried about China's military. As Gator points out, they are not a military threat. I think they are a grave threat in many other ways, including in information infrastructure, communications, and societally/culturally (though to be fair, we are our own worst enemy on that latter one).

Apparently, Samoa is somewhere in Seattle.

Ah! You found the seeric Easter egg!

Dear Martyn_H, YWTA. U2. But don't stress. Your buddy will get over it, eventually.

How tragic. I have only the vaguest idea of how such things work. I have known my whole life that I am naive, but it appears almost all of us are naive. And those who are not naive (or who are less so) too often are hardened and cynical. God help us.

Yes, paying tithing "in kind" used to be common. Not sure how it works in a modern, money-based society, but I'm confident you could do that. I know people who pay tithing in stock (financial, not livestock) transfers.

It strikes me as cynical to proclaim that one can fast by making some sacrifice other than not eating. "I didn't watch TV for a day, so I fasted." That violates the plain meaning of words. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that you personally are being cynical. I trust your sincerity. But I do believe that the reasoning of a fast not being a fast from food (as if there's any other kind of fast) is indeed deeply cynical. It's like following the law of chastity by, I don't know, cleaning the kitchen.

I am not conscious that I have spoken against this teaching. I don't see where President Smith suggested that one can fulfill the law of the fast without fasting. Looks familiar.

I confess these teachings have completely escaped me. I do not recall any doctrine that fasting can be accomplished without avoiding food. As I've said earlier in this thread, this seems an obvious semantic point. But if there exist true teachings that one can fast without abstaining from food, I welcome the enlightenment. It will fundamentally revolutionize my very understanding of what it means to fast. Indeed this seems a reasonable possibility. We fast as we can. But that we do not know how long we must fast for it to "count" as a "real" fast doesn't mean that it actually does not matter how long. Perhaps it matters a great deal. I don't know. I have no authority to pronounce doctrine on such matters. What I do know is that the scriptures teach that fasting brings spiritual strength, and that various prophets gave themselves to much fasting and prayer, with mighty and even spectacular results. So if one can fulfill the law of the fast without actually fasting, I want to know. If one can with a sincere heart avoid food for, say, 30 minutes, and still obtain exactly the same spiritual power as another who fasts for 24 hours, I want to understand this. Because under such conditions, it seems like "fasting" is not fasting at all, but rather ticking a checkbox to fulfill the requirements list for receiving blessings. That idea rings very hollow to me, so I disbelieve it. But I could well be wrong, and if I am, I want to understand how and why I am wrong. I believe in a lawful God who uses natural law, aka the realities of existence, to accomplish his ends and who teaches the law of these realities to his children. I do not believe in a lawyer God who carefully checks to see that all the requirements are adequately fulfilled before meting out the promised reward and who teaches his children to study the rules very carefully and e.g. make sure they're following each the seven Rs of Repentance. If I am mistaken in my concept of God's nature, I need to know.

So eating less will cause you to grow bigger. Ah, the irony.

This feels like a strange interpretation of what I said. Well, that seems to me to be the logical interpretation. I offered it because I think it's a strange thing to think. You obviously have another interpretation in mind. Would you share that interpretation, an interpretation that allows there to be blessings specifically attached to the law of the fast, yet that do not require actual fasting in order to receive, as seems to be suggested by D&C 130:20-21?

I certainly do not disagree. The problem with this attitude is that it seems to encourage people not to read or consider closely. Instead, they just read quickly and go with whatever their first impression is. This might actually work out well at times, but in general, I trust Joseph Smith's teachings: "The things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out."

And what does it mean in V 20? Do those two uses of the word "law" refer to the same specific law? It means that blessings from heaven are predicated upon the structure of the very fabric of the universe, and when we receive a blessing from heaven, it is because we've operated within the bounds of the immutable spiritual physics that governs that blessing. I believe the word "law" in v. 21 refers to the same example law as proposed in v. 20.

You have a lawyer hat? I understand "law" to mean an eternal, inexorable permanent truth, a clear statement about the way the universe operates. Obedience to a law suggests conforming one's actions to accord with the observation about how reality works. A non-spiritual example would be a rocket kick motor to put a second stage into a circularized orbit, without which the satellite would simply reenter the atmosphere and lose its position in the heavens.