Just_A_Guy

A completely nuke-free world would undoubtedly be a better place, but I think recent events make that dream even more unlikely. In the current conflict Putin has been immeasurably empowered by his possession of nukes, and Ukraine has been immeasurably hamstrung by the fact that they gave theirs away. The takeaway here is likeIy to be that unilateral nuclear disarmament is merely a precursor to your own people becoming the victims of theft, rape, and murder by their greedy neighbors while the international community sits on its hands in terror. I agree re the treatment of Russian nationals. As for the Russian Orthodox Church: it’ll be interesting to see what kind of influence they maintain in the next decade. Obviously I can’t speak with any authority here; but if (as I understand to be the case) they have been in Putin’s pocket and are unqualified cheerleaders for the war, and if the war goes badly . . . Russians have also, in the past, shown themselves adept at directing fearsome temper tantrums towards the Orthodox Church.

I wonder if some countries that might otherwise be inclined to do more (Poland, for example) are actually being hamstrung by their NATO membership; since the western countries would be dragged into a war if Russia chose to retaliate. Is the USA leaning on eastern NATO countries to do less than they want to do?

Most of y’all have probably seen this already; it sounds like LDS Charities saw the writing on the wall and pre-positioned humanitarian assets around the borders even before the invasion. A random thought I had today was that given the effects of the sanctions on Russia (Task and Purpose described the resultant stagflation there this way: imagine waking up tomorrow and finding that 30% of your bank balance is just gone): when the dust settles from this, Russian authorities may be eager for any foreign investment they can get—even if it comes in the form of construction projects by a wealthy American church.

I’m sorry to hear that, MrShorty. But if you fight cancer the way you discuss religion—your tenacity means you will surely outlast it in the end!

Yeah, for my part I’ve tried to acknowledge my own unmanly physical frailties and keep the discussion in terms of general trends.

Considering that university graduating classes now tend to be, I believe, in excess of 60% female— —maybe we should let ‘em?

You can have my Chicken Kiev when you pry it from my . . .

But that’s the Old Testament, which I think we all agree was superseded by the New Testament and statements of our Lord such as “if any part shall offend, pluck it out.” On the athletics angle: speaking as a corpulent tub of lard who never has and never will participate in anything more athletic than a three-legged race and could be beaten up by three out of every four random females I see in the street: my impression is that female athletics exists for two reasons: 1) Because for biological/physiological reasons, the vast majority of females cannot compete with the vast majority of males in the vast majority of sports, and the string of losses that would result from compelling them to do so would be demoralizing for females; and 2) because a not-insignificant part of the audience for female athletics is people who, for one reason or another, enjoy watching the female body in motion. I personally think it’s silly to allow someone who went through puberty as a dude and has the muscle mass and physiological development of a dude, compete as a female. But then again, in the unlikely event that any of my kids participated in athletics, and the even u likelier event that one of them came in as high as second place, and the first place winner was transgender—I’d have no problem saying “well, we may not be allowed to say it; but everyone here knows that the winner was physiologically a guy, so shake it off—you, who competed as a female, did great as compared to the other actual females in the event.” So as far as I’m concerned, the folks running female athletics can do whatever they want. With regard to staying in the Church: I certainly respect and sympathize with those who are attracted to it for tradition-related reasons; and that’s not (IMHO) a bad reason to stay. But I think that first and foremost our church is a church of ideas, not tradition; and part of being a “card [or, temple recommend]-carrying member” is embracing a certain ideal of loyalty and a sort of lowest-common-denominator of conformity, both vis a vis the Church leadership and to the broader membership. When someone says “hey, I’m a card-carrying Mormon too”—maybe; but we all know how they got that card, and we know the commitments and covenants that are supposed to accompany it. And because of the nature of the Church as a primarily-ideologically-based association, members who openly reject some or all of the ideology are going to find they don’t have as much (for lack of a better word) credibility, or influence, members who openly accept it.

Agreed, on all counts. I just also agree that the Church, institutionally, could inflict great harm on a substantial number of its members by being overly vocal about this. The resistance in Kiev and elsewhere is heartening, but the odds are still heavily in favor of Russia winning this thing; and the Church needs to prepare to operate in whatever environment comes next.

We have over 20K members in Russia and 11K members in what very likely is about-to-be-occupied Ukraine. They are already under suspicion in their respective societies for affiliation with what would be seen as an American church. The Church formally taking a side in this war, could well be a prison/death sentence for those Saints who are or are about to be under Putin’s power.

(Tangent) So, my understanding is that the BSA’s safety/ compliance guy just recently quit his job and fired some public broadsides against the BSA, claiming (among other things) that they aren’t doing enough to prevent youth-on-youth sexual abuse. Can the BSA implement a program that effectively addresses this risk, while also maintaining a traditional youth-to-youth mentorship model?

MoE, if you’re willing to share your thoughts as a medical statistician (am I remembering that right?) on the efficacy of both masks and the mRNA vaccine (both efficacy and risk factors), I’d really love to read them. I see so many studies suggesting so many different things, that it’s frankly hard for me to make heads or tails of it all.

I’m serving in my ward Sunday School presidency right now, and I think a big emphasis in our trainings is going to be teacher questions. I think often teachers will pitch a question to their class without stopping to think: a) Is this something I’d feel comfortable/open enough to publicly answer myself? b) Is this something that I’ve thought about enough that I could articulate a personal, authentic response in a reasonable amount of time without embarrassing myself? c) Am I prepared for the possibility that someone may answer the question in a way that is not, fundamentally, a humblebrag?

“I’ve been having an issue with lustful thoughts lately. Especially about *you*, dear group leader. My current goal is to limit myself to three lustful thoughts about you per week. You’ll be following up with me . . . what, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday? Excellent. Excellent.”

What, you think God gets a full night’s sleep?

I love this, but I’d offer one caveat: For Latter-day Saints who are married, this commandment is repeated to them at a sacred time and in such a way that it is crystal-clear that it is referring to child-rearing. I don’t say this to suggest that your exegesis on Genesis is wrong; but merely to restate that in the divine plan child-rearing *is* important. That said: we often look at exaltation as a sort of carrot God that offers us as a reward for our being (at least, willing to be) parents. I think that’s perhaps backwards. Exaltation isn’t the reward for parenthood. Exaltation is parenthood. If due to circumstances, I can’t find a spouse/become a parent in this life—okay. But (speaking anecdotally) we seem to be seeing increasing numbers of nominal Mormons who aspire to exaltation while expressing a permanent distaste for parenthood; and I think perhaps as a church we could do a better job of reinforcing that the link between parenthood and exaltation is not arbitrary. It’s inherent to that whole state of being.

My understanding is that these are segments of Ukraine that have basically been out of control of the Kiev authorities for some eight years now, and that Russian forces have been in and out of those regions for some time. The tripping wire will be if/when the Russkies move into the western parts of the country.

This may be at tangent, but . . . In my current job—it took me *three years* of applying just to get hired in the job title with the employer I wanted, and then another year and a half to get transferred to the location my family wanted (I’m over-simplifying a bit, but that’s accurate enough for purposes of this discussion). But right now, my office has two attorney positions open; and one paralegal position. We advertised for one of the attorney positions about two months ago and got zero qualified applicants, whereas historically listings for similar jobs have yielded 10-20 applicants who were qualified enough to interview. We typically get two or three dozen qualified paralegal applicants; this time around we got maybe half a dozen. It’s always scary to quit a job without having another one lined up. But (and obviously, with the caveat that I don’t know you or your profession, or the job market where you live)—if your current job is what’s preventing you from finding a new one, I would venture to suggest that in most of our lifetimes there has never been a better time to apply the “quit-first-find-a-new-job-later” model. Employers right now are begging for qualified workers; and you’ve always come across on this board as educated, thoughtful, empathetic, thorough, and diligent. I think that right now you could do pretty much anything you wanted to; and if even you don’t have the academic credentials for whatever you want to go into (need a 4-year degree or an extra certification or whatever)—I’ll bet you could make it happen in pretty short order. And frankly, little hints you’re dropping here and there make me wonder if your current employer isn’t sort of trading on your common religious affiliation in order to keep you and your LDS co-workers “in line”. Maybe not in a deliberately oppressive “let’s see how little we can make her work for” sort of way, but perhaps in a sort of “I work hard to give my employees a good work environment and so they’re more loyal to me and the company” sort of mindset. And that’s a nice thing, if you can get it; but ultimately—Working with other Mormons can be enjoyable, and especially if you don’t live in Utah; but they don’t come over and put food on my table when the workday ends.

What shocks me is, the building was apparently taken over back in 2014. How did we not hear about this earlier?

I just came across this story saying that an LDS chapel in eastern Ukraine that was expropriated by the Russkies in 2014 has been converted into a “Russian cultural center”. Local authorities claim that the Church abandoned the building and that its members “dissolved in space”.

Happy birthday!

Jerusalem, A.D. 70. The temple there didn’t come off too well. (A little less tongue-in-cheek: I think that maybe there was some gang street-fighting that resulted in some bullets striking the door of a temple—maybe in Nigeria? But in terms of a modern nation-state with an LDS temple losing a war and being occupied by a hostile power: I think there is no modern precedent for that.)

Well, if you’re a cheap-gracer— —why not, really?

He was never *stupid*; and senility can come and go.

I don’t think he is actively trying to create a war. But I think he’s hoping that we will think there is about to be a war. It’s a distraction from other bad news; and if war doesn’t happen, he can claim it was due to his statesmanship. Whereas if it does, it’s a twofer for him—he can claim to have predicted it, and hopefully a few errant bombs destroy whatever repository is holding the papers/servers that could get Hunter convicted.