mordorbund

We could, but I don’t think she’d like that either.

First off, if I need to point out that anyone who decides Nephites are racist in any way similar to the racism that’s almost universally decried today, then they are tacitly admitting that “skin of blackness” was a literal change of Lamanite’s literal skin. After all the Matrix-level dodging of a literal reading, do they want to return to that to give Nephi this flaw? Second, who was Nephi racist against? His own brothers, nieces, and nephews? We’ve assumed cultural and societal intermingling and even intermarriage into the text, but that first generation married within the two founding families (plus Zoram). Is racism the right word to throw around here? Nephi falls in love with Isaiah’s prophecies and especially seems to favor the pro-gentile message. Gentiles readily fall outside of Nephi’s race.

Mine were way off.

Finally got around to it. It's a good sport.

What do I mean by this? Well, some of you may recall a tv series about naval "judge advocates" from the office of the "Judge Advocate General". Naturally, this is abbreviated as JAG (perhaps @Ironhold can weigh in on why NCIS seems to have the staying power that JAG hasn't). Our own @Just_A_Guy purports to be a lawyer, but I don't believe I've ever heard him pretend to military service. Additionally, JAG seems to be a nickname others have given him (he seems to have used it himself a few times, but the vast majority comes from others), so it doesn't seem to like he was forming a backronym from the initials. From this I conclude that he wasn't aiming for the title JAG but it seems to be thrust upon him. So, why do you call him JAG? Is it because he is a lawyer and there was a lawyer show called JAG? Or, and I shudder to think this, is "jag" an slang form of "jack" and his nickname is far ruder and cruder than I previously conceived? Is he the reason the chat* was shut down? So, why do you call him JAG? Really, I started this thread because I got stuck and needed some help. I'm watching closely to fill in more of my grid. * I mentioned the old chat feature so watch @pam and see if we need to start a new thread about her mental state.

Here's a scripture that hasn't been shared yet: "I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven". I don't know about angel fleas or angel ticks, but there's definitely angel flies. I'll let myself out.

This is profoundly true in a technical sense. A "mystery" is something which can only be known by revelation (for instance, "Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed"). There is often a ritual component which places us physically and mentally in a state to receive such revelation -- baptism being a good example of a physical act meant to get us pondering this very subject (among others). In two short sentences you've hit on what LDS scholar Hugh Nibley refers to as the "terrible questions". These are the weighty matters that we so often dance around. We'll argue over how three persons identify as God but there remains yet one. We'll laugh and poke at glowing stones, dancing bones, and other oddities that come from the old stories. But once we get serious, these are the answers we want. Religion is supposed to have the answers, but in many ways have fallen short. Science and Philosophy have placed these questions outside their domain. When pressed on it, they'll often come up with nihilism which yet remains unsatisfactory. Spiritual-but-not-religious have come up with their own brands of mysticism and ritual which provide meaning and purpose, but they never get to the meaty questions: Death is a mystery to me; so is life. We return to Religion pleading that it does what it's supposed to. Ritual (including baptism) can give us comfort from the familiarity of it, but if it is not accompanied by revelation it is merely pageantry. Scripture and Tradition can get us closer to the matter, as they may claim that someone once had the answer from personal experience. But once again, it becomes an issue of trust. Assuming a perfect and true transmission history, can we really trust this other guy's experience. Institutional revelation may record the answer and provide the words for it, but it can't truly be accepted until it is personally experienced. Without a revelation that tragically means death, with all the anxiety until then. Clement in his Recognitions shares this same arc. He was in the same boat you are. He searched everywhere for answers and found the schools unsatisfactory. The best they could give him were someone else's words, who was long dead. He was on his way to Egypt to see if a seance there could satisfy him. Barnabas shows up on the scene and explains that his answers come from what he has seen and experienced. They travel to Peter where Clement is introduced to him and Clement receives answers to the terrible questions from someone who actually knows. Jamie, I do not pretend to speak as an apostle or to carry the same weight as Barnabas or Peter. I have had experiences (I can think of 4 at the moment) that answer clearly for me that we -- who we are, what it means to be I -- continue after death, and family relationships still play an important role there. On the Internet I will not go into more detail on this, but I did want to share my witness on this matter. I can accept that I'm just an anonymous voice in the aether, but I wouldn't want you to just take my word for it anyway. I would ask that you simply consider that this stranger on the computer seems really convinced from real experience, and take that matter to God for your own experience. Personal prayer can feel funny when we're out of practice with it. Feel free to use Lamoni's father as a template.

Jimmy Carter already died over 20 years ago. Michael and the devil came down and fought for his soul. Carter sat them at a table and said they had to stay there until they reached agreement. Carter has been free to pursue his interests while awaiting the outcome.

It’s been…. a quarter century(?)…. since God’s Army? Bout time cinema revisited the subject.

We could solve mysteries in a van. I even have a theme song. “Neurotypical solves a mystery. Gator’s got a charming personality…” I read the same thing you did and my thoughts were less "Scooby Doo" and more "Tiger King".

I’ve already given about 80% of the story. Just to flesh it out more… My grandfather was born on a sharecropping farm a little after WW1. We don’t have a birth certificate for him, nor do we have any divorce documents ending his first marriage. I tease my mom that she may have been the daughter of a bigamist (cue Groucho Marx). Anyway, she’s been submitting memories for FamulySearch and came across a picture of him and his brothers on the farm. The image was refused because it did not meet community guidelines. She continued to crop it until she realized the dead pig was no longer in frame.

That’s good. My particular struggle is in winning friends and influencing people. Does it help with that?

Bonus: looks like RootsTech has had some sessions about genealogy and AI. https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/search?f.language=en-US&f.text=ai&p.index=0

I sympathize quite a bit with you @mikbone. If the lesson is priesthood keys or doctrine then I'm fine with quotes and discussion, but if it's supposed to be a training or a lesson on family history then people should be expected to bring a device to follow along. A second problem I often have with these trainings is the training typically covers the same material as if everyone is noobs. Ideally you would include the noob stuff, but also include some advanced material (like using birth and marriage records to traverse up a tree line) -- I may not be skilled enough to fully follow along, but I can at least know that it's doable when I finally face that scenario. Roots Tech has a good balance of noob material and advanced material. If you are on the Family History council you should be getting an invite to it every year. You can access some videos from previous years here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/library. There's a section of Just the Basics that should be good for starting out, and as you browse you can see other topics and skills that you may want to work up to.

Family search allows you to add “Sources” and “Memories”. Under sources you can link anything already indexed in the database. Under Memories you can provide digitized photos (unless there’s a dead pig hanging in the background apparently) and remembrances (if you’re relying on an aunt’s memories for grandma’s dates, or just fun stories).

About 15 years ago the Church got some members involved in a crowdsourcing project called indexing. Participants were shown a digitized record like the census and extracted names, dates, and places. Once the data was confirmed the document was tagged with that data so searching for the data would yield the document. The process for confirming the data required at least three people, two to independently enter the data and a more experienced indexer to act as tie breaker in case of conflicts (or to override it if they both got it wrong). If I’m not mistaken, this data was also used to train an algorithm so we just need one person to confirm the computer got it right (back then AI was only buzzed, it wasn’t full-on drunk like today so the algorithm was referred to as machine learning). I suspect some of the blue checks on FamilySearch are also initiated by machine once a record is digitized. Humans will need to handle the legal barriers for retrieving and digitizing documents. And they’ll be needed to confirm blue checks, but I can see that fading to a 110 year rule. You can confirm the computer’s guess if you’re a direct descendant within 4 generations, but beyond that you’ll actually need some genealogy skills to confirm it.

That poor man almost ran out of sand

I tend to agree with your take here, but that isn’t what Andrew Fox is asking for. He would like social media to be held accountable — even financially — for what is published on their platforms. Advocating for the devil, you seem to have a high opinion of the masses and their ability and desire to embrace truth. How many flat-earthers, moon-landing-deniers, Steele dossiers, Obama birthers, or neo-nazis does there need to be before intervention is required?

Wish he had a more defined proposal. How can you tell 1) it's disinformation (as opposed to not-mainstream-but-still-plausible), and 2) "purposely spread"? The algorithm is agnostic as to who's interacting with the post. If 1M users all reply back "that's bogus" the post is promoted because of the engagement. If 1M bots posing as users all reply back "right on, brother" the post is promoted because of the engagement. The closest thing I can think to legislate is to say bots shouldn't be included in the algorithm. The problem there is proving it's a bot. I bet social media sites would love to always know when they're working with bots versus humans, but that's a tough problem to solve when we all echo out "thoughts and prayers" following a sad post. I am not familiar with the Netz-DG law. Does this address it?

For your consideration, make The Family: A Proclamation to the World one of your family's governing documents. A relevant portion reads: You've seen how these principles have gotten you this far in your marriage -- build on them.

Hold on just one minute! The wife of the next king gets cancer and then the current king suddenly has cancer? Is this a biological usurpation? Scandalous family relations? TABLOIDS DO YOUR JOB!!!!

A math riddle comes to mind. You want to average 60 mph for your trip from point A to point B. When you reach the halfway point you realize you’ve been dilly dallying and have only averaged 30 mph so far. How fast do you need to average on the second trip for your total trip speed to be 60mph? Actually I see @Vort has already posted something more relatable so maybe stick with his. If you’re into math though, read on after you’ve given it a try. Note that all the values I’ve given are quite finite, but an infinities speed is required to bridge the gap.