mordorbund

Funny you should say that, since the tragedy at Marathon might have been prevented by something like a bicycle.

If it might interest anyone, this short (3 minute) video features Apostle Lachlan Mackay of Community of Christ sharing his feelings regarding this transaction.
 
I'm not sure why this seems important to me. Maybe just to remind us that, while our branch of the Restoration is celebrating today, another branch of the Restoration is probably experiencing some mixed emotions.

It is illegal to keep wombats as pets, but you can have a virtual one. This is mine. His name is Willie the Wombat.

What about all the signs in the heavens discussed in the scriptures?  Are those irrelevant too?

Germany. I mean Almany. You know, Teutonia. Or Saxony. Uh, Tedeschia. Doychland, that is.

I agree that very rarely does a person participating in a debate changer their mind from the debate, but it does happen. Dave Rubin went full derp-face while interviewing  Larry Elder and subsequently changed his views on black victimhood narratives.
@NeuroTypicalhas more experience with online debates than I do, but I’m sure he’ll agree that the person you’re trying to convince is not the die-hard staring at you but the silent lurker sitting on the fence observing the proceedings. These individuals change their minds all the time because they’re coming to the debate wanting to be persuaded.

This is a song/anthem I wrote on June 27th, 2023 as I sat pondering the martyrdom and reading D&C 135:
"The Testimony is Sealed" (triumphantly)
Like a lamb to the slaughter
Went the prophet of the Lord
And left a name and fame
That can ne'er be slain!
Chorus: 
It is sealed!
It is sealed !
The testimony is sealed!
By the best blood of that generation
the testimony is sealed!
Ever faithful his dear brother
Went with him to certain death
And on that fateful June day
Breathed his final breath!
(Chorus)
In life they weren't divided
And in death not seperated
The two brothers e'er united
Shed their martyr's blood!
(Chorus)
 

Wait, what land is that?

Well, duh!  They speak Deutsch. 

* @Vort (aka Julian Bashir) must be referring to a hyperspace manifold. 
 

The “controversial” commercial:

I struggle to see the controversy here. The message I get from it is “Yes, many people who are ideologically opposed to you are Christian. They belong in the body of Christ. So do you. There’s a place for you and a place for them.”
It’s an attempt to invite people to fill the pews who may feel alienated by church. Once there, it’s the job of local congregations to help them feel welcome and the role of local ministers to invite the same sort of change and indwelling encouraged of long-time members. Calvary Chapel in California took a similar approach with the displaced hippies and its members today form a small Bible Belt in a land of “nones”.

Can bears climb trees? Let's find out!
 
I'm gonna say yes.

That reminds me of when I was at Loughborough Univertity, the following notice was posted all over campus:
SEXUAL HARASSMENT 
USING THE OVERHEAD PROJECTOR
(Actually two separate workshops)

The first 4 lines hits different when you’ve been reading Jacobean English.

I thought there was a standard that said capitalize pronouns for divinity if there's some ambiguity about whether it's a member of the Godhead speaking. "And the disciple whom Jesus loved lean on His [capital, must be Jesus] breast and he [not capital, must be John] said 'Lord, who is it?'" I might have read that for another organization's publications.
Here's something more official:
Looks like this style has been in use for 50 years.

I thought there was a standard that said capitalize pronouns for divinity if there's some ambiguity about whether it's a member of the Godhead speaking. "And the disciple whom Jesus loved lean on His [capital, must be Jesus] breast and he [not capital, must be John] said 'Lord, who is it?'" I might have read that for another organization's publications.
Here's something more official:
Looks like this style has been in use for 50 years.

This sort of question feels an awful lot like an effort to excuse the words of the Lord. What comes to mind immediately for me is D&C 1:38: "What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself;"
This is expressed practically immediately after the Lord declares the church to be the only true and living church in D&C 1:30.
But inevitably someone comes along and tries to excuse what the Lord said. Let's focus "less" on that. Let's be apologetic about what the Lord declared. I don't find the Lord's declaration in this case as useful. Etc., etc.
That doesn't sit well with me.
I think instead of trying to excuse what the Lord said I'll focus instead on trying to understand why He said it and why it's important.

HORSE!  HORSE!!! (*fixes post*)

The first 4 lines hits different when you’ve been reading Jacobean English.

The first 4 lines hits different when you’ve been reading Jacobean English.

Indeed, ChatGPT cannot count except in the most rudimentary way, and appears to have no consistent notion of what a syllable is. It seems capable of doing only very simple arithmetic. Anything more than that, it can answer if it can look up the answer, but it is not capable of actually doing math (in the sense of reliably following the algorithms we usually follow). It is most definitely not Wolfram Alpha. Ask it for the integral or derivative of ex and you will get the right answer. But ask it something harder, such as the value at x=0 of the nth derivative of a function f(x) where f(x) = (xn)(en) and ChatGPT can't do it. It tries to, and apparently it thinks* it can, but it can't:
*Yes, I'm fully aware that AIs don't think. This is just the easiest way to express the idea.
*******************start********************
User
Calculate (f^n)(x) [the nth derivative of f(x)] for f(x) = xnen at x = 0.
ChatGPT
To find the nth derivative of f(x) = xn, let's first differentiate f(x) repeatedly with respect to x:
f(x) = xnen
f'(x) = n(xn-1)(en) + (xn)(0) - n(xn-1)(en)
f''(x) = n(n-1)(xn-2)(en) + n(xn)(0) - n(n-1)(xn-2)(en)
f'''(x) = n(n-1)(n-2)(xn-3)(en) + n(xn-1)(0) - n(n-1)(n-2)(xn-3)(en)
.
.
.
fk(x) = n(n-1)(xn-2) . . . (n-k+1)(xn-k(en)
From this pattern, we observe that the nth derivative will be n!(xn-n)en - n!en.
Now, evaluating this at x=0, we get:
fn(0) = n! en
So, the nth derivative of f(x) = xnen at x=0 is n! en.
User
The actual answer is f(x) = xnen at x=0 is n!, not n! en.
ChatGPT
You're absolutely correct, and I apologize for the oversight. When evaluating f(x) = xnen at x = 0, it simplifies to 0nen for any value of n other than 0.
Thank you for pointing out the error. So, the nth derivative of f(x) = xnen at x = 0 is indeed n!.
*******************end********************
Now, this problem has some thorny issues that befuddle normal people such as Yours Truly, like figuring out how to deal with xn at x=0 when n=0 (so that you would get 00 with a naive substitution, a result that gives normal people brain cramps). So the AI got reasonably close, and I can't fault its effort. But why should that be? Why should it be "close, kinda, when you think about it" instead of simply "correct"? This is a computer, for heaven's sake. And despite how White Imperialism Racist math is, there is actually a correct answer.
Here's a conversation I just had with ChatGPT:
*******************start********************
User
Solve for f: f'(x) = ef
ChatGPT
The equation
f'(x) = ef
is a first-order ordinary differential equation.
This equation is separable, meaning we can rewrite it in a way that allows us to separate variables and then integrate both sides:
df/dx = ef
We can rewrite this as:
df/ef  =dx
Now, we integrate both sides:
∫(1/ef)df = ∫dx
The integral of ∫[1/ef]df with respect to f can be solved by substitution. Let u = ef , then du = ef df, which transforms the integral into:
∫(1/u)du = ln∣u∣+C
Substituting back u=ef, we get:
ln∣ef∣+C = f+C
Integrating the right-hand side with respect to x gives x+C1 , where C1 is another constant.
So, the general solution to the differential equation is:
f(x) = ln|ef| + C1 = ln|eC| + C1 = C + C1
where C and C1 are constants.
User
Look at your answer above. You assert that ln |ef|+C=f+C. (Note that the absolute value sign is unnecessary if f is assumed to be a function in the real range R, because ef is in R for all f in R.) Subtracting C from both sides simplifies the equation to ln(ef)=f. What is the solution to this equation, f(x) = ln(ef)?
ChatGPT
You're correct. Apologies for the oversight.
The equation simplifies to ln(ef) = f. Since log ex = x for any real number x, we have:
f = f(x)
Thus, the solution to the equation f'(x) = ef is simply f(x) = ex.
User
Not so. Consider x=C. Then f(x) = f(C) = 0, but eC <> 0 for all real C.
ChatGPT
You're correct again. My apologies for the oversight. Let's correct that.
Given the equation f'(x) = ef, we have:
ln(ef) = f
ef = ex
Then, taking the exponential of both sides, we get:
f = ex
So the solution to the equation f′(x)=ef is indeed f(x) = ex. Thank you for your patience and pointing out the mistake.
*******************end********************
The moral of this story is that there is a reason it's called ChatGPT and not MathGPT or IntegrationGPT or SyllableCounterGPT. ChatGPT doesn't have any idea what it's "doing". ChatGPT is a language model, and a very cool one. But it does not go beyond mechanical pattern matching.
Note how the explanation above sounds kind of like what you might expect to hear from a first-year differential equations student who wasn't really up on his calculus (especially integration, essentially meaning that he was planning on failing the DiffEq course; but I digress). It uses words and terminology correctly; it just doesn't get the right answer, even when prompted with hints, and has no idea how to go about getting the right answer. In the end, it confidently asserts that the solution to f′(x)=ef was f(x)=ex, which is easily shown false merely by substituting the proposed solution back into the original equation. (f'(x) = ex = ee^x ⟹ x = ex; yeah, no, not as a general solution, and not at all with Real numbers.) It can't follow a mathematical algorithm per se, because it is not programmed to find and follow mathematical algorithms. It is a language model. That's all.
So as long as you stay in soft and squishy areas, like literary analysis or how you feel about things, ChatGPT sounds remarkably real, even wise. But when you start into areas where the respondent needs to understand what he's talking about and not just parrot a book or synthesize a body of literature, you will quickly expose that ChatGPT doesn't have a chance of passing the Turing test.
As AIs get more sophisticated, I expect that it will become harder to distinguish their responses from those of an actual person. (For example, today it's pretty obvious when you're reading AI-generated filler text, but that might not be the case in five or ten years.) But I think there's a fundamental barrier here that will not be overcome by simple programmatic improvements.
My bigger fear is that our children will start adapting themselves, their expectation, and their own performance to that of the AI models. That would be tragic and wholly unacceptable, a real case of the tail wagging the dog. Though come to think of it, mankind has always been remodeled by its tools. This was one of the themes of Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
(Didja like my lit analysis reference? I though it was very ChatGPT of me.)