Ironhold

The problem with Japan is that because it's a densely-populated island nation, land is often at a premium. It's possible that any future temples in Japan will be done up how the church did the temple in Manhattan, that is they purchased an existing building, made one level the temple, and made the next level a chapel. Given how packed Osaka itself is (to the point of it blurring into several other major cities), I'm having a hard time envisioning any other way to go unless they somehow get permission to build within the mountains.

Modular construction in general is how a lot of buildings are now being done, especially homes. It wouldn't surprise me if this is how many of the smaller temples are handled in the future, with at least some of the components being prefabricated.

I've mentioned Get Religion before, a website where veteran reporters with experience covering religious topics examine how the mainstream media handles their reporting as a lesson for those who might be reading and wanting advice on improvement. Well... they got to Vice's coverage of Ballard: https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2023/9/25/a-mormon-psychic-involved-with-the-very-successful-sound-of-freedom-thats-just-the-beginning

Not everyone has reliable internet access even nowadays, but there are still places where over-the-air TV and radio are big things.

https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20230803/fema-and-fcc-plan-nationwide-emergency-alert-test-oct-4-2023 Just a reminder that October 4th will be the national-level Emergency Alert System test for the United States. After what happened in Florida earlier in the year, people are already spinning conspiracy theories despite this being a nearly annual event.

OK. I live by Fort Hood / Fort Cavazos. Once upon a time, a friendly face at the (now) Charter Spectrum cable company branch facilities in Killeen would occasionally splice in General Conference, usually on a public access or government information channel being offered by Spectrum as a public service. When we got BYU-TV as part of the digital tier, this stopped so near as we could tell. Earlier today, I was checking through the digital listings from Spectrum and found that according to the listings, the local Cozi TV affiliate (a network that airs classic TV shows) had a listing for Conference - the 193rd Conference - on Sunday morning. It would start a half hour late and run for two and a half hours instead of two, but if the listing is true then it's someone, possibly at Spectrum, pre-empting regular programming. Well, I did some more searching, and found that this Saturday morning the local My Network TV affiliate had a block of time on Saturday morning listed as "to be announced"... that was the same time slot and same duration. Thing is, the two affiliates are owned by different companies. So yeah... you might want to check *your* local television (over-the-air, cable, or satellite) listings to see if by some chance you'll have Conference coming to you via a local TV station.

It's not just conservatives. One of the syndicated radio shows I listen to is "The House of Hair With Dee Snider", a 2 - 3 hour (there's two versions) weekly syndicated number in which musician Dee Snider looks back at classic rock and metal bands from the 1960s - 1990s. On the episode that aired the weekend of 17 September 2023 (that is, two weeks ago as I type this), he got a request in from someone who was hoping that the song in question would save his relationship. The requester and his girlfriend were starting to drift apart despite having a child on the way, and the requester was wanting to signal that he was willing to put in the effort. Cue Dee, who is pretty open about being left-wing at times, going on a monologue about how children need both parents and ultimately encouraging the couple to work it out.

On a normal Sunday, I take my spot in the back, have the one earbud in (only going to two if it's a song I like or one of Casey's Long-Distance Dedications), and then read the scriptures for a bit (1 - 2 chapters from OT, NT, BOM, POGP). If there's still time left in sacrament meeting, I'll fiddle with my phone a bit, usually one of the comics from Weekly Shonen Jump (the app usually updates Sundays around noon local time) and a few minutes on a wrestling management simulator. Yeah, the music does keep me chill most of the time, but sometimes it keeps me *so* chill I'll nod off if I'm not a part of what's going on... which is actually quite a bit as it's a larger family congregation, I'm single, and because I was with the YSA branch for so long as a de facto advisor few people even know who I am despite my trying to introduce myself. Basically, the ward's big enough I'm lost in the shuffle so unless I start snoring few people notice me outside of my coming in late every now and then.

To be brutally honest? Music is a big part of how I deal with everything in life, and so I've gotten into the habit of sitting in the back with an ear bud in so I can live-stream a favorite radio station during church... especially if I've had a rough week going in and I need a little bit of extra boost to deal with people. Church starts at noon and ends at 2, but I've often started listening as early as 7 AM since there's back to back syndicated shows on different channels and so the battery on my phone is already starting to get lower than I'm comfortable with. Throw in the fact that I have fixed errands to do after church which usually take another hour to do, and my phone's about 40% by the time I get home. And since it's an iPhone, I don't have separate ports for charger and headphones. (For the record, KBGO-FM Waco Texas airs back-to-back classic episodes of American Top 40 with Casey Kasem on Sundays; I listen to this 10 - 11 months of the year, depending upon when KBGO stunts all-Christmas. Once they do that, it's KUQQ-FM Milford Iowa, which is a local Lutheran church service followed by rebroadcasts of Sammy Hagar's Top Rock Countdown, The Classics With Steve Downes, and House of Hair with Dee Snider from Saturday night.)

If you'll recall, the term "dunce" is derived from a term used to identify the followers of a philosopher and theologian named Duns. To put it simply, Duns' followers were held in low regard by much of society, with the term "dunce" eventually coming to indicate a person who was ignorant and foolish, perhaps willfully so. Well, something similar has happened with the word "woke". Take a look at the political cartoon I attached. It depicts a black woman trying to speak her mind on a topic, only for a "woke" white woman to literally silence her and declare their intention to speak on the black woman's behalf since, they believe, the black woman is not up to the task or otherwise does not understand the "oppression" she is "fighting" against. Just as the people who are loudest about signaling their own virtue are the least likely to actually have any, the louder someone is about signaling their own "woke" nature the less likely they are to actually be aware of what's going on in the world around them. In extreme instances, they'll presume to speak for or advocate on behalf of the various groups they claim to be working in support of and then say or do things that are the polar opposite of what the people in these very groups actually want. For example, with Hispanic Heritage Month 2022, DC Comics decided to celebrate the occasion by doing special covers highlighting a number of their Hispanic characters. Problem was, the original versions of these covers all placed their Hispanic characters in the context of food. One such cover, the cover highlighting Rene Montoya (who is the current Question), depicted her standing against a blank white background while fruit randomly floated in the air around her. A very broad cross section of individuals from across all races protested how ignorant this was, and the covers were hastily redone; in Rene's case, the fruit was digitally edited out. It's for this reason that the term "woke" is now being used as a pejorative in describing people and things that are ostensibly "progressive" in nature but are badly out of step with society and possibly even promises to drag the world backwards.

It's more than that. Many companies are set up so that they receive short- and intermediate-term "bridge" financing from different companies to fund various projects, with the expectation that the profit they'll make from the project will earn a minimum profit above and beyond the cost of the financing. A number of the companies that routinely deal in providing this "bridge" financing are, themselves, infested with woke all the way to the very top. They know the power they have over other companies, and so are using this power to coerce companies into adopting various DEI-friendly policies... never mind the fact that companies tend to DIE once they do so. Word is that with the Budweiser disaster, some of these companies are having to pull back on the coercion and are even using new euphemistic names to hide their DEI requirements. If true, this indicates that even the hardcore true believers are starting to catch on to the fact that the general public is now pushing back.

KBYU started out life as a PBS station, but in time the college officials (et al) began adding more college-related and church-related content until finally it really didn't resemble a traditional PBS station anymore. That's when the break happened, with KBYU dropping the PBS affiliation, becoming independent, and focusing on its eclectic mix of family, BYU, and religious programming. And since it was independent, it was no longer confined to broadcasting just in Utah, allowing it to broadcast across the United States in a way that KSL-TV couldn't. Thus, it's become a major source for church programming, including Conference.

Ironically, nowadays you're more likely to see members of certain racial minorities be the most opposed to interracial relationships than the people you'd expect. Racial supremacy movements have been established among all races, and these movements are working overtime to try and cause discord in society.

I wanted to separate this from the other Disney thread to discuss matters. A few years ago, BYU-TV struck a deal with Disney that saw Disney provide them an eclectic mix of movies that were older, long-forgotten, flops, or otherwise not the kind of thing that Disney could push on Disney+ in and of itself. The deal lasted a few years, and that was that. By all appearances, Disney is having a major liquidity crisis; it seems they maxed out one or more lines of credit to make the Fox deal, and between Covid & a string of major flops they can't pay the piper. Word is that Disney is now looking at selling off various assets, and they might be willing to cut other deals. To me, it seems plausible that if BYU was to come around again, Disney would be willing to cut another deal for not just movies, but possibly even TV shows and other content at this point. Disney actually still owns a handful of anime and other series they got when they purchased Saban back in 2002, including a full season of "Transformers", and it wouldn't surprise me if nowadays they're open to putting these shows back on the air or even selling them off. I'm wondering, though... if BYU-TV started airing Disney content again, would you watch? Should BYU-TV even *try* to approach them again? (And yes, I am a bit amused by the idea of Bonneville et al just outright buying some of the third-party content Disney owns but isn't really monetizing.)

The carriage dispute between Disney and Spectrum has been resolved... sort of. ABC, Disney Channel, ESPN, ESPN 2, FX, and National Geographic have returned to the airwaves. But Spectrum will be removing FXX, FXM, Disney Junior, Disney XD (formerly Jetix), National Geographic Wild, National Geographic Mundo, and Freeform (formerly The Family Channel) from their offerings. Spectrum will offer Disney+ to select customers to compensate. I think it's pretty safe to say that everyone lost here.

Once upon a time, there was a place called the University of Central Texas. Ross Perot's people owned a research facility that was adjacent to the ever-growing campus of community college Central Texas College. When Perot's people moved their operations down near Austin, the research facility was donated to a non-profit and became the main campus of the University of Central Texas. People would do get their associate's degrees at CTC, then move to UCT to get their bachelor's. Due to a variety of factors, UCT allowed itself to be bought out by Tarleton State University, which is affiliated with the larger Texas A&M system. This meant that everyone who went to the former UCT now had access to the sum total of Tarleton's offerings, including post-graduate degrees. But with enrollment at both CTC and TSU Killeen surging in the late 2000s, this still wasn't enough to get the job done. More buildings at the shared CTC / TSU Killeen campus? Online courses from Tarleton and other A&M affiliates? Renting classrooms from CTC and Shoemaker High School after hours? Not enough. Instead, the plan was put in place to have TSU Killeen transition into Texas A&M Central Texas. This would allow them to purchase a large plot of land for the construction of a proper campus that would be large enough to handle everyone without needing the space in Shoemaker, and eventually without needing the space in CTC itself. I was finishing up my MBA when the transition was being made, and so we were still relying on online courses from Tarleton and other A&M affiliates to help since only two structures at the new campus were operational. In particular, the online courses were needed to cover electives, since there wasn't enough room to handle everything. I needed x number of elective credits to graduate. I was only supposed to take a maximum of three seminar-style online elective courses, but this would have kept me back an entire semester just to take a single elective course for the sake of graduation; I wouldn't have qualified for financial aid this way, and it would have caused other disruptions since I'd have still been taking a lone class despite having already completed my official capstone course. So my advisor signed off on an exemption that would let me take a fourth seminar class. Well, my advisor was scheduled to be promoted at the end of the academic year, and because of his exemption I would graduate at the end of that academic year. His successor as an advisor either did not know about a number of exemptions that had been granted (including mine) or chose to deliberately ignore their existence for the sake of some sort of power play. Thus it was that I got my diploma on a Saturday and an e-mail the following Monday saying that my degree was revoked because I had too many seminar courses. I went with my mom to the campus, and in a fluke we blundered into the proctor. I explained the situation, mentioned that my previous advisor had given me an exemption, and saw the proctor flinch as he explained that my previous advisor's name had never been brought up at any point in the discussion prior to my arrival. By the time my mom and I had arrived home, I'd gotten a second e-mail explaining that my degree had since been restored.

I have an MBA unless someone's tried to have it clawed back again (bit of a story). I never push for anyone to call me by a title, and only *reference* being an MBA when I need to make it clear I'm speaking from an academic standpoint.

How these two people worked was that they saw their doctorates as shields of invulnerability. In their mind, no one who had less than a master's had the right to even speak to them, and only those who had doctorates like they did could even think about posing questions. It didn't matter what the topic was; they had a doctorate, they were all-knowing, and everyone else was to kiss their ring after the lecture was over. For obvious reasons, they were quick to get upset when people did ask questions, and had full-blown tantrums when confronted with contradictory evidence that they couldn't refute. The social sciences major actually cussed out an entire internet forum when multiple people there with various areas of expertise and credentials all agreed that a study which backed up her bigotry was too fundamentally flawed for the results to be trustworthy. How dare anyone so affront her view of the world, and how dare anyone in academia not automatically take her side. The minister? His entire portfolio boiled down to six or seven arguments against the church, arguments like "Since Joseph Smith didn't have a degree in such-and-such language what gave him the right to try and translate anything?". These people had the sheets of paper to say they were supposed to be smart and wise, but hard reality said that they were incredibly foolish and could only serve as poor examples.

Over the last decade, Hungary has slowly become decidedly old-school about certain things, such as ordering all "gender studies" programs at all public schools in the nation to close due to how few students majored in the field and how little demand there was for graduates. This has led to a number of left-leaning and "progressive" individuals here in the United States accusing Hungary of sliding towards fascism. The statement here is basically Hungary saying "Get your own affairs in order before criticizing us, as you're doing things even *we* find unconscionable."

As I've noted before, two of the most bigoted, hateful, and willfully ignorant people I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with had doctorates in their chosen field. One was an avowed atheist with a degree in the social sciences. The other was a minister.

https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2023/9/6/attention-gray-lady-team-latter-day-saints-are-not-the-only-skilled-fantasy-scribes The Get Religion blog was founded some years ago by a group of veteran news reporters who had experience covering religion and religious topics. Their goal is to examine how various news outlets cover this field, what they call the "Godbeat", and point out the good and bad in different reports as a means of helping other journalists hone their craft. I've been a regular reader for over a decade now, and have commented enough - including submitting a few stories for consideration - that I've had a few chats with some of the regular contributors. This bit here is one of their contributors looking over a New York Times story in which the author is flabbergasted by how many members of the church have found their place as science fiction and fantasy authors. Not only is the contributor noting that there are elements of church culture that have contributed to a love of literature (even above and beyond the things the writer notes), the contributor also notes that the writer has failed to mention the long history *of* religious authors being successful, and even influential, in these fields. I wonder what would happen if someone explained to the NYT writer just how many of us are in Hollywood...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disney-pulls-channels-off-charter-spectrum-as-negotiation-dispute-escalates-160100358.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFZphoKgMkD9lPvWXL9vXL2l7DNRRQyU5bxdQuDMfMgQANSUMzlffD59zjiINrKp9OjtXE5Ks49S7dyOVm1uGF-SldALGTsM-o4ap6dwd_Rd9KPHiE2l70kcE-Fx2YVxSp8wP4PjKTIHMxz8BuOI0mP4iJJ6wBZTxauDyhv6NAlZ A carriage fee dispute between Disney and Charter Spectrum resulted in Charter Spectrum pulling all Disney-owned channels (including ESPN just moments before some major games started) and replacing them with a canned message saying that Disney wanted "excessive" carriage fees and bundling agreements that would potentially force customers to pay more for channels they didn't want. Charter Spectrum has also removed all Disney content from their on-demand, including ABC content despite still airing ABC stations that aren't owned by Disney itself. This is in keeping with my hypothesis that Disney is having a liquidity crisis if they're going for a cash grab like this.

That's actually supposed to be a piercing. Another trendy thing is for people to pierce various parts of their body. Eyelids. Lips. Nose. Tongue. Genitals & reproductive organs. Basically, anywhere that the person operating the piercing machine can successfully pierce with the device folks will put a hole in. And it's not just studs they'll put in place, either. I'm talking massive bits and bobs, and some folks who get their ears pierced will have devices put in place to stretch their earlobes out. I remember seeing people who had these stretched earlobes use the holes produced by the devices to mount their wireless headphones.

I started growing a mustache at the tail end of junior high because teachers kept confusing me with two other students who had glasses and similar builds. By the time I graduated high school, it had become part of my signature appearance. I went for a type of beard known as a "Van Dyke" (mustache and goatee combo, like Evil Spock) to further stand out from various individuals I kept getting confused with, and started growing out mutton chops because the skin near my ears is so thin that any nicks would just keep bleeding.

Sometimes, just being of good character and encouraging others to be of good character is enough to rebuke a corrupt system, hence all of the screaming you'll hear when modern "progressive" types see people who live with classical mores.