Ironhold
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Posts posted by Ironhold
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https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-reason-for-the-Mormon-migration-from-Nauvoo-to-Utah
For those of you who don't know, Quora is a website where people can crowdsource answers to questions.
I link this particular question so that you can take a look at the question itself.
Specifically, look at what's immediately below the question, on the right-hand side of the space beneath it. You should see a lightning bolt symbol, a speech bubble symbol, a down arrow symbol, and an ellipsis.
That lightning bolt symbol means that the question was not written by a human being.
Rather, it means that Quora's Prompt Generator Bot is the source of the question. You see, the bot scans Quora, sees questions that people are posting, and automatically generates additional questions to keep engagement going & guess what people are going to ask next.
Sometimes the bot screws up hard, like the one time I saw it produce a nonsensical question about Star Wars.
Other times, the bot asks a reasonably intelligent question like the one above, a question that real people might actually have.
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2 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:
Oh, everyone has a bias, even the Snopes people. But the best sources say "here's what I think, and here's why I think it". Snopes does that. It says "true" or "false", and then lists it's sources. It's why I said we'd have to look at Snopes' track record on how it treats stories from the left and the right, to see if one gets better treatment than the other, or one side's sources are more believed than the other.
As I've mentioned above, co-founder David Mikkleson drove their reputation into the ground through his actions. They're basically having to rebuild.
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36 minutes ago, Carborendum said:
Snopes has been fairly reliable for the 20+ years I've been going to them for verification. Conservatives who didn't even know much about Snopes decided that they must be a Left Wing site because they actually said something favorable about a Democrat and said something bad about a Republican. But when I read the articles they were referring to, I realized Snopes was right. Did I like the fact that the Democrat was not at fault? Meh... Did I dislike the fact that the Republican did something wrong? Yes.
But the facts were clear. And I've been rolling my eyes for the past 15 years at so many conservatives claiming that Snopes was a Left Wing rag.
Things became hazy when I saw several articles which showed Snopes was being biased in favor of the left. But after a few months, they looked into to the online furor and found more sources. They discovered that they were wrong and corrected their articles.
I have not found them to be biased at all. But that doesn't mean that they will have 100% accuracy. Once in a while they'll get things wrong. They're human. That doesn't mean they are biased.
The issue with Snopes is that after co-founders David and Barbara Mikkleson divorced, David got the company and immediately got a lot less transparent about how the company was doing its research and fact-checking. This newfound lack of transparency, combined with several fact-checks that critics felt were taking liberties with various definitions, led to questions as to the site's continued accuracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes#Plagiarism_by_co-founder_David_Mikkelson
Matters came to a head when an investigation revealed that David Mikkleson had been plagiarizing and writing articles for the site under a presumed name. 60 total articles had to be retracted due to this, with Mikkleson ultimately having to step down from his ownership position.
- LDSGator and JohnsonJones
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Coincidentally, Free Comic Book Day was the first Saturday of this month.
One of the titles available as part of the FCBD offerings was a special Asterix book in which select panels from different stories from over the years were strung together with narration putting them in the context of advising the reader on how to adopt a life of health & fitness. Advertising in the book included reference to the upcoming Summer Olympics in Paris this year.
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3 hours ago, Carborendum said:
I have a question about chocolates, if anyone has had a very expensive chocolate candy.
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I believe that for most Americans, the standard chocolate candy bar is the Hershey chocolate bar or chocolate kisses. I've had all the Mars candies, Ghirardelli's, Dove, and many more common candies. With only minor differences, I'd say that they were all very similar. It would take me a while to learn the differences to the point where I could name them all with a single crumb. But I acknowledge that they are different.
Recently I tried another brand. And it was supposedly created by looking up ingredients and methods used by the more expensive chocolatiers. While Hershey sold their bars for $1/bar (for whatever size it was that was standard) this new bar sold theirs for $6/ bar (equal weight as Hershey) when bought in bulk. I thought, "No way. If you can get it down to $2, I'll buy it and see."
Well, true to my word, I noticed that after about a year or so on the market, they brought down their price point to $2. So, I got a large box for my wife as a Mothers' Day present.
I tried a bar. It had a funny texture. The flavor and smell were fine. But the texture was more like hard plastic. It didn't melt in my mouth all that well. It "crunched" in my mouth. Perhaps it was because we had the AC set to a low temp. But it really ruined the experience.
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So my question is: If you've had a high-end chocolate, was it like that? Was it a bit harder? More like hard plastic?
In the meantime, I'll try giving it a shot while the weather is warmer and see if that changes anything.
What brand did you try that came out like that?
As Vort noted above, there's a *lot* that goes into the production of chocolate, from the ingredients themselves to how it's prepared, packed, and stored. This can all make a difference in flavor, smell, coloration, and texture.
- Vort and Carborendum
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1 hour ago, Vort said:
Dante's Comedia (modern Italian: La Divina Commedia, meaning The Divine Comedy*) is the poetic story of man's journey through life and death to find life again, a midlife journey from death and despair to everlasting life and bliss.
If you'll recall, Inferno has it that when Jesus was resurrected (et al) the gates of Hell were quite literally torn off of their hinges.
I don't think even Dante himself truly understood the importance of that bit of symbolism.
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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28172032/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_escape%20from%20
Apparently it's been out since last month, but I only just now heard about it this morning since it's only just now coming to theaters in my region.
It's based on the church's efforts to evacuate its missionaries from Germany before the start of WWII.
So far, the nearest theater to me that's airing it is the next stake over, so I don't know when I'll actually be able to watch it.
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As I've mentioned before, I'm a part of a group known as GWES, the Global Weather & Emergency Alert Society. It's a group that's focused on the STEM fields, particularly meteorology and telecommunications.
As I type this, it's been 2+ weeks of rain and storms across the United States, including flooding and tornadoes. This has, as you can imagine, once more put the focus on emergency preparedness. In fact, the stake actually had to tell members in certain cities not to come to stake conference yesterday because roads were flooding out.
So the question... what is everyone here doing, as of 2024, to prepare?
What sort of food storage is everyone here getting together?
Do you have your 72 hour kit?
Do you have a weather radio tuned into the National Weather Service's radio stations to keep you aware of emergency alerts?
Et cetra.
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1 hour ago, JohnsonJones said:
Something else that I thought of when driving out to Texas, but which isn't about the eclipse itself.
When I was younger Westerns were quite a big deal. I realized as I entered Texas that there were a lot of lies in those Westerns. They all look like Eastern California more than Texas, at least the part we were driving through.
It should be no surprise, seeing that East Texas is basically bordering a swamp state, nevertheless, it never really struck me before. East Texas is extremely green and humid. It looks nothing like the dry forest and areas of California. Yet, in so many Westerns of my youth that's exactly what they tried to portray.
You have to go out to the western part of the state to get to the desert areas.
Everything east of I-35 is going to be a mix of grass, trees, and marshes. Not only is that part of the state near the coast, it's also near a great many bodies of water.
Once you start heading west of I-35, things slowly start drying out. By the time you get to the time zone boundary, it's going to be sand.
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5 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:
Such things are part of the process. Some temples go into areas with welcoming and friendly neighborhoods, some go in to places despite vigorous and litigious opposition, and everything in between. It's why we currently have 31 announced temples in the US that have not had groundbreaking yet.
Yeah, last night I was on Quora and someone was blowing her stack about how the church "shoved a temple down" the throats of everyone in the town where she lived, only to go radio silent when I pointed out that temples don't just emerge from nowhere and if it was built then it had to have city approval first.
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Just got to looking at Google Maps to see where the Austin, Texas temple might actually go because of how packed most of the Austin metroplex area is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nameless,_Texas
Nameless is still on the map despite being largely defunct as a town.
However, it's not been abandoned.
There are multiple main roads that run through the area, there are historic sites, there's a new housing subdivision being built, and there's also a shooting range.
Aside from the shooting range, it's the kind of place the church prefers to set up temples: lots of empty property, but still near main roads and housing.
I wonder if this is where the Austin temple will actually wind up being built.
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9 hours ago, Carborendum said:
Uh-huh.
I'm sure there was no artistic license on the crafting of the features for animation.
I've seen actual photos of the process being done. They're floating around somewhere, but I don't have the links handy.
Let's just say that the people they brought on board as references for He-Man and Skeletor were pretty beefed up by the standards of the early 1980s.
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15 hours ago, zil2 said:
By coincidence, I was asked to teach Enos - Words of Mormon on Sunday. The regular instructor will be out for a scheduled event, and so I'll be handling matters.
- zil2, NeuroTypical and Vort
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21 hours ago, Jamie123 said:
She-Ra was always criticized for giving unrealistic bodily expectations to young girls. (You don't get big breasts AND a tiny waist - its one or the other or neither.) No one ever mentioned that no one looks like He-Man either!
Actually?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping
Filmation used an early form of motion capture known as "rotoscoping" in order to produce He-Man and She-Ra.
Filmation's facilities weren't that far from places where athletes, bodybuilders, and weightlifters liked to congregate (remember, this is in California), so what they'd do is whenever new characters were to be introduced they'd send some people out as talent scouts. These scouts would then hire some of these individuals and bring them back to the facilities. The individuals would then dress in costume, pose for reference photos, engage in a series of relative basic & common actions that Filmation expected the characters to engage in quite often, and went from there.
So when you're watching the old 1980s Filmation cartoons, you are in fact essentially watching real people.
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5 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:
I remember the He-Man/She-Rah cartoons where at the end of each episode the moral lesson would be pointed out. It was usually something like "Don't kick the bad guy when he's down, even if he is a jerk" or "you won't have your grandparents forever ever, so appreciate them while you can". Not bad really, for a franchise that was mostly about selling plastic junk.
2 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:The Berenstein Bears was a staple of my childhood, and my kids' as well. Honest look at family life, dealt with real issues. Before congress got involved and made GI Joe devote a portion of each episode to some stupid messaging directed at how kids shouldn't bully but should brush teeth or whatever.
What happened was that when Filmation was about to ship He-Man out the door they realized that the violence in each episode was on a rather higher level than what kids' shows of the era normally contained.
As a result, they devised the PSA bit at the end of each episode in order to put the violence in some sort of context as part of a larger moral bit.
This "halo effect" concept caught on, and soon a number of cartoons were doing some sort of PSA or educational segment at the end of each episode.
These initially faded away around the end of the 1980s as most of the shows that did these segments got cancelled, but briefly reappeared in the mid-1990s when Congress passed laws requiring that all over-the-air broadcast television stations had to air three hours of "educational and informative" kids' programming a week as stations used these segments to justify tagging whatever show they were attached to as E/I compliant.
Nowadays they're more of a meme than anything else, although there are G. I. Joe fans who are open to the idea of the PSAs returning at the end of future content.
- NeuroTypical, Jamie123 and LDSGator
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19 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:
Oh, and straight from the horses mouth:
https://x.com/iran_un/status/1779269993043022053?s=46&t=X5qcMifsD8E7ppEtCxaqJw
For Iran to say that the matter is "concluded" pretty well tells me that Iran won't do anything further. They've made a show of force, and they don't want to do anything else lest Russia and China not protect them against the retaliation.
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Also, think for a minute why the in-flight safety briefings tell airline passengers to get their own oxygen masks on before trying to help someone get theirs on.
Folks, if you're worried about the spiritual decline of society, get your own affairs in order first. Figure out where you stand, strive to improve, and behave in such a fashion that you are modeling the behaviors you want to see others adopt.
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For those who are just tuning in -
I have had a very unique, interesting, and "different" life than what most of experienced.
There are topics to where if I was to even *vaguely* go into any sort of discussion to any real depth, it would cause people to either glaze over or break down in tears... assuming of course they didn't vomit or freak right out first.
Well, by day, I write for a series of newspapers. I do a weekly op/ed and a weekly movie review, and sometimes other material from there.
Between my word count restrictions and my audience, I have to be very careful as to what I discuss, how I discuss it, and what lesson I want my audience to learn (if any). I also have to make sure that what I write is something that is accessible to all but the youngest readers.
If there are things I don't talk about, it's generally because either there is some restriction in place that prevents discussion or I know that my audience just isn't ready to handle it. Yes, I've actually done entire *series* of columns just to cover a single topic or series of related topics so that people understood what was going on and why I felt compelled to mention it.
So sometimes, when people don't infodump on everyone, perhaps you should give them the benefit of the doubt.
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22 hours ago, classylady said:
My grandson was diagnosed as a child with Asperger’s, but now it’s called the autism spectrum. He is high-functioning, but he has anxiety, which at times can be severe. He was at college last year, but his anxiety and difficulty with dealing with the social environment (roommates), he came back home. He overeats, and it’s like he has no concept of feeling full or knowing when to stop eating. I have to hide certain foods from him. He has a hard time with delaying gratification, such as saving money for something in the future, or just paying his bills. Most people wouldn’t have any idea he is on the spectrum when they first meet him. It’s after they have been around him for awhile that they begin to notice his quirks, such as not understanding personal space, etc.
In your grandson's case, it literally *could* be that the part of his brain governing the signals from his stomach isn't working properly and so he *could* legit not have an understanding of when his body is full. And apparently, some people on the spectrum do have issues with delayed gratification; I myself had issues at one point to where when I was stressed or not focused I'd spend money.
That's the thing with autism, as it's almost always comorbid with *something* physical, mental, or emotional, if not some combination thereof.
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Slowly re-watching the anime adaptation for review:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Love_Story!!
It's a TV-PG to TV-14 romantic comedy in which a high school student the size of a Buick blunders into a relationship with a tiny little thing after he saves her from being harassed.
He means well, but has never had to push himself mentally or academically because he's always had sports to fall back on.
She's got a bright future, but is incredibly self-conscious because of her small size and how it puts her at a disadvantage in the world.
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4 hours ago, laronius said:
You make a great point @Traveler. I was previously in a ward that combined our youth programs with a Spanish speaking branch who met in the same building. The branch president was not very popular among some members of his branch. I don't know what exactly the issue was but it was clear there were some in other leadership positions who thought they could do a better job and even hinted at such. When the branch presidency was eventually reorganized the man called as president had very little if any leadership or administrative experience, he was very introverted and not someone the world would view as a leader at all. But he was humble. Whatever else we may have been deficient in he was definitely humble and that made him a better candidate than the others who appeared to have more leadership "ability". The Holy Ghost is the great equalizer. With the Holy Ghost leaders don't need to be perfect. And if we have the Spirit we don't need perfect leaders.
It's case by case.
I remember one ward I was in where the position of Gospel Doctrine instructor was given to people who needed to somehow grow into the role. Some people needed to humble themselves, others needed to find their courage, et cetra.
In contrast, I was finishing up my MBA when I was called upon to be the finance clerk of a YSA branch. Long story short, I had to change the entire culture there as the leadership and clerks had gotten a little sloppy when it came to following official protocols, and even then we almost failed an audit because an attempt to cross-train the membership clerk to do my job ended with the membership clerk deciding to use paper clips instead of staples as per best practices and a key document nearly getting lost as a result.
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9 minutes ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:
Why are so many worried about finding a photo of the Prophet?
It's about historic preservation and trying to unlock the mysteries of the past.
People forget that even solid objects can be lost or destroyed over time, and all too often they're lost or destroyed deliberately.
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Ever since at least junior high school (so about ages 12 - 14), whenever Conference came around things would go sideways in some fashion. Whether it was an argument with my parents the morning of, scheduling conflicts that left me rushing to get things done before Conference, or just general drama in the week leading up to it, things tended to be quite rough. Today, for example, I woke up to discover that for some reason Microsoft redid Office so that it's no longer defaulting to have Auto-Save on, and long story short I may have borked the saves for two critical spreadsheets I'm keeping by trying to manually save them to the cloud as well as to my system (yes, I have them backed up to Google Drive as a failsafe). I'm waiting for either Microsoft tech support or some computer peeps I know to get back to me.
Does anyone else find themselves having to deal with a spike in stressful situations and personal problems ahead of Conference?
Chocolate Candies
in General Discussion
Posted
In all seriousness, it refers to the mix of textures an item has as the tongue & roof of the mouth register it.
This is a critical issue in the realm of food science as well as the culinary arts, but isn't something most people consider.
IRL, I have damage to my sinuses from injury and illness, and this has affected my senses of taste and smell. I'm now a lot more sensitive to the textures of what I'm eating, and this has resulted in me no longer being able to eat certain foods because this sensitivity to texture has rendered a number of food items quite disgusting to me.