Ironhold

There are days where it feels like I gave up everything for a town that doesn't give a care about me. I was being scouted by Rutgers and BYU at one point. I stayed local because my maternal grandmother was in the Alzheimer's wing and I knew that with my older brothers gone my leaving would be a hardship on my parents when it came to taking care of her. Well, because I was the one closest to them my parents took their frustrations out on me. The least little thing on my part would get them flying off in ways that they're only just now recognizing they flew off at me. I was not so subtly "encouraged" by a representative from a college in San Antonio to put in for a professorship. Instead, I stayed back to help keep the newspaper going after a major shift in leadership. This cost me financially, to the extent that the money I've missed out on has been life altering. Et cetra. When you're in a situation like mine, where it seems like you're sacrificing for the greater good but have nothing to show for your sacrifices, it can be *incredibly* discouraging and make one wonder if they wouldn't be justified in walking away.

I think it's largely person by person. In my case, being with a newspaper means that I've had to work on Sundays before, either because a story broke or because a holiday on Friday meant that many of the customers (re: businesses or city offices) I deliver to were closed and so I have to choose between delivering after church or delivering before the sun's up on Monday. I also, TBH, hit up 7-11 and Walgreen's on my way home because for the longest time the paper I was with printed *twice* a week and so I had no choice but to do some of my errands on Sunday as I had no guarantee I'd have time on Monday. And as I've noted before, I spend most of the day listening to the radio, with me using earbuds to listen to rebroadcasts of Casey Kasem during most of the day. Am I far too casual for most? Probably. As a contrast though, I'm reminded of a book I tried to read for rebuttal some years ago, "Turmoil In The Toybox II". It was a book from 1989 / 1990 in which the author, Joan Hake Robie, was screaming about how most toys that were available during the 1980s were "Satanic" in nature because of this, that, and the other, usually something that was a significant leap of logic. The opening chapter is a long diatribe about the nature of toys, with her claiming that once upon a time the only toy that kids were allowed to play with on Sunday was Noah's Ark since that tied back to the Bible. The tone of the book made it seem like she wanted a return to those days.

Kamala Harris tried to make a campaign point out of "I worked at McDonald's once, so I know what the working class is going through!". Thing is, 1. There's reason to believe that Kamala was not being honest about this point, as McDonald's the corporation has supposedly claimed they have no record of her ever working for them. 2. Trump *did* work for them just now, albeit in a carefully staged public relations bit in which only pre-screened individuals were allowed to order. It's political posturing, but it does highlight the work history of the two. It's like how a number of labor unions won't support a candidate unless the candidate spends a day doing the duties of a random given worker so that they know what the worker's duties are like.

Second Life was at one point quite popular for people to do things like virtual get-togethers, to the point that some companies were looking to use Second Life to conduct remote meetings in the years before Zoom was a thing. It was even quite popular among members of the church, who created replicas of church buildings in there and broadcast Conference as well as other bits. The problem, however, was that Second Life *also* had a not-so-secret adults-only section. It took a while for word to slowly get out, but after a while there was a surge of people essentially using Second Life to create adults-only content, at which point it seemed like people were finding other platforms for their social gatherings and other events.

It's my understanding that several key labor unions are seeing their members split instead of being solidly Democratic-supporting, which is why the Teamsters failed to officially endorse anyone this time around. The simple truth of the matter is that Harris is coming off as dangerously out of touch with what the working class is dealing with, and there is evidence that the youngest generation of eligible voters is just as concerned about this as their parents and grandparents. We could see a proverbial horse race provided that nothing untoward happens.

Both of my older brothers moved some distance away for work and school, leaving me the only one here to help take care of my parents. This meant, for example, that when my dad had his hernia operated on I was the first one awake each morning and the last one to bed each night as mom wasn't strong enough to help him in or out of bed. On a good day we're able to help each other out and coordinate things to where we mutually benefit. But on a bad day the stress can be overwhelming at times. A big part of it is that they're getting stubborn as they're getting older and so aren't admitting that they need to take care of certain things.

The whole OK sign bit started when a controversial niche left-wing media outlet known as The Root first published an article claiming that it was actually a white power symbol. Not long after the whole frenzy started, a poster on a certain infamous internet forum claimed credit, saying that they fabricated the story and fed it to a series of niche media outlets as a test to see who would or wouldn't go for it. If this person was telling the truth, then it means that The Root never fact-checked the story before running it.

Scenario - You and someone else are having a polite conversation about school lunch reform proposals. You feel that a recent federal revision to the school lunch guidelines was woefully misguided because it overlooked the needs of student athletes, individuals from lower-income families, and other kids who need the extra calories delivered in a healthy fashion. The person you're speaking with is more optimistic about how well the program is going and believes that this series of oversights will soon be corrected. Then a third party barges in to the conversation to declare that such-and-such group of people are all "Nazis" and anyone who doesn't immediately denounce them then and there is likewise a "Nazi". Yeah, that happened in early 2017. Someone who couldn't get over Trump winning kept disrupting every last ongoing conversation on a news & politics group I was in to demand that we all declare whoever his political foe of the day a "Nazi" or else it meant that we were just as evil. He eventually had to be shown the door.

For several decades now, various left-wing groups have claimed that various words, phrases, and slogans used by right-wing politicians were code-words meant to incite various hate groups and violent actors that the left believed were somehow lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce. Even when the left couldn't actually say *what* those words and slogans were, they were *certain* such code-words were in use and that we had to fear anyone who wasn't overtly left-wing because it must surely mean the person was up to something sinister. In extreme instances, the left would fabricate new definitions of words that nobody on the right was actually using. For example, after Trump won in 2016 several hardcore leftists were falsely claiming that "snowflake" was a reference to the ashes from the crematoriums in Germany during the Nazi era, and so if anyone called a person a "snowflake" it meant that they were wanting to kill them. In reality, the term had been in use as a pejorative since the late 1990s, having first appeared in the film "Fight Club" and most likely being a response to the overuse of the "special snowflake" metaphor in "character-building" educational material that had been introduced in the public school system earlier in the decade; most people who used that term thus used it to mean that they felt a person was too emotionally fragile, physically soft, and ego-driven to be of value to society. Ultimately, this nonsense is all just evidence that quite a few people on the left see the right as a collective bogeyman and fear those who hold views opposite theirs.

About 20 minutes ago mom came in to let me know that a friend of hers might have gotten one of their social media or e-mail accounts hacked; she didn't go into details, but apparently the person sent a link to what was supposed to be a church video that opened with someone other than the ostensible speaker talking about sharing the video. I have no idea what's going on, only that it seems like I can't go more than a few hours at a time without some new bit of stress being dropped on my shoulders. ...And people wonder why past a certain point I either put on my earbuds, escape into escapism, or get intense with folks...

There's actually a tabletop role-playing game called Twilight 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight:_2000 Depending upon which rules set you're using (the game has had a few updates and revisions), the premise is that between losses & damages sustained and the overall economic cost of everything, WWIII bankrupts the United States. Characters typically play as members of an American military unit stuck overseas, typically in Europe, as they try to deal with the implications. Basically, the characters have whatever gear, supplies, and vehicles they've got as they try to decide if they want to figure out a way back to the United States or carve out a part of Europe for themselves.

It's person by person, really, and often unstated in this is the fact that many high-performing individuals are often dealing with some form of high-functioning autism. In my case, I'm a big dude whose skeletal structure has been deformed by scoliosis. It's difficult finding comfortable clothing in my size that is affordable enough for me to stock up, let alone the kinds of clothing I need given how quickly I can find myself having to shift gears since I'm constantly on-call with the newspaper. I've also recently (since late 2022) been dealing with a cardiovascular condition that has caused my feet and lower legs to periodically swell, so I'm now wearing Velcro athletic shoes wherever I go. Hard experience has told me that so long as I'm reasonably presentable the rest will generally sort itself out later. Yes, the white shirt I wear to church is actually a *fishing shirt* I picked up at Academy Sports because few local retailers stock proper white dress shirts in my size.

It's rare, but a stake president can stumble to a degree that it negatively affects the entire stake. For example, when I was a teenager, the stake presidency was so obsessed with getting all young men to go on missions that they spent just about every 5th Sunday and stake priesthood meeting declaring that all young men *must* serve missions and all young women *must* consider any man who doesn't serve a mission as ineligible for marriage, no exceptions, not even for valid health or other such concerns; I was actually literally told that my having a heart condition wasn't a disqualifier as I'd just be sent to a mission that included a good hospital, a promise that the priesthood leader who said this didn't have the authority to promise. For a young man to not serve was to essentially mean that they were abandoning their duties and were thus of no further value to the church. We lost a *lot* of young men over this, and a lot of the young women who were coming up during this period wound up looking well outside of the stake for partners. It disrupted the stake for an entire generation. If someone had actually contacted Salt Lake over the matter back then, I imagine that things would have been quite different.

Under the circumstances, have you considered an appeal to Salt Lake City? This might seem drastic, but if the stake president won't intervene then you may well need to go over his head on the matter.

My flagship newspaper literally can't pay me enough for me to live on my own due to how small it is and how financially struggling it is. There are several times in the past few years where we could have gone under, and even then we've had to go from "Tuesdays and Fridays" to just Fridays because we lost the major advertiser who was basically subsidizing the Tuesday paper. I could easily make more money elsewhere, but I really struggle with this as if I go the paper goes and the town might go with it.

OK. This is something that's been on my mind. Back when I was in my early 20s, I was in a long-distance relationship with someone I met through an internet forum. Thing is, I was dealing with a number of undiagnosed mental health issues at the time, and I wasn't the guy she needed me to be. I basically inadvertently torpedoed the relationship, and it was *years* before I was able to truly accept that she was gone and that I had nobody to blame for it but myself. Fast forward. There's someone I know through social media. She's only a few years younger than I am. We have a lot of shared interests and hobbies. By her own admission she's single and is having trouble finding someone just like I am. A lot of people would look at this and tell me I should at least try to put out feelers. Thing is... I'm 41, my health is dodgy, and I make so little being in the newspaper industry that I can't even afford to live on my own, let alone support a family. As things now stand, I don't exactly have a lot to offer a potential partner in the sense of "providing for house and home". So for obvious reasons I'm feeling very, very nervous about even putting out those feelers, let alone coming right out and asking her if she wants to give it a go. Thoughts? Thanks.

IRL, one of the big things I deal with is anxiety issues. As I've explained before, I'm high-functioning autistic and wasn't diagnosed until adulthood, meaning that I never got any of the counseling or therapy that most people who are diagnosed as children receive. Couple this with everything I've had happen to me in life, and I have a bit of a hair trigger. I'm actually coming down from a massive freak-out yesterday as a result of my credit union blocking payment to my anti-virus service; it was a regular once-every-several-years renewal, and because I didn't think to remind the bank ahead of time fraud protection intervened. Between my anxiety, the stress load I can be under in a given day, and the sum total of everything I'm worried about, I can quickly get overwhelmed mentally and emotionally. This can lead to me being so drained I have to dip into my physical energy reserves to function, and because of some health challenges I've had the last few years I don't exactly have large reserves to begin with. This means I can quickly become physically fatigued as well if I'm under prolonged stress, to the point that I can have to take a nap to reset myself. When you're in a situation like this, it's hard to feel anything *but* the panic and anxiety. A person needs to step back in order to gain perspective and allow the Spirit time to reach them, but when that person is in the thick of it they can feel like they have to take care of everything right then & there.

happy birthday

There are critics of the church who feel that the ends justify the means, and so they have no qualms about doing Satan's work in God's name.

Back in the 1970s or so a critic of the church was looking through official court documents from the era, found a document relating to the case, tore it out of the records book, smuggled it out of the building, and declared that the document was a conviction & fine. The best guess is that it's actually a bill for a pre-trial hearing, but the person never allowed third parties to inspect it and once the authorities regained possession of the document they sealed it away to prevent other people from trying to steal it.

"Hard times make hard men. Hard men make soft times. Soft times make soft men. Soft men make hard times." When things go wrong on a grand scale, the generation who arises to deal with it often wants to make life better for their offspring. Past a certain point, however, they can make existence too good, such that their offspring (et al) lose sight of what it means to struggle and have no benchmark for hardship. When this happens, society forsakes what made for its greatness and a decline happens. If this decline isn't halted, then it leads to things going wrong on a grand scale.

Well, a few months ago there was a video game called "Dustborn" that... Let's just say a few of us are suspicious as to whether or not it was a real life "The Producers" due to how much money the developers took from various sources (including grants from two different governments), how very obviously calculated the game was to infuriate & offend 90% of humanity, and how utterly the game failed.

A lot of his supporters have taken a "the lesser of two evils" stance on the matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Producers_(1967_film) The entire premise of the original 1967 version of "The Producers" is a naive accountant telling a corrupt Broadway producer that the IRS rarely bothers with the financial records of shows that fail, leading to the pair devising a scheme in which they intend to put on a show that will be so awful as to fail after only a single evening; the way they see it, if they oversell stake in the show they can skip town with gobs of money before the IRS or anyone else catches up to them. In this case, the director they hire and the lead actor take it upon themselves to rework the show into an absolute satire, and so it becomes a smash hit. The producer & accountant get greedy, keep running the show, and wind up getting audited as a result of how big a hit it is... whereupon the IRS auditors discover that they oversold stake in the show and promptly arrest them for fraud.

One has to ask where the origin of the term "daily bread" came from if not from that practice. It's not like it's an obscure term, either; I've seen secular entertainment media make reference to the term "daily bread", such as an episode of M*A*S*H where Father Mulcahy laments that the "daily bread is stale again".