Ironhold

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses In order to keep the poor from becoming unruly, the Roman government issued a policy stating that those who met certain requirements could receive a daily measure of grain for free and would have reserved free seating in certain types of public venues. The powers-that-be figured that so long as the poor were fed and entertained they would be far less likely to take out their frustrations on the government. So far as we know, the Nephites had no such practice in place, so any reference to one's "daily bread" would have made no sense.

Musk has made claims about people attempting to set up Star Link systems (or whatever his satellite-based communications network is called) in the affected region.

A day or so back there was a photo on Twitter of a pair of excavators trying to clean up wreckage in order to clear as much of a road as they could. Someone was holding this image up as "proof" that the government was, in fact, actually on the scene and responding. I was one of several people trying to explain to them that this photo simply meant that two people with excavators were at work. It could have been a pair of construction workers racking up some unpaid overtime, or private landowners who had them as part of the equipment for maintaining their property.

Already happening. Several people have taken to social media alleging that FEMA employees and other federal officials have threatened arrest and jail time to various individuals who have been using their private aircraft and boats to bring supplies into the area affected by Helen. While it's hypothetically possible that there is some concern these employees have done a terrible job of outlining, conspiracy theories are already in circulation alleging that this is a deliberate act on the part of the government to somehow "punish" the region for one thing or another, with most of these focusing on the punishment being for voting the "wrong" way. Elon Musk has actually been using Twitter / X to call out various FEMA officials and demand explanations for what is or isn't happening.

I question the implications of El Paso, as a lot of members north of the border have been going to the temple in Mexico because that's closer to any in the United States. So for a temple to be in El Paso, that would suggest the church isn't wanting members to cross the border as often.

https://apnews.com/jarvis-in-a-mazda-takes-pole-in-star-studded-rolex-24-field-6eca51364f83411faa307688bcdcfd65 "Jarvis In A Mazda Takes Pole In Star-Studded Rolex Field". This is an actual AP article from 2019, and the article is every bit as incoherent as the title. I often refer back to it when I need to teach younger individuals the importance of clear writing and proper article organization. For those wondering, the article is about the world of motor sports. A rookie driver named Oliver Jarvis won the "pole" position in the upcoming Rolex 24 race by putting in a record-setting performance in the time trials ahead of the event, meaning that his car would be very first in the line-up of cars when the race began and so he would have a critical advantage. Making his accomplishment even *more* spectacular is the fact that he was competing against a number of veteran drivers who were handily expected to win *and* he was driving a make of vehicle that is not a common choice for drivers in this event.

The AP's own Style Guide *demands* that the church's full name be used. So unless they've removed this requirement, the AP's own people insist on violating their rules. And yes, the AP doesn't exactly send its best and brightest to cover us.

@Phoenix_person What often gets overlooked in conversations about the border and migration is the sizes of some of the towns involved. For example: Del Rio, Texas - 34, 673 versus Ciudad Acuna - 225,000 Eagle Pass, Texas - 28,130 versus Piedras Negras - 245,155 Et cetera A number of border cities are far smaller than the Mexican cities that they're across the border from, and so they just don't have the resources to house all of the people who are using the large Mexican cities as their point of departure, let alone process these people through in a reasonable amount of time. It's not a lack of compassion but a lack of resources that is causing a lot of people at all levels to cry out over the number of people trying to come in. And given how overwhelmed these systems are and how little resources there are, a lot of people who shouldn't get in, like drug dealers and fugitives, are getting in, either by getting through the overwhelmed facilities or making their way through the large, unguarded swaths of open terrain. It's an incredibly complicated matter, and far too many folks on both sides are failing to appreciate various nuances and contributing factors.

As I noted a few months ago, I was removed from my position as moderator of a Discord server because I explained to someone that "just because you hear it in a rap song doesn't mean that you need to repeat it". Apparently, the server administration found that more offensive than the word the person was saying even though the word itself was against the rules.

In the course of 72 hours, the starter on my car went out, my blood sugar crashed due to a failed attempt at fasting (I'd been told Sunday was Fast Sunday), I was dealing with numerous old injuries as a result of being crammed into a tight space where I couldn't stretch, I got a contaminated store-brand bottled beverage from 7-11 (it was fruit juice, yet there was something milky under the lid), and I wound up with a series of sinus headaches due to what's going on with the weather. All this spiked my blood pressure to the point that the damage to my sinuses had ruptured twice. This is most likely going to be a big conference for everything I'm having to deal with on my way up to it.

Let's just say that the period of time since Friday morning has been quite trying for me, to the point that my blood pressure is up and I've already had to treat two shirts for the aftermath of nose bleeds. It's going to be a toss-up as to whether or not I make it to Conference at this rate...

At one point Quora, a social media platform where you can crowd-source answers to questions, had an experiment in place where when you posted an answer there was a chance you'd be given three images, one each from three different AI image generators, that you could use to put in your post to highlight your answer and make it look more attractive. For one question, my answer involved explaining the difficulties that Bob Hope had in filming a movie on location in France. Basically, not only was his local co-star a bit prideful, the local labor unions operated *strictly* per letter of their contracts and didn't offer the give-and-take American labor unions were willing to engage in. As a result, Hope spent a lot of time trying to smooth things over with different people and readjust the filming schedule accordingly. Cue one of the AI programs giving me a picture of Bob Hope wearing a MAGA hat and leading a pitchforks & torches - type mob.

Not only is Chick Publications still in business, individual churches are still doling them out. One church in town buys them in bulk, stamps their name & address on the back, and gives them to their congregants. I'll literally see them laying about on store shelves and in other public places, having been left and abandoned on purpose. I usually just turn these into the store workers and warn them to be on the lookout. The local Walgreen's in particular keeps getting hit, with someone actually taking a religious book and slipping it onto the shelves with the paperback novels. This is the same church that actually sends street preachers out during the warmer months, where they'll stand at a busy intersection waving mass-produced signs and boldly walk right up to anyone whose window is rolled down (which is quite a few people, this being Texas). ...And the same church that invited a guest speaker from Missouri to appear shortly after the Covid lockdowns were lifted, with the speaker having Covid and much of the congregation getting it as a result.

A lot of today's left-leaning and "progressive" individuals are ineffective at best and fascists at worst. Take, for example, the tale of Trigglypuff. A few years ago, several College Republican groups pushed their college officials to invite a rather motley mix of controversial speakers, such as Christina Hoff Summers and Milo Yiannopolous, as a counter-balance to the left-wing and the milquetoast speakers who normally came. In response to this, various "progressive" students made it a point to take seats in the audience, then at key moments stand up and start publicly screaming in order to disrupt the presentation. One individual was an obese woman with a pink top and a pastel mohawk. At the designated moment, she stood up and started screaming while flailing her arms. This caused her body fat to begin jiggling, which soon became the focal point of the video someone recorded of her. Her temperamental outburst, her bulk, and her wardrobe caused various individuals to compare her to the Pokemon critter known as Jigglypuff, and soon an unsympathetic internet dubbed her "Trigglypuff" as a way of mocking her.

Shortly after WOTC released 3rd edition in the late 1990s, they issued the Open Game License. This was meant to make their d20 game system and various elements relating to this system "open source" so that other game companies could use it. So long as WOTC was credited somewhere in the work, the other company didn't actually have to pay anything. In fact, there was an issue of Dragon Magazine, one of the two official magazines that were created in support of the game, that did a review of 20+ pre-written scenarios created by third party companies under the auspices of the Open Game License. For 15+ years, WOTC allowed the Open Game License to stand, and this brought them legions of new players as content became more readily available and people followed the trail back to WOTC itself. In fact, the massively popular online gaming series Critical Roll is produced under the Open Game License, and has become such a smash hit that WOTC itself retroactively made the campaign setting for Critical Roll an official campaign setting through an agreement. WOTC's "revisions" to the Open Game License would, ultimately, have nullified it. Instead of people being allowed to use things for free, there would be fees and percentages based on sales numbers and other factors. Smaller third-party platforms, and production companies like the one behind Critical Roll, ran the numbers and then had to go running for a dry pair of skivvies. This is on top of a clause stating that WOTC had legal right to use any material created by a third party without compensating that third party. Yeah. A great many expletives were uttered and obscene gestures made as people told WOTC how they felt. Various groups that had relied on the Open Game License announced plans to move away from it as soon as feasible, while groups like Steve Jackson Games created their own alternatives that they in turn made available under a similar license. The backlash also caused people to boycott the live-action movie, which wound up being a hideous financial disaster. Put it all together and WOTC lost big time in terms of both money and reputation.

So - Who's getting ready for conference? What's everyone thinking about ahead of it? Any predictions on new temples? For well over a decade now, the weeks before conference tend to get really stressful for me and mine, as if someone is deliberately trying to frustrate us and break us down. I'm kind of dealing with that right now, especially since I have to work that Saturday morning and there's a chance I might not quite make it home in time.

"Once Saved, Always Saved" is a bit tricky to discuss because there are a handful of Protestant groups who functionally do believe in it but don't use that name or terminology. One of the bigger non-Calivinist proponents of this was Jack Chick, a tract author who created an entire "ministry" based on the idea of buying his tracts, which were essentially miniature comic books, in bulk and circulating them. Chick frequently declared that salvation was as simple as saying a single prayer to Heavenly Father, and even periodically included different prayers that his readers could pray to this effect. His tracts also frequently depicted a variation on the idea of "deathbed confession", where a person would be instantly saved provided they made that prayer just before they went. Even though Chick's material is hideously flawed and incredibly hateful towards groups Chick didn't like (he *literally* referred to the communion wafer used by Roman Catholicism as a "death cookie" in one tract), there are still Protestant churches who take pride in littering their cities with his tracts.

Hezbollah was using such lower-tech methods as pagers and two-way radios *because* they had reason to believe that Israel had compromised their cell phone network and was using it to track them.

Between the Open License fiasco and the Pinkerton incident, a lot of folks are done with WOTC until such time as the entire roster is turned over. There are plenty of alternatives that people can turn to for fantasy and adventure gaming, such as Paizo and Steve Jackson Games. Folks are taking their money there and into the indie scene accordingly. If it were up to me, I'd introduce 7th Edition, a hybridization consisting of the better elements of 2nd edition and 3rd edition. I'd also de-canonize anything having to do with wheelchairs or other "trendy" but illogical concepts.

Nutshell: the current crop of content creators and management at Wizards of the Coast are aiming for modern-era teens and twenty-somethings as their new target audience, the idea being that if they make the game flashy enough and "trendy" enough these individuals will automatically gravitate towards it. They're also trying to find ways to monetize the game, such as "pay to play" online game management tools. The problem is that both changes have begun to alienate older fans like myself who are frustrated by how quickly the new content creators contradict established lore and see no point in paying for what we can do on our own. Making matters worse is that individual content creators insist on driving wedges, whether it's mocking older players in official materials or trying to force various controversial & nonsensical issues. For example, one big push right now is to work wheelchairs into the game in the name of "representation", never mind the fact that wheelchairs make no sense in a game where healing magic exists and several people like myself with real-life mobility issues / spinal injuries / et cetera have voiced their rejection of the concept as insulting and demeaning. Those people who object are mocked and cyberbullied online by the sycophants who support the content creators behind this push, with someone literally telling me that my lived experiences don't count since they contradict what that person was expecting to hear. edit - Note that this is on top of several existing controversies within the company, like how they sent the Pinkertons after someone over a box of Magic: The Gathering cards. Yes, you read that. The guy hosts a YouTube channel devoted to the game. He purchased a box of cards from a legit vendor. The vendor goofed and sent him an *upcoming* box that wasn't supposed to be available at retail yet because both boxes had similar assortment names. The guy did a video showing off the new cards. WOTC called out the Pinkertons, who sent some big beefy dudes to demand all cards and packaging ASAP.

Alt media groups had the guy's name early yesterday, but it wasn't until today that a lot of mainstream outlets named him: https://www.kwtx.com/2024/09/16/man-accused-trying-kill-trump-wrote-book-urging-iran-assassinate-ex-president/

Even CNN is paying attention this time: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/15/politics/donald-trump-safe-shots/index.html

In my case, it means that: 1. The people I tried to warn weren't listening. 2. These same people will likely either demand to know why I didn't warn them sooner or so completely overreact to whatever the situation is that I'm stuck having to try and reign things in. This is a big part of why some days I question if I just need to start leaving people to their fate a little more often on the chance that it's perhaps the only way they'll learn.

It's become a thing now to where my de facto psy ops training, combined with the plethora of experiences I've had and how long I've been around has resulted in me seeing an impending disaster far off in the distance, trying to warn people that the disaster was coming, trying to tell them how it could potentially be averted, and then needing to go lie down because the disaster happened and everyone I tried to warn started screaming about how they can't understand how it could have happened. It's one of several reasons why I struggle with the impulse to just leave the world to its fate.

When I was younger and dealing with undiagnosed mental health issues, several relatives constantly accused me of "being an Eeyore". Some of those same relatives now post the occasional missive on Facebook about how everyone likely knows an Eeyore and needs to be their friend. No, they've never apologized to me. They likely don't even remember that they used to make fun of me like that.