Ironhold

I've seen it happen more than once where people were called into positions because of what they were supposed to be learning from being in those positions. Some rise to the occasion, such as when a sister in one congregation I was in had to get over her fear of public speaking in order to be a Sunday school teacher. Others don't, like the especially arrogant elder's quorum leader we had in another congregation who caused several brothers with personal issues to quit coming until after he'd gotten a work transfer elsewhere.

Just had a bit of ice here in Central Texas again, but most of it is already melting.

As a consequence of some mental health issues I'm dealing with, when I'm at my regular chapel* I've taken to having one ear bud in my ear so I can continue listening to a syndicated radio show I enjoy listening to (specifically, rebroadcasts of episodes of "American Top 40 with Casey Kasem" from the 1980s). Not only does this help keep me awake (I don't get a lot of sleep, part of my problems), it also gives me some positive energy (sometimes more so than church itself, to be honest) and helps keep me calm. If someone smarts off or is otherwise quite unwise with their words, I can just tune them out and listen to something far more pleasant. Many bishops would fly off the handle if they saw me doing that. My branch president has come to understand that even with one ear to my preferred form of music I'm still more attentive to what's around me than a lot of others. This came to a head when the younger men of the branch all proceeded to disappear right after sacrament was over one day, leaving me to actually break down the sacrament and clean the trays. Since then, he doesn't care what I'm listening to so long as I keep the volume down. *The stake center has electronic devices in place to interfere with streaming media and social media, meaning you can only do phone calls and whatever's already downloaded to your device.

As a follow-up to my post, something that might be worth discussing as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism There's a rather controversial hypothesis in the world of psychology which holds that people who are more depressed are more likely to grasp the nuances of certain situations and respond in a more appropriate fashion. A lot of what I've seen in life, and heard from others, does seem to indicate that the more pie-in-the-sky someone is, the less likely they are to actually try and work out the nuts and bolts of why a system isn't working, let alone take steps to fix it.

As the saying goes, "some people are so Heavenly-minded that they are of no Earthly good". When I was in college, my mom read somewhere that some companies wouldn't hire a person unless they'd read "The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People". This caused her to freak out, and so when we were in the area shopping mall one day she caused a scene in their book store because she wanted me to get the book right then and there. One anecdote in the book talks about a friend of the author who owned a store inside of a shopping mall. The mall's owners decided to raise the rent by a degree that the store owner couldn't afford, and the store owner's pleas fell on deaf ears. When the store owner asked the author for assistance, the author responded by declaring that if the store owner and the mall owner hadn't come to a mutually-beneficial agreement then the store owner hadn't tried hard enough. To say that I was furious was an understatement. I was even *more* furious when I discovered that E-Bay was so flooded with copies of books I could have gotten it for $5 under the cover price even *with* shipping, and that by the time I finished reading it so many more copies had flooded the site I would have to sell my copy for even less. I guess I wasn't the only one who read the book and realized that it was pure hokum. It sounds to me like the people in charge at church have a dire lack of empathy. They are so overly optimistic that they literally cannot fathom why any noble or high-minded idea would fail, instead presuming that any failure was a failure on the part of the person who didn't achieve. It's pretty similar to what I was going through when the local and stake leadership were declaring "every member a missionary means that all young men must serve formal missions and all young women must shun any young man who doesn't"; these people didn't realize that there were far more ways of serving the church than just in wearing a name tag, and many, many missionary opportunities were lost because of it. I would take the matter up in prayer to determine if it's appropriate for you to counsel with these individuals in private, and if so how. They need to be made aware of the fact that their efforts are doing more harm than good by ignoring the fact that external factors may legitimately be beyond someone's control, and that they - as members of the church - need to be open to the prospect that maybe people cannot legitimately make something happen without help.

One of the most bigoted, narrow-minded, and willfully ignorant individuals I have ever had the misfortune of encountering was a self-described "free thinker" with a doctorate in the social sciences who insisted on trolling a particular internet forum that has since ceased to exist. She was very arrogant, believing that her doctorate made her functionally invulnerable. She had the degree, she was right, and that was to be the end of it. If you posted anything contradictory, no matter how well-documented, she'd either side-step it or pretend you never said anything. Matters came to a head when a controversial study was released claiming that "religious" children had more trouble separating fact from fiction than "secular" children. A website I'm on that discusses now religion is handled in the news (it's run by several veteran reporters, and since I'm a newspaper writer IRL...) decided to look at how the study was being covered, and someone in the comments found a link to where the study could be read for free. We all poured over the study, and in doing so found many shocking flaws in its design and execution. For example, they defined "religious" as "attends private school" and "secular" as "attends public school", definitions that are utterly meaningless due to how many factors dictate where children attend classes. Our general conclusion was that the study was such a mess it never should have been published, and we mutually chose to table matters until subsequent studies on the topic shed more light on the matter or the people who did the study chose to revise it. The "free thinker" in question, however, took the study at face value, started crowing about it, and held it up as "proof" that her bigoted sentiments towards people of faith were justified. When I tried to explain to her how flawed the study was, she and one of her allies told me that as a "non-scientist" (direct quote) I had "no right" (also direct quote) to question anything that appeared in a peer-reviewed journal. When I linked her to the other discussion and showed her a dozen people with relevant qualifications all saying "Yeah, this study is too poorly done to be credible", she exploded in rage and literally started cussing everyone out. What would you do if I - or someone else who witnessed this fiasco - started judging all free thinkers by the actions and sentiments of this person? You yourself would admit that this person was far removed from the norm, correct?

happy birthday

General note for anyone reading this thread: Entertainment media may make it seem like newspapers can just "stop the presses" if something big enough comes along, but that's not how it works. Most smaller newspapers no longer own their own presses, instead hiring time out on the presses of a larger newspaper. Because of this arrangement, the smaller newspaper must dance to the bigger newspaper's tune when it comes to final deadlines for printing. Thus we can have a situation where a newspaper's final deadline is, say, noon for the next day's edition, as the larger paper will be printing the smaller paper's full run at 3 PM so that they can get it out of the way before starting their print run. If there's a holiday coming up, the smaller newspaper's next print run can literally be printed days in advance so that the larger printer can maintain its own holiday schedule. For example, the flagship newspaper I'm with publishes every Tuesday and Friday. But the Black Friday edition of the paper, that is the paper that comes out the Friday after Thanksgiving, is actually printed Wednesday evening so that the printer can have Thursday afternoon off.

The guy who is currently stake public affairs was previously in the stake presidency. When he *was* in the stake presidency, he made my life miserable because he assumed he could just order me to make things happen. So even though this is information he needs to know, there's a *real* prospect he won't accept it from me, let alone listen while I explain it.

I live next door to a major military base. Someone, somewhere, got the idea that "having active-duty military service members as scoutmasters" was a good idea, both because they had survival training and because they could get supplies from the base as part of a long-standing arrangement the Army had with the BSA. What these people forgot, however, is that most of the units here at Fort Hood, the base in question, are front-line combat units and units that support the front-line fighters. As such, it was depressingly common to learn at the last minute that the current scout master was either in the field doing a training exercise, on alert status, or just plain gone, having either been deployed or re-assigned to another base. I tried to work on the genealogy merit badge, hit a brick wall because the one relative on my mom's side who was doing all of the family history wasn't sharing any information with anyone aside from her kids, tried to see if I could get someone to sign off on the "find a new family member" requirement as a waiver, and that was the end of it. I think we went through three scout masters in a single year, and after that I was done. I was just too frustrated. Unfortunately for me, my dad was both hard-core into scouting *and* spent most of my preteen and teen years being bounced around the world thanks to the Army. When I tried to explain to him why I never really went for scouting, he just presumed I was "making up an excuse" and generally being lazy. After all, he and my older brothers had all made Eagle, so why wasn't I trying? It took a *very* long time for him to realize what was going on and how bad things were. Once he retired from the Army and had a regular civilian job, he was quickly "volunteered" and actually got our scouting program back on track.

Situation: I presently work for a family of local newspapers. I started out doing deliveries, and now write two columns a week. For one column, my editors have authorized me to discuss religious topics once a quarter. At one point, I was also the assistant stake public affairs guy. I was supposed to be #2 to the regular public affairs person, but there was a several-year period in which we couldn't keep anyone in the actual public affairs position. This was a source of frustration, as we had no functional public affairs program, but people knew I was in the media and so I would catch heat whenever something or other didn't get covered. Matters came to a head one Sunday when I had it out with the stake presidency at the time. They wanted me to submit anything church-related I tried to write for approval. Well, it took them three weeks to get back to me about a column. ...A column they didn't want me to run. When I tried to inform them that because of the involved lead times I had a mere 72 hours to dash out a replacement column, one of the stake presidency tried to order me to write about an upcoming Choir event. It took me three tries to get him to understand that he was ordering me to directly advocate for the church, which was an ethical violation. I didn't even have a chance to get into the implications of him, as a member of the stake presidency, trying to tell me what to write. After that, it was about three years before I even *tried* to bring up anything religious outside of reviewing religious-themed entertainment materials. At the end of 2018, we got a new stake presidency in. This, in turn, led to my being released and a whole new stake public affairs crew being brought in. I drafted a briefing document for the guy who was coming in, giving him a head's up on what the various media outlets within the stake were, some general guidelines about how to deal with them (with particular emphasis on finding out what their deadlines and lead times were), and handed it off to them. Yesterday I was going through old computer files, found the briefing, and felt inspired to update it. It turns out that we have a new stake public affairs person. It's the very same person who, as a member of the stake presidency, caused me so much grief several years ago. On one hand, I know that they're going to need the revised briefing document as a *lot* has changed locally. On the other hand, given what happened the last time, I fear that they won't take me seriously or will try to boss me around again. Thoughts? Thanks.

The three games I play the most are all wrestling-themed games.

I see this as people on both sides needing to get over themselves. It seems like whenever one group is in power, their first response is to try and forcibly censor or even destroy material that pushes POVs the other side supports.

Priest came in the top 5 of the fan vote a few years ago, but the Hall proper didn't agree and picked some hotshot who was only on their first year of eligibility. The Dolls, Devo, and Dionne Warwick have also been nominated before, only to not get in.

https://www.billboard.com/music/awards/rock-roll-hall-fame-2022-nominees-1235026206/ The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has announced this year's nominees and opened the fan vote up. Nominees include Carly Simon, the New York Dolls, Judas Priest, Dionne Warwick, Pat Benetar, and Duran Duran. Note that while you can vote once a day, you need either a Hall of Fame account, a Google account, or an Amazon account so that they can prevent spamming of votes. Yes, Dolls drummer Arthur "Killer" Kane did indeed join the church before he died.

The younger and more impressionable someone is, the more likely they are to seek the approval of a given social circle - friends, parents, society, et cetra - and thus act based on what this circle stipulates. They don't understand that past a certain point, they need to put themselves first and not care about what others say if they wish to get ahead.

Suppose, for a moment, that we confirm sentient alien life. We make first contact with them. Maybe they look just like us, give or take a few odd features (like Spock's ears). Maybe it's clear that they evolved from another critter, like a fox instead of a monkey. Maybe they're three-story tall transforming robots. Either way, it's now undeniable that there is life on other worlds. How would you handle it? How do you think the people in your belief system would handle it?

The minute she went on her "basket of deplorables" rant, I stuck a fork in her campaign. It was the same mistake Romney made with his remarks about people on financial assistance.

Hillary ran a terrible campaign. Nothing more, nothing less. She appeared as physically frail, mentally out of touch, incredibly arrogant, and elitist. Trump, in contrast, appeared to be keen, energetic, and willing to listen to the public.

What I've heard is that something along the lines of 20 Democrats in Congress have all announced plans to retire or seek office elsewhere. If the reports are true (I've been busy trying to keep up with news specifically in my field, entertainment), then this indicates that the Democrats know they're going to lose the midterms by a wide margin and people are getting out while they can still do so with dignity. As it is, a full blow-out in the midterms will likely mean that Biden won't get his first few choices for replacement through as he won't have a raw majority to ram-rod them in place. We might even see Breyer's seat be vacant until the next President is in office.

As far as cars go - My 1990 Buick Skylark was designed in such a fashion that if you couldn't reach a component just by popping the hood and reaching down, you could get to it by jacking the car up and going from underneath. My 2006 Dodge Stratus is such a horror story you have to pull the left front tire just to replace the battery and pull the right front tire just to check the belts. I hate working on my Stratus for the simple fact that it's such a knuckle-buster, and I credit one of my three blown vertebrae to trying to crawl underneath it and do work with inadequate floor jacks.

So many people in my stake are sick that the stake presidency asked us not to have second hour this past weekend. I normally go to the YSA branch despite being too old simply because they so often need extra priesthood to help out, and it was practically deserted. The branch president actually had to be the speaker because the other people who were supposed to show up were absent.

There's also the internet gutter brawls of the 2000s, where minister after minister and author after author were exposed for what they truly were. People would read one or two hostile works, assume this was all they needed, and get completely demolished, either forcing them to actually *investigate* what they'd been told or resulting in them going mad from the realization that their entire world view was based on incorrect information. This in turn would usually result in ministers, authors, and other higher-up counter-cult figures getting tagged in, and they would almost inevitably embarrass themselves through their own misconduct. I think after a while, most people in the Christian counter-cult finally caught on to the fact that we - and others - were more than willing to push back, ask questions of our own, and bring our own evidences into play. A lot of the old games don't get played anymore except by the truly desperate, and a lot of the old authors seem to be falling out of favor.

I've had similar experiences as well. During various debates and discussions I've had, I encountered more than a few people who - either literally or figuratively - declared that we had "declared war on" traditional mainstream Christianity and so we "deserve" every bad thing that happens to us, individually and collectively. They don't understand why anything that they're doing is wrong.

That's the thing... they refuse to consider other world views. The best guess I can give is that somewhere, at some point, someone they trusted filled their head with notions about different groups and they never thought to question what they were being told as doing so would force them to question who told it to them. Rather, they just take it for granted that these groups need third parties to intervene.