Ironhold

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Everything posted by Ironhold

  1. For about a *month* when I went to the actual page for the General Conference videos on the church website I got a 404 error indicating an invalid link. Same for many of the other videos. I guess they finally put Conference back online, as that's what I'm seeing now.
  2. I've tried to watch videos through the church website, but since the app was launched all I get are error messages and "page doesn't exist" messages.
  3. OK. I just tried to use the Gospel Stream app, which is what we're supposed to use now to watch church videos as most of them have been pulled from the church's website. Well, a single session of Conference drained about 45% off of my phone's battery while also heating the battery up to a very alarming degree. I actually deleted the app as a result. Has anyone here had issues like this when they tried to use the Gospel Stream app?
  4. In the original TV show, it was a "retired" black ops guy evening the odds against crime and other bad actors.
  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Equalizer_(1985_TV_series) The franchise got its start in 1985 as a television series. The main character was former black ops, and was offering his services as a hero for hire in order to protect everyday people from the folks that were threatening them. The original series - which I did in fact watch - generally had much lower, far more realistic stakes in each episode. For example, the pilot episode saw him attempting to protect a woman from a stalker and a computer expert from hitmen. Other episodes involved protecting the daughter of a would-be Russian defector and discovering who tried to kidnap the son of a wealthy businessman. The first live-action movie was over-the-top enough for most people to just sit back and allow suspension of disbelief to kick in. But the sequel decided to take a hard detour into politics, and the third movie had no purpose in existing. Likewise, the TV series has stretched things significantly, often to the point that even someone like myself has trouble taking it seriously.
  6. OK. Earlier in the year, a study was published confirming that the Covid vaccines had a risk of cardiovascular side effect, with mRNA vaccines in particular, like Pfizer and Moderna, having the highest risk. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9905103/#:~:text=All reported cardiac events including,myocarditis and TTC were lower. Now the State of Texas is suing Pfizer, saying that it knew or should have known that its vaccine was less effective than advertised and that they engaged in a conspiracy to suppress information to this effect. https://texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-sues-pfizer-misrepresenting-covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-and-conspiring?fbclid=IwAR1IGaLYrs7F6iWJfyIsdlWLyLNBkjz1mEKNMrCSXy2Hwdf9T__jlAHirXE#:~:text=Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton,public discussion of the product I do believe a Pandora's Box has just been opened in regards to legal action now, especially if the federal government tries to quash this.
  7. Asked around a bit. From what I got, it comes down to whether the parents are still alive. If the parents are still alive, either they or the child can decide, at a later date, that they no longer wish to be sealed, in which case it's the standard procedure for a sealing cancellation. If the parents are deceased, then it's on the child to decide at a later date.
  8. I take it that I'm the only person who remembers this one from back in 2002? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juwanna_Mann It's a sports comedy about a failed basketball player who dresses in drag and plays on an all-female team to rebuild his career. I've never seen it, and quite frankly it's low on my priority list.
  9. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Tarantulas_(BW) Tarantulas (pronounced "tar-an-tu-luss") is a character from the Transformers franchise. He was first released circa 1996 as part of the first wave of toys from the "Transformers: Beast Wars" product line, and like most early characters his toy bio was completely ignored by Mainframe when they did the cartoon. They had him as a megalomaniacal mad scientist, and he was such an over-the-top villain that he became one of the more popular characters in the show. This has led to him getting various new toys over the years and even appearances in subsequent media. So yes, as a character he is quite beloved. 😇
  10. Check with Brigham Young University to see if they've prepared anything. That's my suggestion.
  11. The problem is that a lot of people nowadays don't understand nuance. They want the world divided into a binary system where you're either "good" or "bad". This complicates efforts to evaluate people from history.
  12. As an entertainment writer, one thing I sometimes have to deal with is the legacy of high-profile figures and their respective scandals. For example, I'm part of the generation that grew up seeing Bill Cosby on television. We watched both Fat Albert and The Cosby Show regularly, and we acquired his "Himself" comedy show on both audio cassette and DVD. We also have a few of his books hanging around somewhere. Now we know that he was, shall we say, far from the fatherly figure he depicted on television and that his son may have been killed because of it. So while he revolutionized a great many things about American television, he was also not a good person in the way most people would evaluate things. Fabulous Moolah was both a pioneering figure in women's professional wrestling and a sex trafficker who prostituted her trainees out to people she could get favors from. Voice actor and comedian Chris Latta turned in numerous influential performances in the 1980s and very early 1990s... but was if hints and allegations are true living a toxic personal life that contributed to his premature death. Et cetera.
  13. The issue is that because a number of right-wing groups were going hardcore about conspiracies regarding child trafficking and prominent individuals, there are a lot of left-wing outlets, like Rolling Stone, who dismiss *all* discussion of the matter as conspiracy theory when it is in fact a real issue. This dismissal, in turn, leads the folks on the right to suspect that these outlets are covering something up, especially since some of these same outlets praised the film "Cuties". That's the issue.
  14. As I've explained before, I've had a type of training in psychological warfare. There are people like me who are trained to get inside a person's head, see what makes them tick, and wrench that around to the point that the person in question does what we want them to do while still thinking it's their own idea. Why would we need to know how to do this? The capacity for free will for people who understand what's going on around them and are capable of reaching out for what they want is such a powerful force that it has to be manually subverted through manipulation and coercion if someone's going to shut it down.
  15. I know people from all walks of life via social media, including a few athiests. I was actually talking with one of them last night about this, with him noting his frustration with remarks like hers. Athletes, by virtue of being athletes, face injuries consistent with their sport, and her number was finally up. That doesn't mean anything either way.
  16. And where were the protocols to stop the robot from loading cargo there if it was in fact occupied? Some basic sensors and a little bit of extra programming would have taken care of it.
  17. I am, for all intents and purposes, a Reagan-era political conservative. ...Who, because of how politics has shifted over the years, now comes up as a "moderate" on a lot of those automated "where do you fall on the political spectrum?" tests. The way I see it, society needs to periodically test the old and new against each other. Is there still merit in the old ways of doing something? Is the proposed new way of doing something truly better? Sometimes it becomes clear that the old ways need to crumble. But other times it becomes clear that the new ways are not for the best and may even be for the worst. What I find is that moderates and conservatives tend to agree with me on this approach, while liberals and "progressives" are frequently aghast and presume evil things about me. Society needs to evolve to survive, but not all would-be evolutions are beneficial in the long run.
  18. Screwed up the one and only good relationship I've ever had because I was dealing with an undiagnosed mental health condition and it was affecting my judgement. Am now staring down 40 with zero prospects and no means to support anyone anyway due to how little I make at the local-level newspapers I'm with. All I can do is trust that whatever will happen will happen.
  19. I think you and your parents need to both take it down a notch. Your dad is out of line for saying things like you won't have your muscles in Heaven. You need to ask yourself *why* you're spending so much time at the gym and what you hope to accomplish through it. As it is, you don't need to be wearing a name tag to serve as a missionary. Your membership in the church is enough that you should be a living example to others as much as you can be, and you should also be well-versed enough in the scriptures, the church's teachings, and the church's history to answer any questions that people may have. And for the record, my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in my senior year of high school. It would have been a hardship for me to leave my parents at that point, and so I made the internet my mission field.
  20. OK yeah, those are all fairly new, having been built in the last 20 years. If you follow the Central Texas Expressway (that is, the service road) a little eastward, you'll get to the intersection with Trimmier Road. The intersection itself is home to both a CVS and a Walgreen's. If you go north at the intersection with Trimmier, you'll pass a Red Lobster on your way to Mary Jane Drive. Turn left and you'll eventually come to the stake center. If you go south at the intersection with Trimmier, you'll come to Lowe's Boulevard. Turning right will take you to the H-E-B Plus grocery store, which has a gas station, a Whataburger, a UPS store, and a Freebirds Burritos. Turning left will take you past a Wal-Mart Supercenter, a Kohl's, an Office Depot, and a Lowe's before you reach W. S. Young Drive. Going straight through that intersection will take you to the Cielo Vista shopping center, which has an Aldi's, a PetSmart, an Ollie's discount store, and an Academy Sports. Going straight through the Trimmier intersection will take you past a shopping center with a Hobby Lobby, Dollar Tree, and Tractor Supply as well as a Wendy's and an In-And-Out Burger. The Killeen Mall is on the north side of the highway along W.S. Young, but has been *heavily* changed over the last 10+ years. Sears, Beall's, and the movie theater are gone, as are many stores & concessions that used to be there. However, there's a Chuck E. Cheese where the theater used to stand, while Hallmark and J. C. Penney are still there inside the main facility. edit - As far as Fort Hood Street / Highway 195 itself goes? Going north will take you past a shopping center (on your right) that has a Big Lots and a supermarket called O-Mart that specializes in Asian goods. Following 195 north across the railroad tracks will take you past Book 'Stan, one of the two comic book shops in the area. Going south will take you through a rather... colorful part of Killeen, but if you turn right on Stan Schleuter heading towards Clear Creek Road you'll see a recently developed area with multiple retail outlets and America's Heroes Comics, the other local comic shop.
  21. Right now, I'm cautiously optimistic. For the last few years, iHeart-owned classic top 40 station KBGO-FM Waco Texas has stunted all-Christmas starting the first weekend in November. It's the first Sunday, and they're still playing their regular format. Either they're pulling back and waiting to go all-Christmas when it's more appropriate, or they just didn't get the memo yet.
  22. Uh... Where in Killeen? The nicer, newer, safer hotels are along US 190 / I-14 and parts south. These are the actual tourist hotels for people traveling the interstate or coming to town for conventions & the like, so they're generally in better shape. If the hotel is in between Business 190 and US 190 / I-14, you're taking some chances. They're a bit on the dodgy side, and one hotel actually lost its franchise. (The Stratus Suites along Fort Hood Street used to be a Best Western.) If it's *on* Business 190 or north of it, then you'll want to take a few moments to re-read your various insurance policies. Most of these places were built when Business 190 was Highway 190, and so they're older. The loss of highway-based traffic has put many of these facilities in decline, and so they're not particularly concerned about who or what their clientele is when someone does come through the door.
  23. Let's just say that each person will likely have an individual reaction based on their own individual experiences.
  24. I am a professional entertainment writer. I also have an MBA and have, for all intents and purposes, been trained in psychological warfare. That being said - While the film made a pretense of being an investigation into the phenomenon of near-death experiences, the structure of the film and the way various elements are arranged violate the basic tenets of how a documentary film should be. In particular, the way everything is set up nudges the viewer towards a generalized Protestant understanding of the afterlife, such that one can argue the film is in a way propaganda. However... One of the people who they interviewed did describe an experience in a place he referred to as "outer darkness", so make of that what you will...
  25. What city are you looking to view it in? Many cities have already seen their available hotel rooms booked for the period, limiting what accommodations are out there, so if you haven't booked you'll need to book now. Even then, it might be too late.