Ironhold

A big issue with conspiracies is the need to sit down, pull the threads, and see what unravels. 
For example, consider the whole "Paul is dead!" conspiracy, which claims that Sir Paul McCartney was killed in a car crash at some point in 1966 and replaced with an imposter named William (either William Campbell, Billy Shears, or William Shears Campbell). It further claims that the band members or someone affiliated with the band objected to this trickery and started hiding clues in the band's various materials pointing towards this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_is_dead
From what I understand:
1. Paul was in a very unpleasant motorcycle (motor scooter?) accident which left him with head trauma that may have had an effect on his memory and behavior in the years immediately following. 
2. One of Paul's friends borrowed Paul's car and then proceeded to wrap it around a light post, leading to the "Death Cab For Cutie" headline as at least one newspaper erroneously reported that he - Paul - was dead. 
3. The band themselves were aware of the rumors very early in 1967 and tried to dispel them, only to inadvertently draw more attention to them. 
 
It seems that, at least on the surface, the conspiracy was generated by a combination of points 1 and 2, erroneous reports of Paul being killed in a serious car crash and his somewhat different appearance and mannerisms after his motorcycle accident. Under the circumstances, it would seem quite plausible that people would be suspicious, especially given what was going on at that time. 
It wouldn't surprise me, however, if someone at their record label was behind the conspiracy, or at least worked to fan the flames, as the conspiracy kept the band in the headlines and likely juiced their album and movie sales. 
 

Military circles, and those who have been following US politics, have been pretty critical of certain higher-ups in the US military, as they seem more interested in their own careers and their ability to use their positions to ram-rod through certain social programs than in the military's actual ability to win wars. This alone has likely cost Biden the military vote, and has all but ensured we're not really in any position to be fighting a war. 
And as far as the sanctions go, Russia has such a stranglehold over domestic media outlets that the average Russian citizen doesn't even know what's going on, let alone why so many foreign companies are suddenly pulling out. 

Military circles, and those who have been following US politics, have been pretty critical of certain higher-ups in the US military, as they seem more interested in their own careers and their ability to use their positions to ram-rod through certain social programs than in the military's actual ability to win wars. This alone has likely cost Biden the military vote, and has all but ensured we're not really in any position to be fighting a war. 
And as far as the sanctions go, Russia has such a stranglehold over domestic media outlets that the average Russian citizen doesn't even know what's going on, let alone why so many foreign companies are suddenly pulling out. 

The biggest demographic growth in Republican supporters has been among Hispanic voters. 
One contributing factor is the fact that "progressive" pundits and talking heads insist on using "Latinx" to refer to those of Latin-American ancestry, which represents them attempting to force their political and social sensibilities on the Spanish language. 
I myself have literally seen social media exchanges consisting of someone who is on the more "progressive" side using the term, people who are Hispanic asking them not to and explaining why they regard it as offensive, and the someone trying to defend their continued use of the term. 

For those who aren't familiar with Spanish as a language - 
The -o and -a you see at the end of many Spanish words is a result of Spanish being an inherently gendered language. 
The prefixes "la" and "las", and the suffixes "-a" and "as", indicate an item or group that is feminine or female. 
The prefixes "el" and "los", and the suffixes "-o and -os", indicate an item or group that is either masculine, male, or mixed-gender. 
This even goes for inanimate objects. 
los pantalones = a pair of pants = masculine
la pluma = ink pen = feminine
Gender is so inherent to Spanish, as a language, that it would be impossible to remove gender without utterly destroying the language and having to start from scratch. 
The problem is that many people who self-identify as politically progressive are against gendered language in the belief that it's inherently sexist, to the point that a moderator over at controversial video gaming website Reset Era banned someone for repeated use of the word "German" in the belief that it was somehow gendered. 
As a result, whenever anything dealing with Spanish as a language comes up, they insist on using "-x" as a gender-neutral suffix even though it has no place in Spanish as a language. Instead, it's nothing more than pure cultural imperialism. 
Things like this are why an increasing number of Hispanic voters are shying away from progressive-leaning causes and politicians. 

Military circles, and those who have been following US politics, have been pretty critical of certain higher-ups in the US military, as they seem more interested in their own careers and their ability to use their positions to ram-rod through certain social programs than in the military's actual ability to win wars. This alone has likely cost Biden the military vote, and has all but ensured we're not really in any position to be fighting a war. 
And as far as the sanctions go, Russia has such a stranglehold over domestic media outlets that the average Russian citizen doesn't even know what's going on, let alone why so many foreign companies are suddenly pulling out. 

Conspiracy: The shiny, multi-colored dots on a person's mailbox are markers placed by the government to signal what the status of the residents will be in the event of some nefarious turn of events.
Reality: Those shiny, multi-colored dots are available over-the-counter from office supply companies like Uline (or at least they were when I last ran a residential delivery route), and are typically put in place by service workers - such as newspaper delivery drivers and utility workers - to help them quickly determine who is or isn't a customer and what level of service they require. 

Conspiracy: The shiny, multi-colored dots on a person's mailbox are markers placed by the government to signal what the status of the residents will be in the event of some nefarious turn of events.
Reality: Those shiny, multi-colored dots are available over-the-counter from office supply companies like Uline (or at least they were when I last ran a residential delivery route), and are typically put in place by service workers - such as newspaper delivery drivers and utility workers - to help them quickly determine who is or isn't a customer and what level of service they require. 

Each year, the State of Texas has a sales tax holiday on designated emergency preparedness items. 
The State Comptroller has posted the list of approved items for this year's sales tax holiday, which will be on April 23rd - 25th: 
https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/publications/98-1017.php?fbclid=IwAR2za70JSd2nLo7-eJXZ3i5PhVzx_NwzWHOzuK95TYtVzpzBaU7DTThZQ1w
No state sales tax will be charged on approved items. 
Note that near the end of the document is a list of items that are *not* approved, its presence likely due to constant questions. 

I have an MBA, meaning that I could hypothetically teach 101-level business classes here in Texas. 
I would never tolerate such behavior from a student, regardless of the reason why they're having such an outburst. 
There are far better ways, far more mature ways in fact, to register discontent with the subject matter and the approach being taken. And if they feel a protest is needed, then there are more effective ways to do so than by making oneself look disturbed. 

I have an MBA, meaning that I could hypothetically teach 101-level business classes here in Texas. 
I would never tolerate such behavior from a student, regardless of the reason why they're having such an outburst. 
There are far better ways, far more mature ways in fact, to register discontent with the subject matter and the approach being taken. And if they feel a protest is needed, then there are more effective ways to do so than by making oneself look disturbed. 

I have an MBA, meaning that I could hypothetically teach 101-level business classes here in Texas. 
I would never tolerate such behavior from a student, regardless of the reason why they're having such an outburst. 
There are far better ways, far more mature ways in fact, to register discontent with the subject matter and the approach being taken. And if they feel a protest is needed, then there are more effective ways to do so than by making oneself look disturbed. 

I have an MBA, meaning that I could hypothetically teach 101-level business classes here in Texas. 
I would never tolerate such behavior from a student, regardless of the reason why they're having such an outburst. 
There are far better ways, far more mature ways in fact, to register discontent with the subject matter and the approach being taken. And if they feel a protest is needed, then there are more effective ways to do so than by making oneself look disturbed. 

I live three hours north of San Antonio, Texas. 
Due to the various spinal injuries (et al) I'm dealing with, just getting to the temple is literally painful as it requires sitting for that long at a time. 
My endowment session was a nightmare, as I had to do even *more* sitting, followed by my family making a spectacle of the event and having to eat out at a nearby restaurant and then the three hour trip back. 
The pain was so bad I was freaking out by the time the endowment ceremony was over, and I was pretty much in a haze by the time I made it home. 
The whole thing was so bad that I haven't been back to the temple since. 
Austin is closer, and so hopefully attempting to visit won't be as much of a disaster. 

I live three hours north of San Antonio, Texas. 
Due to the various spinal injuries (et al) I'm dealing with, just getting to the temple is literally painful as it requires sitting for that long at a time. 
My endowment session was a nightmare, as I had to do even *more* sitting, followed by my family making a spectacle of the event and having to eat out at a nearby restaurant and then the three hour trip back. 
The pain was so bad I was freaking out by the time the endowment ceremony was over, and I was pretty much in a haze by the time I made it home. 
The whole thing was so bad that I haven't been back to the temple since. 
Austin is closer, and so hopefully attempting to visit won't be as much of a disaster. 

I live three hours north of San Antonio, Texas. 
Due to the various spinal injuries (et al) I'm dealing with, just getting to the temple is literally painful as it requires sitting for that long at a time. 
My endowment session was a nightmare, as I had to do even *more* sitting, followed by my family making a spectacle of the event and having to eat out at a nearby restaurant and then the three hour trip back. 
The pain was so bad I was freaking out by the time the endowment ceremony was over, and I was pretty much in a haze by the time I made it home. 
The whole thing was so bad that I haven't been back to the temple since. 
Austin is closer, and so hopefully attempting to visit won't be as much of a disaster. 

You can also purchase so-called "parallel Bibles" that have 2+ translations positioned next to each other for study and comparison purposes. I have one somewhere that has four different translations. 

To expand on this point as it's something that comes up quite frequently in a lot of various discussions: 
In the United States, the term "creative work" is a deliberately broad legal term that encompasses a wide variety of produced materials, including religious texts. 
The way US copyright law works, copyrights are there to ensure that whoever creates a work will have a designated period of time to enjoy the fruits of their labors. That is, to say, they'll have time in order to monetize their work to make their money back on creating it, plus whatever profit they may gain. 
Because of this, US copyright law has considerations under which a work cannot receive a copyright under its own merit. When this situation is met, the work is said to be in the "public domain". 
The most common method by which a work passes into the public domain is, to put it simply, the passage of time. As noted above, copyrights were never intended to be permanent. If a work goes beyond a certain date, then the copyright expires and anyone can use it. 
Once a work goes into the public domain, anyone who wishes to seek a new copyright on it must do so by means of an "innovation" they create. For example, if you were to go to the Middle East, take some photos of various sites, and insert the photos into the text of the KJV, you could seek a new copyright on the basis of those photos. 
Things like this are why the KJV is in the public domain, but newer translations of the Bible and various other works are under copyright. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War
When Germany signed the treaty with Russia at the start of WWII, Russia decided this meant that they were free to invade Finland. 
While Finland wasn't able to hold out without foreign aid and was forced to surrender territory to Russia, the Finns did manage to inflict shocking casualties on the Russian military, the result of Russia going to war in winter with brightly-colored uniforms and using human wave tactics to overwhelm Finnish emplacements. 
When the war was over, Finland, like any civilized nation, returned all Russian soldiers taken prisoner during the conflict.
Those soldiers that the Russian authorities didn't execute on the spot were shuffled off to the gulags. 
Russian military doctrine, you see, is "death or glory". You either win, or you go home in a bag. Surrender is seen as nothing less than desertion, if not treason. So by surrendering instead of dying in battle, they were seen as criminals and traitors.
Between the casualties from the war and the returned soldiers who were killed by their own country, Russia lost so much in the way of military manpower that Germany tore up the treaty and ordered the invasion. 
Finland responded to the news by... becoming an Axis power, with many Finnish soldiers, such as Lauri Torni (the famous "Soldier of Three Armies") literally signing up for the German military in order to get revenge. 
Your average high school history textbook whistles past many graveyards, and this is one of them. 

I'm trained in psychological warfare. 
A few other people here have likewise had training or other experience in fields that touch on mental illness and mental health. 
Quite a few posters have also had their own personal struggles with mental illness, either themselves or caring for someone else. 
This isn't a judgment rendered out of the blue. 

The best guess anyone has is that he was likely in danger of being let go from the TV show he was on at the time, so he staged the attack to gain sympathy while making it too dangerous for the network execs to consider cutting the cast. 
Instead, independent media outlets and commentators like Tim Pool almost immediately pointed out how his story was implausible, causing the public to put pressure on law enforcement to investigate. 
The revelation that he'd faked the entire thing instead led to the show he was on being cancelled and Smollett himself being radioactive as far as the mainstream entertainment industry was concerned. At that point, he pretty much had to keep up the charade and keep the sympathy rolling in or else it would be the end of his entire career. 
The best he can hope for now is that his time in prison passes in peace, and that when he's released he can find some quiet but substantive - and likely menial - employment from where he can rebuild his work history and his reputation. He *might* convince people on the indie scene to give him another chance after people start to forget, but trying to rush into anything the moment he's out behind bars will just destroy his reputation further.

I'm trained in psychological warfare. 
A few other people here have likewise had training or other experience in fields that touch on mental illness and mental health. 
Quite a few posters have also had their own personal struggles with mental illness, either themselves or caring for someone else. 
This isn't a judgment rendered out of the blue. 

There's a Facebook group that has been set up, and there was talk about potentially setting up a Discord server. 
I'm already on Discord, where I'm a part of multiple servers and even a moderator for one of them, a server dedicated to various STEM topics such as meteorology and communications technology. I even posted an invite to the latter server if people wanted to jump on it and start probing around. 

Each year, the State of Texas has a sales tax holiday on designated emergency preparedness items. 
The State Comptroller has posted the list of approved items for this year's sales tax holiday, which will be on April 23rd - 25th: 
https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/publications/98-1017.php?fbclid=IwAR2za70JSd2nLo7-eJXZ3i5PhVzx_NwzWHOzuK95TYtVzpzBaU7DTThZQ1w
No state sales tax will be charged on approved items. 
Note that near the end of the document is a list of items that are *not* approved, its presence likely due to constant questions. 

https://discord.com/invite/P5WrGCEum8
For those who want to tinker with Discord before any possible move, here's an invite to the GWES Discord, where I'm one of the moderators. 
It's centered around STEM (specifically meteorology and the communications systems used to generate alerts), and has a number of radio and TV enthusiasts as well.