Carborendum

Because we as members of the Church are being more rebellious, the Lord has no choice but to remove certain knowledge from us. The things are changing now beause we refuse to accept that our idea of right and wrong has fallen from the Lord's Ideal. He wants us to seek Him. We should not be demanding that He seek us.

That's just what I was going to bring up.

More Brownshirt activity: Colorado prosecutor offers unlicensed and undocumented teen probation after deadly crash - CBS Colorado Allowing "useful idiots" to avoid justice "just because."

The reason why this sort of survey is dumb is that EVERYONE is treated with disrespect. So, all they need to do is take surveys of "disadvantaged individuals" to prove that they are disadvantaged.

I never saw this coming. But David Hogg said something that I 100% agree with. No wonder the Dems are trying to get him out of there. Oh, wait! He also said: David Hogg: Dems have abandoned men

Like vandalizing any products associated with one's political enemies? And having such vandals get off without any punishment? Like having government officials hire mobs of protesters to help them physically attack their political enemies and make sure to blame the opposition for any wrong doing?

I have to wonder if anyone "got it." Maybe I should have used...

Travis Hunter flatters unbeknownst mother on flight: 'Nicest young man' | Fox News Travis Hunter was polite and helpful to an elderly woman on a plane. Her recounting of the tale was one of the cutest stories I've heard in a while. I thought I'd share. Her Facebook post is linked further down in the article.

The US has sent mediators to Pakistan and India, attempting to end the war before it goes much further. India and Pakistan have agreed to a ceasefire. They seem to be fighting over water rights. Yeah. It's that simple. When you have a population almost as big as the USA against another population as big as China, that's an awful lot of mouths that need feeding via irrigated crops. The borders between the nations have been disputed for some time. The recent hostilities are much more serious than we may think. If it turned out to be full out war, it would be the first time two nuclear powers would be at a fully declared war. India's policy is against first launch. Pakistan's policy has not been made public. But they have given warning that they might use them if (such and such) enemy measures went too far. Even with the ceasefire agreement, there are still small military actions taking place. It may be that communications are not reaching the front lines. It may be that some of the forces are going rogue. It may be that a "ceasefire" means something different to them than it does to us. But we hope that cooler heads will prevail. As for now, it is about as effective as the ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. It is tenuous.

I have been formulating a theory that seems to touch on many points here. I have never heard of anything that ties up everything in a nice neat bow. But here goes... Phase 1: Patriarchal order In early days, it appears that not many people were ordained to the priesthood. Adam was the first. Some of his sons were ordained, but not all. And we don't have a complete record of ordinations. But we do see the line of descent all the way to Noah. I believe that this was not just a biological line, but a priesthood line. I theorize that Cain's great sin that began his fall was the same as what King Saul did. He took it upon himself to offer up a sacrifice when it was the purview of the Patriarch (i.e. he performed the actual ordinance himself, rather than simply bring the sacrifice to the patriarch). Yes, he did it because Satan told him so, and all that. But the physical act that sent the boulder rolling down the hill was that he did something via the priesthood that he had no right to do. Then he shed innocent blood, and many more things that are not recorded. Phase 2: The Order of Melchizedek As of Melchizedek, anyone could be ordained to the priesthood, regardless of lineage. "Without father, without mother, without descent" -- meaning, as of (at least) Melchizedek, it is no longer a biologically inherited ordination. It is done purely through a spiritual line of authority. Even so, while it was not necessarily through biological lineage, it was not given to anyone and everyone. But they needed to be called. No man taketh this honor unto himself. Phase 3: The Book of Abraham Abraham sought the priesthood from "The Fathers" (read: The Patriarchs, of which Melchizedek was the last, then the first of the new order). Abraham was ordained under the hand of Melchizedek. And we know of the continued line. But there was something else that is not clearly delineated in scriptures regarding the "birthright." We don't really know what that was. But it appears to be something physical. Otherwise, it could not have been "stolen" by Jacob. Pharoah also sought the priesthood. But instead of recognizing the Melchizedek order, he falsely claimed it through the patriarchal order through Ham. While his intentions were good (he was called a righteous man) he still had no rights to the priesthood. So, it would be easy to say the curse came because of Pharoah. It couldn't. Phase 4: Joseph of Egypt Joseph married two of Pharoah's daughters. Undoubtedly, the Pharoah at the time was descended from the original one who claimed priesthood from Ham. So, those daughters would have inherited any such "curse" if there was one. But we know most of the priesthood holders of this dispensation are of the line of Ephraim and Manasseh. So, clearly, the curse was not from that period. Phase 5: The Unknown There was something else that has not been mentioned in scriptures (AFAIK) where "someone" did something wrong and was then cursed as well as any descendants. But as far as we can tell from scriptures: It was NOT Cain. It was NOT Ham. It was NOT any of the Pharaohs (at least, not until after Joseph). It must have been sometime/someone else. For whatever reason, it is apparently wisdom in God that we do not know the origin. Phase 6: Young to Kimball Apparently, the ban began during Brigham's tenure. I do NOT believe Coltrin's accounts. Too many holes in his story. I believe he was more racist that most others of his generation. And since most everyone of that era weren't all that kind to Blacks, that made him even worse. I think he took bits and pieces of words said by Joseph and mixed them all up in his head with his own animus towards those of African descent. And he convinced himself that such a conversation occurred. I don't believe it ever did. Upon hearing it from Coltrin, Brigham was convinced of it somehow. I'm going to assume that he prayed about it. But we have no such record (AFAIK). Whatever actually motivated it, a prophet of God instituted the ban. Over the course of over a century, the theories kept changing. Why? How? When? Unclear. No doctrine. Only theories. I recall one general authority spoke of the "less valiant in the pre-existence" theory. But then he said something that no one seems to quote: If we have no way of knowing, I wonder why he offered it in GC. People now take his statement (without the disclaimer) as fact. Nope. Not fact. As per his disclaimer, it was a theory. I don't see it as too far of a stretch to believe virtually everything said about it was theory. Every prophet from John Taylor onward wanted to lift the ban. They thought it must be a mistake. But as each one individually prayed, the Lord was silent. No answer that has been recorded for many prophets. The very fact that no answers were given to the Prophets should tell us all that EVERYTHING said during that era were only theories. Not revelation. Pres McKay then prayed and prayed and prayed until, he finally received an answer: This tells us that the Lord confirmed that it was His will to continue, and that it would be temporary. Still no explanation as to why. The only wiggle room here is that it might be that the Lord didn't initiate it, but for some reason, He wanted to continue it for a time. That doesn't really make sense to me. But logically, I have to admit this possibility. For whatever reason, it is apparently wisdom in God that we do not know the origin. Phase 7: Official Declaration 2 We all know what happened. All 15 apostles were given a confirmation as bright as the sun at noon day. The ban was to be lifted. No explanation given as to why it was there in the first place. But it is lifted. No wiggle room for any doubt. It's gone. Done. Finito. No more. It's pushing up daisies. The curtain has been dropped. Still no explanation as to why. For whatever reason, it is apparently wisdom in God that we do not know the origin. Ever since then, we have heard that all past theories are disavowed (of course people use that word to mean many things for whatever reasons). And it remains a black mark (no pun intended) on the history of the Church. Yet, we see the Church growing by leaps and bounds in Africa today. And none of them seem to care why it was a thing. Why do we? I'd be interested in any stories of how people reacted when it was announced.

From a recently released hostage from Gaza. Damari lost two fingers on her left hand when her kidnappers shot her as they dragged her out of her apartment in southern Israel, and for months in captivity the wound did not heal due to the conditions in which she was kept. She was also shot in the leg, and the only medical treatment she was given was an expired bottle of iodine. What propriety prevents her from saying is that when she says she was "abused" she means she was sexually assaulted and/or raped.

Think about it.

OK, so here's an interesting correction. WHAT HE DID NOT DO/SAY: Trump didn't originate the idea that he could run for a third term. And he never said he was going to violate the Constitution to do so. And AFAIK, he never actually said he was going to run a third term. WHAT HE DID DO/SAY: He said that some people were telling him that there is some loophole or other that could allow him to run for a third term. But he didn't know the details of it because he isn't a lawyer. Later on he flat out quashed that notion. He publicly stated that he had no intention of running again. But it was fun to speculate. He repeated what he heard as if it were a subject of conjecture. It was fun to talk about at parties. That was about it. The loophole is about using the role of Speaker of the House to allow himself to become President by succession. I doubt that would pass SCOTUS review. I am not aware of any time when Trump described the details of this method. So, if people are saying that he's violating the Constitution because of this, they just don't know the facts.

I'm aware there have always been "protests." What I'd been hearing is that they have gotten to the point where Xi is afraid. The numbers reported were higher than Tiananmen Square. And it is not just one day. It continues to get worse. Apparently it has been so for the past few weeks. But I just couldn't get details on it from sources that were not "fringe." Yes, take a look at the dates on those. They were in just the past few days. Only one is about a week old. And, yes, I'm seeing them now, which was why I finally posted about it. I didn't want to be the boy who cried wolf because it was just a fringe site posting clickbait. I've been hearing about it on foreign and fringe sites for weeks. It was basically from the moment Xi raised tariffs on the US. That was a few weeks ago IIRC. But since I first heard about it, I couldn't find anything on legacy media or even "mainstream conservative" sites -- incl NYPost. Only in the past couple of days did I start thinking it was real. And they're acting (writing) as if they'd all been talking about it for weeks. No, they haven't.

I've been hearing for a couple of weeks about how China is having mass protests over How Xi is dealing with the US. But I only heard about it from fringe sites. I'd searched for more verification via Google and other search engines. Nothing came up. All I saw was a rehashing of the Tiananmen Square debacle. Today, I finally found a more reputable source that is reporting it for the first time. Now, to put aside the issue of the protests for just a moment, I found it very disturbing that this has apparently been happening for weeks. But Google and other search engines were not showing any results on it. Hmmm...

For userid and passwords, I do a double-whammy of unlikely words. I use obscure words or proper nouns and purposefully misspell them. There is no dictionary in the world that would have any of my passwords. My userid is a misspelling of the stone known as carborundum. I came across it in a lab in college. We were trying to grind down some concrete to a specific dimension. And we were using a stone that resembled a volcanic rock (with all the nooks and crannies of the stones that looked like charred sponges). I asked the crew if anyone knew what this stone was made of that could withstand grinding away at concrete without seeming to wear itself at all. I can't be sure what a classmate said. He may have said it with the "u" sound, but what I heard was "carborendum." That was what stuck with me. (It is used as a grindstone because it has a hardness of 9 to 9.5 on the Mohs scale.) As the blogosphere got bigger and social media was a thing, I figured I needed a unique userid. None of the "add some number" to make it unique. I wanted it to be unique. So, I chose "Carborundum." But, of course, to make it truly unique, I purposefully misspelled it. And I like the sound better anyway. As I described the rock form as being like the porous stone, the crystal form is a sight to behold. So, I did a web search for images of carborundum and found my current avatar.

It seems to be exactly what I said. The point you're making is that "in some circumstances" or "in certain circles" you find that you don't need to spend as much energy as in others.

I believe this is a semantic argument. From a layman's perspective, that is essentially all it was. Consider the following. DIFFERENCES From your link: I don't see a whole lot here that says that it was any different from the common flu in any meaningful sense. From a practical perspective, it was a severe flu. You can pick nits all you want. And you'd probably be right. But from a layman's perspective of the effects for over 90% of the population, these items listed above indicate that the effects we see as patients resemble the flu with heightened levels of severity in several ways. And the level of severity is not sufficient to really treat this with much more scrutiny than a common influenza virus. These are good points. But they are outliers. They primarily affect those who already have health issues especially those who are already hospitalized. And some claim that was only for people who got the vaccine. (This is unconfirmed, of course. But we really don't know.) But the flu also causes more dangerous symptoms in the elderly and those who are already weakened or hospitalized. But the "more symptoms" are simply "different". Whether they are "more deadly" is part of my conceding that it was a "stronger than average level." These few differences may or may not be enough to induce the average person to consider additional protocols. But I consider the shutdown of the entire world to be overkill. And the grift that ran rampant throughout the entire era is enough for me to say: That was too much! Wouldn't it be great if it were possible to actually get the real numbers of deaths and hospitalizations so we could compare? That would tell us volumes about how much of it was hype and how much was necessary. But because of the way they funded everything, the level of grift during those years caused it to be greatly exaggerated. So, we may never know.

I've thought about this for a bit and I find a little bit of a paradox here: If you "only do the important things" isn't that an attitude of minimalism? Consider: What we NEED to be done. What we WANT to be done. If we only do what NEEDS to be done, isn't that minimalism? Isn't "important, interesting, or worthwhile" another way of saying "Needs to be done"? What would differentiate that from a minimal producer? Isn't a minimal producer someone who puts their efforts towards things that THEY believe NEEDS to be done? Otherwise, why are they doing it? What we're really saying is that a maximum producer has a different set of values than the minimal producer. One way of delineating these would be: The minimal producer does what he thinks is necessary for his survival. The medium producer does what is necessary for survival AND what he wants above and beyond that. The maximum producer does all the medium producer does AND serves others.

I remember when the "Real ID" began being floated around the 2012 election. I had considered myself a Libertarian (I was actually registered as a Libertarian) with conservative leanings. I now consider myself a conservative with libertarian justifications. I didn't know all the details of what it was supposed to be. It was simply touted as a "National ID Card." I didn't understand how that was an infringement that was any worse than a driver's license or social security card. But for some reason liberals were all for it. Conservatives were ambivalent. Libertarians were up in arms about it... except me. I just didn't get it. And I didn't really look into it. Today, the Real ID has made front page news. Why? Conservatives are still ambivalent. I have not been among my libertarian friends in a while. One old friend of mine does appear to still be up in arms about it. And liberals have done a 180. They were all for it when Obama was in office. Now they think it stinks of Nazi-ism now that Trump is in office. That 180 doesn't really sound like a sincere assessment of what it actually is. But as chance would have it, I do share some of the liberal sentiment about the difficulty of certain people who have change their names -- particularly divorced/widowed/remarried women. Is this enough to warrant undoing this legislation altogether? I don't know. One of the provisions of the new legislation is that states will have some latitude in how the determination will proceed when dealing with people who have had a name-change. Until we start seeing what states do, we may find that it is too onerous, or useless, or both. I would think that red states will pass a document trail requirement that may take some time that we don't have between the passage of the bill to the first election afterward. I'd suppose that blue states will simply "take people's word for it", making the process completely useless anyway. There was an instance where this may be a problem for certain individuals in unusual circumstances. A US woman was pregnant when the couple decided to move to Canada. The baby was born in Canada to two US citizens. He was a US citizen. But... The family moved back to the US before the baby could even walk. They didn't think anything about citizenship at the time. They have since passed on. The boy grew up and joined the army (I believe). He didn't seem to have any problems until he tried to apply for a Real ID (as an old man). He had no proof of US citizenship. His birth certificate said that he was born in Canada. It didn't say anything about the citizenship of his parents. And by the time he found out about it, the rules changed for the Consular Report of Birth Abroad (which used to be the way to take care of that). So, as far as everyone involved in this can tell, they have no way of allowing him to vote under this circumstance. So, he served in the army. But he cannot vote. It may be a rare exception to the rule. But that is jacked.