Carborendum
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Posts posted by Carborendum
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On 12/28/2023 at 12:07 PM, NeuroTypical said:
I continue to be amazed that I was having this conversation 4 years ago, just about Trump and not Biden. My buddy was speculating about Trump not finishing his term, and that's how we'd know the theory had merit.
Anyone want to bet that we can skip forward 8 years, and we'll be having this exact same thread, with the exact same posts being made, with the only change being the current president in 2031 being named instead of Biden?
I think you may have gotten an incorrect impression about what the purported prophecy meant. The only point of concern with regard to the same theory that was offered several years ago was the idea that Trump would be removed from office prematurely. The "wiggle room" here is that Trump wasn't "removed" from office via death, impeachment, etc. The election was stolen.
On the question of it being "stolen" is unprovable. But there is significant evidence that gives a lot of doubt about Biden's legitimacy.
We can believe that the matter was settled because Biden won and Trump left peacefully.
Or we can look to see what happens with Biden for the next year or next five years and then make a judgment. That's when things get really obvious in Ezra's Prophecy.
I'll reiterate: I don't know if this passage of the Apocrypha is legit or not. So, no skin off my nose if it doesn't pan out. But if it does, that will certainly be rather interesting.
- mirkwood and NeuroTypical
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On 12/29/2023 at 10:45 AM, The Folk Prophet said:
I'm not sure government and taxes is sufficient to explain the fact that our house is worth 3 times the amount we originally bought it for 15ish years back though.
Yes, you're probably right. But it does explain a lot of it.
A 3x factor is probably a local phenomenon. The national average has been just under 2.0
- Overall inflation alone (which is 100% the government's fault) will explain about a 1.5 to 1.6 factor over the course of 15 years.
- Building code requirements effect the land prices. A recent subdivision I designed ended up creating a cost of about $50k per lot above and beyond the price of the land originally due to development costs as mandated by the County. There was, of course a bit more cost due to the profit to the developer. But I'm not privy to that amount.
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Houses are required to have more construction requirements every three years. Most people aren't aware of the differences. But they incrementally cause more and more cost each year.
- When new homes cost more, existing homes will see their appraisals rise as well.
- Property taxes won't explain home prices. But it impacts the monthly payment (which usually escrows the property tax). The original point was about affordability, and the escrow amount is included in that.
- Insurance rates (also escrowed into the overall monthly payment) have gone up mainly due to government influences. And this gets a lot more convoluted when you consider broad based insurance companies (i.e. companies that do more than one type of insurance).
Not everything, I understand. But the market forces are something that the average person is well aware of. And that may be the difference between the 2.0 average and the 3.0 that you cited. Some places like CA are seeing their home prices plummet, while places like Texas and Florida are seeing things skyrocket. I, myself, saw the price go up over 40% in two years. Multiply that with the 2.0 average, and yes, it has tripled. But most of that was in the past 5 years.
We're at a peak right now. The next year or two will see home prices plummet.
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23 hours ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:
Pre-fabricated and concrete dome homes would cost a lot less. What the Feds should do is unlock the BLM lands and allow people to have them up to half an acre. Then help them finance the prefabs.
Unfortunately, it is not about availability. It is about government intervention.
- Lumber can be grown at a very fast rate. With more supply, lower costs. But government is preventing private forests through environmental and tax intervention.
- Property taxes are just plain too high.
- Cities and counties have overly restrictive building codes. And the enforcement by untrained bureaucrats causes compliance costs to go through the roof.
- Minimum wage causes all the little expenses to go up. And they add up pretty fast.
Put it all together, and there is no way to build a cheap home.
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Regarding Moroni 10:31-32
Compare:
Quote1 Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean.
2 Shake thyself from the dust; arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion.
-- Isaiah 52: 1-2
Notice this is repeated twice in the Book of Mormon. Then a third time with an alteration.
Quote31 And awake, and arise from the dust, O Jerusalem; yea, and put on thy beautiful garments, O daughter of Zion; and strengthen thy stakes and enlarge thy borders forever, that thou mayest no more be confounded, that the covenants of the Eternal Father which he hath made unto thee, O house of Israel, may be fulfilled.
32 Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.
-- Moroni 10:31-32
I believe it was a dispensational change just as the baptism prayer was changed after the resurrection.
To be more clear, here is my personal interpretation/modification.
QuoteAwake! And arise!
Shake thyself from the dust of the earth.
Put on thy beautiful garments that ye may come unto Christ and be perfected in Him.
Deny yourselves of all ungodliness so that ye may fulfill thy covenants with the Eternal Father.
And sit down upon thy throne.
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16 hours ago, zil2 said:
I don't think this was a Church-wide instruction. We had a stake president who instructed all the wards to sing all the verses of every hymn sung during Sacrament meeting. But it was announced that this was instruction from the SP. I don't remember ever hearing anything like it from Church HQ (doesn't mean it didn't happen, just that I don't remember it).
It must be one very long meeting if they sing either A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief or The Star Spangled Banner.
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On 12/21/2023 at 3:10 PM, Traveler said:
There is precious little in scripture for such an important and critical event. The stories we tell of this divine birth are somewhat ambiguous – perhaps even part fantasy.
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There are some ancient documents that were rejected at the first council of Nice – among these documents was an account of Mary the mother of Jesus.
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According to tradition Mary did not die but disappeared. I speculate that she was translated and never tasted death.
I can't help but notice that you're rejecting scriptures that we call canonical, calling it "fantasy." Then you choose to cite (and preach) apocryphal works as if they are canonical.
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23 hours ago, pam said:
My son keeps telling me I need to watch this. I haven't even made it past the first episode. So far hasn't caught my attention. But he says to stay with it.
No, no, no. The books.
I agree with @The Folk Prophet, the Amazon series is just plain garbage.
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33 minutes ago, Vort said:
Absurd? Well, yes, this is utterly absurd. But the more I think about it and the more I reflect on comments I have heard, the more I realize that it is exactly this kind of thinking that is responsible for the meme of Musk's stupidity.
Doesn't everyone do that? I'll quote Mark Twain
QuoteWhen I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.
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So, I got to thinking about the Wheel of Time.
"Saving magic" was exactly what the wizarding guild wanted to happen. But the imposter was evil and gave a procedure to the heroes that would "taint" magic.
It could be used by evil people to do evil things. But when it is used for good, something evil always comes with it (Monkey's Paw).
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1 hour ago, The Folk Prophet said:
Multiple sources say the number of the beast was possibly 616.
I don't care. But I'm just sayin'.
I mentioned that in my post and why that was.
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26 minutes ago, zil2 said:
Maybe...
I use Cascade liquid. The bowls are metal. And I feed him both canned and dry. He likes the canned. He can't stand the dry. As far as I could discern from his behavior around various scents, I don't think he has a keen sense of smell.
He will not eat brussels sprouts or cabbage. He won't come near the table when we have kim chee. So, he's obviously not a Korean cat
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He can't decide if he's an indoor or outdoor cat. He can't decide if he's a pet or pest control. He's apparently not too keen on identifying as anything that will pigeon hole him. Not a woke cat. He sleeps a lot.
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15 minutes ago, zil2 said:
Far too busy day! Did you know that cats have really good noses (sense of smell)? And that citrus oils are toxic to them? And that dishwasher detergent often has citrus scents in it? (Not enough for me to smell it, but kitty noses are super-strong.) And that this may well be the reason Klaw doesn't eat much at a time and wants to be fed every 2 hours, unless I feed him straight out of the can rather than in a bowl? I have spent the morning soaking my kitty food bowls in vinegar and then baking soda in hopes this will remove the citrus scent and let him eat out of the food bowls without being repulsed by them. Hopefully I don't need another round, but who knows. Guess I'm back to hand-washing the kitty bowls until I find a tolerable dishwasher detergent (if there is such a thing). Pray for us!
I've washed Strider's bowl in the dishwasher before. He never shied away from it.
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1 hour ago, Traveler said:
There is in the USA a chronic disconnect between our educational system and our work force needs.
This may not be directly what you were talking about specifically, but... I have an opportunity to take a position in a company that designs nuclear power plants.
It would be a huge feather in my cap. I've never been in that space before. I found out why. For many decades, those in that field became nuclear engineers because they were already in the field. As you can guess, that meant that no one was coming into the field and the attrition rate was as rapid as the aging population.
Now, they're looking at the entire field who is ready to retire. So, they are willing to take outsiders who look promising. I'm one of them.
While discussing options with my wife an interesting point came up. Many people are growing up learning that 2+2 does not necessarily = 4. Can we really trust the rising generation of engineering students? If not them, whom?
Even if the other job would be a better idea for me personally, I am considering this position for the future of the nuclear industry because I believe it will always be a necessary part of our power grid.
I haven't worked with a newbie in many years. I really don't know if any of the new kids actually understand engineering.
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1 hour ago, Just_A_Guy said:
I was privileged (ulp! There’s that word again) to have a 10th grade English teacher who insisted on giving us weekly vocabulary lists (and, thereafter, tests) of really obscure words. That was one of them.
Interesting. I had a 10th grade English teacher who had a list of 1600 words taken from the literary classics which we were to read throughout the year.
At the time, I thought they were big time words. But over the years, I heard them all over the place. Yet I'm surprised at how many people either don't know these words or use them incorrectly.
"Hirsute" was brand new to me.
- zil2 and Just_A_Guy
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15 minutes ago, zil2 said:
Found on IMDB. Apparently I can watch it on Amazon with ads (no Prime required - good thing, cuz I don't have it or want it). I'll ponder. I have zero time at the moment, but I occasionally feel the need to binge something. Bookmarked.
Just to whet your appetite:
- A man invented a machine to give to DHS which reviews all digital data throughout the United States and anything connected to that network.
- The government gets "relevant" numbers which are people of interest in some major terrorist attack or such. The back door provides "irrelevant" numbers (common murders for private reasons). No further information other than the number.
- This man hires a retired govt assassin/operative who has become a homeless man. This agent becomes the secretive bodyguard of certain individuals who are either going to be a victim or a perpetrator in a murder. Sometimes, just a witness. But they need to find out who is who.
- They work with a couple of cops and a few other individuals. But they basically work outside the law to protect a victim.
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2 minutes ago, zil2 said:
Haven't seen (Person of Interest) But I get it. And yes, our heroes would not have done all they did had they not believed the character was the HW. Now I just have to decide whether he was, and if he wasn't, who he really is.
You gotta watch at least the first few episodes. The first three seasons are really cool. It gets weird in Season 4.
Abrams decided to go a different direction because he thought it was too formulaic. He made the same mistake with Alias and destroyed both shows.
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16 minutes ago, zil2 said:
Hmm. It was definitely a good thing that they did, no getting around that. But I suppose the "fake" HW could have wanted the source of magic healed so that he would have the power to do something sinister. I shall have to ponder.
The twist on the twist could be that the imposter was actually a good magician of some sort that was completely different than the wizards. And the only way to have the heroes do what they did was to pose as the High Wizard. And possibly, the wizards' guild has many questionable members which seem to be steering the caste into bad directions.
Or, if the wizards knew there was a problem. But they were proposing a really bad solution. So, the imposter "really knew" what was going on and gave the proper directions to fix it because the guild wouldn't approve.
If you've seen the series Person of Interest, you'll kinda get what I'm talking about.
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This is a graph from Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage. Please note the black dot.
The Y-axis is self-reported happiness levels as analyzed in interviews. The X-axis is the criterion for happiness based on the common things that people tend to believe bring them happiness.
Mr. Achor recognized that it is obvious that the common wisdom seems to be fairly predictive of the state of being happy. Those common things do indeed bring some level of happiness. But what he was curious about was that black dot instead of the gray dots. What's up with that guy?
Most of the time statisticians would simply ignore the black dot as an outlier. It obviously is an outlier based on statistical analysis techniques. It could simply be that this person has a naturally high level of endorphins in his body. Could be anything.
But instead of simply dismissing the outlier, Achor wanted to know WHY? Why is that guy so much happier when others are fairly miserable with the same criteria that the world tends to value and seems to be fairly predictive?
He looked into it and found many criteria that we all kinda know is linked to happiness, but we tend to ignore. Often, it is "just too much work."
This got me to thinking about:
QuotePeace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
-- John 14:27
The peace the Lord gives us is more enduring. It is beyond the ups and downs of the human experience. It is constant. It is eternal.
I'm fairly comfortable as far as the worldly things. But I know that it isn't a long fall from my height of 5'-7" to being homeless and sleeping on the sidewalk. Job was the perfect example of how we can still have some "happiness" when we really should be miserable.
It is easy to be "happy" when you're on the far right of the graph. It is another thing to be happy when you're near the left end of the graph.
- zil2 and mordorbund
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Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
-- Rev 13:18
The word "count" is often translated as "calculate." And I believe that to be a more appropriate translation into modern English.
(Etymology: "Count" originally meant "calculate" or "compute")."Number of a man" often referred to the concept that the gematriot of a man's name was his number.
The number is actually written as 666. It is not just any combination of various letters that total 666, but specifically three digits:
χ=600 ξ=60 ς=6.
So, what is that supposed to mean? Apparently the beast's name has the gematriot of 666. This is the popular theory.
Many people point out that when you write 666 in Hebrew, the letters clearly write out "Emperor Nero." Not exactly.
So goes the theory: If you take the Greek version of his name (John's original manuscript is generally considered to be the Greek) and then transliterate (NRON QSRN) into Hebrew, the numerical value is 666. But if you take the Latin version of his name (he was Roman, after all) and transliterate (Nero Caesar) into Hebrew, the gematriot = 616. Interesting enough, some older Latin versions of the Bible indicate that the number of the Beast is 616. There goes the translational Integrity of various versions of the Bible.
I've tried to follow the gematria through these translations and I can't figure out how they did it. Some of the letters they use to make these sounds is beyond my understanding. If I, were to transliterate, I'd get a very different number. But I believe it is because it is a proper noun. And a proper noun is spelled slightly differently in different languages even if you're using the same alphabet. That becomes compounded when you translate between several different alphabets.
Since I don't know the cultural adaptations of said name into the various languages, I'll just go along with it.
If we then believe that it is an accurate interpretation, the Beast = Nero. So, what does that mean for us today? I'd consider it a type and shadow. Nero was the Type that Foreshadows a similar character in the Latter-days. So, theoretically, if we study what Nero did, we'll have some idea of what the Beast will do in the coming years. And if we see someone doing the various things that Nero did, that man is probably the beast foretold by John.
Is this likely? Well, to the ancients, the gematria would be very clear. So clear, in fact, that they felt it appropriate to change the number because this specific gematriot would have been different in a different language.
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2 minutes ago, The Folk Prophet said:
That being said...I don't really believe excommunication was on the table here. It's a bit of an exaggerated point.
For some people, that may be true. But for some, a single wrong word spoken, etc... with the stake pres already publicly chastizing him without even hearing his concerns?
It sure seemed like it was on the table if he pressed the issue.
Christmas
in LDS Gospel Discussion
Posted
No contradiction here. There are a couple of popular interpretations here.
OPTION 1: The events of Luke 2 occurred earlier than the events of Matthew 2. This is largely based on the fact that Herod asked when the star appeared and that he had all the children under 2 years killed. (Note: the usage of "young child" is really a red herring. The Greek word "paidion" can be used for both infant or older pre-pubescent child.)
Herod must have heard that the star first appeared at the time of the birth. But the (likely Chaldean) wise men would have travelled hundreds of miles from their home country to Jerusalem. A minimum of about three months would have passed. But possibly over a year given certain conditions.
Such an interval could easily have given Joseph enough time to make the trip between Bethlehem and Nazareth a number of times.
OPTION 2: Matthew was writing to the Jews, using Jewish literary techniques and Jewish understanding of prophecies. So, he wrote those parts that would be most appealing to Jews who were looking for the Messiah. He didn't need to describe ALL the details. He only wrote what was required for the message he was trying to get across to the Jews.
People may take sides and choose one or the other. But the fact is that they can both be true. Consider the following narrative:
Fantasy? Contradiction?
Most of the time we see a supposed contradiction, it is because we have incomplete information. The way that the Gospels seem to fill in the blanks is that the same story is told from different perspectives (reference frames) and for different purposes. When we consider that these are not contradictory, but rather different pieces of the puzzle, we realize that the real image is discovered as we see with BOTH eyes to observe the richness of a 3D world.
But if you want to call it "Fantasy" over a supposed contradiction, I guess that is your right to declare that even though Joseph Smith never saw any such contradiction as he went through is translation.
And it is your right to insist that the Gospel of Mary is bona fide, revelatory scripture even though even though we've been cautioned about apocryphal scripture.
And you have the right to declare it was from the perspective of the Mother of Jesus, even though most people can't agree which Mary wrote it.