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She could be one of those heathens who doesn't keep it in the fridge!!

PS: If it helps any, yesterday the reddit FP folk showed their viciousness and intolerance as much as possible when someone brought the religion of the owners of a popular online FP shop into the discussion. So, they only out-Christian us when religion and politics are not part of the discussion (a fact I was already well aware of).

We all do.

Sorry, three of us are not enough. I'm well aware that forums are less popular - likely because parents buy their kids cell phones and the kids think everything worth doing has an app. Probably something to do with crappy American education, too, but... 28 "guests" have been here in the past 3 minutes. 83 in the past 10 minutes. Sure, some are bots, some are just viewing search results, but I have to believe there's some percentage of those who might sign up and stay if: The mobile template had the user menu so that folks could sign in, sign up, manage user stuff like notifications, etc. If we weren't so quick to call people trolls / or so brutal when folks post something we don't like When a newbie signs up for a fountain pen forum, or the reddit sub, and introduces themselves, they basically get love-bombed. It sucks that members of Christ's Church are being out-Christianed by a bunch of fountain pen users (especially the ones on reddit).

English muffins, by the look of it. And that's not relevant. She used a knife to chop pieces off the stick. We don't see the chopping, just one chunk falling from the knife, and she picked it up with her fingers and dropped it on the muffin.

Better answer - watch the video @NeuroTypical posted - that's basically it.

She just hacked up the cold, hard butter with a knife. If you've ever tried to use a stick of butter right out of the fridge, but without putting it in a butter dish, that's what happened. (Why she didn't just ask for a butter dish is beyond me.)

When you and I are the only two users left, I'm pretty sure MGF will shut it down and save their money. I'd like us to try encouraging folk to come and stay (we've had poor luck at that), but first, the mobile version has to have full functionality because the vast majority of the world are crazy enough that that's the only way they'll use the site.

What? The butter is obviously hard and not in a butter dish. The notion that you can easily scrape spreadable butter off a cold, hard stick of butter that's just resting on its own wrapping is absurd. Of course, one could have put it in a butter dish that has enough of a lip to let you scrape some off. Or you could have put it in a dish and then in the microwave at a low power setting to soften it. But barring those things, I'm not sure what the issue is...

@mikbone, I'm just bemoaning the dwindling participation here. I've been mentally planning a post about it, but haven't made one. There will be no point unless @pam can fix the mobile template for the site to include the user menu (or have someone do it). It's lacking the user menu. I guess I should make another post about that.

Yes, all 5 of the rest of us are now aware. Methinks you're gonna need another platform if you want to reach a few more of us...

If we want to get realistic, Covey's isn't a 4-box matrix either - in real life, both urgency and importance are scales, not "on/off" attributes. The 4 boxes just simplify it for teaching. The learner must then adapt it to their real life - that is, they complicate it themselves once they understand the basic principle. Thus, yours is both a 4-box matrix and a scale. Thus: Top-left: righteous & abundance Top-right: righteous & poverty Bottom-left: wicked & abundance Bottom-right: wicked & poverty These are the general "groupings", but one can fall anywhere within the entire chart.

FWIW, I don't believe that the pride cycle or the Book of Mormon teachings from which it is abstracted were ever meant to apply to each individual. They are meant to apply to the whole community. They are the enacting of God's promise: "obey and prosper". That promise is made in every volume of scripture. And where it's mentioned, "prosper" is not explicitly defined, but its opposite is defined as "being cut off from God", which suggests that "prosper" means "enjoy a connection with God" (covenants and the Holy Ghost, etc.). But despite this community promise (which we see played out repeatedly and most clearly in the Book of Mormon, but also in the Old Testament), the experiences of individuals within the community seem to vary (probably because we think of "prosper" the way the natural man does, and not as the spiritual man should). In other words, I don't see anything wrong with the pride cycle abstraction, so long as it's tied to the community as a whole - and technically, even to individuals so long as we define "prosper" in the proper way.

In a normal matrix, the top left would be the left half of the X axis and the top half of the Y axis. Etc. For example, look at Covey's time management matrix. Horizontal is urgency, vertical is importance: Right now, your quadrants are: top-left: Jesus, blessings top-right: Jesus, curses bottom-left: Satan, blessings bottom-right: Satan, curses It makes no sense... You need different axes. Any more, I'm uncertain what your theory is, so I'm having a hard time guessing what they should be. Perhaps "spiritual status" by "temporal status"?

No, I'm just suggesting relabeling your axes. Right now, you appear to be using "poor" to mean something different from "poverty", and "rich" different from "wealthy", and without an included "dictionary", that's confusing.

How can we send you mail without an address? I think your matrix might make more sense if one axis were for "blessed / cursed" and the other axis were for "rich / poor" Then you have four quadrants (though one can be anywhere within the matrix): blessed-rich blessed-poor cursed-rich cursed-poor ...Does that make sense, or am I missing something?

Nice to see you back, @Vort.

Are Americans the only ones capable of composing stories with happy endings? PS: I tried mightily to resist making a joke about being finished with the Finnish story. This PS is the best I could manage....

I have felt very similar things, for a different reason, leading to a very difficult trial that lasted about 3 years. It was a very dark time. Guess what I learned. I learned that we are to choose God no matter what. Even if doing so makes no difference outside our own hearts. Even if, for the sake of argument, it leads you to a celestial kingdom where God is the only one glad you're there and everyone else there wishes you weren't. No matter what. Perhaps this "I'm not making a difference" is your trial - the reason you had to come to mortality - to see if you would choose God, even though nothing you did ever seemed to make a difference (so far as you could tell).

I suspect that every sacrament talk that basically communicated this idea did more harm than good. I'm glad it's been close to 30 years since I heard one. Folks need to learn that you can talk about all the reasons we have to rejoice without condemning those who feel sad or depressed.

Gotcha! Thanks. I think for me, since I have no other way to cook or heat water should the power go out, something like this is a good idea. I'll do more research - the one I linked was one I liked, but I haven't done enough research to know what else is available or how well any are built. Wise woman. Yeah, that's about where I was. I need to figure out what it could run (or how big of one I'd need to run various appliances - or appliance alternates, perhaps...). Thanks. I'll continue research, but this one is for after the stove / cooking solution.

I know. I have other water stored in containers that aren't ideal (such as milk jugs). Those won't keep the water good for drinking, and water will evaporate out of them, but I basically add about 1/2 gallon per week and can refill as needed. The tub liner is for drinking water (again, assuming I had notice enough to fill it; and yes, I'd have to treat the water to keep it from going bad). I have juice bottles (thicker than soda bottle plastic), and commercial bottled water. I rotate these. That's what I figured. Am I understanding correctly that you agree this is a good idea? This sort of thing was next on my list of things to get as I'll need to at least be able to boil water to cook the emergency food supplies. And as you say, the addition of an oven is nice, as is the fact that with the right fuel, I can use it indoors. For the roof panels, that's what I've heard, although, if it would work, and if there ever came a time when the electric company wasn't going to restore power, then who cares about the normal return on investment - the point would be electricity to help you survive. But mostly, I was thinking about these smaller somewhat portable things, such as this site sells. They're more for emergency or "power in the middle of nowhere". I shall continue to ponder and pray on this one. I was thinking heating if the power goes out long-term (or permanently). Thank you for your comments!

My biggest struggle is not being able to imagine the practical - in some areas. For example, in addition to my regular overstock of food and other consumables (TP, shampoo, clothing, etc.), next week I'll have about 8 months of emergency food storage. This is easy to figure out - even if there's no famine, even if food is available, there may be other reasons why having this stuff is a good idea (some other necessity is crazy expensive, for example). Water turned out to be harder. I have a short-term supply of drinking water, and water that could be used to flush the toilet (for example). I have one of these emergency water storage things that would turn my spare bathtub into water storage (assumes I'll have notice and time to fill it). I was going to get storage containers sufficient to give me about 450gallons, but just before submitting the order, I had a ridiculously strong impression not to - no idea why, but I aborted that effort. I'm supposing my water prep is enough, or that the 450 gallons was overkill, no idea, but I've put (more) water on hold for now. What I'm entirely unsure of is power. Power outages for more than hours aren't really a thing here (as yet). If I were trying to prepare for simple "the power is out but will be back" scenarios, then a Generac would be sufficient. But what if the power's not coming back? In such a scenario, is the gas gonna keep flowing to my (as yet theoretical) Generac? Am I going to be able to get gas, the other gas, or propane for the other sort of generator (were I to have one installed)? (Cuz you can only store so much of those fuels.) A stove like this seems like a pretty good idea, along with a variety of fuel. (Anyone know why it isn't?) A solar power generator might be a good idea. Or is it? I don't know how to figure this out. Advice welcome. Then there's the fact that we have winter here. Seems almost like a wood-burning stove would be the best option (I don't have a fireplace), but I'm not sure if this is realistic or not... I've even considered solar panels on the roof, but I don't know if those would provide me power were the electrical company no longer a thing (no idea how those are connected, etc.). This would be a very painful option for me (given the expense). Anywho, these are the things I think about as far as what I still need to do, and I'm entirely unsure which of these things I should pursue.

Here's a snippet:

We are not the only Christians who disbelieve this idea. Personally, I think this isn't the way to even try to approach things. I think Ammon teaching Lamoni is one example of how to approach this. And I think Brad Wilcox's devotional, "His Grace Is Sufficient" has some good ideas. Yeah, this one seems the most difficult. But again, I think trying to argue positions / points of doctrine is the wrong way. Do things that invite the Spirit - minister and testify. If they can feel the Spirit, they'll want to know more (sooner or later - it may take multiple examples across a lifetime before someone is ready to learn from missionaries).