NeuroTypical

Fun thing: I signed up for another covid trial, but fell through the screen out process. This one was a vaccination administered by a nasal spray. It would have been bloodwork, then the dose, then regular bloodwork and physicals and an app to update weekly for a year. I had never heard of the company - some odd name that immediately had me think "Moderna from wish.com". They were paying $260 for each visit, with 6-8 visits in total unless I got sick and it seemed to be related to the vaccine. I was screened out because of an antacid I take might have interfered with the absorption of the dose. Oh well. They paid me for the initial screen. Like my 2020 Moderna study, previous animal testing had been done, testing on fit and healthy people had been done, and the first "vanguard" round of the less fit and less healthy was in process, and nobody had reported any effects as yet. Me and thousands of others would be following the vanguard into 2026, and as long as nobody had any problems exceeding the usual rate of problems in the general demographic, then it would get deemed 'safe'. And the test results would tell them how effective it ended up being, if at all. Other fun thing: Going over the paperwork, the company actually takes out a life insurance policy on each volunteer. I asked the guy how much the policy was for, and he didn't know and had never even thought to ask. He said he'd been in the biz for a lot of years, and it had never come up even once because nobody had ever died from a trial medication.

Interesting. I don't think I've ever received a message on X or Twitter before that. My folder is empty and I've never checked it. I wonder if I have a "don't let people send you messages" box checked somewhere. If I do, that's fine with me.

How many times have you had covid that you noticed? That would be the other thing to wonder about, as covid has absolutely been linked to a host of issues from brain to nerves to lungs to heart issues. My wife is a lucky winner of some of this stuff. Gotta love those comorbidities and no clear answer on cause or treatment.

I use X daily, absolutely an active presence there, but I've never been spammed there. Not even sure what that would look like. Does this spamming show up in notifications? I always seem to have something there, but I never pay attention to it.

I think most of those are just me, hitting refresh endlessly to see what glorious new avatar you'll choose next. Honestly though, I believe the high count is an aspect of the billions of bots out there. Nearly half of all internet traffic is generated by bots, with bad bots accounting for about one-third of that traffic. This trend has been increasing, with bad bot traffic rising significantly in recent years. In 10 years if we don't find a way to halt the nefarious bots, probably most of the online folks out interacting with each other will be bots. We absolutely see bot traffic here. It started with accounts signing up, changing their avatar, then trying to start a post full of russian text, or links to free viagra, or what have you. The mods catch all those. But now I'm guessing half or more of our new people showing up and posting on existing threads, sometimes years old threads, with relevant things to say, are bots. The technology is certainly there, and it's not like thirdhour has two factor cell phone authentication. All you need is a fake Google/Facebook/X account or valid email address, and the ability to find the "I agree to the terms" button. So yeah, don't buy viagra from anyone who contacts you via the thirdhour PM function.

Child of the '70's here. Chicken Pox vaccine didn't exist until 1995, so yeah, absolutely the parents all did their best to manage it made the rounds with their kiddos. MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) showed up in the '60's. In the '70's, we actually stopped smallpox vaccinations because the eradication effort had been so successful. We humans have a long history of medical advancement, and also medical "advancement" that turned out to be not so medical or advanced. There have always been physicians willing to prescribe treatments at all stages of human civilization. And there have always been willing folks, and skeptical folks, and hopeless folks, and hopeful folks receiving or refusing the treatments. Sometimes the healers claim the power of the supernatural or divine. The ruling class will often urge this or that treatment, and sometimes use their power to force a treatment (like the Biden administration did during covid). Undeniable miracles of modern medicine exist. Germ theory and antibiotics helped us move away from the good old days of only 6 out of 10 children living to adulthood, and people dying of small cuts in their skin. Stuff gets sketchy when advancements in medicine gets tied to politics. Everyone swiftly forgot Trump's "operation warp speed", designed to get the vaccine hastened through the trials and released in time to help Trump win the next election. You can still find the videos of the leftie politicians like Pelosi throwing shade on Trump's poison from the early days of the pandemic. Then Biden took over, and everyone did a politically-biased 180 so quickly I literally watched people do the Covid version of tearing down the posters that said we were at war with Eurasia and replacing them with Oceania war posters and then immediately forgetting Eurasia ever happened. Honestly, kudos to the people who just picked the best opinion they could muster and stuck with it for the past 5 years. At this point in my life, I value stubborn people who might be wrong, than wishy washy people who get led around and just have stress when things are hard to think about. The picture of President Nelson baring his old man arm for the needle was a traumatizing event for some members, and more than a few testimonies were lost when they just looked at the image and didn't pay attention to the actual message. Everyone hoped the covid vax would be more effective than it turned out to be. Lots of people and organizations and folks with influence got behind it in various ways, and then reality showed up, that it was just sort of effective, not a miracle cure. It didn't stop covid, just sort of slowed it down. It didn't stop deaths, just make them a bit more rare. It didn't stop serious problems that came from covid, it just made them a tad less serious for many. And there will always be people who can't tell the difference between an anecdote and data if you paid them a million bucks for each correct answer and gave them the answer book, and the rule of "I knew someone personally who had something happen, therefore:" remains with us forever.

Gotta take issue with that. I mean yes, our central focus must be on the Gospel of Christ. That comes with loving our neighbor and a focus on missionary work. So we owe it to our neighbors to do good missionary work. My favorite quote on the relevance of apologetics: "Though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish." The least impressive, least impactful people on my spiritual journey have been the ones who stick their fingers in their ears and refuse to interact with criticisms of my faith. Most of the most impactful ones have boldly interacted with the criticism, restating it in the best most powerful way possible, and then refuting it with truth and reason. I'm still a fan of 1 Peter 3:15: But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear There are an awful lot of people asking me my reasons for the hope that is in me, even though [polygamy/archaeology/dna/kirtland banking/etc ad nauseum]. So if it's ok with y'all, I'll both hold to the Gospel of Christ, AND engage in apologetics on occasion.

When I think Brady Bunch, I think their Hawaiian vacation with that tiki head thing, and whenever we saw the head the music went "boodaadiidaaLOOOO". Oddly enough, people refusing to get their kids vaccinated against stuff like measles makes me hear the same music. I grabbed this meme in 2017-ish, as it was all getting started.

Well, if we're trying to turn the subjective world of should into the real world, I think AOC should have stuck with her original summary of the Green New Deal. People shouldn't have to work at all. Get on that, wouldja @Phoenix_person?

Meanwhile, Zohran Mamdani just won the New York primary seat away from Cuomo. Dude's policies include initiatives like raising the minimum wage to $30 an hour, creating city-owned grocery stores, bringing back rent control, and paying for it all with increased taxes on wealthy residents and corporations. Wanna bet eighty qwubbrillion dollars that if he wins and implements all that jargle, every single one of them will end up epic massive failures?

I think just about the coolest thing I've seen come out of my church, is our temple construction going on in nations living in destitute poverty. Nigeria, Venezuela, Philippines, Peru, Argentina, Brazil and others - these have GDP per capita of somewhere between $5k/yr and $10k/yr. Places that couldn't hope to afford a temple on their own. Temples are, especially in poorer nations, massively expensive undertakings that can have a great permanent economic impact on the surrounding communities. Think the parable of the Widow's mite, but we go build the widows their own temple.

Zil says pretty much everyone in Iran is Muslim and there's hardly any non-Muslims. Carb says most of the people who left Iran that he knows, are pretty much all non-Muslims. Gee. I wonder if the two experiences might be related in some way.

I don't know anything about the Arutz Sheva conference. I may or may not care what Hegseth thought back in 2018. Mind you, I'm not unhappy with T's cabinet having believing Christians in it. I'm happy to gripe with you on people in Washington "ensuring the ME remains a powder keg until nuclear holocaust or 2nd coming happens". I don't see talking about rebuilding a temple on the temple mount as doing that. I'm not the hugest fan of Huckabee, but our Ambassador to Israel having Christian beliefs doesn't bug me. I note the article says nothing about war or powder kegs. If you're gonna get nervous that Christians are running our country, I guess that's ok. I said I'll join you in griping if someone wants to ensure the ME remains a powder keg until nukes or 2nd coming. Same comment. We all get to have opinions about what will solve a problem that has been unsolvable my entire life. Dude's almost 30 year old comment talks about solving the issue and getting rid of the powder keg, with no 2nd coming or nuclear war necessary. Dislike his comment all you want, but from my perspective, the only people keeping the powder keg a powder keg, are those who refuse all solutions on the table. Funny how we only do these things in regions that have something of value to us. Um, In 1788, most of the world was run by monarchies, warlords, and strongmen. Today, just about everybody (including nations that have nothing of value to us) have some sort of governmental founding nod to human rights and elections. That's the sort of exporting I'm talking about. What they are in fact can be quite different, but even Saadam Hussein's Iraq had a constitution very similar to ours, at least pretending to have elected leaders that represent the people. I remember shortly before we invaded, Iraq claimed they had just had a free and fair election and re-elected Hussein with like 98% of the vote. Free market capitalism has spread globally since its inception. Western Europe, especially after WWII joined up. Asian nations like Japan and South Korea jumped on board in the mid-20th century. Latin American countries like Chile in the 1970s implemented free market reforms, influenced by economists like Milton Friedman, leading to significant economic changes. After the USSR fell, former member nations like Poland and the Czech Republic joined up. Africa is troubled, but even they have their African Continental Free Trade Area, and greedy Americans hardly drool when thinking about most of those nations. Nobody is arguing against you. Nobody has ever argued against you. The left seems eternally tone-deaf to the actual argument: All human systems suck, but free market capitalism sucks less than any other system ever tried. It would be really nice if the left could finally abandon this eternally-regrowing strawman, so we could have an honest discussion. But the left keeps propagating the notion that "capitalists think their system is universally good" decade after decade, generation after generation. At this point, it's like arguing with a flat-earther who isn't convinced that NASA isn't a plot.

I get that too. My mind got blown on all this stuff a long time ago. Slice of life: I like the "radio garden" app. You pull it up and it gives you a globe like google earth, with a million dots all over it. Each dot is a radio station, broadcasting out of the city and country indicated on the map. I like scrolling around to random places and listening to what other nations play on the radio. It's surprisingly difficult to go anywhere on earth, to any of those dots, and find a station playing something that ISN'T American songs from a decade or three ago. Exporting notions of government by consent, inalienable human rights, free market capitalism, technological advancement: Good things. Hooray. Exporting Hollywood skin flicks and Madonna's Like a Virgin: Not-quite-so-good things. Sort of embarrassed. Perhaps you could use a bit of mind blowing, but every single nation on earth since the dawn of recorded human history operates the same way. Nations all have a military class, a political class, and an economic class. If you're missing one of those, you're not a nation, you're part of someone else's nation. The elites in each class vie with the other classes for power in the nation. The three of 'em stand united as the nation vies against other nations. Allies and enemies, treaties and warfare, leverage and power, culture and trade, all are levers pulled by each nation in order to make gains. It's a human thing, not a US thing. Everywhere. All the time. Without exception. Us religious folks call it "our fallen mortal probation", a consequence of getting kicked out of the garden of Eden. Folks on the left of the spectrum tend to think of it as "something we can win over if only we had just a little more government". Just look at the thing: Yeah. The US is enjoying it's time as the world power. Using our influence/power to do stuff for our benefit. One good thing we have with US empire, that we really didn't have with any of those other big pretty colors, was our empire wasn't really an empire. More like a Hegemony - rule through influence and leverage and treaties. We didn't move in and conquer. Our military bases all over the world don't control the political class or economic class. And where they don't run the military class, those are other people's nations. Yeah. I get being ashamed that the US did a thing to get more oil out of Iran. I get thinking thoughts while stationed in Iraq and experiencing the hatred from some people there, and having a deep understanding and appreciation of it. I even get rejecting the notion that "if it wasn't us, it would be someone else", which is what my point here boils down to. But rejecting the notion is rejecting reality. The US isn't perfect, and we've projected power in ways that other people don't like. But I daresay we've raised the quality of life for more humans in earth, than any other nation on that chart, as measured in GDP, longevity, and freedom.

Everything I've heard from policy-makers like Trump, Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth, all seem to be saying "we just tried to stop Iran's ability do do nuclear stuff and now is the perfect time for peace". Trump's latest f-bomb directed at both Israel and Iran seemed to be generated by their hesitation to see the big gleaming pearl of peace sitting right in front of them ready to be jointly seized. But yeah, I've heard the criticism from a lot of atheists over the years. Humans are all about long term planning, and we're down with the notion of enduring hard things now for a brighter tomorrow. But folks who believe in eternal life have a different definition of "tomorrow" than you do, and therefore sometimes a different definition of what "enduring hard things now" looks like. For example, we might be more willing to die and kill for principles than our atheist buddies. I get it. But again, the notion that T & crowd wouldn't be happy for a long and enduring peace in the middle east is a pretty nonserious take. If you're seeing that take from some folks in washington, then I'm happy to join you in griping about it.

Ok. So they think we're satan because of compound interest. Agreed. We're talking about those that see us as their enemy. In other words, the bloody theocratic dictatorship ruling Iran. I agree. But noticing that Jews exist and someone on earth lives under free market capitalism doesn't justify seeking nuclear weapons and ICBMs in the latest attempt to destroy those people. I mean, does it? I mean, it does in their eyes, right? This is the understanding I currently am having. You got anything else you want me to understand about those that see us as their enemy? @Phoenix_person points out the history of American meddlings in their affairs. I haven't heard the current dictatorship voice the notion that our tinkering is part of their justification. I've heard it more expressed in terms of how the Shah's authoritarian rule, political repression, and Westernization policies justified the 1979 revolution and setting up the Islamic Republic's authoritarian rule, political repression, and the complete opposite of westernization wherever feasible. But I'm not an expert so maybe I'm missing something.

Ok. So they think we're satan because of compound interest. Other things to understand about them: - In a world where you only need 20% enriched uranium to run a nuclear energy industry, they have stockpiles of 60% enriched uranium. - Enriching to 20% is relatively easy, enriching to 60% is relatively hard, and then getting from 60 to 90 is pretty quick and easy. 90% is weapons grade. - Iran has a space program full of dual-use technology easily used for ICBMs. - The govt of Iran has overflowed with rhetoric for a long time about destroying Israel and the US with nuclear fire. - The govt of Iran has a long history of killing Americans and Israelis. And supporting terrorist proxies that try to kill Americans and Israelis. Anything else we need to understand about the danger from our understood enemy that we're understanding? I'm reminded of the parts of the Book of Mormon that had the good guy Nephites use spycraft and deception in order to destroy their enemy in combat. I mean, I yearn for the day when Christ will return and become the government, and we won't have to worry about neighbors that want to kill all of us and are actively engaging in doing so, as well as building better ways to do so. But until then, I gotta live in the world I live in.

In breaking news, the guy we were calling hitler is now making us mad for being too close with Israel.

Here’s a way to check your social media literacy. https://x.com/grok/status/1937032971007258625?s=46 Questions: - Who is suggesting that the church’s real estate holdings be seized, and what’s his general deal? - Were you able to find the article and read it? - How did Grok AI get involved, and what did it have to say about the issue? Scoring system: 3+points: boo-yah! 2 points: boo-nah. 1-0 points, better ask your grandkid for help. (wondering how points are assigned: -1 point.)

Oh wow. Those must have been some wild leaflets we dropped.

Golden Dome is all about that particular threat. I'm a little worried about an EMP attack, but I'm more worried about shipping containers of drones heading to random cities and popping off all at once.

JJ, thanks for the update. I have no small amount of envy for a person who worked as long as they wanted to, and is content (happy even) with an approaching closure of mortal life. I pray I'm that lucky. Please check in as you can, and here's hoping your son-in-law agrees to check in with us after that.

The Pentagon's press briefing said like 3 or 4 times, this was a one-off mission, and the administration is hoping Iran will take the loss and come to the peace talks. That said, we've got 2 carrier strike groups in the area, to make sure we return anything Iran gives us tenfold. That said, after our strikes, Iran launched a whole crapton of missiles at Israel, and we didn't respond. So who knows. I don't want another war either.

Yeah, it's been 5 years since the last time a bunch of armed leftists shot each other by mistake while trying to look tough. So they were overdue. https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2020/07/26/nfac-shooting-louisville-being-investigated-negligent-shooting/5514492002/ It is absolutely a shame to see a totally innocent bystander was caught in the crossfire this time.

Putin: "No way Mister Trump. No way. Is not possible." Trump: "Bet me." Putin: "Ok cowboy, you're on. I bet you a barrel of vodka. You may be popular, but you are not popular enough to convince your left wing, your political rivals, your domestic opponents to call you king."