NeuroTypical

Obviously, you've never seen me. And the entire mess has been relentlessly parodied and meme'd ever since. One of the better ones:

C'mon Gator admit it, this is the only reason you never burned yourself on a stove, or bullied people, or huffed the marijuanas.

Not tasteless, not offensive, not even a joke, but I wanted to share: "Yesterday, someone was so wrong on the internet, that I caught a 5 day posting ban!" - NT, to his wife this morning

The Berenstein Bears was a staple of my childhood, and my kids' as well. Honest look at family life, dealt with real issues. Before congress got involved and made GI Joe devote a portion of each episode to some stupid messaging directed at how kids shouldn't bully but should brush teeth or whatever.

I'm only 2 years away from starting the first one as a way of coping with the second.

I watched Raya and the Last Dragon for the 2nd time. Still excellent. All I really remembered from the first time, was best animation I'd seen in a decade, and I won a facebook argument about it's worth. I still find wholesome and correct principles throughout the thing. I had forgotten what a huge emotion dump it is, although some of that is unique to me because I've lost both parents and the movie is filled with broken orphans.

It's fascinating watching GenZ/Alpha starting to expound on stuff they're learning about the BoM. So much political and social commentary goes with it:

Saddest thing in the world - I saw a post from someone near the bottom of the 2008 economic downturn, saying he was selling all his retirement stock while he still had some left and putting it somewhere safe. The market has gone up roughly 500% since the 2008 bottom. If dude put it in cash or gold or something, it's probably lost like a third of it's value, because of inflation. And that's how you end up spending your golden years working, unable to retire. (Divorce is the other reason people end up there.)

Is this the drop you're referring to? If so, I'm having a hard time getting worried about a coming depression. I'd love to see 10x the size of that drop, to get us back to 2020 levels before we shut down the economy and made the money printer go brrrrrrt...

Well, Israel has been attacking targets in Iran for a lot of decades. As well as killing Iranian targets in other countries for decades. There's a longer history than even this article mentions: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/14/world/middleeast/iran-attacks-israel-history.html Or even this one-sided history from Al Jazeera. The Wiki article does it better justice. I'm guessing Israel figures this round of tit-for-tat is over. "We finally hit them hard enough, and publicly enough, that they had to give their first actual response launched from their own country. And it was a pretty pathetic response." Although you read the comments section of the IDF twitter feed, and you'd think it's kicking off armageddon, end times, apocalypse, millennium, and the 2nd coming, all rolled into one. That video of missiles in the background of the dome of the rock, is really riling up the sign-seekers from 3 different world's faiths.

There's an awful lot of results when you just search for "service missionary" on the church's website. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/search?lang=eng&query=service+missionaries&page=1&facet=all

Yep. Iran did something similar after the US did some similar attack a few years back. We killed a senior baddie, they threw some token number of missles at some of our bases in Iraq. A few news stories about some of our troops getting hearing damage and a TBI or two, Iran's media crowed to it's own people about how they rained down death and destruction on the great satan in defense and retaliation, and then everyone went back to business as normal.

Oh, and straight from the horses mouth: https://x.com/iran_un/status/1779269993043022053?s=46&t=X5qcMifsD8E7ppEtCxaqJw

Since He's one of 'em, it would be sort of hard for Him to be there without Him present...

Iran, who for a long time has attacked Israel via proxies, finally attacked Israel from it's homeland.

Audio: By the way, whatever answer you find for the discrepancy here, you should also be applying to the BoM. Thing is chock full of such discrepancies. The scribe's notes don't match the printer's manuscript doesn't match the first copy of the first print run doesn't match the last copy of the first print run doesn't match the copy you have on your shelf doesn't match what you find at www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures. https://criticaltext.byustudies.byu.edu/

I've met two. One married, one not. Both of 'em temple worthy the last time they told me. One of them I know very well.

I wonder - what does it mean to you to be "against gay sex", and what does it mean to you to have the church "never allow" it? Membership in the church is voluntary. People can do whatever they want to in this church, and reap whatever consequences spring from their actions, be it positive or negative. The church isn't our mommy, telling us what we can and can't do. It's not about allowed or not allowed. The church is our guide, giving us counsel on how to be and how to act, inviting us to come to beliefs which our doctrine indicates is true, urging us to gain, maintain, and strengthen our testimonies. It's missions are to perfect the saints, proclaim the gospel, redeem the dead, and care for the poor and needy. It doesn't enforce keeping the commandments, it urges keeping the commandments. When you talk in terms of "against" and "never allowing", the immediate question is "or what?". The main actions the church can take with members, who either aren't keeping the commandments, or are breaking the commandments, are primarily to urge, proclaim, teach, and love. Some things the church figures are serious enough breaches of community norms (i.e. sins), that the ultimate power - that of removing membership - gets involved. It's like a chess club dealing with a member who wants to play checkers. Ok, you're still welcome in chess club, but you can expect we'll be playing chess, and inviting or even urging you to do the same. And if you disrupt our chess games to push for checkers, we'll probably disinvite you to future meetings and tournaments. Replace chess with bringing unto Christ, and checkers with sins, and there you go. Another way of thinking about it, is we're also "against" and don't "allow" cheating on a spouse. But there are endless active LDS folks with behavior like that in their past, and that's a good thing, because being LDS and living as one is a blessing that's available to all, just as the atonement is. We're also "against and "don't allow" p0rn or lusting after your neighbor's wife in your own head. But there are endless active LDS folks engaged in it, and we want to keep them in the church, because we believe being in the church is a good thing. Isn't same-sex behavior or thoughts or orientations sort of the exact same thing? I guess another way of asking my question, how do you know you're "against gay sex"? What sorts of actions or beliefs spring from you when you see gay? Something that surprised the heck out of me recently, was found in a recent poll: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/03/08/jana-riess-who-is-leaving-lds/ That 4% number floored me. 4 out of every 100 members of the church identifies somewhere in that acronym? With roughly 6.8 million LDS members in America, most of whom live in the corridor, that equals roughly a quarter-million members who might identify as LGBTQ. Who are these people? Are they happy? At what rates do they keep the commandments or break them? Are they active? Do they hold callings? Are they surly teens waiting to age out and leave the church as soon as they can? I wonder - has the church found a good balance on the issue? Ok, so you like checkers. This is the chess club, and we'll be doing chess club things. You're welcome to come as much as you want, and participate as much as you want, and we'll love the heck out of you. Just don't try to get us to stop playing chess, or force your checkers playing on us, and we're good.

Why did @Vort go fishing? Just for the halibut.

I believe it is being referred to as "inspired counsel"? There's also a hefty dose of good old fashioned Old Testament-ey prophetic warnings and calls to action in it: The forces working against the family are pretty much everywhere now. Plenty of voices decrying outdated European models based on an oppressive patriarchy, plenty of sympathetic ears.

Also, folks in Florida be like:

My hand looks weird.

It's a fine question. I think one without any doctrinal answer, but one we can speculate and opine about. I think about dispensations and folks setting off into new uncharted territory needing guidance from the Lord. We are a relatively young restored church - a scant 200 years. The restoration kicked off something that doesn't need a bunch of changes. The D&C is a record of those changes. I think about how things get canonized, sometimes a lifetime or three after the record is actually made. It makes me wonder, as the Proclamation on the Family approaches turning 30, if it might become part of the D&C eventually. I also think about Enos, Jarom, and Omni, books documenting ~300 years of BoM history, and how they get only 3 short chapters. Enos gains a solid testimony. The Lamanites resist missionary efforts. Prophets keep prophesying same old stuff. Oh look, it's Zarahmelans. 3 centuries, that's it. Omni gets 3 verses. One verse saying "I'm writing something because my dad told me to." One saying "I fought a lot, and wasn't a good person." One saying "Lotta peace, lotta war, nothing much else to say. Wrote this down because it's tradition, so here's my son Amaron for you." Amaron's record is equally as short and unremarkable. Holy, sacred scripture at it's most routine and unremarkable. Omni certainly didn't think anything about him or his record should have been thought of as holy or precious, other than he was an unimportant part of an important story. It makes me think about what 2020-2024 would look like in scripture. "A new plague crossed the entire world and killed many of the old and sick. In the church, there were some disputations about how the sickness should be dealt with, but mostly the saints did their best to practice their religion in safety. I, Russel M. Nelson, being a doctor by trade, urged the world to receive a medicine, but nevertheless to love all no matter their choice. The sickness did not stop us from our missionary work, nor did it slow our work of building new temples at a fast pace across the world. Nevertheless, the dark one took advantage of the disruptions caused by the sickness, sowing much confusion and dissention among the children of men, with some men crying "lo, I am a woman", and others crying "because of injustice of one, it is not just to be subject to laws enforced by many". And these notions did confuse and anger many, including amongst the saints." A heck of a lot more interesting than Omni, if you ask me.

By per capita GDP: Temple Uturoa, French Polynesia 20000 Chihuahua, Mexico 10000 Florianópolis, Brazil 9000 Rosario, Argentina 10000 Edinburgh, Scotland 45000 Brisbane Australia South Area 55000 Victoria, British Columbia 50000 Yuma, Arizona 63540 Houston Texas South Area 63540 Des Moines, Iowa 63540 Cincinnati, Ohio 63540 Honolulu, Hawaii 63540 West Jordan, Utah 63540 Lehi, Utah 63540 Maracaibo, Venezuela 2400 4, maybe 5 of those 15 announced temples happening in countries where the tithe-paying members couldn't have possibly hoped to fund their own temple. Yay tithing!