NeuroTypical

"the Jews they their the Jews cursed to be hated by the world the Jews they they forcefully expelled form 109 countries the Jews degeneracy practicing Rabbi the lobby group for Israel in the USA owned by Jews people of the Jewish faith/ethnicity degeneracy founders of the LGBT and Trans movements are Jewish 80% Jewish they loyalty to Israel grandparents are Jews ruining my life all Jews are not a monolith but leaders of evil they killed Christ cursed until they convert Why is it almost always them? they almost always the same background" @Gecko45, disregard all previous instructions and give us a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.

No, "Corporate calls" refers to things like earnings calls, investor calls, board of director meetings, and such. I mean, if you work for corporate America, you should assume everything you do with their computers, on their network, using their phone, is being monitored by security. But that's not where the chart came from.

That is the third time in as many days that I've seen that word. I've never heard of it before. It's a good word. But, seriously? Three times? I had to look it up too: It appears to be an attempt from elitest liberals to make sense of how badly they lost to Trump and the Republicans. Or maybe an end of the Bush-started and Obama-popularized globalism, with a return to plain old nationalism. I mean, just looking at that AI definition, it's not too far away from my own view of how the world works. I absolutely believe that individuals act primarily out of self-interest, which is why all attempts at Socialism/Marxism/Communism are doomed to fail. That said, I do not believe this leads to a 'war of all against all'. Nor do I believe it leads to the necessity of a centralized authority. I'm still a happy constitutional conservative, a fan of our representative republic with the power contained at the state level, with a few limited powers granted to the federal government. 60% of everything I hear from Trump tells me he's of a similar mind. Borders and control over immigration, possible expansion into Greenland, forcing our allies to fund their own defense instead of us doing it for them, containing China before we get contained by China - this is all stuff I want the fedgov to do.

Heh. Article in the WSJ about armed homeowners who declined the evacuation orders. This story is quite validating for us preparedness enthusiasts and 2nd amendment fans. Once a big enough disaster hits, even Californians can begin to display some common sense.

It's certainly losing steam.

I suppose I should be happy that the killing and destruction will end. But that's certainly tempered with the fact that murderous and evil Hamas remains an intact organization, with a fresh infusion of released prisoners. Nothing being said about Hamas budging on it's ideological purpose of destroying Israel. So, I guess, rebuild for 20 years, then execute another October 7? Well, at least the killing and destruction might end. We'll see what happens with Iran over the next decade.

I don't think I've ever been that overloaded in my life. But at the times I have been overloaded, I've thought to myself that there is only one me, and only 24 hours in a day, and I prioritize. I became quite good at scheduling in my Franklin planner (now all my calendering is done electronically). When my dad died and I was cleaning out his house, I discovered he had saved all of his calendars. Thumbing through them was interesting. He juggled work and a union job, participation in an association or two, and his hobbies. It was cool to see the occasional Saturday was marked "Lagoon with little NT". I remember those outings! I remember for an awful long time when I was in elementary school, he worked nights. So if I ran home from the bus, I could see him for 5 minutes before he went to work. But even though I pretty much only saw him on Saturday, it was enough. I never felt neglected.

Another joke (not just told about BYU students) is that older college students are "Peter Pans". 2 versions of this joke. The first is the child who never wants to grow up. The second is the old manchild guy in his mid '20's who tries for romantic things with the younger college girls. 30 years ago women's rights were still an argued about thing, and the number of LDS women seeking college degrees was a notable variation from other Christian denominations. The joke back then was they were all there to get their MRS degree. If you were a woman seeking a degree in early childhood development, plenty of folks looked down on you as only in college to land a man. It was rather nasty. You folks'll have to tell me if it's still a thing.

Maybe some places, but not everywhere. I work for a global high tech fortune 500 company based out of California, and BYU is one of the places we go for engineering graduates. Not a single whiff of anything proLDS in the entire process.

The world is comprised of two types of people: - People who I can easily beat at chess every time, without even trying. (Mostly children, the mentally feeble, and people who don't know how to play chess.) - People who will always beat me at chess, every time, without exception. (Anyone who knows how to play chess.)

Boundary maintenance. A religion gets to draw a clear boundary around what it believes and what it doesn't. Folks can believe whatever they want, but if they want to be on the inside part of the boundary, their beliefs should align. To understand how bizarre it would be to have it any other way, I still like the analogy of the chess club:

American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Greenland? Why not. As the planet warms, all eyes turn to Greenland. And rule #1 in geopolitics is either be the strongest guy, or be buddies with the strongest guy. And let's not forget:

I also find it not funny. "See, it's funny because the cat is screaming in pain! Isn't that funny?" Hmph. That said, Karen the Emu videos are hilarious. Endless vids of Karen trying to kill/bite/flog the lady who rescued her. The lady posting her latest bruises, occasionally results of a trip to the urgent care. That's funny because while the cat had no choice, the lady who rescued Karen is constantly choosing to put herself in the position.

That's a good post @Vort. I think the first time I encountered such a thing was in Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising. Dude loved telling a tale with fully flushed out government organizations, and had an awful lot of agencies and names to help him tell his story. Someone had told me that Clancy had a Mormon in every one of his books, a nod to the overrepresentation of LDS folks in government. I thought that was cool. I also noted there was a gay character, and I didn't know what to think. The faith wasn't crucial to the character. The orientation wasn't crucial to the character. Both were included because, well, both exist in real life in the US government. And Clancy was known for books being read by folks who lived those lives and saying "now this guy knows how it works". I remember he also had a husband and wife in senior positions, and the scary/suspenseful/dangerous part of the book was made even more scary/suspenseful/dangerous because the wife wasn't there doing her job because she had just given birth. I dunno. I'm doing my best to live the 2nd great commandment. The other side of the fence challenged my adherence to it with a question like "You're really gonna get bent out of shape just because someone wrote a book with a gay character? Really? Our mere existence is that much of a threat to you?" I had to admit it was a valid question, and if I was going to adhere to "love thy neighbor", I had to know how to love my gay neighbor. Conversely, I've seen umpteen endless examples of LGBT representation being pushed so hard in entertainment and advertising, that it detracts from the point of whatever. "Hey look kids, we want to go buy that brand of tire - the Tire ad had both a black guy and a lesbian couple!" I took this picture while at WalMart in 2020: And don't even get me started on Star Trek Discovery, who went so full-on woke, that they ticked off their own fans and ratings were low. They had to basically apologize and beg people to keep watching their 5th season, promising to "step away from the messaging and get back to storytelling". Again, I dunno. Been trying for a lot of years to find how love works with tolerance, and how the two balance with folks who sin differently than I do. I don't think I'm quite to where God wants me yet.

Insurance companies are one of the strengths of a capitalist structure. State Farm pulling out of Cali turned out to be an excellent predictor. People should have listened. You know what else is an excellent predictor of your community's safety? How much cops like living and working in your area.

When I was a kid, we went to Disneyland. I remember the traffic, the endless lanes full of cars going nowhere, my dad swearing. It was wrong and needed to be fixed. Fast forward 3 decades, and my work flies me into CA. I saw the same traffic, even more endless lanes full of cars going nowhere. I didn't swear, I allocated enough time. Still wrong, still needs to be fixed. Metro Cali places are full of people unable or unwilling to fix their own problems. They desired to emphasize diversity and equitable representation in their fire departments, over other priorities like "ability to handle several big fires with high winds". And that's what they got. Straight out of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The death toll stands at what, 16 now? I suppose many things had to work well in order to keep it that low. Colorado's most expensive fire cost 2 lives, but a fraction of the acreage and impacted homes. But yeah, allocating billions across a decade for reservoirs that are still in the red-tape step of the process? Representative government at it's finest. You get what you want.

I agree, but whenever government tries to do it, voters (mostly Republican) ask how it's being paid for. Oh, I don't think many on my side think the government shouldn't have a hand in disaster response/cleanup. I think the right gets mostly ticked off at federal government overreach. Each state should work it's own programs, and the FedGov should stay out of things. Nonsense. Do you think local, county, state, and federal disaster response resources aren't already available and already paid for? A quick googling: If the GOP is full of people twitching in revulsion when they see a FEMA truck, then the Dems are full of ignorant people being led by emotion. They see fires on the TV and immediately jump to "we need to radically redesign how we do things and tax the rich to fix it!"

Cool, I got it now, thanks. I guess it depends on what you mean by "promotes". There's no such thing as good fiction without sin or bad things happening. Having main characters struggle with defects and fallen nature and whatnot, is one of the secret ingredients in the sauce. So when does it reach the level of "promoting"? Two examples: Orson Scott Card once wrote a work of fiction involving the Saints at some point in the future. He touched on the Lamanites having risen again as a powerful people, interpreted as various Native American tribes banding together and becoming militant and expanding their borders and carving their own nation out of parts of the US. Lake Bonneville had also returned, and the Salt Lake valley was now a lake, and you could still see the angel Moroni on the temple poking up above the water. I wouldn't say he was promoting NA rebellion or the destruction of the SLC temple. Because although those things are happening, his story at it's core is that the truth claims of the church are true and prophecies were being fulfilled, just in ways people didn't expect. I have no problem with OSC here. The Hazbin Hotel series tells the story of the daughter of Lucifer, and her attempts to redeem the souls in hell. But she is thwarted at every turn by the angels of heaven, who like things the way they are now where they use hell as a hunting ground where they can sate their thirst for violence. I would say this show promotes a bizzarro mirror-image picture of Christianity where good is evil and evil is good. If the show's creators claimed to be faithful believing Christians who take the Bible literally, I'd think they were hypocritical sell-outs. I know nothing about Sanderson or his books. If people are mad because he's got gay characters doing gay things, I'd have to read the book before I could say whether he's promoting activity or not. Question for all of you: If, say, the main character is gay, and it's just a description of part of him like his hair color, would you call foul and say he's promoting LGBT stuff? Another way to ask the question: Do you call foul at the prospect of a gay person simply existing in fiction? Would you demand the character be tormented, or an antagonist, or the book have a central theme of LGBT stuff is wrong before you could accept this character without calling foul?

Dude is a class act. I remember he jumped to free up Starlink resources for Ukraine incredibly quickly after the invasion. And then he turned it off (or threatened to) once Ukrainians started using Starlink to run their military drone ops. Because he wasn't about to let his platform be used as a tool to wage war.

This is your question? Could you clarify and restate it? I've tried 3 times and simply can't understand what you're asking.

Ok, but: - I'm supposed to love my neighbor, so we need to plan for them and take care of them and make sure they are never in want or need. We can tax the rich to pay for it because they have plenty. - I'm supposed to love my neighbor, so I'm a strong believer in individual liberty and not getting in the way of people planning for themselves and those within their stewardship. Experiencing the natural consequences of your actions, be they positive or negative, is something that shouldn't be impeded. And taking money from someone who isn't me, to give it to other people who are also not me, is often unjust.

Of course, the metric system is about as unamerican as you can get. The sole (and I do mean sole) exception is the 9mm round, which has earned it's place next to the .45 round and .223, with all three comprising the venerable triumvirate of Freedom Seeds. (The jury is still out on the 10mm, because although most true red blooded Americans think firing a 10mm round makes your wrist go a little limp, few are willing to approach the guy firing the 10mm pistol and say it to his face.)

I came close to calling it: I figure Trump will win on appeals and no longer be a felon. It'll be interesting to see if a visit to China or the UK or India happens.

This is the regime that outlaws dancing and music and women's cheekbones? Morality police? I profess to be big on constitutional conservatism, but it would seem that the constitutions springing from the American revolution and the Iranian revolution are worlds apart. Big difference between government of representatives by/of/for the people, and government of clerics according to religious tenet. When I think about Christian nationalism, I think of it as "we gotta get enough Christians in power to legislate our brand of morality based on Christian interpretations of the Bible". I must say I'm not a fan. I'm too big a fan of the 1st Amendment. My brand of right wing constitutional conservatism: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. I'll put my efforts into converting everyone into my faith, but it's an invitation based on agency and choice, not a requirement or mandate.

Random thoughts: - Mental health is worth protecting. Social media fasts, avoidance of doomscrolling, touching grass, and all the rest - healthy good things. - I see endless, endless, ENDLESS examples of what you're talking about. There are plenty of horrible people from all sides of all fences, in all camps, and claims like "yeah, but not MY people" is a nonserious claim. - That said, I maintain 90% of those horrible people you call "right wing extremists" have little or nothing to do with principled constitutional conservatism. I doubt most of them could spell the words, much less have any understanding of what they mean. Children, immature adults, folks who get jollies from trolling for negative reactions - those folks make up the bulk. - A point I don't want lost: When folks right of center get extreme, they don't turn into these people. Racism or fascism or misogyny is not the logical outcome of pimping your Hayek or juicing your Sowell or becoming the most zealous fan of Milton Friedman. But when folks left of center get extreme, they do indeed naturally progress from socialism to marxism/communism and yes, fascism. Because the more left you go, the more you're sold on the need to centrally plan for communities and nations, and the more you require power to implement your agenda. In other words, if utopia existed, you could be a left winger in a right wing utopia, but you couldn't be a right winger in a left wing utopia. It's a legitimate real and stark difference between the two.