NeuroTypical

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."

I agree it can be. Switching religions or political affiliations - that sort of thing can get people kicked out of families and end relationships. Paths of spiritual or moral growth can be smooth or bumpy, or even traumatic. I was born into a church I did not believe in, and stopped going as soon as I could get away with it. It seemed at the time to be an act of being honest with myself and those around me. Seeking and finding a testimony in my 20's brought with it this sort of "calm fearful panic", as it dawned on me that all that stuff I had walked away from, I must now intentionally walk towards. There were quite a number of times when I was totally out of my element, walking towards some new experience full of fear, sometimes even experiencing a pounding heart and close to hyperventilating. Heading to the bishop's office, telling friends and relatives, getting called to teach my first Sunday school lesson, getting asked to give my first blessing. Near panic, with the only thing on my side was this sense of "well, either the church is true or it isn't, either God is on my side or He isn't - I guess I'm about to find out one way or the other". My 180 on politics, however, was a mostly uneventful no-brainer. Discovering that there were better things to believe and better worldviews to hold than what my agnostic union democrat upbringing had taught me, really didn't involve any fear. I think a lot of that was because of the high caliber character of my father. Although he was ticked off to no end that, from his perspective, the smarter I got at college the dumber I got about things, he didn't seem to take it personally like close family often does. The beer-drinking gambling foul-mouthed WWII sergeant who mocked religion and anyone to the right of him politically - raised what turned out to be a good little conservative mormon boy. I never got the sense that he was disappointed in me, even though he had to have been at times. Fun stuff.

Everyone has a different spin on things, even different spins given to different audiences for different reasons. I'm as prone as anyone else to forget stuff over time, but after 9/11, I made a concerted effort to both pay attention and remember things going on. From what I recall, there were two narratives being pushed at me regarding why Dubya was going back into Iraq. The administration's claim was full of "We're gonna enforce UN resolution 1441". The jargon and messaging was full of words like "human rights violations", "treaty inspectors can't do their job", "WMD". And the critical response from the Dems (and anyone else opposing the action) was full of "no blood for oil" and "no imperialism". Over time I've watched folks defending Dubya's 2002 return to Iraq dwindle down to nothing. I think pretty much the last of it died out in the 2016 presidential campaign where Trump and Jeb "is it my turn now" Bush sparred over it. Jeb was still defending his brother and the war, and T shocked everyone by boldly criticizing the whole thing and finally it was ok for people on the right to admit openly the thing was a mistake. My efforts to pay attention and remember have basically culminated in a bunch of reading between the lines and concluding thus: 9/11 was an attempt to embolden the Arab/Muslim world by proving the US was a paper tiger. Americans responded by pouring billions into two decades of military response. We bounced the rocks around in Afghanistan with our bombs, and did a regime change on Iraq, making sure the entire globe saw us ticked off and fighting back and finding people to kill. As we left Afghanistan, our implicit message was "You wanna attack us again? Go for it - we'll come back again and make sure every single one of you *beep*s lose another brother, father, cousin, or son, assuming we don't end you. And we're gonna pick at least one of your nations to overthrow and occupy. We don't even care which one. Try us." I'm not interested in defending any of this, but right or wrong, this is the story that makes the most sense to me. I believe geopolitics can be effectively reduced to tales from an elementary school playground. They came into our side of the sandbox bloodied our noses, so ten of us rushed all of 'em and swung and punched and kicked, sort of indiscriminately, until a bunch of 'em were on the ground bleeding and their buddies weren't looking so brave any more. @Phoenix_person, I am not trying to dismiss or ignore the realities of warfare or the impact on our troops with this hyper-reductive scene. ~5k dead and ~33k injured US troops demand to be remembered. This just helps me understand why humans do what they do globally. So yeah, a similarly reductive viewing of what's happening right now. I took a little Krav Maga a decade ago. Quite the introduction: the first day included an exercise where we students had a black hood placed on our heads, and when it was removed, I had to spend 2 full minutes punching bags held by the 4 people surrounding me. That experience was sort of a reductive way I see Israel's view of it's place in the world surrounded by it's neighbors. In other words: When comparing population percentages, October 7 2023 saw the equivalent of a dozen 9/11's carried out against a nation whos founding motto is "never again". Israel gained the national will to try to settle things permanently. First by destroying everything that had been built in Gaza and killing everyone willing to resist them, then by pager-bombing their terrorist neighbors to the north, assassinating the crap out of every high-value terrorist they could find along the way. Now they're seeing if they have the will to finally end the source of it all - Iran and the Khameni regime and it's IRGC and decades-long proxy building effort to justify it's existence with the claim of 'death to America, death to Israel'. America can come if it wants, but we're doing it regardless. Stay tuned to see what the next couple weeks bring. In short, the answer to your question is "as much as it takes until Israel doesn't feel like it's surrounded by people willing and able to kill them any more, or their national resolve ebbs to levels that won't justify further action".

Oof. Add T talking about "unconditional surrender". What's happening right now in Iran isn't just an Israeli/American thing. Germany's chancellor defended Israel's attacks on Iran, expressing respect for the 'dirty work Israel is doing for all of us'. The G7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and US seem pretty united about it. Antisemitism and anti-Israel notions are more out there than they've been in decades. It's nice to see so many adults in the room understanding that blowing up parts of Iran is best characterized as Israel defending itself.

I learned long ago that sometimes, people's anger directed at me says more about them, than me. And sometimes it's not the best idea to attempt to deal with someone's excess emotion. A long time ago, when we lived in a poorer area, we were walking out to our car to drive somewhere on Christmas Eve. Up the street came a crying lady, approaching us asking for help. Between sobs she let us know something horrible had happened, some fight with a boyfriend or husband or something, she had been wronged. We offered to drive her to the police station or ER or something. She got a surprisingly-obvious devious look on her face, and asked us to drive her past a certain house. We said no, but re-iterated if she was hurt, we could get her to the cops or the hospital. In a heartbeat, we became the bad guys in her sobbing story, horrible racist white people for not helping a black lady. We got into the car amid screams of "merry f*&$ng christmas!". The 2nd great commandment demands that we love our neighbor. There's no exception given for random people who only occasionally cross our paths. It's important to know what love looks like, and what it doesn't. For us on Christmas Eve, love looked like an offer to take someone to people who could help, and a refusal to be a chauffeur to help her carry out whatever drama she had going in her life. When you kneel at the feet of your Savior, and He asks you "how did you love that polish lady who called you racist?", what sort of answer do you want to have ready to give? "I didn't seem to be able to do much for her, but I tried to have love for her in my heart" might be one answer.

Yeppers. https://primerogueinc.com/blog/the-pentagon-pizza-index-behavioral-osint-national-security-and-the-geopolitics-of-takeout It certainly spiked earlier as Israel attacked. I'm hearing people talking that's its currently spiking now, but haven't seen anything definite. Trump leaving G7 early, showing up on camera bemoaning Iran's lost opportunity to sign the deal, and flat out telling Iran to evacuate Tehran, coupled with the months-long multibillion dollar repositioning of military assets into position, might also be an indication of things. Or it could just be how T engages in dealmaking on the global scene. A lot depends on Iran I suppose. Related: UAE129 yelled "Leeeeroy Jenkins!".

Dawwww 5 month old daughter! Congratulations dad! My advice: As you go about raising your family, if you can't do it with an overabundance of love, don't do it. If you have an overabundance of love for something that isn't in your constitution, do it. This thing will succeed or fail dependent on how aligned both you and your wife are. And you can expect that both of you might see some of these things differently. A rule that has worked well for us: "If you don't hear two yesses, it's a no". Meaning: If there's anything on this list your wife isn't too excited about, it might not belong there. And if there's something your wife keeps talking about that isn't on this list, maybe it ought to be. I remember being all gung ho about stuff like this. Eventually my wife had to grab me by both cheeks and shout "SHE'S FOUR!!" into my face. I was a tad too gung ho at times. My wife was right. Your kids will teach you things as you are trying to teach them. You will teach them things you didn't intend to teach. Make sure you are more aligned to them, than any particular item or effort in this constitution. It'll be great when it works. When this or that effort fails, that's not a failure. Some of the items on your constitution might take, and some might take time. If there's an important item here that meets resistance until someone is twelve, that's still not a failure. Good luck dad!

This one has a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense yet. Stuff pointing in various directions. If Boelter turns out to be motivated solely by his pro-life stance, it'll be probably more horrible than the Planned Parenthood shooting (which happened just down the street from where I worked). That guy was a mentally ill nut who is still showing up in our local news fighting against being medicated so he can stand trial. Boelter doesn't seem to be a mentally ill anything - similar to both T would-be assassins and the UHC CEO killer. I'm against violence, especially deadly violence, from all sides of all fences. The loss in Minnesota is my loss too. And if otherwise mentally stable people are our new class of deadly threats? I'm not a happy camper every time I read the news.

I guess not. https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/minnesota-shootings-manhunt-06-14-25

Actually, I take that back. I will humbly accept a lecture on privilege from the vet who bears literal outward and inward scars gained during service to this country. Just not from the leftie activist. Tell you what: I wish you a happy flag day, or a happy no kings day. Pick the one you'd like to receive.

This attempt to justify violence and the destruction of property is not persuasive. The fact that any group of humans contains elements that can be whipped into a fervor and pointed at a target, does not mean that the LA riots were some sort of moral thing. Liberal guilt over privilege, demonizing the word and forming it into a weapon to be used against those who have it, is also not persuasive. My people were once forced out of their homes at gunpoint and made to trek across the plains in a winter that killed 1 out of every 12 refugees. My wife's ancestry includes a slave (the little Indian girl bought by a family of Saints who had settled in Utah), and slaveowners (the members of the various Ute tribes who raided each other for children to sell to the Saints). Closer to the present, my grandfather lost everything in the great depression, and left my young teen dad as the oldest male to care for a family while he rode the rails looking for work. My Dad & his mom and siblings moved a lot trying to find food - Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico - literally starving at times - only potatoes for days on end at times - only one pair of clothes. And I was once forced at knifepoint to recant my religion. I was once pushed against a set of lockers by a guy who showed me his knife and said "I cut mormons - are you a mormon?" Me, my dad, my grandpa: 3 generations of honest law-abiders, striving for a better future. They had to deal with those who tried to cut corners and break laws back then too. There have always been people who figure the laws shouldn't apply to them. People willing to do violence to get what they want. No, you don't get to use the word "privilege" against me, pal. The United States of America is one of, if not the greatest nations out there when we're measuring who can work their way into earned privilege. Again, you're as familiar with social media as I am - I suggest again that you go find the ever-growing numbers of legal immigrants who are supporting the deportation efforts, and go argue with them. I've said it before and I'll say it here again - you and yours haven't learned a single thing since T took the election with nationwide gains in almost every category. It's not that T and the cops won't stand for it, Americans won't stand for it. Your lawlessness and rioting will be put down, and every thrown brick turns into another 1000 Americans supporting more deportations. Your basic attitude of "I don't condone it but I won't shed any tears over it, and besides, it's useful for change" is widespread across the political left. And y'all seem hell-bent on losing the next decade's worth of elections over the issue. Go for it. Yeah, MLK was a heck of a guy. Guess what else he said: "Every summer we are going to have this kind of vigorous protest. My hope is that it will be nonviolent. I'm hoping we can avoid riots because riots are selfish and socially destructive." "I'm here to say tonight that if every negro in the United States turns against nonviolence I'm gonna stand up as a lone voice and say this is the wrong way!" "The basic idea that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to the negro in his struggle for freedom and justice. I think for the negro to turn to violence would be both impractical and immoral." Again, once the fires start, once the protests turn into riots, once the rocks or bricks or water bottles are thrown - you lose. Especially after the riots of 2021 are recent enough in people's memories, and the results were basically failed cultural reform efforts like DEI and Kendi's stupid antiracism. So, the various -isms have had what, 150 years to work across the planet? There are -isms that have resulted in the worst atrocities, and there is capitalism. The phrase is "the least horrible choice". When paired with a representative republic and a constitution which mandates a limited government, separation of powers, and the notion of govt by consent, there have been zero worst atrocities. Holocaust? Nazis (aka the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The "Nationalsozialists".) The Armenian Genocide that killed 1.5 million? A coup that paired a dictatorship with ethnic nationalism. The Rwandan Genocide that killed around .8 million? Ethnic genocide carried out by a government that engaged in state control of the economy that favored the Hutus over the Tutsis. The Cambodian Genocide and it's almost 2 million dead? Communists seeking to transform Cambodia into a classless society based on their interpretation of Marxist-Leninist ideology. The Great Chinese Famine that killed somewhere between 15-45 million? A result of the Great Leap Forward. More Communists trying to transform China from an agrarian society into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. The Soviet Gulags that killed between 1.5 and 2 million? The Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics. The 1-2 million deaths in India starting in the late '40's might be your best chance lay stuff like this at the feet of a developed capitalist nation. Britain is maybe 40% to blame, initiating the partition and then granting everyone their freedom and bailing on the whole scene as all the factions that had been kept at bay descended on each other. Ghandi tried hard, and he wasn't the only person preaching nonviolence, but it wasn't in the cards in that place. But the US isn't 1940's India. It's not like anyone is howling for blood (except for the growing numbers of leftists supportive of executing CEOs and assassinating presidents and burning down the system in the name of fighting fascism and racism). But apart from them, it's not like the white christian businessmen or McD's employee are howling to snuff out immigrants. We get to be a nation of laws, governed by consent of the people, with an executive branch enforcing laws passed by the legislative branch, and the judicial branch either giving T the green light or a smack down, depending on the particulars. Porous borders are a threat to this nation. Illegal immigration chews up lives and creates misery in the people seeking a better life. Human trafficking sucks. Child sex slavery sucks. Bad actors using open borders to smuggle humans, drugs, weapons across it must stop. Tall walls, wide well-guarded gates, robust immigration policies, humanitarian efforts, and punishing offenders. All of that is just, moral, and good. Win or lose your next election as you see fit. I don't see defending temper tantrums and yelling about privilege as a path to it, but you do you.

October 7 2023 started this. The coordinated attacks, death mayhem slaughter, rapes, and hostage-taking launched against a nation who's founding motto is "never again". With funding/training/equipment/planning coming from Iran. Gaza could have been a jewel with all the freedom and funds flowing into it over the last bunch of years. Instead, they operated as an Iranian terrorist proxy and filled the land with tunnels and missile production sites under hospitals, and Hamas stayed evil and perpetuated itself. I stand with Israel, and I am impressed with them for having the national will to move to this next chapter, which is the only chapter with a hope in hell of actually preventing another O7 next decade. And holy crap - they also pulled a Ukrainian-drone thing, by actually operating drone launch operations from inside Iran. The future of warfare is changing. The cost of doing things like smuggling semi-trailers full of semi-autonomous explosives-carrying drones into a nation is dropping so low, that the number of nations and groups out there capable of doing it has grown ten, twentyfold. Random terrorist attack happening in my city - I'm having to reluctantly add that to my list of worries.

Related to this thread - I just discovered this essay on the church's website: Peace and Violence among 19th-Century Latter-day Saints Not sure if this is a recent addition to the gospel topic essays, or if I'm just late to the party, but I learned many things I didn't know before. It is not easy reading if you're encountering it for the first time.

Me too. We just have different views of how reality works and how to best go about it. The devil always lie in the details. Concepts of "we" and "should" get turned into "government should be allowed to use force in able to" by both of us. I get it. The left is fueled by emotion far more than the right. There is anger, or sadness, or the tortured cry of a child reacting to a perceived injustice, and therefore "we" "must" do "something". Each one of those words carry a definition and a weight. Left and right have different understandings of what those words should mean, and what started as a unified position of valuing life and human dignity, immediately becomes two divergent and conflicting ways to go about being a good human. Yep. Left is emotional, therefore laws and systems and policies and rules no longer matter. The left individual doesn't care. (Source: Phonenix_Person: "I don't care".) There has been perceived injustice. That means something is wrong and must change. Preserving human life and dignity is a function of government, and government must do everything in it's power to preserve life and dignity. Conservatives such as myself start where you start: "human life and dignity is important". But we perceive the world as inherently unfair, full of threats and violence and sadness and trials. And humans are by nature greedy and selfish. Human history is a laughably long loop of people taking power for noble reasons and then becoming corrupt because humans are corruptible. The more power, the more corruption. The largest attempts of government to ensure everyone is treated fairly become the most deadly murderous regimes that end up with human death tolls in the millions. The millions starved in the Ukraine, the purges in Russia and China, the killing fields of Cambodia, none of these come from capitalism. They come from other -isms. So, the best answer is as just a government as you can come up with, people with folks who serve at the behest of those who have elected them, with a constitution which specifies what government can do (protect borders and enforce immigration law), and what it can't do. Checks and balances to ensure power doesn't get too concentrated. No, we're enforcing existing immigration laws that were put into place by a government made up of representatives of the people. The political will to do so hasn't existed in our country for a long time, because videos of sad people don't win elections. Now, an election has been won by someone who doesn't care about being re-elected. By majorities of people tired of hearing about people like Laken Riley and Matthew Denice and Ivory Smith and Maverick Martzen and AJ Wise Jr. and Larisha Sharell Thompson and Rachel Morin. Tired of hearing about cartel-fueled violence and drugs in the US. Tired of hearing about how the Biden administration misplaced thousands of trafficked children by doing dumb things. Yeah, there's plenty of blather about MS13 and Tren de Aragua and whatnot, but there is also a lot of fact that this stuff exists and there are monsters among us. The US has legal ways to enter the country. What's happening right now are for those who have not just cut in line, but bypassed the line completely. It makes it harder for those trying to do things legally. The claim that we must abandon immigration laws because people are fleeing oppression is false on its face. The claim that Mormons who are in favor of imposing just consequences on people who have intentionally broken the law, are somehow going against the dictates of our religion, are nonserious. Born of a lack of critical thought about the importance of immigration laws, and what borders mean. Born of emotion, as you demonstrate above, and not reason. "Such tactics": ICE enters an area attempting to serve warrants on known criminals who have done more than just overstay a visa, more than just drive without a license, more than just petty theft because they're hungry. Individuals with records and convictions. These people are, to varying degrees, accepted parts of the communities in which they live. So people get mad and resist, and ICE/HSA/Local authorities start grabbing anyone who is resisting by breaking the law in ways like throwing rocks/bottles/molotovs. When someone with a warrant is found amongst other lawbreakers, they get grabbed too. Family members with legal status are given the choice: You wanna go with deported dude, or stay in the states? Families of illegals are deported together. "Scorched earth tactics" - gimme a break. The cops aren't the ones scorching the earth. People torching Google cars are scorching the earth, being defended by folks who "don't condone" the act, but "don't shed any tears" over it either. I'm emboldened to see the number of legal migrants on social media standing up and being recognized, voicing their support for these tactics. One suggestion I would have for you, is find one of them to argue with. Deporting illegal families is justified when they break the law and deportation is one consequence. If you enter the US illegally, it's a federal violation 8 U.S. Code § 1325, which includes entering without proper inspection or making false statements during entry attempts. If you remain in the U.S. unlawfully, you're committing a crime according to 8 U.S. Code § 1182(a)(9). If you remain for more than 180 days but less than one year may face a three-year ban from re-entering the U.S. Those who remain for one year or more may face a ten-year ban. Facts > feelings. I reject the premise. ICE starts by going after specific individuals. If there's a family of criminal illegal aliens associated with that individual, their crimes are minor, and yet they have committed crimes. The minors in these situations are not criminals, but they have been moved by their parents (or trafficked by traffickers). In these cases, my faith tells me it's best to allow each situation to be determined by what's best for the children, and I believe our laws reflect this. When a whole family is illegal, keep them together as they're deported. When some are and some aren't, you give the legal folks the choice to stay or go with those being deported. That's the most just, humane, fair way to deal with family members who have broken laws that earn the penalty of deportation. My faith tells me that Trump's offer to pay anyone here illegally $1000 to self-deport is just, humane, and more than fair. Hope all this helps.

I suppose this is one unbridgeable divide between me and thee, @Phoenix_person. If lawless violence and fire and destructive acts from people I consider "my people" were heading towards something you value, I would use whatever legal means at my disposal to stop them. And I would weep if my side was successful at criminal acts of burning things to ashes. Even if I despised whatever you were valuing. Even if I thought the world might be better without whatever you were valuing. I suppose it's nice that you're not out there actively condoning and supporting it, I guess.

In stunning news, Colorado's Dem governor and Dem Denver mayor took care of business. ~100 protestors at capitol hill yesterday, and it all went well until it didn't. Protests are good, riots are not. Clashes started, rocks and bottles and stuff started flying. The protest became a riot. The cops read the riot act, then dispersed the riot. Arrested maybe a dozen or two rioters. So, kudos to the liberal blue democrats in charge of Denver, because they did good. And by "do good", I mean they understand how important law and order is to the people who will vote for them in the next elections. It's nice when a representative government understands the will of the people.

Hi @InallHisglory and welcome. Color me confused. These Paul brothers? I'm confused.