NeuroTypical

Again, I was in the phase III Moderna trial. I wouldn't call it a "little test", it was the third phase of a standard 3 phase trial. Phase 1 of testing was on animals and lasted several months. Phase 2 was on tens of thousands of healthy adults in their prime, and also a year. They started phase 3 during that year. Phase 3 was for the random population including schlubs like me with various health issues. Phase 3 also included tens of thousands of humans, and also lasted about a year. Weekly reporting into an app hungry to hear every symptom, every hiccup, regardless of if it could be traced to the shot or not. Monthly blood work. It was a standard double-blind study with a control group, and nobody knew if they were getting the placebo or the real shot. At the end I was "unblinded" and informed that I got the actual sauce and not the placebo. Can you tell me how you consider all that "little testing", and by what measure you call it that? I believe you. You didn't describe your symptoms or duration, so I don't know if it just made you sick and sore for a few days, or if you have like heart problems to this day or something. A "lifetime of wondering" if you "essentially poisoned" yourself begs the question - are you qualified to know what you're worried about? The Lord's prophet, also an accomplished and wise heart surgeon, painted a broad picture to our church and the world: They urged us to trust the medical establishment: As appropriate opportunities become available, the Church urges its members, employees and missionaries to be good global citizens and help quell the pandemic by safeguarding themselves and others through immunization. Individuals are responsible to make their own decisions about vaccination. In making that determination, we recommend that, where possible, they counsel with a competent medical professional about their personal circumstances and needs. You and I have some disagreements here, but I'm also quite ticked off about Biden's pre-emptive pardoning of Faucci and others.

I can't see how that could possibly be true. At the height of things, my county and state dashboards both painted a picture. They both broke out hospitalizations and deaths by vaccination status, meaning there was a graph with one bar for "hospitalized for covid and vaxxed" and one for "hospitalized for covid and nonvaxxed". Same for deaths: "died of covid and vaxxed" and "died of covid and nonvaxxed". This was starting in 2021, after we had finally learned to tell the difference between "died of covid" and "died with covid". Both of those charts showed, consistently across like 2 years, greater numbers of people in our hospitals who hadn't been vaxxed, and greater number of people dying who hadn't been vaxxed. As the vaccine rollout continued and the majority of Coloradans became vaxxed, and then the supermajority, the hospitals and morgues still stayed fuller with nonvaxxed folks than vaxxed. All that aside, I'm happy that congressional hearings are taking place. Let everyone have their say, and pay attention, and alter opinions based on the picture painted by the facts. You'd think if the vax was killing people, it would have shown up during the human trials. I was part of the nationwide phase III Moderna vaccine trial, and as far as I can tell our death rate wasn't any higher than the normal death rate of ghe population in general.

Congratulations @JohnsonJones! I've paid a lot of attention to folks who retire, and folks who are retired, so I can have a glimpse into what the future might hold for me. Here's what people are saying: - "I absolutely don't have to use my brain as much. It now takes effort to find challenging things to think about." - "Figuring out how to keep busy takes more work than actually doing the things that keep me busy." I commonly hear that retiring is a massive adjustment in a marriage, throwing things up into the air and forcing lots of change. People report varying degrees of things getting easier or harder, better or worse, nicer or not so nice. The folks who seem to have the best grasp on things talk of approaching the change in a planned way that has involved a lot of communication. I can see this requiring my wife and I to approach my retirement carefully. So, I've also gathered input from spouses given to new retired breadwinners, where both parties report satisfaction and love as a result: - "You know, I promised to spend my life with you, but not all at once." - "You will find ways to be out of this house and out of my hair on a regular basis." - "We schedule everything, from trips to fights." As you gain retired miles, please add to my growing database of things to think about.

That's brilliant @zil2. I'd only make one change to that thing: Replace "dejected" with "ejected". I've been in many meetings where I wished for either an ejection seat with a rocket strapped to it, or a trap door of some kind.

I am utterly sympathetic to every word being uttered here. That said, apparently God likes meetings for some things, so I guess I have to as well. If the D&C wasn't bad enough: Moroni had to deal with meetings too: I might be wrong, but this is the only scripture that says we've got to go to church every Sunday:

I just came from 30 minutes of arguing with people about whether Trump was really shot in the ear or not. There's endless millions upon millions of people, just in the US, who'll fall for quick fake vids. Again, the main point isn't "nobody will believe someone licked uranium". My main point is now it takes minutes for the layuser to come up with a strikingly convincing fake.

Google Veo3 is currently in some sort of early release mode, with folks getting their copy by documenting what they'll do with it - and "content creator" is one of the professions. So, guessing at motivations, I'd guess that whoever made these videos is a fan of the tech and wanted to generate lots of likes and subscribes to their channel by making click-and-share-worthy videos. A good way to do that is with a bit of shock value. Yeah? I mean, it also might have been a random marketing effort from the Veo3 people, trying to go viral and generate interest, or it might have just been a random user. Either way, it's now insanely easy to make such things. Not sure if this is behind a paywall or not, but here you go: https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-technology/we-made-this-film-with-ai-its-wild-and-slightly-terrifying/D17B233B-1E06-400D-9095-B5247306DD38?mod=article_inline

I show them examples of how good the lies are becoming, so they understand how important it is to vet things before you accept them. Behold - any 12 year old can now create videos like this by just entering a prompt into Veo3:

Well, if we're tellin' Churchey themed jokes... An armless man rings a church bell by hitting it with his face, but tragically falls to his death. When asked who he was, the bishop replies, "I don't know his name, but his face rings a bell." The next day, his brother, also armless, tries to ring the bell and meets the same fate, leading the bishop to say, "He's a dead ringer for his brother."

I'm a big fan of taking critics and saying "oh, you seem to have it all figured out - let's put you in charge of doing it right." I still remain a fan of being a critic of stake people with an overinflated notion of their stewardships and importance in the lives of people living at the ward level. At this point I'm sort of hoping someone approaches me with a Stake calling - I'll speak energetically and passionately about my thoughts that the stake needs to stay in it's own lane and stop trying to do bishop things. We'll see if they still want me. My heart goes out to all of us random saints just trying to be good disciples and have enough energy for our callings. I am challenged to love the stake representative that just comes up with some activity he wants everyone in all the wards to do and begins pushing it out expecting everyone to jump, without so much as checking with bishops or aux presidents in any wards.

I'm glad to see the basic human right of free speech is getting a lot of notice in the UK. How many people are arrested every week in the UK for stuff they post online? The solution to bad speech is more speech. It's not trying to force people not to say things disagreeable.

You take the phrase "historical ignorance" as a nasty insult? I meant no offense. You come here saying openly that are hearing things for the first time after 60 years in the church. If you don't like the phrase I chose, what would you call it? I mean, all of us are ignorant of things until we learn them, right? Would it help if I gave a partial list of things of which I'm mostly ignorant? - Most languages on earth except English. - Math starting with algebra and anything more advanced. - How to not insult a struggling Canadian while trying to help him, apparently.

Are you sure? I mean, I gave some, but I don't see any indication that you noticed. Much better - thanks. I'm glad to see that the pros also found it impossible to give a good rendering of the text. So, it appears to be a war council trying to figure out how to keep the Saints from going extinct at the hands of their enemies. "J. Higbee the Indians r continually unfriendly killing our cattle & stealing horses we have lost between 50, 60 head. they cannot sustain themselves there. we drive our cattle down in the morning & bring them up at night. The Indians fired their guns at our boys & they found one [illeg] with 4 arrows another with a tomahawk in it they say the Mormons are no [illeg] they want to fight & will live on our cattle they say they mean to keep our cattle & got & get the other Indians to kill us." Do you know what it means when Higbee says "they cannot sustain themselves there"? That means unless something changes, those saints will all die. Why do you find this disturbing? Do you not see an endless tsunami of similar examples pouring forth from the old and new testaments? Not to mention any semi-serious reading of human history convinces us all that most human history is an endless cycle of conflict and war and bloodshed. Please - put your assumptions into words - why do you find it disturbing that BY talked about, even ordered, killing threats to the saints' existence? It's understandable that someone who is moving from a life spent in historical ignorance and assumption making, gets disturbed when confronted with uncomfortable truths and realities. It's quite common. It happens to everyone, actually. The lucky ones have it happen in early adulthood when they venture out into the world and begin interacting with different ideas and perspectives, and read more books. It's happening to you in the 3rd quarter century of your life, so it's easy to understand why you're disturbed. For contrast: I began learning all of this stuff 30 years ago in my mid-20's, as I ventured online to the early discussion forums and newsgroups. I sought out places where critic met apologist, and that's how I learned the seedier parts of our history, along with the apologetic defenses. If you'd like a similar experience, you can still go through the old FARMS Review of Books: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/ It's been many years since I read all these, and I don't remember exactly if those books address what looks to be your main troubling topic, but these essays do address (in varying degrees of completeness, accuracy, and persuasiveness), all of the criticisms leveled against our church and it's members that were being made from the '80s through the 2010's. It's got a very handy search function. I see another unquestioned baseless assumption that you've probably made across your whole life. It looks something like this: "Everything there is to know about the church and it's history, I will learn from the church." Look deeply into yourself my friend. Have you been believing this lie? For, like, your whole life? You want apologetics? I prescribe introspection. You've been ignorant your whole life, and now you're being blindsided by harsh realities you've never encountered before. Troubles and doubts are normal and healthy. They won't go away with a quoted paragraph here or a friendly post on an anonymous message board there. I just gave you a great source to have your troubles and doubts resolved. Will you spend a decade at it like I did?

And just to keep harping on the left for the horrible moral cancer thriving in their midst, have twenty-two thousand likes for the notion that the random target of a random shooting was a terrorist because he lived in Israel: Oh wait - it's up to twenty-five thousand likes now. Careful reading the comments in that link though. It's an interesting mix of reasonable takes, hateful takes, and some of the worst antisemitic horribleness you can find on planet earth. Like, stuff you saw in 1930's nazi propaganda sort of horribleness.

Oof - and more news from the victims: As it happens, Lischinsky was an Israeli Christian who called Israel “the only place in the [Middle East] where Christians can thrive.” Milgrim, an American Jew, worked to build friendships between Israelis and Palestinians as a path to peace. The event they attended was a panel on multifaith humanitarian efforts to aid Gaza and other Arab war zones. Dude sure wrote a nice little manifesto though. Once you start dehumanizing who you think is your enemy, you can justify killing basically anyone.

Psychoanalyzing historical figures through historical records gets tricky fast. It's easy to be an armchair shrink, but it's even easier to judge unrighteously by filling in any missing context with our modern cultural contexts and understandings. Brigham and all historical figures faced many influences from their culture and society, and looking only at their diaries usually ignores the bigger picture of their experiences and decisions. Another way to put it: To us fat lazy 21st century 1st world elites, 1800's frontier Americans all look like crazy savages. We have lost all clues of how much effort those people had to put into just surviving the winter, much less the threats of extinction from other human sources. Here's a fun little slice of how things were back then: My wife is a descendant of the Native American slave trade. When the Mormons hit the valley, the various Ute tribes saw increased opportunities for trade. And raiding other villages for captive women and children became a new booming industry, because the good hearted LDS folks would buy slaves from them, especially if the slave traders mistreated their captives in front of the Mormons or threatened to kill them if they weren't sold. I wonder how accurate we can be with our attempts to psychoanalyze the chiefs of the various Sanpete and Timpanogos and other Ute tribes for thinking such things were a perfectly normal way to conduct a trading relationship with the newcomers. Yep. Even when I download the large filesize copy and drill down to max magnification, it's still nigh impossible to read. @jdf135, unless I miss my guess, you're going off of someone's text here. Care to post it? If it's an anti source, don't post the link to the source, but we can't really respond to your claims until we see upon what they are based.

I'm glad to hear it. When this news is covered on tiktok and x, the anonymous comments from folks identifying as the progressive left are about 90/10 in support of dude and his action. It's a universal phenomenon that people talk crap anonymously, and half of the responses are probably bots, but it's still rather chilling to see firsthand. That 10% is nice to see though. Lots of "I'm all in on Gaza and f*** israel but what dude did was wrong".

For the record, I once had an English teacher who would routinely yell at us any time he saw a paper that contained too many instances of the words "this" or "it". Both were anathema in his book. Although I guess I can see his point. Who wants to spend an hour reading 20 versions of this: The War of 1812 is still talked about today. This is for obvious reasons. It's because it had such a big impact on the world, and this cannot be forgotten. Back in the day, I could take that line of text and turn it into a 3 page essay. My grades usually reflected it.

Yeesh. In the hours since I made that post: https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/israeli-embassy-washington-dc-shooting-05-21-25 https://www.wsj.com/us-news/two-israeli-embassy-staffers-killed-in-shooting-near-jewish-museum-in-washington-3154646f?mod=hp_lead_pos7 This guy left behind a manifesto claiming 'armed demonstration' is now justified to oppose Israel because of their actions in Gaza. He dehumanizes his target, stating "Those of us against the genocide take satisfaction in arguing that the perpetrators and abettors have forfeited their humanity. I sympathize with this viewpoint and understand its value in soothing the psyche" It's much easier to kill people if you don't believe they're people. His target were these young folks, engaged to be married. Dude claims a moral high ground here, defending killing by saying "A perpetrator may then be a loving parent, a filial child, a generous and charitable friend, an amiable stranger, capable of moral strength at times when it suits him and sometimes even when it does not, and yet be a monster all the same." Dude is calling everyone against Israel's actions in Gaza to rise up and do similar things. I guess we'll see if BP's voiced concerns get realized and we see more news stories.

Hi folks, I first saw the search issue about a month ago. @pam is working with our technical folks, but it's taking a lot of time. They'll implement a fix, then Pam tries to recreate the search index, which takes like 2 days. When that doesn't fix things, it's back to the technical team. Hang in there peeps.

Since we're all reminiscing about history: I remember when Pres. Obama was elected, and there was a nationwide two year long run on ammunition. I never really figured out why though. I heard that law enforcement was stocking up and that was the reason. Plenty of folks on the left were claiming it was me and mine who were arming up to overthrow the govt because a black person was in charge and we supposedly just couldn't handle it. I thought that was odd. I was a member of all sorts of 2A and gulcher and patriot/survivalist forums back then, but nobody was talking about assassinating the president. There was plenty of talk (like there always is in those circles) about how the nation was about to fall and it was time to get your preps in place, so you can defend your family when everything collapses. But zero talk about Obama. The folks passionate enough to hate, all hated Hillary and Bill. There are always fringey dangerous people out there, in every demographic, on all sides. But the left has always been more willing to do violence in the name of politics, and it has been getting worse for a decade. The ascension of social media saw popularization of the term "unalive" as a way to get around filters and flagging law enforcement. I got told to unalive myself on at least two occasions that I can remember, back when arguing on facebook was a thing. Goofy nonserious CHAZ/CHOP uprising/occupation eventually ended after folks started getting killed, as the natural progression of progressive anarchy reached it's logical conclusion and they started killing each other. BLM and Antifa ramped up the violence from the left to a nationwide phenomenon, causing billions (maybe a trillion?) in damage. When Roe v. Wade got overturned, I noticed an uptick in random folks on the left talking violence. Twitter was notorious for censoring right speech and letting left speech fly at the time: Then at least two folks tried to assassinate Trump. Can't really peg 'em as leftists, although both of them did donate to ActBlue at one point in their lives. Then the UHC CEO got offed. It wasn't by a right winger. @Phoenix_person has been coming here ever since the election sharing stories about how he's seeing his progressive left circles getting a bit more armed up. Every month, I get a tad more nervous living in Colorado. Our long term planning now has us bailing on this state before it turns into Portland.

Raising your hand and sustaining fallible humans can be challenging sometimes. It helps if you understand that sustaining people in their calling occasionally means not putting up with their bullcrap if that's what they're shoveling. I learned this lesson once as an executive secretary in a bishopric meeting. The stake representative was chewing out the bishop for not having all his ducks in a row regarding some priesthood advancements. The bishop said something to his clerk, who left the room. Bishop then took out his copy of the handbook and began reading verbatim the section on ward and stake duties and procedures when it came to such things. After he had read the section, the clerk had returned with several records, and the bishop proceeded to assign dates to every single thing the ward was supposed to do. Then he turned to the stake responsibilities and read them off, one at a time, saying things like "the stake has had bro Smith's teacher ordination paperwork since [date]. Have you done step 3 and completed the paperwork?" "the stake was informed about their need to interview bro Jones for advancement to elder on [date]. Has the stake contacted bro Jones to set up that meeting?" The questions went on and on. The stake was found lacking on every single item. After the bishop was done, he asked "ok. So, is there anything the stake is waiting for on our end? If not, I think we can move to the next topic." I've never seen such a royal butt-whipping as I saw the bishop give our stake rep that day. There was love in the air, and there was also absolutely no mistake about who had dropped the ball. I mean, you're not bishop, but if you're filling your calling, you can speak with the same authority. You can say what you will and will not be doing. You can point out how other people are not doing their jobs. And even though it's a skill that's hard to master, you can do such things in love.

Um, @Carborendum? This is a fake. It uses random video from multiple sources coupled with an AI-generated Thomas Sowell voice, and an AI-generated script. I have to admit, I was a full 7 minutes through the video before I got suspicious enough to look deeper. This is an excellent warning to everyone in the human race: Be automatically wary of everything you see online. Especially stuff from people you like, saying things you'd think they would say.

This guy? BYU professor Darin Self? https://www.darinself.com/

Fortunately, the county housing my city continues to be deep red. https://www.facebook.com/EPCSheriffsOffice/posts/pfbid0cKgviN3WNWXkXKpFBVEqtLQHsFZ7ybjhhgxJ3tH5epKaC8QzCs7qqwCjf2WzMooBl