Yeah, notary not required unless the resignation was sent through a law office (which is also not required. LDS Inc accepts DIY resignations). I think their problem with law office mediated resignations is that when they get a letter from a lawyer, they have to send it to their lawyers, just to make sure there are no legal gotchas in the resignation. This costs them time and money, so they add
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Re Infinity - see my comment about David Foster Wallace's book above. Technical, but highly recommended. I will take a look at your two, plus probably read Wallace again, now that it is on the desk.
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I don't know enough about the blood and guts of LLMs to be able to defend/reject non-linear math as a basis for how it operates. I do know that there are scads of matrix multiplies involved, which by themselves are linear operations. I also know that chip makers are allocating more and more space on cpu chips for matrix operations, more than seems necessary for today's computing. Looks like they
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Last point first - what's non-linear about AI? As I understand it, neural nets are basically mountains of matrix multiplies, essentially the same operations used in the graphics processing needed for video games. That is why a company that makes graphics cards, Nvidia, is now the darling of the AI industry. Matrix operations are the heart and soul of linear algebra. Now, about infinity -
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I have a bone to pick with Gödel - discussion for another day. I ignore Henry's apparent dismissal of the anthropic principle. I don't think even he believes that. He just likes to argue.
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So when was the Gregorian calendar adopted? If you really want to get into the weeds, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar It's about 18 pages long, so very weedy. The reason Pope Greg the 13th wanted to shift was because the Catholic formula for the date of Easter was based on March 21 being the spring equinox. The Julian calendar, instituted by Julius Caesar (hence the
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I attended a couple of conferences, driving out here from Dakotasota. Ironically, I now live within walking distance of the venue. I remember meeting Cuz X, cludgie, Phantom Shadow, and Jerry and Cheryl. One year Jerry had 3 t-shirts printed up as Nephite #1, #2 and #3. I was Nephite #2. I still have the shirt. I may wear it to a SL temple tour next year. That should give their greeters/sent
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So did I. My brain is now capable of autocorrect errors without the aid of a computer. :-/
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Don't call me "sir." I work for a living. - every drill sergeant on earth
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Ah, your subject line no verb. She was in SLC, 40 years ago. As of now, she continues to be dead.
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And the move toward modern disciplinary practices was to avoid more lawsuits. The Norman Hancock case occurred after they had stopped publishing the names of excommunicants, but they still lost. OK, technically they settled out of court, close enough to losing. https://mormon-alliance.org/casereports/volume3/part1/v3p1c05.htm ETA: the current resignation process has been streamlined compare
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Darn, I missed most of this thread because traveling. Not that I have much of anything that needed to be added. I didn't see anything that I am in radical disagreement with. I even sort of agree with Henry to the extent that the ability of math to describe the workings of the universe is impressive. I don't see that as proof positive that there is an intelligence of some sort underlying the unive
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Congratulations and welcome to the club. I just got back from the opening day of the Cody entrance to Yellowstone (which was yesterday), because I can because retired. I like to go at least once a year, and first and last days can be exciting/dicey depending on the weather. This was the least snowy year I have ever seen there. I also heard from Canadian friends that Vancouver, BC just issued lawn
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https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2026/04/26/these-lds-missionaries-spread-word/ SLTrib is supposed to drop their paywall in early May, so this article probably doesn't make the cut. I have been intrigued by the designation "service missionary". The church started reporting those numbers what, 10 or 15 years ago? It's not like anyone had been asking for that information, nor did th
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https://pagesix.com/2026/04/23/entertainment/secret-lives-of-mormon-wives-orange-county-spinoff-confirmed-with-bobbi-althoff-more/ I bet the PR department at the COB are pulling their hair out. They want nice soft-focus stories about the new visitor centers at Temple Square, and instead what they get are Park City murder trials, The Bachelorette getting yanked, and yet more Secret Lives of Mor
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Yeah, horning in on Mormon claims to be the real descendants of Israel. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/23/world/asia/india-jewish-tribe-israel-bnei-menashe.html Probably paywalled, but not much there that is really essential to your salvation. It's just kind of interesting that it exists at all. It is about 10K people living in extreme easter India, right next Myanmar. They study the Tora
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>1. If the world was not conceived by a being, then the applicability of mathematics is a pure coincidence. Not so fast there. The natural world shows a great affinity for symmetry. Crystals have multiple forms of symmetry. Our bodies are bilaterally symmetric. Other forms of life exhibit various forms of symmetry. It is no surprise that mathematics deals with symmetry, nor is it a surpr
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Or there is a madness to his method. God likes symmetry.
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Lord of the Rings is more moral than the BoM, not to mention more believable, even though it has talking trees. It is also considerably more popular. The tv series M*A*S*H is more moral than the BoM. Hell, "The Muppet Show" is more moral than the BoM. The BoM and any James Bond movie are in the same moral ballpark, but again, the Bond films are way more popular.
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I'm waiting for the lawsuit against "Secret Lives of Mormon Wives". I'd watch that in a heartbeat.
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LW and I are not arguing against that, it's just that calendars are a fascinating subject in their own right, and since you brought it up... I'm really busy today, and doing my annual road trip to Yellowstone Thursday, to be there for opening day at the Cody entrance. Lots of cute little redheaded baby bison running around right now. :). So I will try to make another installation on this threa
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"Name removal" is the euphemism the LDS church (and most of its members) used for "resignation", the process of a person terminating their own membership in the church. The church has recently discontinued using the phrase "name removal". Their handbook now uses the standard English word "resignation". "Excommunication" is the term for the ch
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I can go down a very deep rabbit hole on this. I was fascinated by calendars as a child I suppose because it is the sort of thing that would fascinate a child on the spectrum. I had a particular fascination because one side of my family was Orthodox, so I got to get off school for Orthodox Christmas in January, which I thought was cool. Also, there were usually two different dates for Easter, tho
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I'd forgotten how funny this was. This is a rabbit hole well worth going down.
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I'm still struggling with the Pythagorean comma.
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OK, she has the body fat level of a whippet, which can't be easy to do, so points for determination. It'd be easier to believe the sport was about bodybuilding without all the boob jobs and high heels. ETA: She also towers over the other women in the photos. Google god (who giveth to all liberally, and upbraideth not) says she is 5'6", so these other women must all be 4'11", and figu
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$170,000 is indeed quite modest for the Board of Directors (which the Q15, or at the very least the FP are) of a $300 billion corporation. I know of a couple middle managers in SLC making slightly over $100K, and a couple of programmers at Target Corp with 4 years experience in the $130K range. $170K may not be chopped liver, but it is nowhere near anything to write home about for a senior ex
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The Utah measles outbreak made the Washington Post yesterday. At least some pediatric practices are screening unvaccinated cild patients in the parking lot, screener in full protective gear. The minimum age for the first of the two dose regimen of MMR vaccine has been lowered in Utah from 1 year down to 6 months, so there are fewer children with no protection. The first dose only gives tempora
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Kudos to the church for not sanctioning guys for long hair. Someday, BYU-X will catch up. I suppose there is an indirect sanction in that he's ineligible to be bishop, but that would be true if he wore Crocs to church too. As for the long hair - bellbottoms for the skull. That may have been a trendy form of rebellion fifty years ago. Now it is vertical striped bellbottoms - harmless, but it's
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The rationale the church bureaucracy gave for needing to change was that LDS Inc is now an international religion and names like beehive and miamaid don't translate well into other languages. That's no doubt true, and besides, the names had a 1950s vibe to them and were getting a little stale. But the new ones are not getting much buzz from what I can see. For starters, they aren't so much
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