About 45 years ago, my BYU roommates and I went to hang out with friends at a UofU co-ed dorm floor. I forget which dorm. It was quite a long time ago. It was all shared, with signage for the shower areas. I recall being in there 'seeing a man about a horse' and then a couple of co-eds coming in to use the stalls. Now, that was a surprise and quite a contrast to BYU dorms. I have no idea what the
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With the current capabilities of AI image generators - especially with what has come out in the last couple of weeks - these types of ‘snitch lines’ will be fraught with peril for all. I will not be surprised if protest complaints start showing up with images of politicians and others on the wrong side of this legislation that will give them reasons to rethink the cruelty they seek to inflict
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But what the airspeed of an unladen swallow?
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This! 1000%. All bets are off when kids arrive. Perhaps see if he will go with you to SDA services. Will he or not? If so, is there a willingness to engage with and understand your beliefs? A relationship of equals is just that. If it seems my way or the highway, take the highway.
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16. PEMDAS is the rule. But I wish it was 42, as I am always looking for the meaning of life…
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I realized some ago when I was trying to describe Mormonism to a nevermo that I sounded a little bit crazy. There is just so much material. This is what I share now if asked. “…well, when my son got married in the Mormon temple I was not allowed to attend because I was no longer a practicing member of the church…” The reaction is surprise, disbelief, and a short leap to ‘that is p
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Rocky Horror picture show?
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So true. They snatch the widow's mite from her aged hand, with a hunger in their eyes that can never be sated, and spirit it away to drop into their horde, carefully kept hidden from the widow's eyes.
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For grins, with the assistance of AI (Anthropic/Claude), I thought I'd estimate how much each member of the church might get if it had to distribute its assets evenly. I am using active adult members as a rough proxy for the number of individuals that wealth might get distributed to that might be roughly equivalent to a number that accounted for married vs. single, attending vs. not attending, al
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Yes, I am very fortunate. It's good to see you here, Phantom Shadow—and as you know, I did marry up :-).
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Just think of the ‘discovery’. Many cases are settled in part to avoid the discovery ending up in the public domain. I would be interested to hear thoughts from those who have a better understanding than I do of how the legal process may play out—whatever the verdict or remedy may be.
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When I was well on the way out, and my DW had accepted that this was inevitable, she realized how distressing it was for me to wear garments. She went to the store and bought me several sets of regular non-white underwear. I know that was incredibly difficult for her and extremely compassionate. This was one of several things my wife did for me that significantly lowered my anxiety that my leavin
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That mention of using AI for video conference is a great point. I had not considered this in the contextp. There have been demonstrations that with 15 seconds of voice and a photo, you can use AI to create a video of someone saying anything you want that is indiscernible from the actual person. This full capability is not out in the wild yet. But, with what we can access, cleaning up a complete v
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That is interesting as it was unusual to see cigarettes when I was there in the '70s. Sometimes cigars for show. What I experienced at BYU was a lot of variation in how kids thought about sex - from it being much as anyplace with young people fumbling around trying to figure themselves out to many doing that fumbling around with the added complexity of wanting to be committed to Mormonism at
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The “stay moral, go oral” phrase goes back to at least the late 70s when I was there. And I still find it baffling that back then, drinking seemed to be more taboo than sex.
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Around 25-30% of members of record attending. Maybe 115 attending sacrament out of around 440 on the rolls. This was quite a while ago.
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Lowers risk of being caught flat-footed when an actor in the film leaves the church.
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Clarification. There is no such thing as fast offerings or any other distinct types of offerings for that matter. All tithes and offerings are deposited into the same ward account that goes to headquarters. Nothing is separated out. There is fine print on the tithing slips that give the church all say in where the money goes. The reported numbers are just meaningless words on a report.
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For the 15, and perhaps the other 140. A wretched hive As in “never will you see such a wretched hive of scum and villainy” (Star wars, 1977).
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His “I’m Appalled” cartoons (with Bagley) in the BYU Daily Universe helped me survive my first year at BYU in the late 70s. I hope he recovers soon.
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While one of my kids was on their mission, they were in a missionary vehicle struck by a tractor-trailer. He was lucky and got away with minor injuries. From the photos, it looked like the truck driver had tried veering away as the tractor-trailer flipped over in a field next to the accident scene. I did not receive a call from the mission and only found out about this several days later in an em
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This is back in the late 70s. A guy who lived in the dorms on the same floor as I did visited his girlfriend the following summer as he was getting ready to leave on his mission. He was not feeling well, and since his girlfriend had a doctor's appointment, he went along to get looked at. It turned out he had lymphoma. What I learned later from mutual friends is that he did manage to go on his mis
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I decided to have more fun with AI using MS Go-Pilot and ChatGPT. This is both for 'grins' and to improve my understanding of what these products are capable of in an academic context. I use these products in my workflow as an 'assistant,' I also require my university students to incorporate generative AI as an 'assistant' in completing assignments. (by the way, I am neither a poet nor a teacher
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Here is one using Microsoft co-pilot. Prompt "write me poem about Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon church, from the point of view of someone that sees the Mormon church as a cult and Joseph Smith as a charlatan and fraud." Joseph Smith, the prophet of lies Claimed to have seen God in the skies He said he found some golden plates But no one else could verify his claims He
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Wow, being an alum of both JW and Mormonism. That sounds like a hard road, to say the least. I can see how 'JW light' is a more useful comparison for Mormonism. I had forgotten the full extent of the control that JWs exercise over their congregants - right down to requiring people to break contact with anyone who leaves, right down to disowning family members. I think I have that correct.
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Knowing more about Mormonism did help my therapist consider that some of what I was going through had similarities to PTSD, and that ended up being quite helpful.
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Several of my Nevermo friends were surprised when they found out I'd left Mormonism, given how big a part of my life it had been. I found relating how I was not able to attend my son's wedding was a helpful shorthand in this circumstance to communicate that Mormonism was pretty cult-like. Any adult can quickly relate to this. I'm also a university professor, and in my field, there is a large c
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Good point on the familiarity of nevermos with JWs. A lot of similarities, with one noticable difference is that Mormon culture values higher education.
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I think many therapists outside of Mordor can have a difficult time reconciling the trauma Mormonism appears to be inflicting on a patient's life with the squeaky clean, squared-away look of a few Mormon families they might know of in the community. To the unknowing, Mormonism appears to be another Christian church with good values, albeit somewhat quirky - but by and large harmless. I began to
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I fear for my daughter and for the safety of my LGBT+ kid. They plan to leave the state when as they move on to graduate school. My other kid and their spouse already have jobs lined up out of state. My other kids are already making their lives elsewhere.
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