The Nehor

Your lust for vengeance is showing again.

So they divorce and remarry in exalted glory? Guess Jesus didn’t get the memo. 😜

Then the father bit would also be plural because it would apply equally.

Technically no. If a religion is apostate and a member of that faith never belonged to a non-apostate version they wouldn’t be apostates, just heathens or non-believers or wrong or whatever. We have stopped calling all other churches apostate though for reasons that aren’t clear to me. The optimist in me thinks it is a good sign of goodwill. The cynic in me thinks that we like being at the “big boy” table with the other churches and stopped saying unpleasant things because we sometimes get invited to their parties and want them to keep inviting us.

Good, being a half-sibling of some of the other people on this Earth is still hard to swallow. Convincing myself we are full siblings…..yeah right. Now can we find out we have multiple fathers too?

Like “bless your heart” this statement is basically a euphemism for “**** you, you’re wrong!”

No, South Park went much further in mocking Islam than most are willing to do. They got death threats over it. Their parent company censored at least one episode to try to prevent the possibility of violence over it. The show’s creators wanted to leave it in. Presenting them as cowards unwilling to mock Islam because they are afraid and they only choose “safe” targets is just wrong. Now I need to go take a shower. I feel dirty for defending South Park.

Even if you take that part literally Wisdom is a divine being and not a mortal person. Divine beings existing before humanity exists is pretty normal in mythology and not evidence people existed before their mortal existence.

Some tech was provided but the big aid was logistical support. The ability to support military forces deployed far from home has been the most exceptional element of the United States military since the Second World War. The British were hard pressed to operate in the South Atlantic. Even today we see Russia struggling to maintain supplies to their troops in Ukraine which is on their border. Meanwhile the United States can launch an operation against landlocked Afghanistan and get the people and stuff they need to the site. It is sometimes overlooked how exceptional that is. And it is not just Argentina that feels that way. A lot of South American nations grew even more suspicious of the US after the Falklands conflict and we didn’t have a great reputation before that.

I don’t find this reading progression from statements in the Bible concept to be convincing. There is no evidence the writers believed it. When people go into the weeds of a General Conference talk and try to intuit stuff out of metaphors or take ambiguous language to support heterodox positions they are often told to knock it off. Not sure what about the source being the Bible changes that. One of the most obnoxious to me is pulling a doctrine of premortality out of Jeremiah. It is just a huge stretch on what was said and there isn’t any support for the idea that Judaism had such a doctrine.

It has been done before with lower caps. During Covid there was a temporary one in 2020 I think. It was also tried in the 80s for a while. Might have the year wrong. In general though yeah, it is new. The idea is that upping the standard deduction had a negative effect on charitable giving and this may alleviate it. I doubt it. It didn’t help much before. On the positive side this is theoretically permanent so there is more time to publicize and get people used to it. On the downside this is a very easy cheat on taxes to claim you donated when you didn’t and with the IRS being defunded lying on taxation is pretty low risk. Even if the IRS were well-funded this would still be pretty easy to cheat on. It is probably not worth pursuing for the IRS when someone takes the standard deduction and cheats on this. There is also a change for those who itemize and you have to meet a minimum of giving to itemize. Same with corporations. I am a bit more concerned at the changes in education taxation. They are raising the taxes on endowment funds. This obviously targets Ivy League schools but also smaller schools funded by investments. There is also a pretty vague tax deduction for private school scholarships for K-12 education which I don’t understand but I am cynical about.

Or just evidence that Joseph Smith used chiastic structures without recognizing it. Not sure why God would feel the need to seed ancient structures into revelations given in a different language and culture. Why? Maybe we should start looking for modern grammatical structures in the Bible that are completely out of place. I would find that more convincing.

It means you can deduct up to $1000 in charitable giving ($2000 for a couple) if you take the standard deduction. If you do not take the standard deduction and itemize nothing changes. Disclaimer: Not a lawyer or tax expert. Following my advice has been known to cause chronic head pain, seizures, coma, death, and halitosis. Nehor advice is not for everyone. Consult with a doctor before use.

True, but I see them trying to counter it by limiting marketing of unhealthy foods to kids, creating access to exercise spaces, and trying to fight poverty. Americans are really good at looking at a problem and saying “nothing we can do about it” and calling it a day.

Maybe we should create and enforce food health standards much of the rest of the world have adopted.

And not being able to afford the cost of living, feeling trapped in a system where ownership of a home seems impossible, having to give up dreams of parenthood due to financial realities, paranoia that every health concern could turn into financial ruin, and the like. Add in being chastised by others that you are all a bunch of lazy layabouts who have had it easy for way too long and people wonder why everyone is lonely and depressed. It never ceases to be funny to me that people who think we are in the last days when troubles are supposed to abound everywhere will ignore all that because their favored diet of propaganda tells them it is more fun to punch down and insist that all the suffering of others is due to laziness and sloth and not being challenged enough by life.

The fact that they keep talking about it and telling leaders and people not to do it suggests that it happens. It is like the biblical prohibition on necromancy. From it you can deduce that there were people practicing necromancy. Unlike necromancers though we tend to honor those who make sacrifices for church service including the excessive ones.

What’s changed that made all of us so soft and having it too easy? Subsistence farming is hard work. Taking a wagon trip on the way only makes it marginally more difficult. There were lots of other people making similar trips throughout history. It is not some unique experience.

Fun fact: In the 1800s many LDS attended church once or twice a month. So our pioneer ancestors may have taken a trip across the plains one summer but that doesn’t make them super devout. Brigham Young was ripping his hair out over how those pioneers weren’t that devout. This is just romanticizing the past. And no, people today don’t have it particularly easy. We have some modern comforts but about a million extra things to be anxious and concerned about.

I don’t because it never happened. She used a generic southern dialect. I hope so. We have seen what happens when an LDS governor thinks they have been led by God to lead and the conspiracies that spring up about apostolic support. Making that support overt would lead to all kinds of disasters.

Religion, already an exciting way to evade campaign finance laws. Now you don’t even have to pretend you aren’t a PAC.

The invasion of Taiwan could very easily be a boondoggle. Even without direct US support it could go very badly. It is easy to look at military numbers and say that China will win but Taiwan would be very hard to take. Taiwan’s west coast is shallow meaning you have to ferry troops in from ships. This makes you very vulnerable. The East coast is covered with cliffs. There are a few beaches that are better than others but none are particularly good and Taiwan knows this. An amphibious landing on this scale hasn’t been tried in a long time. Normandy was easy by comparison. Even if they get ashore and get a beachhead the terrain is brutal for an invader. It is not impossible but it is not a matter of China pulling up and waving the flag and taking over. The weather would also be critical. We also don’t know how will the Chinese military will function. They haven’t been in a peer conflict in about 70 years. China is an authoritarian regime which means corruption. How badly has corruption hit China’s military. It could be as bad as Russia or bad but not quite that bad or mostly under control. Also Taiwan and the United States will see an invasion coming months in advance. There would be no way to hide the prep work for this. A less drastic option would be a blockade. It doesn’t risk as much but it could also fail. I think of Argentina trying to use the Falklands to distract from domestic woes. Didn’t go that well and the Falklands conquest was laughably easy compared to what China would have to do to occupy Taiwan. Again, not saying China wouldn’t try it but some people have presented it as a foregone conclusion that China will win unless the United States intervenes directly. China might be able to pull it off but I wouldn’t be surprised if they failed. Also worth noting in general that this religious crackdown is more general than just targeting LDS. Other groups are feeling it too. Some religious groups have been flouting China’s laws for some time and this may just be a reaction to that. I know of some Christian groups that brag about breaking these laws. The really dedicated ones sneak over the border to proselyte in North Korea. Not sure whether this is bravery or stupidity or both. And yeah, China has to pay the economic piper soon. They have been papering over their economy’s shortcomings since the late 2000s with fiscal stimulus but their government is so far not willing to address the actual problems underneath and the safety cushion won’t last forever.

Bringing back memories of Evan Mecham and all those shenanigans. Weird times.

The more I learn the less I feel the Texas War of Independence was a good movement so not sure the cause was good. The ramifications of the war might have brought more good overall but that is hard to measure.

My what now? It is more of an asparagus smell.