webbles

I was reading the article from Deseret News about President Oaks tour of the temple and it had a picture that I couldn't place in the temple. It is the picture at https://www.deseret.com/faith/2026/05/08/president-oaks-tours-salt-lake-temple-following-april-surgery/ with the caption "Church President Dallin H. Oaks, left, and President Henry B. Eyring, first counselor in the First Presidency, right, look at a stained-glass depiction of the First Vision of the Prophet Joseph Smith in the Salt Lake Temple on Friday, May 8, 2026, in Salt Lake City." I'm pretty certain that is the picture of the Holy of Holies. https://ldspioneerarchitecture.blogspot.com/2017/02/latter-day-stained-glass-part-2-first.html has another older picture of the Holy of Holies. This new picture looks like it is from the Celestial Room into the Holy of Holies. It includes the short set of stairs from the Celestial Room to the Holy of Holies.

Your last question is hard. I think ward leaders and stake leaders should be able to write a letter in their personal capacity with no reference to their church callings. I don't think area leaders or higher should. That's because an area leader is usually called for a much longer time while ward/stake leaders have shorter times. So you could have a person who was the bishop during the actual crime but is no longer a bishop. Should he be prevented from writing a letter? He is no longer the bishop. I do think Kirton McConkie shouldn't have asked for prosecutors to flag the letters. That feels wrong and the prosecutors shouldn't have sent them the letters.

Is this one of the things that switches around 3 Nephi? I was recently asking claude about the therefore to wherefore switch, and it pointed out that from Mosiah to 3 Nephi, it was mostly 3rd person narrative (Mormon abridging the plates). Then from 3rd Nephi to Words of Mormon, it has a lot of 1st person (3rd Nephi has Christ speaking, Mormon is from Mormon's point of view, Moroni is Moroni and epistles from Mormon, and the small plates are all 1st person). And that could possibly explain the switch of therefore to wherefore. Could that explain the other things that you've found?

I would say it is ambiguous by itself. This structure, by itself, doesn't argue for or against EModE. Joseph could have had it as part of his idiolect (as I think Davis calls it). But he only uses it once in D&C and uses it 7 times in the Book of Mormon. So did he pick it up because of what he learned from the Book of Mormon? Or did he have it before? He doesn't use it enough to make the case either way. He uses the other form that you've pointed to several times but that is an EModE form that lasts into modern English so that form doesn't help in this argument either. For me, the main draw to EModE isn't just one or two structures like this. It is that there are a bunch and some aren't as easily explained.

Talking about the holdings in EPA, the Widows Mite site has discovered that in the last quarter, EPA liquidated almost $6 billion in stocks (about 9% of their total stock holdings). No idea on why (could be allocating to bonds, moving to different managers to hide the size, the church needed the cash, etc). But it is interesting based on this conversation.

That's not what I seemingly believe. The "for this cause ... that X may|might <infin>" is also another form. But it is different from the "for this cause that X may|might". Both are in EModE. The former still shows up in modern English. The later is pretty much gone.

The version with the extended passages is very common. Totally agree. But Carmack isn't talking about that syntax. He is talking about a specific linguistic structure that doesn't have the extended passages. I had to go to an AI to help me understand I basically asked it to compare your examples to what Carmack's structure and it said they are different. The ones Carmack is looking at doesn't have the extended passages and is archaic. It shortcuts the text in a way that modern English doesn't do. So comparing the two types is a completely different argument than what Carmack is saying. The "cause" by itself isn't what makes it archaic. From the AI: It is the syntactic pattern where a “cause/end” phrase directly governs a purpose “that”-clause without a verb in between I also asked the AI about these 3 examples. Apparently only the Shelley one is equivalent. The other two, even though they have the same words, their clause types are different. For the Hershell one, the "that" class is an explanation clause which is different somehow. For the House of Commons one, the it doesn't have a modal (may/might) or an infinitive sense. (I'm paraphrasing what the AI said). I'm not a linguist and had to pester the AI multiple times to try and understand it. I gave it every instance you had and only gave it the 7 that Carmack listed. Your examples are not the same as what Carmack is focusing on.

I think the addition of the clause in between "for this cause" and "that" is a completely different linguistic structure. The usage of just "for this cause that X may/might" is the archaic phrase. Adding a clause in between the two is not archaic. So, I guess you could argue that Joseph, in 7 instances, just dropped the inner clause to make it sound more archaic. Or that it is evidence that it was archaic from the start.

It is based off of this study - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03271. The study is over a year old and based on the ChatGPT 3. The numbers in the study look all right. They grab actual datacenter water usage and the calculations from energy usage and water usage look sane. So, yes, 10-50 prompts with chatgpt probably consume about 500ml of water. That's why I talked about if this new datacenter is going to use water shares that are actively being used (so already being used and consumed), I don't have that much of a problem. But I have a problem with developing unused water shares for this.

I'm familiar with it. I would also bet that President Packer was familiar with it. So why would he ask to the see the Church's investments when he knows he isn't permitted to see it? That's what I find implausible. Or if he wasn't familiar with it, then Clark just had to point him to it. I don't see it as President Packer was trying to get around the rules or trying to see something that he knew he couldn't see or that he was angry/disappointed he couldn't see it. The way the story goes, it makes a big deal out of it but that is what I don't think happened.

The news article says that the water for the data center is from existing water shares. If those have previously been used and this is just redirecting its use, I don't have that big of a problem. But if those shares were currently not used and are being developed for the project (like a well is being dug or a pipe is being built to take water out of a river), then I would have problems. The use of the cross-state gas line to power it is interesting. It should have enough power for the data center without affecting other communities but who knows the future. The big push for data centers right now is because of AI. Both training AI and then using AI consume a lot of power. I doubt this data center would spy on people. Utah already has a data center that does that down near Lehi and Saratoga Springs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center. That is managed by NSA and stores a ton of data that probably includes everything about everyone.

Hide from the IRS? I haven't heard that before. How does this hide from the IRS and who said that? And I thought this wasn't hiding it from the SEC. This just affected the 13F form which is for public disclosure. I thought there were other forms that were being filled to the SEC and weren't hiding it. That is how the SEC noticed the issue. This story is from the IRS letter. And it was third hand at best. I have a hard time accepting because it is "too good to be true". It might have a kernel of truth but I doubt what happened is what was described.

I'm still trying out claude with the data but the D&C doesn't match the Book of Mormon. Sure, there are EModE things in the D&C but the usage differences between the Book of Mormon and D&C are apparently enough to make claude not think that they are enough evidence to say that Joseph was the EModE author of the Book of Mormon. Still trying it out. Sure, they might not have noticed that Joseph used archaic language, but it is really odd. That's what claude is really focusing on, the fact that there are multiple ways that the Book of Mormon doesn't match Joseph's other writings, the writings in his time period, and pseudo-archaic writings. It isn't just 1 or 2 things. It is a lot. That's what seems to be why claude finds it difficult to accept Joseph being the source of the EModE. It can't rule him out, but it considers him to be extremely unlikely.

One thing that came out in one of my attempts with claude is that the "Book of Pukei" should have been a perfect example for Joseph's dialect to show up. This is written by people who personally know him or his family, they live in the same environment, they read at least parts of the Book of Mormon, and were mocking Joseph. It has some archaic phrasing (like "it came to pass") but it uses modern phrases in places that the Book of Mormon would have used archaic. If Joseph really did use archaic language or those in his environment used archaic language, it should have shown up in the "Book of Pukei" as they had every reason to make Joseph look like a yokel.

I started from the assumption that EModE was a red herring. I thought it was easily refuted. But it isn't. I first asked claude what it's opinion of Carmack and it agreed with you. I then gave it Carmack's documents as well as documents from those that have refuted him. I then provided claude the eebo, ecco, evans, pseudo-archaic 19c literature, etc. And let it go through the documents, run analysis and look at what Carmack wrote and the refutation. Claude came back and basically said that the best explanation is an EModE original text with a thin layer of 19c on top. It said the vast majority was EModE and correctly written. I didn't believe it and pushed back on it. But it pointed to all of its data. So I started another instance of claude so it wasn't blinded by the first one. This time, I had it look for EModE in the Book of Mormon without giving it anything from Carmack (as I saw from the previous attempt, it is biased against Carmack). It found a bunch of potential EModE things. These were based on its own understanding of EModE as well as ngram analysis of the Book of Mormon. I then gave it all the files from before and asked it to verify that what it found was really EModE and what was the most likely path that Joseph learned these EModE. Everything it found could be shown to be EModE and several of them have extremely few 19c and 18c rates in the files. Many aren't in the KJV or the pseudo-archaic attempts. They aren't in Joseph's later writings, D&C, etc. And again, they were correctly written as if the person knew EModE intimately. I'm now trying a third attempt. I don't know what to make of it but it is not easily refuted. The Book of Mormon is full of EModE that can't be explained by a "local regional dialect" because it isn't anywhere except in the Book of Mormon. No one else around him spoke or wrote like that. At this point, the Occam's razor points to an EModE book that Joseph found and then modified it slightly or not at all. That's why I asked about direct quotations since that would refute it. I'm going to be using that in the third attempt to see what it would do, but I suspect it will give an answer similar to the first attempt as I tried bringing up how the Book of Mormon talks a lot about 19c religious issues. But one thing I have learned from this is that the Book of Mormon doesn't mimic the KJV. It exceeds it in pretty much every category. And it does it correctly. It isn't random attempts to inject archaic phrases. It is done correctly in ways that aren't obvious (like using "hath" for most situations but "has" for informal or emotionally charged areas)

I've actually been testing the EModE out with claude. It is a lot more surprising than I expected. I thought it would be easy to refute and show that Joseph could do it, but claude is convincing me otherwise. It is really weird to argue with claude and tell it that Joseph had to have been the author and then have claude point out multiple ways that he couldn't have done it, all using EModE data. I don't think it is stupid anymore. I don't know what to make of it, but it can't be easily refuted.

Oh, I doubt King Benjamin formulated it. He wouldn't be speaking in English. As for how it was translated into English, if we are talking about the EModE issue (which is what I was thinking of), then it could be someone at least a 100 years before Joseph since Boston formulated the English phrase.

Do you have a list of these usage shifts somewhere? I've gone through your Interpreter papers and I couldn't find any that documents these shifts.

I wonder how much older is a phrase like that? Because it is basically a merger of two KJV phrases from Pauline epistles: 1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Romans 8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

Which sermon is this?

I haven't heard about the Book of Mormon quoting published sermons. Do you have a link to the paper?

I found Heber C. Kimball's journal of the same day and it is really similar to what is in the History. It is printed 1845 so it is after the A-1 book is done and it is possible that he is copying from what is in the History https://archive.org/details/TimesAndSeasons18391846/page/n1763/mode/2up Interestingly, it doesn't mention Joseph Smith preaching anything.

George A Smith was involved in the creation of the History of the Church. He did a lot of the authoring and editing post 1850s. So, he easily could have used his own journals or his own memory. Edited to add: This is the A-1 book which was finished before leaving Nauvoo. So that would be before George A Smith was heavily involved. I wonder if the George A Smith's journal entry is actually quoting the History vs the History quoting him?

The Collesville letters are authored by both John Whitmer and Joseph Smith. That article just assumes that it is all Joseph Smith but what if it was mostly John Whitmer? We have other letters from Joseph Smith, do they show the ability to "seamlessly interweave passages"?

Per Joseph Smith Papers, the History of the Church was written in first person even when the original source wasn't in first person. I know this has caused some confusion previously where we thought Joseph did something himself and then when we finally found the original source, it wasn't Joseph who did it. Also, per Joseph Smith Papers (who is quoting Brigham Young), only the first 42 pages were read and revised by Joseph. So this page would have been done after his death. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/intro/introduction-to-history-1838-1856-manuscript-history-of-the-church