- ReTx on Creative and Cultural Self-Reliance: “I struggled in reading this to distinguish between how you are using the word culture and the word creativity. As I read along, they at times seemed interchangeable and at other not…? I wonder at the narrowing of the idea of ‘creative’ to ‘professional creatives’ only. I’m not seeing that as being true. Over the last 20+ years what I’ve seen is an exponential growth of easy art (using the word art broadly). Meaning it’s become so easy to become mediocre at pretty much anything with the help of Youtube, etc, that everybody and their brother is now a painter, writer, musician, etc. (Personally, I find things like cooking, mechanics, sports, etc, also fall under this idea of creativity.) This growth has been s a terrible thing for the artistic markets, and AI is making it so much worse. (10,000 new books published on Amazon every day, or something like that.) But is it a terrible thing for the human soul? I am waffling. GenAI without the human effort definitely does nothing for the human soul, but for the individual who decides to try their hand at a LitRPG book using Brandon Sanderson’s BYU class and a few How-to-Novels, I’m not entirely convinced it is for the reasons you went over. The person is creating and creating is good for the soul. At the same time, 99.99% of these people tend to give up long before the 10 books/1 million words that Brandon says is needed to reach mastery level, which has created this sludge of mediocrity. Is there then a benefit for the try, but-it’s-hard, give-up cycle of creativity? Does the individual gain something even if they stop when it gets hard? Does collective creativity and humanity gain anything from their attempts? Is that fact that so many consumers are perfectly happy with MVP (minimally viable product) as their favorite artists’ goals (quick-release authors openly discuss MVP as the goal) rather than Excellence a problem? Is MVP a reflection on the state of our culture? Does a creative person focusing on MVP receive a creative benefit to their soul? Does God care about pursuit of Excellence and reward accordingly with a strengthened soul? I’ll stop there. I have no answers, just more interesting questions as this is what I’ve been wrestling with lately after listening to too much Arthur Brooks.” Oct 21, 08:26
- on The New Jerusalem and Ancient Israel Imposed on Google Earth: “Mark, thank you for the comment. That explains why my memory of the cornerstones there doesn’t match up with the map here. The original cornerstone was uncovered during excavations in the early 1909s. So, at least on cornerstone should be in the location of the original. I’m not sure if the others were found. As far as multiple temples go, it’s not that dissimilar from modern temple square with a building for church headquarters, the old office building, Relief Society headquarters, tabernacle, assembly hall, and so on. Quite a bit there depending how many blocks you want to include” Oct 20, 14:03
- on The New Jerusalem and Ancient Israel Imposed on Google Earth: “That’s a really cool article, thanks Mark!” Oct 20, 13:00
- on The New Jerusalem and Ancient Israel Imposed on Google Earth: “P.S. The temple footprint that is marked immediately south of the Church of Christ Temple Lot meetinghouse is for their own temple, which was a new design and would be much larger than the JS original(s). It is possible that their “SECT [South East Corner Stone?]” stone dates back to 1831 (or 1833) or that it was placed later based on some memory of where it was supposed to be as per 1831 (or 1833). All of this, however, is quite uncertain.” Oct 20, 10:55
- on The New Jerusalem and Ancient Israel Imposed on Google Earth: “Here’s some good cartography from John Hamer: https://bycommonconsent.com/2009/01/19/the-temple-lot/” Oct 20, 10:49
- on Jonathan Stapley on the Law of Adoption: “It’s most commonly thought that sealing between man and wife developed first, intertwined with the early plural marriages (and could be thought of as horizontal sealings, i.e., creating links within the same generation). Sealings to children or parents were a slightly later development (and could be thought of as vertical sealings, i.e., linking between generations). The Law of Adoption sealings were a modified version of the type we do for children to parents today, with the difference being that it was to someone who wasn’t a close biological relative. An adopted child being sealed to their adoptive parents is the closest equivalent practiced today, and is functionally the same category of sealing. The main differences are that priesthood adoption sealings were frequently creating child-parent relationships between people who were similar ages, and the purpose was to be sealed to someone who you thought had a good chance of being exalted rather than to be sealed to someone because you viewed them as kin beforehand.” Oct 20, 09:23
- on Jonathan Stapley on the Law of Adoption: “Was the sealing between a man and wife considered different than other types of sealings? Were these types of sealings considered the same as children to parents that are practiced today?” Oct 20, 09:02
- on The New Jerusalem and Ancient Israel Imposed on Google Earth: “I thought JS had plans for one bigger temple in the middle between the 12 MP and AP ones?? It is interesting to me how BY treated temples differently than JS.” Oct 20, 08:47
- on That time when President Oaks told you voting Democrat was okay: “I’ll admit I am one of those people who voted for Mr. Trump last time. That being said, I only did it because I didn’t trust Kamala Harris, the VP to be an improvement and found her whole “regulating speech” on social media platforms especially concerning. Sure you could make the argument that I could’ve voted third party instead, but since when has ANY third party candidates EVER won a presidential race? All I can really say here is that I didn’t vote for Mr. Trump out of any love and admiration for the man at all. I even TRIED to make sure Mr. Trump didn’t get the GOP nomination. But it was all in vain. So there you have it. I’m not proud of my vote for Mr. Trump last presidential election, but I did what I did.” Oct 19, 22:19
- on Jonathan Stapley on the Law of Adoption: “John D Lee was the adopted son of Brigham Young.” Oct 19, 17:02
