The Official Status Thread
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@pie_flavor said in The Official Status Thread:
@Benjamin-Hall Sounds a lot more fun than Judaism, with their calling-an-elevator-is-starting-a-fire thing.
Is @Polygeekery on the elevator?
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@remi The whole point is that if you're truly being obedient, trying to "work around" the commandments isn't going to be a thing. Seriously. This may be better suited for a different thread, but the general idea is that commandments are not to be thought of as restrictions. They're guideposts. They're God saying "If you want to be like I am, do <this> or avoid <that>." So weasel-wording, language-lawyering, loophole-hunting, and seeing how close to the edge you can get indicate that you've got a check-list mentality toward obedience, not a "I love God and want to be like he is, so I'll do as he does." Which rather misses the point and, while commendable (to a degree) for just being obedient, are definitely not in accord with the higher law taught by Christ.
Note this is wholly unsuitable for a binding legal code (binding on believers and non-believers alike)--it's not designed to be used as one. It's designed for the individual to decide between them and the Lord, using the Holy Spirit as a guide through prayer and study.
There are other commandments where the official interpretation is to not give an official interpretation and to leave it up to individual judgement and understanding. And since the only reporting is a yes/no self-assessment...it's on your own conscience.
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@pie_flavor said in The Official Status Thread:
@Benjamin-Hall Sounds a lot more fun than Judaism, with their calling-an-elevator-is-starting-a-fire thing.
This is getting into the weeds but AFAIK a lot of Rabbinical traditions are like that. e.g. "Don't boil a calf in its mother's milk"
"Don't eat meat and dairy products together, keep a separate set of dishes for dairy and meat products, and if one ever touches the other, give @Polygeekery a call (but not on the Sabbath)"
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@pie_flavor It's a real thing, although like with anything else you will find people/families with varying levels of strictness about it.
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I just spent no less than 40 minutes looking in every single spot of the room to find a small roll of adhesive tape I used earlier, including every drawer and behind all the furniture (yes, and in my pockets). I knew it couldn't have left the room, and I was determined to not be defeated this time.
I gave up. It's just not in here. As far as I can tell, it simply vanished.
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@anonymous234 said in The Official Status Thread:
it simply vanished
A time traveler nudged something in the past. Sorry.
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@anonymous234 The same thing happened to the single roll of thread and associated needle that I had laying around the house to fix buttons. I blame the gnomes, they're always stealing things.
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Status: So my youngest brother wants a "photo box" for his wedding. We've got a Canon DSLR (with a power supply, not batteries), my other brother can build the enclosure and I've got a small TV with HDMI-In coupled to the HDMI-out of the camera, an indirect flashlight (cabled) and a cabled remote trigger. The idea is that the TV shows what the camera sees and the guests can arrange themselves, using the trigger to take a snapshot. We're doing this all cabled so there's no chance of something wireless losing a connection or powering down due to empty batteries or something.
Also we thought it best to keep it as simple as possible because, let's face it, a wedding is usually not an event intended to advertise sobriety.
My youngest brother doesn't like this, he wants a remote control over an iPad.
I've done events often enough at school to know that consumer-grade hardware, wireless and reliability are not exactly on the best of terms. Also, the app in question has ... options.
Now, the iPad as an option I could see working - but not as the sole way of taking a photo.
I'll try to convince him that the KISS principle (especially when alcohol is involved) would really be best. But we'll bow to his wishes if he's really set on his way.
I just won't do tech support in any way at that day.
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@e4tmyl33t The major downside to this is that I have 3 pairs of pants now that I need to repair, and I can't be arsed to remember to just order some new thread and some needles...
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@Rhywden said in The Official Status Thread:
he wants a remote control over an iPad.
For a second I was going to think you meant "just use an iPad" but then I read it and thought :but-why.gif:
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@Rhywden And now he's avoiding the phone call and generally playing dead
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@anonymous234 said in The Official Status Thread:
I just spent no less than 40 minutes looking in every single spot of the room to find a small roll of adhesive tape I used earlier, including every drawer and behind all the furniture (yes, and in my pockets). I knew it couldn't have left the room, and I was determined to not be defeated this time.
I gave up. It's just not in here. As far as I can tell, it simply vanished.
You will find it tomorrow, guaranteed.
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@Rhywden said in The Official Status Thread:
I'll try to convince him that the KISS principle (especially when alcohol is involved) would really be best.
In this case, KISS is “hire a photographer”. Seriously. Yes, it adds to the cost of the wedding, but no, the photographer won't be drinking and so will be able to use their brain to work out what is a good photo. (Alternatively, find someone among relatives and/or friends willing to be a designated driver who knows how to take good photos.)
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@dkf said in The Official Status Thread:
@Rhywden said in The Official Status Thread:
I'll try to convince him that the KISS principle (especially when alcohol is involved) would really be best.
In this case, KISS is “hire a photographer”. Seriously. Yes, it adds to the cost of the wedding, but no, the photographer won't be drinking and so will be able to use their brain to work out what is a good photo. (Alternatively, find someone among relatives and/or friends willing to be a designated driver who knows how to take good photos.)
Not my circus, not my clowns.
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@Rhywden said in The Official Status Thread:
which means reading the forms the pupils give us. Which are often borderline readable.
Wimp. I'm used to that since I'm secretary for many of our club's dog shows. Let's just say some forms are ... creative. (Just had one yesterday - "Why is my dog jumping 16" instead of 20"?" Um, because that's what you entered. "Well I didn't mean that - please fix it." - she did at least thank me for all the work involved)
Oh, did I mention those are fill-in PDFs? Yeah, 80% are still handwritten. Decyphering emails is the worst.
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@dcon said in The Official Status Thread:
Oh, did I mention those are fill-in PDFs? Yeah, 80% are still handwritten. Decyphering emails is the worst.
I assume there are printouts and wooden tables involved.
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@dcon Yeah, we always tell them: Write legible because we need to send you an email with your password in it!
I assume that both their attention span and endurance is only five seconds because their name is always legible but the email address right below is regularly an unholy mess.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
Status: Have I mentioned recently how stupid Unreal Engine is?
Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this setup?
Answer...
Text Render Components do not properly attach to Static Mesh Components (attachment is indicated by the tree, in this case it is attached to Utility_WallUnitRemote_A_STM), and thus when spawned will remain stuck in the world position they spawned in. E.g. if the thing moves the text does not move with it.
The solution:
Attach it to the root component instead!
Of course, pray that you don't actually need the text component to move apart from the object it's attached to (or be prepared to write manual positioning logic to emulate it).
What is the point of having an attachment hierarchy if it's just going to be ignored at will?
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Status: So, I'm re-creating my FreeBSD jail (because you apparently can't just upgrade them when you upgrade the host OS). Copying configs and whatever, doing some simple tests and....
Huh, strange, I've never revoked a certificate befo---
Ah. Apparently the certificate in use internally is from a while ago. Good thing I did this, otherwise it would have fallen over at the end of the year and I wouldn't have a clue why...
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@Tsaukpaetra I know that typing 'thisisunsafe' into a cert error page for HSTS loads the page. Does it do that for revoked certs too?
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@pie_flavor said in The Official Status Thread:
@Tsaukpaetra I know that typing 'thisisunsafe' into a cert error page for HSTS loads the page. Does it do that for revoked certs too?
Fancy that, it does!
Sadly, Internet went down in my area so I'm probably just going to head to bed now...
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@dkf said in The Official Status Thread:
In this case, KISS is “hire a photographer”.
From experience, the photographer is a different thing from the photobox. With the photobox people get a bit creative (and sometimes do a minimal effort at staging) in ways that they would not feel comfortable doing directly in front of someone (and I'm not only talking rude-ish pictures, although you will probably get some), so you sometimes get pictures that you wouldn't get with a photographer. The photographer, OTOH, will catch more spontaneous things (such as cute children doing cute children things), and will of course produce technically much better pictures (and will also likely do a first pass skim of the results which will drop all the obviously-bad-ones).
So I'd say that both are complementary.
In the good'ol days before digital pictures were omnipresent, I went to several weddings where there were throw-away cameras strewn around the venue, the idea being that anyone would grab one and snap whatever they'd like, staged or not. It worked pretty well -- you'd get loads of crap, but every now and then there was a nice memory that an official photographer would have missed otherwise.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
Internet went down
And Internet went back up! Almost exactly an hour, to the decasecond.
Still going to sleep though.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in The Official Status Thread:
@remi The whole point is that if you're truly being obedient, trying to "work around" the commandments isn't going to be a thing. Seriously. This may be better suited for a different thread, but the general idea is that commandments are not to be thought of as restrictions. They're guideposts. They're God saying "If you want to be like I am, do <this> or avoid <that>." So weasel-wording, language-lawyering, loophole-hunting, and seeing how close to the edge you can get indicate that you've got a check-list mentality toward obedience, not a "I love God and want to be like he is, so I'll do as he does." Which rather misses the point and, while commendable (to a degree) for just being obedient, are definitely not in accord with the higher law taught by Christ.
I think that I get your point, although I still think that e.g. "seeing how close to the edge you can get" is necessarily intrinsically part of such a restriction, even if not actively trying to work around it. I mean, even without any weaseling, if God says "no coffee", the natural reaction is "OK, what about other drinks?" and then you get some that are allowed, some not. Even with the highest motives, you're still intrinsically setting boundaries ("some drinks are not OK") and saying "some drinks are one side of the border, some on the other". So even if you really just want to do as God wants, you're naturally going to ask yourself whether such and such drinks are one side or the other of the border. It might not be weaseling, but just honest confusion: "I know coffee is out, and I truly don't want to drink any coffee, but I also just found out about this foreign drink that I had never heard about and that is from a plant that is not coffee but does look a bit like it, am I following God's guidelines if I drink it?" Of course you can have a blanket-answer of "if I have even the slightest doubt, I'll reject it", but for one things that's a bit of a cop-out (morally speaking, i.e. you're avoiding making hard choices) and for another this is only going to lead you to a more and more recluse/limited life, which doesn't seem right either (at least not if it becomes the way of the majority of believers).
So really, even assuming that people are truly and deeply only trying to do what they feel is right (as opposed to just trying to keep up apparences while indulging in whatever they like), I still don't see how such a prohibition can lead to anything but some degree of working around it (whether it's a conscious attempt to work around it, or just different people interpreting in different ways where the boundaries are).
Note this is wholly unsuitable for a binding legal code (binding on believers and non-believers alike)--it's not designed to be used as one. It's designed for the individual to decide between them and the Lord, using the Holy Spirit as a guide through prayer and study.
Then I guess that, apart from the obvious clear-cut violations of the commandment, anyone is free to decide for any of the slightly contentious cases and do as they wish, as long as they do it in the right way (i.e. following their spiritual guidance etc.)?
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@remi said in The Official Status Thread:
Status: Trying to use OpenBLAS on Windows
I recommend installing with conda, I see there are openblas builds for windows.
conda install -c conda-forge openblas
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@Adynathos I saw that you can build OpenBLAS with conda, and yes but no. I just want this one library, I'm not going to install yet another flavour of Python-related stuff on it, and then have it install clang and whatever other random dependencies it has, and deal with versions of those ones in the future and so on. Even installing directly a precompiled package doesn't please me too much.
Actually I don't even want OpenBLAS. I just want a working linear algebra setup. We use Armadillo in our code, which has a relatively user-friendly API but does not provide the actual low-level code itself. We picked OpenBLAS for that because... I don't know, that was the choice some years ago and it doesn't seem worse than any other choice.
On Windows Armadillo comes with pre-compiled BLAS libraries and I felt this was a bit icky, especially since on Linux we already did the work to use OpenBLAS (not that we had any choice, Armadillo does not come with Linux BLAS libraries, so we had to pick one ourselves), so I thought that if I could also get OpenBLAS for Windows, we would have the same setup for both platforms, which is nicer.
But now I've got the choice between keeping using different setups, which works perfectly (it's just a bit not-very-nice), and installing whatever chain of dependencies and umpteen programs needed to compile/use OpenBLAS on Windows. I have a very, very hard time thinking the latter is better than the former.
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@e4tmyl33t said in The Official Status Thread:
@anonymous234 The same thing happened to the single roll of thread and associated needle that I had laying around the house to fix buttons.
Threads are free, so you only need to find a needle.
EDIT: damn,
-ed by @Luhmann.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in The Official Status Thread:
One key doctrinal interpretation principle is the idea that you shouldn't "look beyond the mark"--read a doctrinal statement or commandment and extract what you think is "the spirit of the law" and then use that as an excuse to
- ignore the letter of the law through clever wording
- add additional restrictions and enforce those on others through any means including social sanction (ie you can choose to be more restricted than the law requires, but you shouldn't demand others do so based on your personal interpretations).
If your religion forbids
and 
, I'm pretty sure being a member of WTDWTF is a Bad Idea.
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@remi said in The Official Status Thread:
So really, even assuming that people are truly and deeply only trying to do what they feel is right (as opposed to just trying to keep up apparences while indulging in whatever they like), I still don't see how such a prohibition can lead to anything but some degree of working around it (whether it's a conscious attempt to work around it, or just different people interpreting in different ways where the boundaries are).
That bold is kind of exactly what's expected, especially in this particular case (dietary laws). The Word of Wisdom was given as "a principle with promise, adapted to the capacity of the weak and weakest of all saints, who are or can be called saints". It's designed as a bright-line threshold commandment. A bare minimum bar. Going beyond that is totally expected and fine...as long as you don't try to enforce your personal take on anyone else.
Note this is wholly unsuitable for a binding legal code (binding on believers and non-believers alike)--it's not designed to be used as one. It's designed for the individual to decide between them and the Lord, using the Holy Spirit as a guide through prayer and study.
Then I guess that, apart from the obvious clear-cut violations of the commandment, anyone is free to decide for any of the slightly contentious cases and do as they wish, as long as they do it in the right way (i.e. following their spiritual guidance etc.)?
We believe strongly in personal revelation. Revelation to individuals won't bind the church as a whole (only the President of the Church, in unanimous council with the Quorum of the Twelve, can do that), but what I need to do right now may be very different than what you need to do right now, as long as we're both inside the bounds the Lord has set. In fact, in recent years the Church has been backing away from giving detailed "rules" beyond the commandments themselves and instead teaching principles by which members can generate their own rules. For example, there used to be a booklet for the youth with detailed descriptions of what counts as "modest" dress. That was done-away-with about 20 years ago. The current teachings are on the concept and commandment of modesty in dress, behavior, and speech, and how best to reach it in your own lives.
So yes. In fact everyone is expected to decide any of the non-obvious-violation cases for themselves. What things are appropriate to do on the Sabbath (ie the 4th commandment)? There are a few things we're commanded to do, and a few things we've been counseled not to do, but beyond those, everyone has to choose for themselves and for their families. Some are very restrictive (can't go outside, can't play games, can't read/watch anything non-religious), others are much more "lax". Everyone is at a different point and what's right for one family may not be what another family needs right now.
From the early history of the Church in the modern era comes this quote that sums things up. And it's still an operating principle of the Church.
Elder John Taylor overheard someone ask the Prophet Joseph Smith how he could govern so many people so well. The Prophet replied, "I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves." (In "The Organization of the Church," Millennial Star, 15 Nov. 1851, p. 339)
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@Benjamin-Hall said in The Official Status Thread:
So yes. In fact everyone is expected to decide any of the non-obvious-violation cases for themselves. [...] Some are very restrictive (can't go outside, can't play games, can't read/watch anything non-religious), others are much more "lax". Everyone is at a different point and what's right for one family may not be what another family needs right now.
That sounds like a nice principle for an ideal world. In practice, does it work though? Like, would a "lax" person be left free to do as they wish, or would "stricter" persons tend to badger them (in various ways, but we all know how powerful peer-pressure can be)? I guess this is probably where "moderators" are, in theory, supposed to step in and basically either tell the lax ones that they're maybe a bit too soft or the hard ones that they should back down (all these things being said and framed in spiritually-appropriate ways, I'm not diminishing the faith part here, but there is also an inevitable component of simply managing any social group).
(and also, thanks for your answer -- that may go without saying, but it always goes better with!)
(and feel free to switch to the relevant Salon thread if you want, although I'm just scratching a shallow itch here, it's just idle talk to me...)
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@remi said in The Official Status Thread:
@Benjamin-Hall said in The Official Status Thread:
So yes. In fact everyone is expected to decide any of the non-obvious-violation cases for themselves. [...] Some are very restrictive (can't go outside, can't play games, can't read/watch anything non-religious), others are much more "lax". Everyone is at a different point and what's right for one family may not be what another family needs right now.
That sounds like a nice principle for an ideal world. In practice, does it work though? Like, would a "lax" person be left free to do as they wish, or would "stricter" persons tend to badger them (in various ways, but we all know how powerful peer-pressure can be)? I guess this is probably where "moderators" are, in theory, supposed to step in and basically either tell the lax ones that they're maybe a bit too soft or the hard ones that they should back down (all these things being said and framed in spiritually-appropriate ways, I'm not diminishing the faith part here, but there is also an inevitable component of simply managing any social group).
(and also, thanks for your answer -- that may go without saying, but it always goes better with!)
(and feel free to switch to the relevant Salon thread if you want, although I'm just scratching a shallow itch here, it's just idle talk to me...)
Peer pressure is a problem, to be honest. It's part of why "The Bubble" (the communities surrounding Salt Lake City, where 99.99% are members of the Church in name at least) is so cloying and insular at times--they've developed their own cultural expectations for behavior, and a lot of it goes well beyond the commandments.
Local leaders (who, by the way, are all lay members--the only "professional clergy" are the general leadership, who were lay members before that and who basically only get living expenses paid) spend a lot of their time putting out fires, and many people step away from church activity because they're offended by what someone said/did. This offense is usually unintentional and consists of the other person being stricter/less strict about a particular commandment and its interpretations. Sometimes, it's well-meaning advice that's taken/given in the wrong way and someone gets their feelings hurt. And sometimes, yes, people act maliciously and cause problems. As a note, one of the "mandated excommunication" events is for a leader to intentionally lead a group of members astray. It's a perfect church...populated by very highly imperfect people. Even the President of the Church is imperfect. We've been promised that
“The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the programme. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so He will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty” (Official Declaration 1, “Excerpts from Three Addresses by President Wilford Woodruff Regarding the Manifesto”).
Though we are expected to follow the Prophet's counsel, we are also expected to read, study, and pray to know for ourselves that it's the right thing and how to implement it for ourselves. In software terms, the commandments are the requirements document, but the implementation is up to us and the Holy Spirit. And since each of us is running our own, highly-custom OS and hardware, those implementations may vary both in time for one person and between people. I know I do things differently now than I did 10 years ago. And that's part of the plan. We learn, we grow, and we repent of our mistakes, silly beliefs, misconceptions, and stupid actions, and we do better next time. It's a continual process of change and improvement, not a one-time "ok, now I'm saved!" gig.
Edit: I do apologize for my prolix behavior. For some reason, it's worst when I just get up. But I'm happy to talk about these things--I don't believe in hiding my faith and talking often clears up lots of misconceptions that cause tension and distrust.
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Status: It's been doing this for half an hour now...
Edit: It moved! But now it's doing it again
Edit2: We're about an hour in and it's been showing this for the last 10 minutes
Edit3: It's finished! For a grand total of about an hour and a half
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@Benjamin-Hall said in The Official Status Thread:
It's a perfect church...populated by very highly imperfect people.
That sounds a reasonably pragmatic way to see things, and the rest of what you said is indeed what I was expecting. Thanks for clarifying.
Also:
Edit: I do apologize for my prolix behavior. For some reason, it's worst when I just get up. But I'm happy to talk about these things--I don't believe in hiding my faith and talking often clears up lots of misconceptions that cause tension and distrust.
I guess we're used to lengthy posts here (maybe not in this thread specifically), and getting into details of subjects we know is a common pattern as well, so really, nothing out of the ordinary.
Amusingly, since there are very few Mormons over here, there is (I think) also relatively little of the tension and distrust that you mention. Some misconceptions, I guess, but mostly plain straight ignorance, but in the same way as we're ignorant of the details of, say, Shintoism or any other "exotic" religion.
So most people would probably look at you with a mix of
("they've got weird customs!") and 
("whatever floats their boat..."), perhaps mixed with a hint of :homer_simpson_walking_back_in_hedge: ("uh, yeah, if you say so... let's change topic").
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@Cursorkeys said in The Official Status Thread:
Status: It's been doing this for half an hour now...
Well...
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.
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@remi my favorite was the people who mistranslated a movie about the Amish as being about the "Mormons". We got lots of strange looks and questions about that one.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in The Official Status Thread:
Elder John Taylor overheard someone ask the Prophet Joseph Smith how he could govern so many people so well. The Prophet replied, "I
teach them correct principles and they govern themselveslook at what Jeff Atwood does, and I do the exact opposite."
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@Benjamin-Hall said in The Official Status Thread:
@remi my favorite was the people who mistranslated a movie about the Amish as being about the "Mormons". We got lots of strange looks and questions about that one.
I miss the days when I'd accuse you of some random tradition from an arbitrarily chosen religion. I ran out of faiths I know about and didn't want to keep doing Amish or Scientology
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Status: As the summer progresses, my standards for "being productive" have slipped.
Additional WTF: Yesterday I found the cause of a persistent bug in a program I'm responsible for. It had the habit of showing the week as starting on Sunday and going through Thursday (instead of M-F, since it's school week only). But only on first launch after an update--running the "schedule update" routine cleared it up until the next update.
Turns out that I had an off-by-one error--Swift's date library assumes that weeks start with Sunday, but I was thinking ISO, where they start with Monday. Or I was thinking they were 0-indexed, not 1-indexed. Either way, I wrote it so the default was to start the week with
date.weekday = 1. Which was rather wrong. And it took me this long to find that stupidity.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in The Official Status Thread:
Status: As the summer progresses, my standards for "being productive" have slipped.
WTF Unread count < 20 instead of 0?
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@error Because it failed to turn off properly, it needs to be repaired
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@TimeBandit said in The Official Status Thread:
@error Because it failed to turn off properly, it needs to be repaired
It is now unsafe to turn off you're computer.
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Status: Just got my provisional schedule/class load for next school year. Things of note:
- Fridays are going to be easy--my preps are 2 and 4, which are the first two classes that meet that day.
- My classes are tiny: biggest so far is 14. 14!
- My programming class (fundamentals of Python) is all boys. As expected.
3 chemistry, 1 physics, 1 programming each semester (python 1st, web design second)
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@Benjamin-Hall said in The Official Status Thread:
My programming class (fundamentals of Python) is all boys. As expected.
They just want to play with their danger noodle.
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Status: Confused
ddwithddclientfor some reason. No wonder my disk clone operation failed. In other news, my public dynamic DNS record might contain a full Windows 7 install now.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
It is now unsafe to turn off you're computer.
If you're a computer, you should make sure you're safe before you turn yourself off.
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