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Did you know Denver has 13 Sister Cities? Here they are!
  • TLDR:

    Akureyri, Iceland

    Axum, Ethiopia

    Brest, France

    Chennai, India

    Cuernavaca, Mexico

    Karmiel, Israel

    Kunming, China

    Nairobi, Kenya

    Panama City, Panama

    Potenza, Italy

    Ramat HaNegev, Israel

    Takayama, Japan

    Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

  • Clarence Thomas’s $267,230 R.V. and the Friend Who Financed It
  • He was known as the justice who never asked questions during any court proceedings, for about a decade. He didn't participate in court cases for a decade, other than to vote at the end.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-justice-clarence-thomas-hasn-t-asked-question-decade-n520801

  • Flash back to when my oldest nephew was given "free agency" to choose, to become a future missionary at the age of 3...
  • Well there's your problem. You don't have Free Agency. You have Moral Agency, which is defined as obeying the "brethren" no matter what. The thinking has been done, as they tell you.

  • This isn't a robbery...

    cross-posted from: https://negativenull.com/post/40924

    > https://mastodon.social/@davew/110829219504113442

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    This isn't a robbery...

    https://mastodon.social/@davew/110829219504113442

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    The ingredient that changed your life
  • Smoked Paprika! Gives anything a quick/easy smoky flavor, with just a touch of heat (not like cayenne pepper). It's works with just about anything.

  • United States | News & Politics @lemmy.ml negativenull @negativenull.com
    Leah Remini Sues Church of Scientology, Says She Is Victim of ‘Psychological Torture’
    variety.com Leah Remini Sues Church of Scientology, Says She Is Victim of ‘Psychological Torture’

    Leah Remini has filed a lawsuit against the Church of Scientology and its leader, David Miscavige, for harassment, defamation and other unlawful conduct. Remini, who joined the Church in 1979 as a …

    Leah Remini Sues Church of Scientology, Says She Is Victim of ‘Psychological Torture’

    Leah Remini has filed a lawsuit against the Church of Scientology and its leader, David Miscavige, for harassment, defamation and other unlawful conduct. Remini, who joined the Church in 1979 as a child and left in 2013, claims Scientology’s “mob-style operations and attacks” have “significantly” impacted her life and career.

    “For 17 years, Scientology and David Miscavige have subjected me to what I believe to be psychological torture, defamation, surveillance, harassment, and intimidation, significantly impacting my life and career. I believe I am not the first person targeted by Scientology and its operations, but I intend to be the last,” Remini stated in a press release sent out Wednesday.

    According to the release, Remini filed the lawsuit in the California Superior Court on Aug. 2 in an attempt to “require Scientology, and any entity it controls and funds, to cease and desist its alleged practice of harassment, defamation, and other unlawful conduct against anyone who Scientology has labeled as an ‘enemy.'”

    Remini also seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the alleged harm Scientology has inflicted on her personal and professional life.

    Named defendants are the Church of Scientology, Miscavige and Religious Technology Center, Inc., which, Remini alleges, manages policing operations and principally enforces Scientology’s punishment orders.

    Per the release, “OSA Network Orders, a series of directives from Scientology’s founder, the late L. Ron Hubbard, institutionalized a series of retaliatory actions to be taken against any individual, organization, business or government entity that Scientology declares as an enemy. Under the organizations’ rules, directives originating from Hubbard cannot be changed.”

    Remini alleges that a series of attacks meant to “obliterate” and “totally restrain and muzzle” her were “activated by OSA and their operatives.” The lawsuit details alleged “coordinated campaigns” by the Church levied against Remini and her family, friends and business associates.

    “With this lawsuit, I hope to protect my rights as afforded by the Constitution of the United States to speak the truth and report the facts about Scientology,” Remini continued. “I feel strongly that the banner of religious freedom does not give anyone license to intimidate, harass and abuse those who exercise their First Amendment rights.”

    The Church of Scientology did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.

    In 2016, Remini co-created and executive produced a documentary series about the Church titled “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.” She won two Emmy awards for the series, which ran for three seasons.

    In November, Remini testified on behalf of Paul Haggis in the filmmaker’s civil rape trial. Remini implied that the Church was behind rape allegations against Haggis, who left Scientology in 2009. “Men and women who have been raped absolutely deserve justice. But in this case, it’s absolutely Paul who is the victim here,” Remini told jurors.

    After “That ’70s Show” actor and practicing Scientologist Danny Masterson’s rape trial ended with a hung jury, Remini posted a lengthy statement to Twitter directed at Miscavige, whom she accused of covering up sex abuse crimes within the Church.

    “While this is not the outcome I wanted for the survivors of Danny Masterson’s predation, I’m glad a retrial has already been rescheduled,” Remini wrote. “My heart breaks for the women who have courageously and tirelessly fought for justice for over five years. For years, they have been targeted and harassed by Scientology and its agents. They have also been targeted and harassed by their family members and friends who remained in Scientology.”

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    Portugal’s caves are amazing
  • Edmond Dantès found a lot of treasure there.

  • Pence Makes It Clear Why It’s Necessary to Prosecute Trump
  • The real hero is Dan Quayle. He's the one who convinced Pence not to follow Trump's plan.

  • Donald Trump mugshot promised in looming indictment
  • Ministry of Truth:

    The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.

  • The Klingon Who Invented Warp Drive
  • That's spectacular!

  • Where did it all go right for Biden? Facts blunt Republican attack lines
  • Our chief weapon is surprise... surprise and fear... fear and surprise... Our two weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency... and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope... Our four... no... Amongst our weapons... Amongst our weaponry... are such elements as fear, surprise... I'll come in again.

  • Ironically, since I started pirating, I've spent MORE money on movies.
  • As Gabe Newell once said:

    Piracy is an issue of service, not price

  • AWS: IPv4 addresses cost too much, so you’re going to pay
  • My current ISP still does not offer IPv6 🤦 🤦 🤦

  • Who the hell cuts their pizza into fifths?
  • It's not delusion, it's Digiorno !

  • Third defendant charged in classified documents case, Trump faces new charges
    www.msnbc.com Third defendant charged in classified documents case, Trump faces new charges

    Donald Trump and his aide Walt Nauta had already been charged and now face additional charges.

    Third defendant charged in classified documents case, Trump faces new charges

    A third person has been charged in the classified documents case in addition to Donald Trump and Walt Nauta.

    Carlos De Oliveira was added in a superseding indictment in the Florida federal case and, like Nauta, is charged with obstruction-related crimes. De Oliveira was the property manager at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club beginning in January 2022, according to the new indictment.

    Among other things, the new indictment charges Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira with altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object regarding their alleged request that another employee delete security camera footage at Mar-a-Lago to prevent the footage from being provided to the grand jury.

    Judge Aileen Cannon recently set a late May trial date before this superseding indictment. It’s not immediately clear how, if at all, adding De Oliveria affects that timing.

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    Removed
    How a start-up built the search engine of the future — and then died
  • I used them for a while as well. Their search was good, and their auto-generated answers they provided was very decent. I loved the idea of non-ad supported search. For me, their problem was their value proposition. You could use search for free, but you have to pay them if you want them to index your github/dropbox/etc accounts, so they could be searchable from the same searchbox. I had no need to have any private accounts searched, so never needed those licensed features.

  • The X Factor

    by Jen Sorensen (@jensorensen@mastodon.social) https://mastodon.social/@jensorensen/110766924492888405

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    I desire all to receive this
    www.apostatecoffee.com Apostate Coffee

    We are hereby called to serve our customers with delicious, fair-trade and organic coffee. We invite others to come to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the importance of coffee and how it can bless us and strengthen and nourish our bodies.

    Apostate Coffee

    a.pos.tate /əˈpäˌstāt,əˈpästət/

    noun.

    1. a person who renounces a religious or political belief or principle.

    2. a drinker of hot drinks

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    cute dogs, cats, and other animals @lemmy.ml negativenull @negativenull.com
    All tucked in
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    Searching intensifies
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    Searching intensifies
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    The Lemmydance Song

    !

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    My wife asked me: Why are dad jokes so bad?

    Me: It's a rule. Dad jokes are required to be bad

    Wife: Who makes these rules?

    Me: The Dad Poets Society

    Wife: Groan

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    US judge rules Microsoft deal to buy Activision can go forward
    www.reuters.com US judge rules Microsoft deal to buy Activision can go forward

    A U.S. judge ruled on Tuesday that Microsoft may go forward with its planned acquisition of videogame maker Activision Blizzard, turning aside antitrust enforcers' request for a preliminary injunction to temporarily stop the $69 billion deal.

    US judge rules Microsoft deal to buy Activision can go forward
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    Mormons walk away from major multinational tax evasion scheme
    www.smh.com.au Mormons walk away from major multinational tax evasion scheme

    The Mormon Church is significantly reducing its use of a controversial shell company after an investigation revealed it had engaged in alleged serious tax evasion in Australia.

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    Archive of the greatest r/exmormon post ever

    Original: https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/6jd4fm/budding_apologists_create_book_of_mormon_nahom/

    ***

    I don't think I have ever seen a beating like this. Maybe the Jenkins v. Hamblin debate. Although this might be worse. What's interesting about this is you've got a guy who clearly isn't an academic, he's not a professional bible scholar or anything like that, but he completely destroys those who are. It cannot be described, only witnessed. Posting to preserve for posterity. I suspect these comments will all disappear.

    It all starts with a video posted by Book of Mormon Central, Evidences of the Book of Mormon: Nahom, and then proceeds with a blog post and discussions in multiple comment areas on youtube and the blog.

    If you aren't familiar with the Nahom / NHM apologetic argument, I recommend just watching the video in its entirety. Watch it either way, it's hilarious. This is supposed to be indisputable evidence of the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Not only that, but the only piece of real physical historical evidence. It's a big deal.

    In summary, the claim is that the Book of Mormon gives a detailed description of the route the Nephites took from Jerusalem to Bountiful, identifying places by name, landmarks, compass directions, etc., and that this description fits perfectly with the middle east in a way that would have been unknowable to Joseph Smith or any early 1800s people in America. In particular, Nephi writes that Ishmael was buried in a place called Nahom, and that they have found this exact place, by name, over in the Middle East, along with ancient tombs bearing inscriptions of Book of Mormon names. Impressive.

    Lots of commenters are saying it's just a coincidence, or there are so many other anachronisms it doesn't matter, and bringing pretty typical arguments along those lines to dispute the video. Nobody disputes the Nahom finding itself Then out of nowhere this random guy Andrew shows up, claims he speaks Arabic and has traveled to all these locations in the middle east and systematically debunks the whole thing. There is no Nahom, it hasn't been found, all the claims in the video are madeup fiction.

    In response to this the apologists start rubbing feces all over themselves. And then it only gets worse from there.

    Here's the video.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOPFob0cjfw

    Here's the blog post by Neal Rappleye, where he responds to critics of the Nahom video. Some important characters. Neal Rappleye, Stephen Smoot, and James Cutler. These people are all apologists with Book of Mormon Central.

    Neal posts his critique of the critics.

    http://www.studioetquoquefide.com/2017/06/responding-to-new-video-on-nahom-as.html

    In response Andrew posts:

    >I did my undergraduate studies in the Middle East. I speak Arabic. I lived in Yemen. I visited several of the the so-called "NHM" sites while I was still an active/believing member, including sites near Marib like the Bar’an temple, Jidran and Ruwaiq mountains, among other ruins in the region and all over the country, as well as sites in Oman like Dhalkuut.

    >I was excited to visit these places and see them for myself as they constituted what is literally the only piece of supposed evidence for Book of Mormon historicity. What I found was pretty underwhelming, nothing at all like what is described, and somewhat faith shattering. This video grossly misrepresents the NHM “evidence,” to the point of deception, leveraging sensationalism and sound effects to construct pseudoevidence.

    >Short version, point by point, every single "correlation" in this video is misrepresented.

    >Nehem is NOT a burial site, it's a vast mountain range. And the ruins referenced in the video are in a completely different location that is NOT in Nehem. Moreover the ruins themselves are not at a specific site, but scattered all over the place, thousands of such sites, all over the country. Going back to Nehem, it doesn't match with the text of the BOM, which describes them as following a path along the coast of the Red Sea. About 140 miles of impassable mountain range separates Nehem from the coast.

    >To put this in context, this is what the area looks like: http://bit.ly/2s3WAOQ

    >BOM doesn't say anything about turning east and passing through 140 miles of nasty mountains before getting to Nahom. It says they turned east AFTER getting to Nahom, suggesting it would be near the coast somewhere. I really can't emphasize enough how nasty the Nehem area is. Lehi slept in a tent? Good luck hauling tents over those mountains. Zero sense for a long list of reasons. Go over there and see Nehem for yourself, of all potential places for them to travel to, it is literally the worst! An impossible location.

    >And then getting into the language, the H and M characters in Nehem the place DO NOT match with the NHM on the altars, nor do they match with the NHM in the hebrew word "nacham" that's being referenced as a potential "word play" with the word "mourn" in the text of the BOM. There are about 4 distinct arabic letters/sounds which get clumsily described as H in English, but in the original language these are distinct letters as different as A and Z. The word "nachom" in hebrew is completely different than "nahom." Just as different as "nazom".

    >So you have some burial sites, literally thousands of them scattered all over the country, everywhere, found a tombstone at one location (not in Nehem) which bears the 3 characters NHM (which also don’t match the NHM characters used in the place name Nehem), and the Nehem location is completely at odds with the BOM text in terms of terrain and geography, but somehow all this is a correlation?

    >And then there is the "nearly eastward" business. Pick a spot literally anywhere in the Yemen, and in many parts of Saudi Arabia for that matter, head "eastward" and you'll end up at some coastline. About 1600 miles of coastline to work with. There is nothing special about vaguely saying, go south along the coast, turn east at some unspecified location, and then arrive at some other unspecified location where you can build a boat. This isn't a correlation.

    >The dating. The NHM altars are irrelevant for the aforementioned reasons, but nonetheless, the dating isn't credible. The altars were not dated through scientific means like radiation, etc. In context, the original dating was literally just a guesstimate based on the expertise of the german archaeologist. And that guy places the stones likely AFTER Nephi. And then the subsequent “researcher,” Aston, who pushed the dates back used even worse methodologies than the original guy. Aston isn’t a credible archaeologist, he writes conspiracy books on UFOs! Can't make this stuff up.

    >Adding to all this are other things I could say. There are a lot of Jewish ruins in Yemen, symbols all over the place. It is my opinion that the area name Nehem comes from Nehemia the Jewish prophet / historical figure, who was a big deal 5th century BC. See the Book of Nehemia. If Nehem is a reference to Nehemia, which would make a lot of sense, that is after Nephi.

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    Supreme Court rules against giving state legislatures unchecked control over federal elections
    www.nbcnews.com Supreme Court rules against giving state legislatures unchecked control over federal elections

    The justices rejected the “independent state legislature" theory, which Trump supporters cited during the 2020 election. The theory would have restricted the power of state courts to review certain election laws.

    The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to impose new limits on state courts reviewing certain election-related issues by ruling against Republicans in North Carolina fighting for a congressional district map that would heavily favor their candidates.

    The justices ruled in a 6-3 vote that the North Carolina Supreme Court was acting within its authority in concluding that the map constituted a partisan gerrymander under the state Constitution.

    In doing so, the court declined to embrace a hitherto obscure legal argument called the “independent state legislature” theory, which Republicans say limits the authority of state courts to strike down certain election laws enacted by state legislatures.

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