Bethany J

Thank you!

Love the idea as a spread with cheese and crackers

I'm a sucker for the Charlie Brown holiday movies 😄

This sounds delicious!

Do you dice the apple?

(I'm blocked on the original post for some reason, so I'm not sure what context I'm missing, but this sounds like an amazing cranberry sauce!)

That could definitely be a factor as well. And it's all related. Get people married and having kids as quickly as possible so they don't have time to question or look outside their bubble.

So much for GBH'S get an education stuff. It wasn't super helpful, but those breadcrumbs were better than the trash that came before about just being a mother and nothing else.

I was on my mission when the age change happened. Everyone I talked to was thrilled. It's interesting to hear your perspective in contrast to those memories. And to think about what I've seen among sister missionaries in the last few years, which is that they typically haven't pursued education.

I wonder if this is a way to make women feel like they have gained lived experience, while still young, and simultaneously further indoctrinating them.

Obviously the patriarchal issues run throughout all of this, but I think the primary motivator is keeping women "happy" in the church.

I'm not sure what to think about this, but I'm thinking it's a retention issue with a heavy helping of patriarchy. I've noticed in exmo spaces there are often women who got married very young and had kids immediately who now feel robbed of other experiences (which is valid!)

That's fair. I went to a grad school at a state university and rarely interacted with undergrads that weren't in the local ysa. BYU is different in that way. I still cannot fathom being in my late 20s and arguing with undergrads on twitter. But I guess that's why he is where he is and I'm not

I cannot imagine arguing with an undergrad after graduation. Especially multiple years after graduation

Given that his immediate reaction to finding my Twitter account was to tattle to BYU (a place I did not have affiliation with at the time and where I had graduated from 7 years earlier) I am not surprised at the skill issue

Seems like a good reason to not be chill

Yeah, I saw his comment about that 🙄

Yikes 😬

I'm glad I missed all of that (didn't start wading into exmo online spaces until 2022 ish), although I'm curious about Smoot's twitter meltdown. Especially since his post mentions Blaine who has always been a lovely person towards me

Absolutely. What a perfect way to sum up years of angst

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

Me too. 😊 It's been a hard journey, but the relief that I no longer have to force things to make sense is worth it

Sometimes I wonder where life would have taken me if I'd leaned into the apologist path. What kind of grift I'd be running in the name of God. I could never have done it, but seeing these two together (2 people who I was with at BYU in the ANES program), makes me think about that alternate timeline.

When Stephen tried to throw me under the bus and I called him out for it he also apologized for "any misunderstanding." 🙄

Can you say more about this video? I'm not familiar with it

Sounds like we're more or less on the same page, just extending the season in opposite directions.

As an adult I've only had artificial trees. Now that I'm back in the PNW I've thought about doing real trees again, but it's a lot of maintenance

I usually leave Christmas up until mid-January. I like keeping things decorated through Orthodox Christmas on Jan 7 (I served in Russia and sort of adopted the tradition, although now that I'm not religious, I don't really do much other than use it as an excuse to keep the decorations up 😆)

That's fair. I have fall decorations that I like to keep up through Thanksgiving (mostly leaves and decorative pumpkins)

Growing up we always had live trees and I think that's a big part of it as well. Get the tree too early and it looks terrible by Christmas.

I won't yuck anyone's yum, but I am team day after Thanksgiving.

I'm a Thanksgiving baby and Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday so I don't want to skip over it. Plus I tend to extend Christmas into January when it's dark and miserable and three months of Christmas is too much for me 😂

This looks incredible!

folks can complain about the effectiveness of scheduled orderly mass protest but to think about it another way its the closest thing we have to the opening scene of A Muppet Christmas Carol where all the muppets sing "there goes Mr. Dipshit, there goes Mr. Ass" to Scrooge and it clearly bothered him

A dozen+ individuals wearing red Handmaid's Tale robes circling a WWI memorial statue. The women are wearing black masks with yellow Xs over their mouths. They are holding signs each with a different statement that is followed by "this is fascism." Some examples of what the signs say: intertwining religion and government; oppression of LGBTQ+ people, use of voter suppression.

From today's No Kings protest in Olympia, WA. These handmaids marched up the road and circled the monument. Kind of a surreal moment, but a powerful message.

you don't need chatGPT i am perfectly capable of drinking a bottle of water and lying to you

I really appreciate the perspective here though. Her experience is one I haven't had and I love reading things that push me to think in new ways.

This was beautifully written.

How to think about death has been a challenge. As someone who needed to know all the answers and where to find them in scripture, I found freedom in uncertainty. I realize that's not everyone's perspective, but I've never been more at peace in saying, "I don't know."

That experience helped me understand how spiritual experiences can be manufactured.

Turns out nostalgia, heightened emotion, good stories, and music are really influential. That or Disney is the one true religion.