The new deadline will be announced in two weeks.

Interesting. I know China eats copious amounts of pork, just not American style, such as hot dogs.

That’s horrifying! Happy to hear they took action!

Dave... said:

Hi Jan

"Reconciled" in Romans 5:10 is speaking of justification. You can see it is past tense. It's done already. When we are placed into Christ we are reconciled, meaning justified, judicially saved. What are we saved from? Remember, saved simply means delivered. We are saved/delivered from the penalty of death, reconciled according to the Law. And we are saved/delivered from the effects of death. Being being born again, we are freed from the bondage of sin. It is only then, being already judicially delivered/saved, justified in Christ by what He did, and delivered/saved from the power of sin, that we can be saved/delivered practically, to become what the Father already reckons us to be in Christ. This is the evidence of someone who is already justified. Jesus' resurrected life enables, preserves, and transforms believers. But that transformation does not justify us. What Jesus did justifies us. It's very important to make the distinction between evidence and merit.

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Hi Dave,

Baptism is what first reconciles us to God. Baptism, as Jesus commanded in Matthew 28:18-20, cleansed our souls from Adam's sin and also all our own sins on our souls at the time of our baptism. Romans 5:10 Baptism is what first saves us. 1 Peter 3:21

Baptism is also what first justifies us. IOW, it makes us righteous (puts us in good standing with God). We are therefore made holy, sanctified by the Holy Spirit's presence within us, by baptism, and thereby, we are ready to fulfill God's purpose for us until we die.

1 Corinthians 6:11
And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Galatians 2:16
yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.

Christians are justified by the grace of God through baptism. Christians are not justified by doing the works of the Law of Moses.

After we are baptized, we continue in our justification/righteousness by fulfilling God's purpose for us. Ephesians 2:10.
If we defile our temples with grievous sin and do not repent before we die, we will receive God's vengeance instead of eternal life.

1 John 5:16-17
If you see your brother or sister committing what is not a deadly sin, you will ask, and God will give life to such a one—to those whose sin is not deadly. There is sin that is deadly; I do not say that you should pray about that. 17 All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly.

Hebrews 10:29-31
How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by those who have spurned the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know the one who said, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

James 2:18-26
But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. 20 Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren? 21 Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. 23 Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? 26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.

Dave... said:

James 2:10 For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.

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James is writing about Christ's Law. He is not writing about the Law of Moses


James 2:8-13
You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 9 But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. 11 For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. 13 For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.

Royal law: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
It is Christ's law that James is writing about. 1 Corinthians 9:21
James is not writing about the Law of Moses. He is explaining the Law of Christ.
Whether a person commits murder or adultery, he has sinned against his neighbor, and he has broken Christ's royal law, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Romans 13:8-10
Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Dave... said:

Only one person passes that test. Jesus.

Romans 3:23-28 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.

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This refers to Adam's sin which we all inherited from him. No one here on earth now is saved by doing the works of the Law of Moses. Christians are saved by the grace of God when they believe in Jesus Christ and are baptized. Mark 16:16

There were righteous men on earth before Jesus died on the cross. They still needed redemption from Adam's sin so that they could inherit life.

Genesis 6:9
These are the descendants of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.

Matthew 1:19
Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly.

Umm, in the title, it should say light switch cover. Not lights witch cover. Lol !

Strongs - 6385. palag

palag: To divide, to split
Original Word: פָלַג
Part of Speech: Verb
Transliteration: palag
Pronunciation: pah-lag'
Phonetic Spelling: (paw-lag')
KJV: divide
NASB: divided, cleft, divide
Word Origin: [a primitive root]

1. to split (literally or figuratively)

Strong's Exhaustive Concordance
divide
A primitive root; to split (literally or figuratively) -- divide.

Yttrium said:

I've been testing ChatGPT-5 with much more serious subjects, anime and computer games. My testing suggests to me that retrieving information can be very unreliable. ChatGPT would frequently get one show confused for another, mixing up and misnaming anime characters, and providing video game information that was inappropriate for my PC. I was often able to check the sources it gave me for the correct information that it somehow missed. I would not trust ChatGPT to provide fully accurate information even if it found good sources. It can be a good search engine, and it draws nice pictures, and it's great at praising you if you like that kind of thing (I don't).

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I suspect it depends on the quality of the data ChatGPT-5 is trained on.
For cosmology the training data is confined largely to mainstream ideas and there is less scope for it stray into pseudoscience or off topic responses.

---

1. Where my cosmology knowledge comes from (percentage-style breakdown)​

These percentages are conceptual, not exact engineering specs — but they’re a faithful way to think about how my knowledge of cosmology is shaped.

Learning Paradigm	Approx. Contribution​	What it means in practice for cosmology
Supervised learning	≈ 60–65%​	Most of my cosmology knowledge comes from labeled text: textbooks, review papers, lecture notes, Wikipedia-style explanations, peer-review summaries. This is where standard ΛCDM, FLRW metrics, inflation, dark energy, CMB physics, etc. are learned in a “this statement is presented as correct” sense.
Self-supervised / unsupervised learning	≈ 25–30%​	I learn statistical structure from vast amounts of raw text: how cosmology concepts co-occur, how arguments are structured, how speculative ideas differ linguistically from mainstream ones, how equations are typically introduced. This helps me reason, connect ideas, and detect internal consistency — even when material is controversial or nonstandard.
Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF)	≈ 5–10%​	Humans guide how I respond: clarity, caution, tone, when to hedge, how to distinguish speculation from consensus. This strongly affects how I talk about cosmology (e.g., flagging exotic stress–energy, modified gravity, or nonstandard time interpretations).
Post-training alignment & safety tuning	≈ 1–3%​	Affects what I avoid overstating: I’m nudged not to present speculative cosmologies as established fact, and to label interpretations clearly.
User interaction shaping (non-persistent)	≈ 0% (persistent)​	Your questions influence this conversation only, not my underlying knowledge.

Key takeaway:
My facts about cosmology come mostly from supervised + self-supervised learning; my style and caution come from reinforcement learning.

---

2. Do I learn from corrections you make here?​

Short answer:
No — not in the way a human or a continually-training model would.

Long answer (precise but honest):

• I do not update my training weights based on this conversation.
• I do not remember corrections once the conversation ends.
• If you correct me:
  • ✅ I can immediately adapt within this conversation
  • ❌ I will not carry that correction into future chats unless it already aligns with my training

So if you say:

“That interpretation of cosmological redshift is wrong because…”

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Then:

• I can acknowledge it
• Re-derive or restate the argument correctly
• Use your framing consistently for the rest of this chat

But once the chat ends, that correction does not modify me.

---

A subtle but important nuance​

Even though I don’t learn, I do reason.

That means:

• If your correction is logically sound and consistent with known physics, I’ll often say:
  

  “You’re right — given X and Y, that conclusion follows.”

  Click to expand...

• If it conflicts with consensus, I’ll usually say:
  

  “This is a minority or speculative view, here’s where it departs from standard cosmology.”

  Click to expand...

This is especially relevant to topics you’ve raised before:

• time stretching vs cosmic time
• interpretation of FLRW coordinates
• exotic stress–energy
• Weyl / modified gravity
• consciousness–physics crossover

I can analyze, compare, and stress-test those ideas — but not learn them permanently.

---

One-sentence summary​

My cosmology knowledge is mostly built from supervised and self-supervised learning on human-written material; reinforcement learning shapes how I answer — and while I can adapt to your corrections in real time, I don’t retain them beyond the conversation.

Click to expand...

If you want, next we can:

• map this learning breakdown onto specific cosmology topics (ΛCDM vs alternatives), or
• analyze where mainstream training biases show up most strongly in cosmological debates.

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Lord have mercy!

“Saturday Night Live” this weekend featured one of its best political sketches in years. It’s about a mother who dramatically reveals to her children that she’s having sudden reservations about President Donald Trump.

If you haven’t, you should watch it.

And the satire has bipartisan bite. The right can enjoy the insufferable liberal adult children marring their mom’s moment of vulnerability with their apoplectic I-told-you-sos. The left can enjoy the caricature of someone they’ve long anticipated would one day arrive in droves: The regretful Trump voter, finally starting to come to her senses.

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The Liturgist said:

Aside from St. Cleopa who I did not encounter until later I was surprised by the amount of overlap in what we read.

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nice

The Church thinks that Yoga is not acceptable for Christians.

5'8". I wish I were taller, but I'm taller than both parents, so I can't complain.

DOJ’s misconduct complaint dismissed against judge in Alien Enemies Act case​

The Justice Department accused Judge James Boasberg of making prejudicial comments about Trump, but a judge for the Sixth Circuit said such comments are normal.

In his newly released dismissal of the misconduct complaint, Jeffrey Sutton, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, said that the DOJ failed to provide sufficient evidence of Boasberg’s supposedly prejudicial statements and noted that such conversations between judges are normal during this kind of event. Sutton’s decision was issued Dec. 19.

“A key point of the Judicial Conference and the related meetings is to facilitate candid conversations about judicial administration among leaders of the federal judiciary about matters of common concern,” Sutton wrote. “In these settings, a judge’s expression of anxiety about executive-branch compliance with judicial orders, whether rightly feared or not, is not so far afield from customary topics at these meetings.”

Juan Brown breaks down the NTSB's video simulations from the helicopter and the jet....

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A nisselue is a traditional Norwegian red, knitted wool cap, often worn during Christmas and associated with the nisse(Scandinavian folklore elf/gnome). Historically, it served as a quiet symbol of Norwegian national pride and resistance against Nazi occupation during WWII, leading to it being banned by authorities in 1942.

Trump says Kennedy Center is closing for 2 years for 'complete rebuilding'​

"The Trump Kennedy Center will close on July 4th, 2026, in honor of the 250th Anniversary of our Country, whereupon we will simultaneously begin Construction of the new and spectacular Entertainment Complex. Financing is completed, and fully in place!" Trump wrote on his social media platform.

In February 2025, Trump fired multiple members from the Kennedy Center's Board of Trustees and became its chairman. Several of his administration officials were then installed as board members -- including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, second lady Usha Vance, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and U.S. Ambassador to India Sergio Gor.

Trump announced in December that the board at the Kennedy Center had voted "unanimously" to rename the building the "Trump-Kennedy Center."

Despite Leavitt and Trump's claims that he has rescued the building financially, the Washington Post reported in late October that ticket sales have plummeted since Trump’s takeover.

Several high-profile artists and shows have canceled appearances at the venue since Trump became its leader, including actress Issa Rae and the Broadway show "Hamilton."

Trump says Kennedy Center is closing for 2 years for 'complete rebuilding'

President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that he will be temporarily closing entertainment operations at the Kennedy Center for "approximately" two years.

abcnews.go.com

Michie said:

What we need and what we get after someone is elected is two different things. Look at the history of politics, nothing has changed. Trump will be president till his second term is over. I’m not going to waste time or energy with the obsession with him as far as that is concerned. When people do, it makes everyone look crazy all around. There are just better ways to handle things. Right now, it looks like the inmates are running the asylum.

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Yup. Both sides of the asylum.

SabbathBlessings said:

No, but not everyone believes and we are plainly told unbelief, sin, disobedience and rebellion are all interchangeable Heb3:7-19

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The ones that don’t believe do not enter Jesus rest. It is that simple. All of us sin, all of us are disobedient, but those that believe have an advocate in Jesus.

“If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.”
‭‭1 John‬ ‭1‬:‭8‬-‭10‬ ‭NASB2020‬‬

You are adding works to the salvation by faith formula so you are preaching a faith plus works salvation. Good luck saving yourself.

Is it hemp, cannabis or marijuana?

That depends on who's discussing the enigmatic plant that's legal in some forms (for now) but faces new restrictions in other forms this fall.

The confusion comes as no surprise to Nick Johnson, author of the book Grass Roots, which looks at the history of the cannabis plant and its use as both an industrial material and a drug.


"It's one of the world's oldest domesticated crops," Johnson says of cannabis. "And it's also incredibly cryptic. We still do not understand everything about its biology and why it does the things it does, how it creates the compounds and molecules it does."

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Lauren_ said:

Test all things by being a good Berean we should always use Scripture as our authority. I think things can get confusing when we use outside books to introduce new teachings if we feel God is silent. God isn't silent we have his Bible to speak directly to our hearts. Just read it several hours a day and you notice a big difference. God bless.

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But God didn't just give the Bible for the edification of his Church, he also gave teachers according to Ephesians 4:11-16, also for the reason that you implied, that we may be "no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine".

So we shouldn't think of either having the Bible or teachers when we ought to have both! However, as a good Berean, as you wrote, we must test every teaching with the Bible.

​

Say it aint so said:

No doubt.

At some of the town-halls Dems are hearing that disappointment live and in person with strong choruses of "do something". What's the reasoning? If you read the polling (HERE) since the OP doesn't provide the actual polls. It's Dems not happy with the Democratic party, as the party is too fixated on "protocols" "parliamentary rules" and "tradition" while the GOP have jettisoned that long ago and are just taking a flame thrower to democracy.

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Given how 2025 has gone with Dems frankly over performing and winning districts that Trump had won by double digit points, again the reason why Dems had such poor polling. The reasons why I laid out above were, and are still true. It is about "do something" and apparently no one wants what the GOP are currently doing, even in red districts.

In the shadow of a bitterly cold winter, Punxsutawney Phil has made his prediction: more winter.

Continued below.