A THREAD: Since today brought on a greater desire/focus to follow the prophet, I felt like it was a great time to review some of his many invitations he has given us as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

#DezNat

Keep on the covenant path. Your commitment to follow the Savior by making covenants with Him and then keeping those covenants will open the door to every spiritual blessing and privilege available to men, women, and children everywhere. (“New First Presidency Broadcast”)
I’m extending a prophetic plea to you, the women of the Church, to shape the future by helping to gather scattered Israel. (“Sisters’ Participation in the Gathering of Israel” – Women’s Session)
So, I invite you to study prayerfully section 25 of the Doctrine and Covenants and discover what the Holy Ghost will teach you. Your personal spiritual endeavor will bring you joy as you gain, understand, and use the power with which you have been endowed. (“Spiritual Treasures”)
Repentance: Teach that repentance is a joyful opportunity to change and grow, something all of God’s children should do with appreciation for the privilege. (Official First Presidency Letter)
Let your children know that their highest blessings will be given in the temples of the Lord. (“The Latin American Tour” – Sao Paulo)
Stand out. Be different. Be a light. Give to a friend one copy of the booklet For the Strength of Youth. (“Hope of Israel” - Youth Devotional)
“We are happiest when we are thinking of someone other than ourselves. (The Prophet at Safeco Field)
Ask your Heavenly Father if we truly are the Lord’s Apostles and prophets. (“The Love and Laws of God,” BYU Devotional)
Hold a seven-day fast from social media. (“Hope of Israel” - Youth Devotional)
I leave my love and blessing upon you, that you may feast upon the word of the Lord and apply His teachings in your personal lives. (Becoming Exemplary Latter-day Saints” – General Session)
I invite you to read the Book of Mormon between now and the end of the year. As impossible as that may seem with all you are trying to manage in your life, if you will accept this invitation with full purpose of heart, the Lord will help you find a way to achieve it. (G. Conf)
Your… family history work will open the heavens to you. (“Spiritual Treasures” – Women’s Session)
I hope there are pictures on the walls of your homes pictures of the children, their parents, and grandparents, and even great grandparents. The family is an eternal unit. (“The Latin American Tour” – Sao Paulo)
We invite them to come unto their Lord, their savior Jesus Christ, keep His commandments, receive the blessings, have joy in their lives and look forward to eternal life with their families. If you want to be happy. Keep the commandments. (“The Latin American Tour”)
Please, teach your children as well as each other about the Lord Jesus Christ. His Atonement is the greatest event in the history of the world. (“The Latin American Tour” - Guatemala)
As you study [conf. addresses], seek to learn what the Lord is trying to teach you through His servants. (Closing Remarks)
I urge you to study these messages, commencing this week. They express the mind and the will of the Lord for His people, today. (Becoming Exemplary LDS)
Emphasize keeping the Sabbath day holy both at home and at church, demonstrating particular reverence for the sacrament of the Lord’s supper. (Official First Presidency Letter)
Your body is your personal temple, created to house your eternal spirit. Your care of that temple is important. Now, I ask you, brethren, are you more interested in dressing and grooming your body to appeal to the world than to please God? (We Can Do Better and Be Better”)
The Lord expects daily effort, daily improvement, daily repentance. Worthiness brings purity, and purity qualifies us for the Holy Ghost. As we take “the Holy Spirit for [our] guide” (Doctrine and Covenants 45:57), we qualify for personal revelation. (Liahona)
Love your husbands. You are partners. (The Prophet in Puerto Rico)
Husbands should be kind and considerate of the wives. The best thing you can do for your children is to love their mother. Your highest priesthood duty is to care for your wife. (The Prophet in Puerto Rico)
A fundamental characteristic of followers of Jesus Christ is the desire and willingness to care for others. This is why at the last general conference we emphasized ministering as a higher, holier way of taking care of each other. (The Prophet at Safeco Field)
The Revealed Name of the Church: Encourage leaders and members to use the revealed name of the Church. (Official First Presidency Letter)
I invite you to increase your participation in family history, including family history research and indexing. (Russell M. Nelson: Hear Him, April 2020)
I renew my plea for you to do whatever it takes to increase your spiritual capacity to receive personal revelation. (Russell M. Nelson: Hear Him, April 2020)
My dear sisters, you have special spiritual gifts and propensities. Tonight I urge you, with all the hope of my heart, to pray to understand your spiritual gifts—to cultivate, use, and expand them, even more than you ever have. You will change the world as you do so.
Giving help to others—making a conscientious effort to care about others as much as or more than we care about ourselves—is our joy. (“The Second Great Commandment” – General Session)
Simply stated, we strive to build bridges of cooperation rather than walls of segregation.
May we go forward doing our best to exemplify the two great commandments—to love God and love each of His children. (NAACP Convention)
Pray daily that all of God’s children might receive the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ. (“Hope of Israel” - Youth Devotional)
We Latter-day Saints are not of the world; we are of covenant Israel. We are called to prepare a people for the Second Coming of the Lord. (“Spiritual Treasures” – Women’s Session)
But my dear sisters, your ability to discern truth from error, to be society’s guardians of morality, is crucial in these latter days. And we depend upon you to teach others to do likewise. (“Spiritual Treasures” – Women’s Session)
Make your focus on daily repentance so integral to your life that you can exercise the priesthood with greater power than ever before. (We Can Do Better and Be Better” – Priesthood Session)

More from Society

So, as the #MegaMillions jackpot reaches a record $1.6B and #Powerball reaches $620M, here's my advice about how to spend the money in a way that will truly set you, your children and their kids up for life.

Ready?

Create a private foundation and give it all away. 1/

Let's stipulate first that lottery winners often have a hard time. Being publicly identified makes you a target for "friends" and "family" who want your money, as well as for non-family grifters and con men. 2/

The stress can be damaging, even deadly, and Uncle Sam takes his huge cut. Plus, having a big pool of disposable income can be irresistible to people not accustomed to managing wealth.
https://t.co/fiHsuJyZwz 3/

Meanwhile, the private foundation is as close as we come to Downton Abbey and the landed aristocracy in this country. It's a largely untaxed pot of money that grows significantly over time, and those who control them tend to entrench their own privileges and those of their kin. 4

Here's how it works for a big lotto winner:

1. Win the prize.
2. Announce that you are donating it to the YOUR NAME HERE Family Foundation.
3. Receive massive plaudits in the press. You will be a folk hero for this decision.
4. Appoint only trusted friends/family to board. 5/
Two things can be true at once:
1. There is an issue with hostility some academics have faced on some issues
2. Another academic who himself uses threats of legal action to bully colleagues into silence is not a good faith champion of the free speech cause


I have kept quiet about Matthew's recent outpourings on here but as my estwhile co-author has now seen fit to portray me as an enabler of oppression I think I have a right to reply. So I will.

I consider Matthew to be a colleague and a friend, and we had a longstanding agreement not to engage in disputes on twitter. I disagree with much in the article @UOzkirimli wrote on his research in @openDemocracy but I strongly support his right to express such critical views

I therefore find it outrageous that Matthew saw fit to bully @openDemocracy with legal threats, seeking it seems to stifle criticism of his own work. Such behaviour is simply wrong, and completely inconsistent with an academic commitment to free speech.

I am not embroiling myself in the various other cases Matt lists because, unlike him, I think attention to the detail matters and I don't have time to research each of these cases in detail.

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I hate when I learn something new (to me) & stunning about the Jeff Epstein network (h/t MoodyKnowsNada.)

Where to begin?

So our new Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's stepfather, Samuel Pisar, was "longtime lawyer and confidant of...Robert Maxwell," Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad.


"Pisar was one of the last people to speak to Maxwell, by phone, probably an hour before the chairman of Mirror Group Newspapers fell off his luxury yacht the Lady Ghislaine on 5 November, 1991."
https://t.co/DAEgchNyTP


OK, so that's just a coincidence. Moving on, Anthony Blinken "attended the prestigious Dalton School in New York City"...wait, what? https://t.co/DnE6AvHmJg

Dalton School...Dalton School...rings a

Oh that's right.

The dad of the U.S. Attorney General under both George W. Bush & Donald Trump, William Barr, was headmaster of the Dalton School.

Donald Barr was also quite a


I'm not going to even mention that Blinken's stepdad Sam Pisar's name was in Epstein's "black book."

Lots of names in that book. I mean, for example, Cuomo, Trump, Clinton, Prince Andrew, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen - all in that book, and their reputations are spotless.
The entire discussion around Facebook’s disclosures of what happened in 2016 is very frustrating. No exec stopped any investigations, but there were a lot of heated discussions about what to publish and when.


In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.

In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.

This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.