richeyrw

For those who prefer listening to reading, here's the audio version:

https://sscpodcast.libsyn.com/meditations-on-moloch

I wrote a post very much on this subject:

https://wearenotsaved.com/2020/03/27/the-fragility-of-effici...

You understand that the Salt Lake Tribune has traditionally been dedicated to being critical of the Mormon church? Right?

I am a Mormon SMB owner, and I agree with your point, but in the interest of full disclosure, there is a darker side to this tendency as well. Utah (read Mormons) is the MLM capital of the world, with other get rich quick schemes being pretty popular as well.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/theslice/mormon-utah-valley-mu...

You're probably thinking of entering a Mormon Temple. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints distinguishes between churches where people meet every Sunday, and Temples where more important ceremonies are conducted (and which, incidentally, aren't open on Sunday).

For those who prefer audio (podcast) here's an audio version of it (read by yours truly, though I did clips of Ginsburg whenever he quotes from the poem.)

http://traffic.libsyn.com/sscpodcast/Meditations_on_Moloch.m...

One additional difference is that the psychic is being personally enriched by the money, whereas the Mormon leaders are not being personally enriched. (At the highest levels they get a stipend, of around 120k/year last I checked). Now this is not true of other churches necessarily, but it is true of the Mormons.

Amazon did something similar to me on a return. I returned a top end pixel book ($1500) UPS said it had been delivered to return center. Amazon said they didn't have it so they weren't going to issue the refund. Despite my receipt from UPS. I did a chargeback, and lo and behold the next day they sent me an email saying they were issuing a refund.

My experience would match lixtra's either get an attorney or write it off, they're punks about this sort of thing.

I'm not saying it didn't happen. It's clear it happened, a lot. I'm taking issue with the idea that the wives were "disproportionally" 14-16.

I did a search for the number 14 and 16 without seeing anything that matched the claim. The closest I saw was

"These men averaged thirty-six years of age (range: 24-60) and had been married an average of ten years (1-32 years) before marrying a second wife of a mean twenty-five years of age (14-39 years). At that time, their legal wives averaged thirty-two years of age (22-56)."

Fair point. I will give it a shot.

There's no dearth of places to find ex-mormon/anti-mormon info. I'm looking for documentation of that specific claim.

I did follow the links, but I didn't see anything promising.

I'm an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and I've tried to be as educated as possible about the controversial/anti-mormon stuff (for example I've read the CES letter). But this is the first time I've come across this claim:

"During that time [when plural marriage was part of the doctrine] some male followers of the Latter Day Saint movement took dozens of wives each, disproportionately favoring girls between 14 and 16 years old."

There's no reference, does anyone have a source for that?

You need look no farther than Theranos.

I'm not sure where you're getting your information. I'm currently in the bishopric of a ward in South Salt Lake, and I think it's rare for a week to go by without writing checks for rent, prescriptions, or utilities. I signed two checks just yesterday.

Dailylit.com is great for getting extra reading in. Beyond that I have "Hard" book that I make sure I read at least 30 minutes a day, to ensure I'm not only reading fluff.

As far as articles go, when I find something that I don't have time for right then I drop it into a "Consume" folder in my bookmarks, and then periodically I go in there and power through some of the stuff, it's not optimal, but as long as you have some way of making sure you periodically check it, it is a trusted system.

I use a filter to send most of my email into a "Batch" folder which I check maybe once a day, if that. The rest of the email I do check first thing in the morning, and like jstanley I get to inbox zero (on the non-batch stuff) every morning before I start working.

We have in-house counsel. And we even have access to a big SF firm. And we are getting both their opinions. But as they say the wheels of justice move slowly, and I basically have to decide on no access, access for one or the other or access for both, while waiting for the lawyers to sort through things. That's the issue.

Encourage differences in opinion, but not to such an extent that you fall into analysis paralysis. Other than that there are no easy answers, this is one of the great problems all startups and even all businesses face.

Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy has come down on the "this time it's for real" side of things. The graph he shows seems pretty convincing:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/20/voyager_...

Thanks!

Anyone remember that science fiction story, where the first ship to leave the solar system shatters some shell. And that it's later discovered that all stars have the same shell, which is impermeable from the outside. Sort of an enforced prime directive by unknown powers? This reminded me of that, and despite many searches I'm not getting any hits.

Are you saying that she could have fired some other people and given this guy their money? Because he was working so hard that he could replace them? If not where does she get the money? You can talk about what you deserve to get paid all day long, but if the money isn't there, you have to take whatever money is there, or quit. And you keep talking about the company. It was a non-profit radio station in a tiny market, what was the next step?

I'm not sure. I know some niche's are pretty well covered with offerings, but I'm always surprised at how bad products can be once you wander a little off the reservation, like a music organization app. I bet if you looked into that space right now you'd find that there's still some room available for something creative.

It's even more difficult if you have kids. Though in some sense they get mad less easily. But a couple of things off the top that have helped me.

1- Have some time with the whole family first thing in the morning. This is basically his four minutes in the morning rule, but the temptation is to think it doesn't matter for the kids or to let them sleep in.

2- Have dinner together as often as possible. Even if you have to go back into work (or back into your home office). Or even if you don't eat much because you have a business dinner later.

I know this isn't curiosity, but it remains the greatest commentary on the Mars Rover program yet.

http://xkcd.com/695/

Yeah, I hear this a lot. And I'm sure that for most people the pendulum should swing more in that direction. But like everything you have to strike a balance. ZERO expectation really? To just take one example, what if you're a boss? I know I would be happier if I didn't expect anything out of my subordinates and they probably would to, but I'm guessing the shareholders might not be down with my new zen attitude.

I've also done it by working backwards. This can be useful particularly in smaller consulting firms. Say you have three tech guys who want to start consulting, you start by saying how much do you want to make each year? How many hours do you want to work a week? Then how many people do you want to hire to help? How much would you have to pay them? From this you have some variables you can tweak to see what various numbers of subordinates and various annual salaries get you as an hourly rate.

I'll occasionally use Wolfram Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com/) for well defined searches for example "countries by population". For stuff like that it's awesome.

I read an article in the Economist not to long ago, that seemed particularly insightful. It's about investing, but I think it applies equally well here.

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21569397...

Here's the money quote:

Investors selecting a sector on the basis of its prior five-year performance would have earned much higher returns over the following five years by selecting the worst-performing sector than the best.

So if you're looking for an idea of what business to launch look at what did the worst over the last five years... Rather than what did the best (obviously this is just one thing to consider out of many, but I think there's a lot to be said for it.)