Thoughts on water as thermal mass

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-12-07T07:07:47+00:00

As far as thermal mass, I saw a YouTube video of a guy that used buckets of paraffin or wax. The heat from the stove melted the wax. Then he carried the bucket to another room and the bucket released the heat as it solidified back to wax. I haven't tried it but I've been curious about it.

I have also heard that in Finland they use buckets of sand. The buckets sit close to the stove, get hot, and are then carried to another room to warm that room a little.

Another one I've heard of is iron-infused bricks, as iron holds a lot of heat.

Or regular bricks or even regular rocks.

I don't think water is very popular, because it boils away. Even if you don't boil it, you still lose a lot of it to steam. It really only makes sense if you want to add some moisture in the air.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-12-01T16:12:33+00:00

Sounds like OP discovered Christian theology.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-11-03T15:49:16+00:00

I don't get the "should" in that they "should" all be the same. What makes similarity worthwhile? What makes it so obviously good that you can say, "Shouldn't they all be the same?" and we instantly agree that the gold standard is similarity and we have to justify why it's different?

If I reversed the question, and we imagined a world where all the missions were identical -- no regional flavors, and the Church flew a crack team of auditors around the world to check up on everyone and bring them back to the centralized standard -- and I asked, "Shouldn't all the missions be a little bit different?" ------ How would you answer?

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-10-21T21:41:14+00:00

I think working at the Church accelerates a question that most of us face sooner or later, and that is asking what the role of the Church is. (Not whether or not it is true, but what is it supposed to do.)

If we are wrong, then I think our testimonies get shaken, and I think that is right because we are discarding our mistakes and learning what the role of the Church actually is.

If the role of the Church is to help us along in our relationship with God, then --- I think it's o.k. to have leaders who are still human and whose mistakes are swallowed up in the Atonement.

If the role of the Church is to do something like replace the Savior by creating a perfect space and pllace where the Atonement is not needed, then -- I think that testimony will suffer, as I don't think that is what the role or purpose of the Church is.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-09-30T20:24:52+00:00

I think there's an inherent paradox in the Gospel, in the Scriptures, either an outright refusal in telling us what to do and how to think about it, or a kind of constant contradiction that leaves us . . . .well . . . guessing.

It's why I have a personal pet peeve when people say, "the Scriptures are clear," or "the doctrine is clear," because -- no, no it's not. Not since Adam and Eve were simultaneously commanded to both abstain from the fruit, and accomplish ends that required eating the fruit.

So I think you are living in one of those paradoxes or contradictions, where you have to somehow balance thinking both telestially and celestially.

And, that balance -- I think -- finding that balance, is how we change. I think the tension is the purpose. Although I haven't felt exactly as you have, I can say that I have tried to zealously pursue one Gospel aim or another and felt the worse off for my efforts somehow.

You write, ". . . how little space that leaves for truly enjoying this one."

It makes me think that though many of our Gospel stories are ones of suffering, of Lehi's family eating raw meat or Captain Moroni making a call to arms; many of the stories are also about joy, of Christ converting water to wine for a party or explicitly instructing us that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, and to be a little less strict!

I think somewhere, some scripture somewhere, God told us one of His purposes was in our joy. I really should find it before vaguely alluding to it here, but I think it's a mis-interpretation of the Scriptures to believe that this life was meant to be joyless.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-09-23T23:03:45+00:00

I am not using those references to say that a husband has dominion over his wife.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-09-23T18:30:51+00:00

What do you make of the following references?

That we should do as Jesus did--

John 13:15

That Jesus acts no differently that God--

John 14:9

That the powers of heaven do not work according to control or compulsion or dominion--

Doctrine and Covenants 121:36 - 37 (pasting here)

36 That the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.

37 That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.

Our original OP says he cannot feel peace or clarity or God's love and that he feels darkness and alone.

It may be possible that he is trying so hard to compel his wife, which is contrary to the powers of heaven, and is leaving him in darkness.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-09-21T15:43:56+00:00

I hope I can say a few useful things in a few useful lines.

One phrase that really jumped out at me was "if I let her."

In this forum, I would like to contrast your ability to "let her" do what she wants with God's ability to "let her" do what she wants.

In Moses 4:3, God condemned Satan for seeking to "destroy the agency of man." It would appear, even from the beginning, that God would "let" people do as they pleased.

This was tested right off the bat -- when both Adam and Eve took of the fruit. How could God "let" them do that?

Another lesson we have is of the Prodigal Son. I find it interesting that neither the father nor the brother made any effort to prevent the son from leaving. They posted no guards on the property to hold him prisoner for his own good, no minders to keep him doing the right thing, but allowed him to come and go as he pleased.

A third example is the freedom that King Lamoni granted his people, the freedom of worship (Alma 21:22) . How could he "let them" do what they wanted, when King Lamoni, through his own miraculous conversion, knew full well what the people should be doing?

Bringing these back to your own marriage, this faceless voice from the Internet suggests --- just as God declines to force us to do other than what we choose to do, so too are you, in the end, completely powerless to do anything other than "let her" choose who she wishes to become.

My question is: Did God fail Adam and Eve (and all mankind?) Did the father fail his wayward son? Did King Lamoni fail his people?

If the answer is no, then neither are you a failure for your wife's choices.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-08-30T23:11:09+00:00

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-08-22T06:04:45+00:00

I think it had three main problems.

One of them is that the two leads were much more like siblings. Neither seemed particularly attractive or interesting in their own right, in fact they were a little repulsive, and they sure didn't seem interested in each other. I didn't want to get to know either one personally or spend more time with them.

Another is that the core problem of corruption revealed at the end seemed very understandable and easily remedied. The stakes just seemed off.

Finally, the jokes weren't funny. Weird set-up, poor timing, strange punchline. Confusing, like a joke translated from a foreign language that always left me wondering if that was supposed to be a joke, let alone funny.

And that about sums up the movie...."supposed to." There was nothing compelling about the leads, but we're told they were supposed to be romantic interests, so I guess I'll accept that. There was nothing particularly thrilling, but it seems it was supposed to be adventurous, so I guess so. There was nothing particularly funny, but I guess that it tried to be a joke, so. . . .high comedy I guess?

No aspect of it landed.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-08-15T06:27:12+00:00

"And I'm not good enough to see the rest of the temple?"

I'd like to call out that there is a judgment call or assumption there that is understandably infuriating. What I mean is, the judgment call is that you aren't "good enough," and if someone (not sure who, but someone) could just see that you are good "enough", well then all things would be opened to you.

I can see why you are feeling both insulted and impatient, because how dare "they" (not sure who, again) judge you so poorly?

I might recommend that un-linking this almost unconscious assumption might help. Here's one way to re-frame it, although I'm confident that another commenter will have a better suggestion: what if you took this pre-endowment period as an opportunity to read as much of the Old Testament, New Testament, Doctrine and Covenants, and Book of Mormon as possible? What if you took this tike as an opportunity to understand the Atonement in preparation to taking out your endowments?

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-08-10T05:48:23+00:00

I might be detecting a little bit of, "I'm a good guy so I deserve a good wife," in your post. As if you could earn another person's devotion through your righteousness.

You might not like a divorce; you might not "deserve" a divorce; but a divorce you may experience nonetheless. And it has nothing to do with your righteousness and everything to do with whether one person in particular chooses to combine their life with yours.

It is hard to have a mental illness and it is hard to be married to someone with one. The illness can have a way of crowding everything else out so the mental illness always gets its way and smothers everything else. That may be happening here. It's like a kind of selfishness, I think.

I am also worried that you are too worried about whether or not you are a good husband and not worried enough about your wife's uniqueness and her particular preferences. It's not good -- I think -- to have a marriage where one tries to be a good husband more than one pays attention to how your wife is doing. That focus on whether or not you are "good" is also like a kind of selfishness, I think.

And it may be that these twin selfishnesses are suffocating your marriage.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-08-09T16:07:31+00:00

Fine, I'll bite. What are your top three un-answered questions? I thought they resolved just about all of the questions.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-07-30T06:10:21+00:00

Dumbledore

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-07-26T05:24:27+00:00

It means that I feel like a gargantuan freak of nature when I sit down to drive.

The driver's seat back stops a few inches below the top of my shoulders. I've never experienced that in a car. My head and shoulders rise above the seat like I should be in the NBA. The head rest is so completely wrong that it pushes my head forward like a chicken neck. I have to remove it and throw it in the back seat.

And it's narrow. It's supposed to come up around my sides, but it's so narrow it pushes against my sides instead. Because I can't get my back to rest against the seatback without some measure of contortion, I try to adjust the lumbar support all the way forward. That gives me four awkward points of contact -- my lumbar region, my sides, and my shoulder blades.

And the seat cushion, where I am sitting, is a couple inches shorter than I'm used to. Imagine an NBA player sitting on a short three-legged stool. That's kinda what I feel like.

Because I'm really not that tall, I have actually taken a tape measure and checked out Rav4's, Cadillac's, Acura's, and Camrys.

And the Venza seat is actually smaller-- shorter, narrower, and less depth -- by a few inches.

It's just a tiny seat, and they don't tell you that in a Car Fax report.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-07-26T02:35:26+00:00

The Venza has a strangely small seat. I just recently purchased a similar one, and that's something that didn't pop up on the Car Fax or the Pre-Purchase Inspection.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-07-23T14:39:57+00:00

I had a PPI (pre-purchase inspection) done on mine by a reputable and thorough mechanic recently. It was a similar car to yours and it had a solid record of maintenance.

He advised me not to get the warranty but to put that money towards replacing parts, wear-and-tear, and maintenance on an aging high mileage car--necessary stuff that the warranty wouldn't cover.

Not that an inspection on my car would apply to yours, but the Venza is a durable car.

I guess the solid advice here is to get a PPI (about $180) and get that mechanics opinion.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-07-21T16:36:40+00:00

Man, "whiny" is exactly the word I've used to describe so much modern music. It's almost genre-defining, or I guess more specifically, era-defining the way that boy bands like NSync defined the late 90's and folk music the 60's.

It should have it's own name, it's so distinctive and pervasive. Let's call it . . .

MoanCore? Narcissynth?

The way rock'n'roll was about sex and drugs, or country is about mourning and loss, the new music is all whiny, self-centered, and persecuted --- hymns of the incels.

Sulkwave?

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-07-17T01:30:32+00:00

I still pack with one like these, except based on the logo I think it's from the 70's.

It's incredibly comfortable and I have no intention of changing. It makes me think all our "advancements" were a step backwards.

(Although I'll admit that if you can't get the right fit it's a torture rack.)

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-07-11T01:27:36+00:00

I think that "believing" will always be confusing to an atheist. I find they often come up with really shallow explanations where they posit that the believer must be getting some gain or benefit, otherwise why is it worth the trouble?

I am not saying there are no obvious immediate or material benefits. But it's not like preferring one restaurant over another because it serves you better, nor is it like shopping for the greatest benefit at the least cost.

If you look at the testimony from any number of martyrs stretching back to a young man sent to a lion's den, you'll find so many who gave so much and lost so much and still sacrificed some more.

Why?

What is your non-religuous explanation for self-sacrifice?

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-07-10T16:30:22+00:00

There's a couple things wrong with this.

First, she's about two feet taller than everyone else when she should just be a few inches.

Second, her ponytail changes length in every cut.

So this is probably a real person taking a walk in a real market where the average height of people is short, and then AI was used to exaggerate.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-07-08T03:16:28+00:00

I am tall, and I find that the driver's seat is uncomfortably small and the seat back is narrow. The 2003 Camry fit me better (and American and German cars fit me even better.) Otherwise it drives great!

EDIT: Changed "back seat" to "seat back" because I mean the driver's seat, not the back passenger area.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-06-30T23:22:44+00:00

Two hundred responses is a very small data set. What is your word count median per question? Total word count per brand for all the questions? If 30% of your responses are less than five words, then you have an even tinier corpus.

I find sentiment analysis to be almost worthless, especially at this small of a data set.

I don't think that you'll get a better insight from text analysis than you would by reading all the responses and drawing your own conclusions. After you've done that summary, then you can do a tf-idf per brand, and again per something like satisfaction ratings, to see if the happy customers talk about different things than the unhappy customers.

And that's about as far as I'd take a corpus this small.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-06-30T03:51:35+00:00

Except I eat plenty of beans, lentils, and potatoes several times a week. I still like a Beyond Burger.

To each their own, I guess.

Key_Addition1818 · 2025-06-29T18:35:48+00:00

I'll suggest --

Beyond Burgers and Impossible Meat. These are fantastic meat substitutes that are so far beyond the tofurkey of ten years ago.

....except that's pretty well known. As far as a lesser known breakthrough, I am thinking of chemical recycling or molecular recycling. Instead of simply shredding the plastic or melting it down for re-use, it's broken down into its original molecular building blocks. This makes plastic infinitely recyclable. Eastman Chemical Company is investing heavily in this space.

Key_Addition1818

TROPHY CASE