It only took 10,000 words to get here, but I finally got through all the 'In Vision' commentaries from 'The Strange and the Dangerous' DVD box-set. And we're ending with a bang that would split Hell wide open even more than Princess Diana, with the Phelps family of the Westboro Baptist Church, aka 'The Most Hated Family in America'.
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\"BECAUSE, YOU ARE... A REBELLIOUS... BRAT!!\"
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For this one Louis is joined by Peter Tatchell, a human rights campaigner who specialises in LGBT issues, and someone who has personally been told by Shirley Phelps that he is going to burn in Hell.
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Cast of bigots: Fred (patriarch of the Phelps family and leader of the church), Shirley (one of Fred's daughters), Jael (one of Fred's granddaughters), Steve (former documentarian who married into the family)
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• Louis: "Would they be so happy, if they weren't so hateful?"
• Louis first learned of the Phelps family in 1995, when one of his colleagues on Michael Moore's 'TV Nation' show produced a segment on them
• As someone he knew had already covered them, Louis "resisted" using them as a subject for Weird Weekends, and waited until enough time had passed for him to make a follow-up documentary
• Peter, who is openly gay, had been raised in a Baptist church that, unsurprising, was nothing like the Westboro Baptist Church
• There is a discussion of how homosexuality is "the absolute, defining point of their faith", along with criticism of the various ways the church attempts to justify it
• The family's excuse for wearing clothes made of "mixed fibres" was that there is a distinction between "ceremonial law" and "moral law"
• The family's excuse for one of Shirley's sons having a goatee (Leviticus states that trimming your beard is forbidden) was also to do with "ceremonial" vs. "moral" law, although Shirley was "shaken for a second" when Louis brought it up
• The family's excuse for why some men in the family were not circumcised was that Paul "released people from having to follow Jewish law"
• Louis was impressed by how many in the family had memorised such a wide repertoire of Bible verses and quotes, which he credits to them mostly being lawyers
• Peter notes that "SHUT UP!" is not "a very Christian response"
• If you look closely at the 'In Vision' commentary, Louis is mouthing the words yelled by the moustachioed man who drives past and swears at the family (he then repeats what the man said to Peter)
• Louis thinks that the man was going to say the family could only get away with what they were doing because they were protected by their right to free speech (remember that for later...), but he drove away before he could finish
• Of Shirley's "10 or 11" siblings, Louis says 9 of them were lawyers and they had a "legalistic" way of looking at the Bible
• They both think the Phelps' "compound" looks like it would be a nice place to live
• Louis was familiar with how people in cults can have a "dazed" or "damaged" look to them, but thought the female children seemed "healthy and outgoing" and "in a weird way, well-adjusted, other than their moral outlook"
• Peter had interviewed Shirley and compares it to "talking to a wall [...] she just carried on regardless"
• Louis states that a gay man visiting the Phelps' would not be "like a black man visiting the Ku Klux Klan [...] they would be reasonably welcoming, as weird as that may sound" (Peter looks ever-so-slightly sceptical)
• Louis implies that the family have an odd sense of equality, as they simply view everyone outside the family as Hell-bound sinners
• Shirley had told Peter that he was going to burn in Hell "in a very nice way"
• There is a discussion of how much weird stuff there is in the Bible, and how modern churches pick-and-choose what they want from it
• The crew made 3 trips, each lasting "a week, or slightly less", and they spent time with Jael on the second trip
• Louis says they tried to show the "human side" to the church members, with Jael being the "easiest to relate to" because of how there was some "turmoil there" (she is a nurse who was raised to believe that all her patients deserve to die and will burn eternally in Hell)
• Peter compliments the family's graphic design skills, "just a pity about the message"
• They both look amused by the idea that Princess Diana's death "split Hell wide open"
• Louis "really enjoyed" making the program and he was "relaxed" about arguing with Steve, as he knew he didn't have to worry about losing access to the family, because "they didn't really care what you threw at them"
• Louis: "They expected you to take issue with everything, and get into barneys and ding-dongs"
• The family had been "very involved in Democratic politics", though Louis suspects this may partly be because the Republican party was supported by other Christian groups that the family hated
• In his younger days, Fred had received an award from the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) for his legal work during the civil rights movement
• Peter mocks Fred for using "Armenian" as an insult, before Louis corrects him to say that Fred is saying "Arminian" ("it's a theological... thing")
• Louis notes that Fred immediately disliked him and was "quite grumpy"
• At the time of recording the commentary, the family had been successfully sued for millions of dollars, after being found guilty of their picketing "causing mental anguish and distress" and Louis says "technically, they may be bankrupt"
• Louis: "Are they still active, do we know?"
• [What happened was that Synder vs. Phelps initially resulted in the family being ordered to pay $5 million, but the judgement was later reversed (with that reversal being upheld by the US Supreme Court) when another court determined that Fred Phelps was protected by his right to free speech]
• The family spent "tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars" each year to fly around the country and picket funerals
• The family makes "a reasonably good living" through their legal practice in Topeka, Kansas
• No-one from the church will represent you as a lawyer for your first divorce, but they don't have a problem with representing you for any subsequent divorce ("at that point, it became meaningless")
• Louis mentions how Shirley's family were the happiest and "her daughters seemed very self-assured", likely because they were "so close to the power" (Jael was not one of Shirley's daughters)
• Some of Shirley's brothers had wives who had been "excluded" from the church (they could live on the property, but not socialise with anyone), because of their "transgressions"
• Peter does not agree with taking children to any kind of protests where they do not understand what is being protested
• Being a member of the family essentially meant that you were forced to take part in pickets ("emotional blackmail", as Peter calls it)
• Peter on Shirley: "She loves the fact the world hates them."
• Louis: "It makes them think they've got something important to say."
• Louis mentions that they had followed and filmed interviews with the male children of the family, but none of it was included in the episode, because they simply weren't as "lively and interesting" as the female children
• When Peter asks, Louis confirms that the male children had exactly the same attitudes and opinions as the other family members
• The family's excuse for watching British TV shows like 'Ali G' and 'Trigger Happy TV' was that they could "find it amusing", while still thinking everyone involved in the production was going to Hell
• Louis: "It's not what goes into the vessel, it's... something-something, some line about how, basically, you can watch whatever TV you like."
• Peter notes how the family are sex-obsessed when it comes to the physical act ("to the point of, it's not really normal or healthy"), but never acknowledge the emotions associated with it
• Shirley's first child had been born out of wedlock with a man she did not go on to marry (surprisingly, the conversation Louis had with her about this "wasn't particularly interesting")
• Louis notes that Shirley and her siblings had a "complex relationship" with Fred, and claims that they had previously worked through feelings of "resentment and rebellion against him"
• They both (correctly) predict that Shirley might be "running the show" now, but she will have a problem becoming Fred's successor, because strictly adhering to the Bible means that women cannot preach in church, so she could not formally be put in charge
• Peter: "So they're misogynistic, as well as homophobic?"
• Peter points out how the women have their heads covered during the church service, as it says to do in the Old Testament
• Fred, literally, lived above the church, in living quarters with his wife
• Louis believes that Fred had tailored his sermon to target Louis (or a UK audience in general), as he had given it a "transatlantic flavour"
• The Bible contains "a recipe for bread that includes human excrement" ("Google it", Louis says)
• Peter: "I'll leave that to them, thank you."
• Personal Note: Did you really think I wouldn't Google it?
• Peter: "Gay men are sex-obsessed, for heaven's sake, but these people are even worse!"
• Louis (with a big grin on his face) gets Peter to explain what "scat" is
• Louis is still unsure about how serious the family was when they talked about things like gay men drinking "feaccuccinos" (coffee made with faeces)
• Louis doesn't do much with the little time he has to speak to Fred, because he was expecting to have a sit-down interview that never happened
• Louis explains that the church's focus on homosexuals began in the late 1980s, when a local park was being used by gay men for sexual encounters and the council would not act against it
• Louis notes that you can hear his voice begin to crack when he reads the dead soldier's obituary, because "sometimes when I'm tired, I get more emotional", and he genuinely was starting to cry
• The family were fully aware that picketing the funerals of, for example, miners who died after being trapped underground would get them more attention than simply protesting against politicians
• Louis mentions how the family had been stopped from picketing the funerals of some very young children who had been shot by a "madman", after a local DJ offered them an hour of airtime as an alternative
• The family's excuse for being so nice to each other, yet awful to everyone else, was that they reserved their "Christian virtues" for fellow members of the church
• The family's excuse for constantly judging people was that "thou shalt not judge" didn't mean you can never judge, and the Bible makes judgements that they are expected to follow (Louis grudgingly admits that they do have a point with that one)
• There is an interesting discussion after Peter challenges Louis on why a small "sect" that has almost no real influence deserves to be the subject of a documentary, with Louis essentially saying that an otherwise intelligent family group following such an extreme interpretation of a religious text makes them significant
• There is a far less interesting discussion when Louis asks Peter, an atheist, how a gay man may struggle to be Christian
• Peter points out Jael's prolonged sigh during her conversation with Louis in the car (neither of them predict that she will end up married to a postman from Bradford)
• Louis: "They create the animosity that then makes them feel as though they're right."
• They both laugh at Jael's whiny "What did we do to them?!"
• Louis notes how the family would "change the meanings of words" (they weren't "picketing", they were "preaching")
• Louis: "I think they were quite pleased with the documentary. [...] They got a lot of hits on their website."
• Peter: "I think a lot of hits on the website doesn't necessarily mean to say a lot of people were supporting them."

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And that's the end of the commentaries! Thank you to everyone who's been following along and reading these. A fish with a rude word in its name asked me to recap 'Louis and the Nazis' (now, there's something you can only say on reddit), but after that I'll take a break from spamming the subreddit with my waffling.
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And if you haven't read my other 'In Vision' commentary recaps, then here are the links to them:

• Gambling in Las Vegas
• Under the Knife
• Behind Bars
• African Hunting Holiday

My hype for AI-related tools combined with gospel study is very high right now.
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AI Interpretation of hype levels in the church when we get semantic search!
Beep boop beep.
Despite the vast amounts of hype-vomit related to "AI" in recent months, a lot of which is unwarranted, there are some really exciting possibilities out there in technology land. I've gone back to AI and AI-adjacent tools to solve a few problems related to study and research in the gospel setting. What I found is surprising and thrilling. In fact, it sucked me in HARD the past few weeks.
I'm so excited about what is possible I want to write a super long post about it! Here is my report.
Young people will be powerful speakers with AI help! Also apparently ice cream will appear at the pulpit!

Writing a talk.

I was asked to speak in church recently and, on a whim, decided to "talk" with ChatGPT for part of that process. I asked it for advice on a certain subject, tried outlining, etc. The results were very boilerplate and uninspiring. I would say this could be a good tool to get started, brainstorming ideas, creating a first outline, or distilling points from a talk. I imagine youth speakers could get a lot of mileage out of using it! :)
Use cases for talk writing:

• Brainstorm: Paste the text of your assigned conference talk and tell ChatGPT to distill it down to its main principles or points. See if any of those resonate with stories from your life.
• Outline: explain you are giving a talk on your given subject and ask it to provide an outline for a X minute talk. You can then use that as a starting point, cutting and replacing sections you don't like.
• Expand ideas: Try asking the program to expand a concept. For example: "How could I explain Christ's Healing Power in a talk? Are there scriptures that I could cite which relate?" If you do this in a conversation where you have already made it clear this is for a talk in the LDS church, the program will know to include our unique doctrines and scriptures in its response.

What it can't do: Write a joke.
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According to AI, this is what \"Latter-day Saint News Reporter\" looks like. Nice.

Eliminate clickbait from Latter-day Saint News? Check.

What is it?
For many years I have been aware of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Latter-day Saint focused blogs, news sites, online magazines, etc. The problem, of course, is that ain't nobody got time for that.
I've tried a few different solutions to this, relying on google alerts to find me relevant articles, but it often gets overwhelmed when something hits the news, or by false positives like obituaries, church building construction announcements in regional news outlets, or even ads. I tweaked and tweaked and finally gave up on that, resorting to just a simple feed aggregator.
The downsides of a feed aggregator are that A) many sites nowadays don't have feeds, and B) It can still be way way way too much since you still have clickbait titles, unclear titles, and, well, a decades-old technology that isn't really approachable.
So I tried an experiment. Could ChatGPT read the article for me and let me know if it's something I actually care about?
The AI News Flow:

• A website posts an article.
• New articles are sent to ChatGPT with the instructions to summarize the article in the style of a news roundup email. That summary is saved in a google sheet.
• Once per day, all the new rows of the google sheet are put together as a single "post" and sent to Chat GPT with instructions to:
  • Read the post and generate a fun, social-media style title based on the content.
  • Read the post and generate a welcome paragraph or two based on the content.
• The daily roundup post is emailed to me with the title as the subject, and the body as the welcome plus the list of summaries.

This works pretty ok. It could work great if I was willing to pay for ChatGPT4 to do the work but that would cost me about 20 dollars per month instead of a buck or two in processing time. By using ChatGPT 3.5 it costs me next to nothing, but it often forgets to return the link to the original post or to format properly. I'm not too fussed about that. You can see the results of this experiment in /mormonism where I have MoroniBot post the results daily.
I really like this because I can skim the email or the post in /mormonism once per day and get a pretty good idea of what's available to read without dealing with clickbaity headlines. I'd love your feedback.
What would be neat:
If I were feeling bold I would work on a system where ChatGPT actually ranks each article based on relevance and other factors. That ranking could then be used to eliminate false-positives, repetitive content, etc. and allow me to go back to using Google Alerts which would make the feed more news-like instead of just blog focused. The downside, of course, is that this would cost a lot (maybe an extra 20 - 30 bucks per month?) since GPT4 is really the best for this kind of qualitative task.
Second, while I can gather videos from youtube, if they don't include a lot of details in the video description then there's not much for ChatGPT to go on. It would be cool to send any new videos that hit the feed to Assemblyai or some other transcription tool before GPT analysis. Then even videos with blank descriptions could be included. Same with podcasts. This, of course, would add significantly to the cost for a casual user like me, but it's crazy to think that the possibility is out there!
Tools used:

• Pipedream - for automation, cron, email, etc. Cost: free
• Google sheets - to store article summaries. I could also use pipedream for this, but eh. Cost: free
• OpenAI API - used to connect to ChatGPT. Cost: couple dollars per month based on processing time
• Reddit API - used to post on reddit. Cost: free
• FreshRSS - used to gather blog posts. Cost: free

This little experiment shows just how disruptive LLM enhanced algorithms will become in the future. Imagine if Youtube, which already HAS the transcripts for its countless videos, is able to implement GPT-style analysis at scale. It suddenly stops being a case of "here's videos that people LIKE you also watched" but instead "Here are more videos which are like the ones you already enjoy." Ideally this will eliminate those annoying false-positives like when searching for Latter-day Saint related subjects and you also get bombarded with all the anti-mormon content. (The scary truth side of that is: ideology bubbles would only be made stronger. You'd have to actually want to see a different perspective before finding it.)
Speaking of improved searches:
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Massive-handed President Nelson cavorts through data using Semantic Search!

Semantic Search

What is it?
Of everything on my list, this excites me the most!!
Underpinning the recent AI developments is a technology called "vectors." This is not new tech. In fact it's decades old. For our purposes, think of it this way: Instead of storing a word in a database, you convert that word into a shape. (That's the vector) Every letter, word, sentence, and paragraph could be turned into a unique shape depending on how your program works.
Why is this useful? Well, computers are bad at comparing words, or making sense of natural language. But they are VERY good at math problems like comparing shapes. See where we're going? So if you use vectors, you might be able to get a computer to identify when words are "pretty close" to other words.
Stick a bunch of words, phrases, and terms that mean "hate" in a vector database and a computer might be able to compare Yelp reviews to that database and figure out which reviewers hated their meals - even if they never used that word - simply because the shape of the review was mathematically similar or "close" to the shape of hate-related terms.
What makes the latest AI so powerful is that they are very very very good at generating vectors based on meaning or "semantics." So, for example, the words "hot dog" and "mustard" will be more similar than "hot dog" and "dog."
But what about in a gospel setting?
If this works right, it will mean much deeper studying and learning for us. Imagine l jump into the gospel library and search for "How can I access physical healing?" and get some great results in conference talks and articles which talk about that exact issue. But if I search "semantically" I might also get things like the gospel topic essay on death, and the one on adversity, since those are closely related semantically to the need for physical healing.

• A search for "What is the purpose of suffering" will return not just articles about that subject but also topics like:
  • Adversity
  • Council in Heaven
  • Atonement
  • Conscience
  • Heavenly Parents
  • Original Sin
  • Mortality
• Complex questions in conversation style can still get relevant results
• Well trained AI can translate your human-style question into a more targeted query if needed
• Well trained AI can examine all the returned results and summarize them for you
• Scriptures can be connected not just by footnote, but by meaning

My tests
I tested this out in an app using "streamlit" and a database of general conference talks, scriptures, and other documents. I fed large chunks of the talks to OpenAI which created a vector for each. Then the app uses a user query to search those vectors for similarity. You can try it out here: https://topical-guide.streamlit.app/ It's not well done, and crashes often, (just try again if it happens to you) but I have had a great experience using it.
In the last few weeks I have used this tool to research reddit questions on this subreddit. Inevitably I find resources and insights I hadn't thought of before.
What's crazy is that I have ZERO programming and engineering experience and I was able to make something that I feel gets me some great results. A whole gospel search engine made from scratch by a total amateur in a matter of a couple of days!
I expect that real programmers and engineers will be able to create tools that will let members search through our vast gospel library MUCH more powerfully. Especially in the scriptures, where finding answers can be difficult, and meaning isn't always clear. I look forward to see what people create.
What would be neat:
There are incredible libraries out there that we ought to be searching through. The reality is that we just don't have the time to read the text, categorize it, and find places to include it in the existing gospel library. A semantic search engine fixes all of that!
I added BYU Studies and BYU Devotional texts to my app, but there's so much more. It would not take much to create a database that searches through much more than we currently have in the gospel library, but still be focused on faith. I hope to add more documents, to my test and if you have any ideas of resources that should be in my database let me know. I'd also love to see an app that can return results based on date of the talk, maybe even sorting by weight for "authoritativeness" in some way. There's some very interesting opportunities here.
Tools used:

• ChatGPT - to tell me how to write python scripts that will do what I want, and to generate vectors. - 20 / month for gpt4
• Python - you know, for doing things. - free
• Streamlit - creates an "app" from my hokey code -free
• Supabase - database for the text and vectors - free

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A perfectly average Latter-day Saint volunteer answers questions in chat, circa 1997

Trained AI

What is it
A process called "Fine Tuning" is how you train an AI into acting the way you want. ChatGPT is a large language model that has been fine tuned by having tens of thousands of conversations with real humans who then correct it and give it examples of the "right" way to talk. While this cost millions of dollars, some companies are creating trained AI for as little as 600 dollars by simply letting the big AI do all the training instead of actual humans.
Ideally you will upload a large database of questions and responses to your model, thousands and thousands of examples of how you hope it will behave, the types of answers it should give, the temperament it should have, etc. But creating that database is a big challenge. For example, if I want to create a chat bot for a law firm, I'd have to spend months and months finding and inserting common legal questions and the right kind of non-legal-advice responses that would be appropriate. So these fine-tuned models are still only options for bleeding-edge tech companies.
Right?
The Gospel Angle
For decades, we've been chatting online, human-to-human, about gospel questions, needs and desires. I can think of two massive databases:

1. The Church Missionary Department, which ran live chats with missionaries for many years
2. FAIR Latter-day Saints, which has been offering email-based human responses to questions for decades.

I'd be very very interested to see how a Fine Tuned model could be adapted to answer simple questions for websites like FAIRLatterDaySaints.org and ChurchofJesusChrist.org. FAIR in particular could really power up their search function by combining semantic search and a Fine-Tuned model to summarize search results. And the crazy thing is it wouldn't cost a lot. It might be a couple thousand to do the fine-tuning, but the database and the individual queries would be only a few dollars per month.
In essence, we could end up with a search function where the article you find isn't the static subject matter page with additional resources, but a custom response written specifically for your need and presented in the style of the thousands of faithful members who have volunteered their time to help people just like you. It could express sympathy for your unique struggles, and offer encouragement tailored to your perspective.
Perhaps most importantly, it could be trained to offer a gentle prompt in the right direction for many, encouraging users to reach out for help.
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Thanks for reading. Let me know your thoughts.

Citadel of Ash Gazette, Monday 5 of June, 2023
This is the Citadel of Ash Gazette, an Albionian daily "i'll create a new post whenever i am in the mood", serious newspaper based in the dungeons under the Citadel with a continental influence and readership.
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[STRNG] AND [IXXXI] ARE PAYING 500 MIL. SILVER PER DAY TO THEIR HANDHOLDERS.

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This was the last week of season 19 and it was the less active week from both sides in this war. They massed only for four CTAs this week.
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Battleboard Season 19 Week 12 (29-05-2023 - 04-06-2023):
29-05-2023, 17:35 UTC - 04-06-2023
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This was a boring week with only 4 CTAs, small masses and few fights. Lets see the weekly handholding and no handholding battleboard of [STRNG]/[IXXXI] and [TERRA]/[WARL].
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[IXXXI]/[STRNG]+[BOBER]Fax+[SRN] Mayhem Corp+Confidentiality+Paura vs [TERRA]/[WARL]+ Mono Con Navaja
when they are handholding. 29-05-2023, 17:35 UTC - 04-06-2023
As you can see even if [IXXX]/[STRNG] brings more alliances and guilds to protect them, they have more deaths than kills. Especially [IXXXI], this week they went 15/62.
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[IXXXI] vs [TERRA]:
when they don't handholding. 29-05-2023, 17:35 UTC - 04-06-2023
Of course [TERRA] had way more people than [IXXXI]. They caught them away from their protectors, that day was Paura, and they instantly die before their reinforcements come.
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According to Dazroun, guild master of [BOBER] Fax, his guild is getting paid from [IXXXI]/[STRNG] 200mil. silver per day to protect them. If we include 100mil. silver for [SEND] Escalation and hundrends of millions that they pay to [FFlow], [SRN] Mayhem Corp, the other small random guilds, and the regears after the "friendly fights" with [FFlow], [BOBER] they are doing if there is no contend with [TERRA]/[WARL], it's about half a billion per day. What a silver sink.
Dazrounn guild master of [BOBER]Fax.
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So, [STRNG]/[IXXXI] is paying four handrend to half a billion -depending who are they calling for help- every time their territories are launched, they mass for over one hour, most of the time they are running around because [TERRA]/[WARL] will not take outnumbered fights like this, and at the end they give "friendly fights" with their protectors.
My personal opinion thats not a good economically long-term plan.
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To the other side, [TERRA]/[WARL] are massing for over an hour, and then, most of the time they are running around avoiding to get in outnambered fights and they are denying contend to their enemies.
A very very very very boring and annoying plan for their members.
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If both of the sides continue with these plans, who do you believe will broke first?
The economy of [IXXXI]/[STRNG]?
or
The morale of [TERRA]/[WARL]?
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Total kills and deaths since 16/11/2022:
[IXXXI]: kills: 11.305 deaths: 13.119
[TERRA]: kills: 13.861 deaths: 15.575
[STRNG]: kills: 5.230 deaths: 5.950*
*including deaths and kills when they were handholding with [TERRA].
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D.P.
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If you like Citadel of Ash Gazette upvote, share and spread the newspaper. Thank you and see you next week.
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All articles of CoAG.