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From Kolob In Peace

@hightokolob.bsky.social
442 followers 38 following 1.8K posts

Writing about Space Age, Cold War Mormon history at hightokolob.substack.com

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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 3h
Ammon Bundy and Trevor Lee arrested. Tim Ballard going scorched Earth on the Mormon church. Tough few days for guys who fly replica Title of Liberties in July
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 6h
Mormon boomers when they meet their tour guide for the Teotihuacan pyramids.
The Simpsons: "Now there's a Lamanite countenance."
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
yaeh that's right
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Lol yeah everybody had all these conspiracy theories about Oaks a few years ago and now that he's in charge it seems like it's basically just the same stuff as always
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
It'll never not be funny to me that M. Russell Ballard created this PR nightmare for them and then when all the Tim Ballard stories broke he promptly died.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
The LDS church's prior support of Tim Ballard is giving this vibe rn
Rambo III closing screen or whatever... "this film is dedicated to the brave mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan"
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
AI images always have a weird vibe too, like even without getting into the errors one glance at this should make you feel like something's off.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
The meme of the mom playing with the kid in the water and the mom is SpaceX and the kid she's playing with is Orbital Data Centers LOL and the kid who is drowning is ISS Logistics and the skeleton at the bottom of the ocean is the Artemis program
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
please don't take this too seriously
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Spiderman pointing meme
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
"Let go" like it was a job, kinda giving away the game there Shivon
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
It's good to have an engine out capability, it's not a good thing to always have to use it.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I thought it was really cute that about the same time that he started doing the "disagree better" schtick the Mormon church started doing their own version of the messaging. Probably fine that Utah politicians and religious leaders coordinate their messages.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The middle ground between normal people politics and right wing ghoul politics is still on the right wing ghoul side of the spectrum.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
For the Exmormons on here: this is the same thing as when members say that the church is perfect but the people aren't.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
functional lunar lander plz
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Muscular Christianity
Arnold Frieberg painting a ripped Nephite about to get in a sword battle over some sheep. Praise Jesus or whatever.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This makes sense to me. A small religious population within more diverse communities is going to select for people who are willing to be committed. Way easier to just kinda sorta be Mormon when that's the background noise.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Oops: heterogeneous, little typo there
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
IMO the online Mormosphere focuses too much on heterogenous beliefs within the church. Studies like this show how the church functionally works for the vast majority of members: their beliefs and worldview are set by the prophet, full stop.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This is a direct reflection of LDS doctrine. Telling members that they are supposed to "gather Israel" to the US leaves them more accepting of multiculturalism. Explicit anti-LGBT and pro-life teachings/policies being a core feature of Mormonism leaves them more conservative on these issues.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I've been enjoying myself. Feels like the start of the end of this era, finally.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
leaked concept art
Ned Flanders with a gun on the roof of a building looking down at a pool
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Yeah, where's your Messiah now, Flanders?
Chief Wiggam arresting Flanders, The Simpsons.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Jeffrey Holland, BBC interview, A+ Mormon PR
Holland: I am assuming that any religious candidateOsama... I mean, (nervous chuckle), President Obamahas made a pledge of some kind to God
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
You don't have to worry about political neutrality if you define all your political positions as moral positions.
“The church opposes” the Idaho Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act, better known as Proposition 1, writes the the four-member U.S. Central Area Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Our long-held stance on abortion remains clear and unchanged.”

In the three-paragraph statement, the all-male signers — led by general authority Seventy José A. Teixeira — note that while the Utah-based faith remains neutral regarding political parties and candidates, it nevertheless “addresses issues it believes have significant moral consequences.”
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Space Twitter seems a little disturbed by SpaceX getting ready to retire Dragon and Falcon but I can't understand why because isn't Starship all but guaranteed to start hitting daily flights next year? hlp Eric Berger I'm so confused. it's a working rocket right? right?
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
but i heard that the church has been getting more progressive towards women because they are less weird about tank tops, noooooooo
wojak in front of the christus statue on temple square
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
You can't do this with Mormon leaders because they have tunnels from their condos to Temple Square. Something for Mitch to consider.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Thought this was a Jon McNaughton painting at first.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
That was really one of the biggest trips about being on a mission, just how little information you have about the world at large, even while you're inside of it, just trying to piece together events from snippets of conversation, people telling you, or stuff you caught on TVs.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
"people who choose to honor the Sabbath" I love when the Trib accidentally slips into passive aggressive Mormon phrasing
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
You're not wrong. faroutmagazine.co.uk/how-a-jeff-b...
faroutmagazine.co.uk
How Jeff Buckley changed Radiohead’s ‘Fake Plastic Trees’
Jeff Buckley soon provided a surge of inspiration. As Thom Yorke’s friend Dougie Payne of Travis told us of the recording of Radiohead's 'Fake Plastic Trees.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
how your email finds me
Problems of mortality: trials, adversity, discouragement, pain, sorrow
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
what if we kissed at the BAE Systems Jimmy Johns 👉👈🥹
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Happy Sunday
"What can I do to strengthen myself against future relapses?"

A video from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints entitled "How can i avoid replaces with corniogoraphy use?"

I'm not sure I can say the dread word in the alt text without Bluesky getting made at me but you get where I'm going with this.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Book of Mormon classes at BYU are gonna get spicy in the fall
The Toy Story meme where the kid's throwing Woody on the ground and he's like "I don't want to play with you anymore" but with this is like the kid is a BYU professor who's just discovered that laser radar is a thing and Woody is that wordprint analysis thing they do when they use statistical models to "prove" that Joseph Smith couldn't have written the Book of Mormon but really it all depends on your assumptions. But now they don't have to do that because of LiDAR.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Could these structures also reference the temple ceremony? Because if you remember during the [REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED] and then you [REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED] symbolic square which represents [REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED]
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Notice how each of these structures is a square, and when you use your priesthood authority you put your arm to the square. It's impossible for this to be a coincidence.
A bunch of pictures of structures that are square in shape.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Holy heck the Book of Mormon confirmed to be true. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Over 20,000 precolonial earthworks in the Southwest Amazonia - Nature
Using canopy-penetrating LiDAR data, the northern part of southwestern Amazonia appears to contain as many earthworks as previously estimated for the whole of Amazonia.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Well you see Jared there's a difference between NASA intentionally crashing rocket stages for scientific research and a piece of uncontrolled space junk accidentally crashing into the lunar surface.
For those interested in a spent booster impacting the lunar surface, this rare occurrence has decades of history, going back to the Apollo era, when NASA intentionally crashed spent stages into the Moon for science and seismic research. The reality is that meteoroids strike the lunar surface hourly, with impacts comparable to this upper stage occurring roughly every six days. The future lunar base will incorporate reusable spacecraft that not only deliver astronauts and payloads, but also become part of the infrastructure itself.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Talking to my grandkids: there used to a time when websites loaded nearly instantaneously, your computer would boot up that quick too.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Must hit hard if all you know about space travel is the Kerbal Space Program
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
I foresee lots of SpaceX fans arguing about what "rapidly reusable" actually means in the near future.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Starship is going through the same decline that the Mormons did with Joseph Smith: Book of Mormon translated with Urim and Thummim -> Ok, sometimes it was a rock in a hat -> Ok, most of the time it was the rock -> A good number of times he wasn't looking at anything -> What does translate even mean?
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Checking in with space Twitter now that they feel allowed to talk about this stuff and Dr. Phil Metzger (Director, Hawking Center for Microgravity Research & Education) seems to be starting to realize that designing a vehicle to operate in 3 completely different space environments is absurd.
I have to wonder if the vehicle requirements have made the thermal problem a bit worse than it needed to be. 

First, the vehicle was designed for two planets (Earth and Mars) where entry is vastly different. It is also being adapted for the Moon, which drives yet again a vastly different set of requirements. This is a challenging architecture to begin with.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Lol @ the idea that conspiracy theorists aren't interested in Mormonism
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Lol that's right.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Starship's heat tiles are a dead end for rapidly reusability (read: SpaceX profit) but don't worry, Eric Berger knows who to blame.... NASA for not using our public science funds to research the tech to make Starship profitable. arstechnica.com/space/2026/0...
This is an area where NASA could probably help.

The experts noted that NASA has not made substantial investments in thermal protection research for vehicles entering from low-Earth orbit (speeds of Mach 25) for three decades. The underlying technologies on Starship, they note, are all based on work done for the space shuttle, National Aerospace Plane, or X-33 programs. No one today, they said, is seriously investing in new, advanced thermal materials for orbital reentry.

Miller, who interviewed a number of senior NASA officials as part of the transition team work in late 2024, said he was told nothing was in the basic research development pipeline. However, he said current and former NASA researchers in this area felt like there were some promising solutions to pursue.

“Based on all this we recommended that NASA create a new initiative to invest in Mach 25 thermal protection system research, development and demonstrations,” he said. So far that has not happened.
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From Kolob In Peace @hightokolob.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
As a big Iain Banks fan, I'm glad somebody finally did this. Somebody should also ask him what he feels about the Culture being explicitly trans-affirming.
From that point on, it was all downhill for Musk. He suggested that everyone read Iain Banks for a vision of the future, and Beddoes pointed out that Banks was a socialist. Musk insisted he wasn’t. Musk said he wanted a Star Trek version of the future, which is also a version of the future that is routinely referred to as “space communism.”
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