Chris Purves

[Ashley Zavala @ZavalaA]

CA High-Speed Rail’s Acting head of external affairs Matt Rocco won’t say why project CEO Ian Choudri refuses to speak with reporters here.

He wants us to submit questions via email and suggests CEOs prepared remarks here are enough.

[David Marcus @davidmarcus]

In nearly 20 years in California, I can’t think of an election more consequential than this one. We’re choosing between immense prosperity and a rapid spiral into a failed state. Don’t sit this one out!

[EldarDRM ⚜️⚛️ @EldarDRM]

Serious question to @AlgoFoundation and @Algorand;
Why are you quiet about #Algorand's use in the Italian banking system?
It's crazy that pretty much no one outside the $ALGO space is aware of this use yet (probably lots within the community are unaware), when any other chain has an announcement that it may be used by some bank or asset manager, the whole blockchain space is buzzing?

[Dave McCann @DaveMcCannTV]

Solution: When groups unitedly chant “F the Mormons, Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Jews” or whatever group they decide to so offensively deride, assess their team with a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. They won’t do it again, not out human decency, but out of their own selfishness because it hurts their team. If the players and fans can hear the offensive chants, the officials can hear it too. One 15-yard penalty will redirect their focus onto something else — like maybe the game itself. The #Big12 could do this if it truly mattered to them.

[Chris Purves @Purves7Purves]

@JeanineElsholz I love the art work. Is that AI or where does it come from?

[Jeanine Elsholz @JeanineElsholz]

Shared on IG by drjoshredd—

“I travel with the BYU football team. Right before we ran onto the field last night at the Colorado State game, Coach Kalani Sitake told the team: “Play hard. Play violent. But be kind. Be Christlike.”

Seconds later, the opposing student section began chanting “F you, Mormons.”

I stood on the sideline with coaches and players from many different faiths. Men who have become like family and whom I have grown to love. The chant continued throughout the entire first half.

How did these young men respond?
They stayed focused.
They stayed disciplined.
They stayed kind.
They stayed Christlike.

Tre Alexander III and several other players went a step further. Somehow, they turned the same students who had been chanting behind them into students who were laughing and joking with them.

At halftime, we were up 31 to 7. Most of the student section went home, and the chanting finally stopped.

But the scoreboard was not the most important victory that night.

7 hours earlier in the day, we had studied John 6 as a team. Christ fed the multitude with loaves and fishes, and then declared: ‘I am the bread of life.’

When following Him became difficult, many walked away. But His true disciples stayed.

That night, these young men were given a choice: React like the world or respond like disciples of Jesus Christ.

They chose Christ.”

THIS IS THE WAY!! We can react like the world or we can respond like disciples of Jesus Christ.Every single day, all throughout the day, we get to make that choice.

Representing Jesus Christ will win EVERY time!

[Chris Purves @Purves7Purves]

@opulousapp Thanks for the update

[Chris Purves @Purves7Purves]

@opulousapp Any more updates coming?

[Chris Purves @Purves7Purves]

@TheRyanSmith3 @jaredadairbell Totally agree! Amazing song, but you can’t recreate this moment.

[Spooky Brother Shackleford @Hotchkiz]

Elder Maxwell on the creation and the premortal identity of Christ:

[Dallin H. Oaks @OaksDallinH]

Merry Christmas to each of us! May we all feel God’s love for us and show that love toward our neighbors during this special season.

[patch @Grownded]

We need more modern Christmas songs...

From @MusicPsk on insta...

[D13 @d13_co]

I'm not going anywhere & neither is anyone on my team.

I'm probably at the ~peak of where I want to be leadership-wise. I lead one of the engineering teams, so I have a pretty good balance of both coding time and also input upwards/sideways/outwards etc. There aren't any meetings I want to be in that I'm excluded from. I'd be interested in being more public facing (conferences/talks etc) but that's probably not happening for another ~6 months due to personal circumstances.

(I'm not going to be in that leadership position btw, I might have been OK but I wouldn't have been great, and we need someone great. I would also hate it & burn out quickly, so there's that)

Regarding efficiency: there is an almost overwhelming amount of work to be done across the board, both technical and not, so in general I don't think that fewer people would improve outcomes. Some things could move quicker, but see above re: amount of work & number of ppl involved. People also forget what the AF was like before Staci, but she's trimmed an absurd amount of fat and spending. Some of the integrations (and outcomes) that the community has been asking for are not only eye wateringly expensive from a $ PoV but also very process-heavy, so there is a limit to how low you can go headcount-wise and still hope to make impactful stuff happen.

Re: outlook now, I do think we face a number of challenges that we must overcome. I'm hopeful that xGov launching (by end of month) will help move us in the right direction on one of those fronts, and that we actually loosen the grip on the purse towards our eco a little (beyond providing xGov funding.) (Staci's remit was to tighten them so she's almost got a physical reflex about this)

The recent news has sucked for everyone, so I understand the community reaction in part, but I feel like a lot of the bottom-bear-market sentiment is exaggerated and partly self inflicted. Doomposting breeds doomposting breeds doom. Almost every other alt L1 community is currently melting down in one form or another (BTC dominance rally issue imo) and having worked for a much smaller L1 that has been struggling to break top 200, we take a lot of what we have for granted, so I wish that we could all just get a grip.

A lot of the community asks seem to come from a place of anger - for example, piling on Staci to resign now when she's already announced that she will be stepping down next year seems pretty... Redundant? Impractical? Reckless? With John leaving, changing the CEO at the same time would be even more uncertainty/inaction etc, so to me, just-now would be the worst time for Staci to leave, given the timeline she's already given for her departure. Some of these asks are pretty short sighted and seem to come from frustration without any consideration for whether it would lead to better outcomes.

One final, important note is that this community is meant to inherit this Blockchain in less than 5 years. Isn't it strange that there isn't a single community-wide council/org/body/DAO/etc that the AF didn't start, or isn't facilitating? Dev council, ATC, defi council, xGov, ... all AF initiatives. Beyond that there's individuals and single-concern communities/enterprises that overlap on X and other socials. So, both as part of the community, and as part of the AF - that will hand all this over to {✨whomever is there✨} - it would be great to see some community-wide organizations that aren't AF led. Feel free to focus on "Fire Staci!" at first if you think that's where your energy needs to go, but over the next years it needs to evolve into Algorand's custodian, or part thereof.

i probably shouldn't press send on this at 4AM but ✨

[Ev Hand @Evan_Hand]

Since the official College Football Playoff was released yesterday, thousands of Notre Dame and BYU fans are buying into the conspiracy that ESPN rigs the CFP for financial gain. ESPN has a $3 BILLION deal with the SEC & ACC 👀 Does this conspiracy have legs or is it just BYU

[Heidi Hatch KUTV @tvheidihatch]

A couple who survived being shot at their Grand Blanc @Ch_JesusChrist meetinghouse in September tried to enjoy a @BYUfootball game this weekend, just a few hours from home, when their sense of security slipped away again as parts of the crowd chanted, “F- the Mormons.”

On Facebook, Brandi Hicken wrote that she and her husband, Jared, “got to sneak away this weekend for a much-needed date night” at the BYU–Cincinnati game. She said they hoped for a night where “the attack is not at the forefront of our minds for once.”

Instead, the trip became an emotional reminder of the hate that took the lives of four members of their congregation two months ago.

Last month, the FBI said the attack on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meetinghouse in Grand Blanc was motivated by “anti-religious beliefs” toward the faith. The gunman, Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, rammed his truck into the building during Sunday services, opened fire and set parts of the church on fire. He was killed by responding law enforcement.

Jared and Brandi Hicken were among the survivors. Jared, a native of Roosevelt, Utah, and a fourth-year chief emergency medicine resident and BYU grad, helped other victims after being shot in the leg. Their 5-year-old daughter, Piper, was also hit, and Brandi suffered shrapnel wounds as she carried their two youngest children to safety.

“Jared took a bullet to the leg. My 5-year-old took one right in the middle of her back,” she wrote shortly after the shooting. Doctors later determined Piper’s wound was more superficial than they first feared, likely caused when a bullet ricocheted before hitting her. Brandi said she didn’t realize she had been hurt until the adrenaline wore off and she saw blood on her dress.

Now physically recovered, the couple drove to the BYU–Cincinnati game hoping for a break from the anxiety that has followed them for two months. Brandi said the chants from portions of the Cincinnati crowd left her shaken.

On Monday, Cincinnati athletic director John Cunningham issued a public apology to BYU and to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “The use of offensive or religiously derogatory language by a group of fans during Saturday’s game was unacceptable and does not reflect our values,” Cunningham posted to X. “We remain committed to creating an environment at Nippert Stadium where every visiting team and its supporters are treated with dignity and respect.”

Brandi shared the letter she sent to Cunningham describing how the chant affected her as a survivor of a religiously motivated attack.

The full letter:

“Dear Mr. Cunningham,

I am writing to you from my heart as a disheartened college football fan. More specifically, as a BYU football fan and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints commonly know as “the Mormons.”

As a BYU alumni and huge fans of college football, my husband and I took the opportunity to travel 4.5 hours from our little city in Grand Blanc, Michigan to come spectate and enjoy our favorite pass time at the BYU vs. Cincinnati football game at Nippert Stadium last night.

I want to provide a little bit of background for you in order to portray the strength and courage it took for us to travel to this event and really try to enjoy ourselves.
You see, just eight short weeks ago, while attending church, we were attacked at our place of worship simply for being “Mormon.”

Someone with hatred in their heart rammed their truck into the front of our church building, entered the chapel, and began shooting us and setting our church on fire while many people were still hiding inside. As my family (me, my husband, and our three young children), ran for our lives, my husband and my 5-year-old daughter were both shot. I was also running with my 15 month old baby and my 3 year old in my arms as I was struck in my back with shrapnel. I will spare you any further details about the nightmare we lived through that day and the recovery that has followed, but miraculously, me and my family all made it out alive.

The anxiety and fear we have felt since that day has been debilitating. We have put in a lot of work in that short 8 weeks so we can try to feel some sort of safety and normalcy again and enjoy the things we used to, including football games.
We had been planning to come see this game for months as we don’t get the opportunity to see many BYU games in person since we moved across the country for my husband’s medical training. We almost didn’t come because it felt scary and overwhelming since the attack on our church. However, we know we cannot live in fear and we need to enjoy the things that used to make us happy. We decided to come and that took a lot for us both mentally and physically. I was nervous putting on my BYU fan gear that day because I knew it would identify me as one of ”the Mormons.” I did it anyway.

I was apprehensive when I walked down to my seat and saw that the nearest exit was pretty far from me. I continued to my seat anyway. We came. We smiled. We cheered. We enjoyed ourselves….Until the University of Cincinnati fans began to chant “F** the Mormons.”*

This is not a new chant. This is not a chant that is specific to your university. This is a chant I’ve heard before while enjoying a football game whether in-person or on tv. It’s always disheartening to hear. However, now that we Mormons have been quite literally targeted, attacked, chased, shot at, and some of us have been killed simply for being “Mormon,” this chant is no longer just disheartening. It’s crippling. It’s personal. It’s unacceptable. Period.

While I did hear the announcer give a warning over the speakers at the game that such chants will not be tolerated, it was simply just that- a warning. It was not just a few fans, it was tens, possibly hundreds of the university’s student fans chanting “F** the Mormons.”*

Please, Mr. Cunningham, do not tolerate it. Remove them from the game. Don’t let them come back.
Educate them on the seriousness of their actions. Set that standard and expectation moving forward and enforce it. We are hurting. Badly. We just want to enjoy the things that make us happy again without the fear of being targeted and attacked for our religious beliefs.
I know you have no control over the Cincy fans on the shuttle after the game ranting about Mormons and how awful we are and how we must have just paid off the refs because we’re corrupt and evil. I don’t get it, but I am used to it. It’s not new to me to hear this stuff and these huge misconceptions about my faith. But now it is personal. Now it is me fearing for my life everywhere I go because someone decided to take it there. Someone tried to kill me, my kids, and my husband. Someone killed 4 of my friends. Now the chanting means something more than it used to.
I know you can’t control the actions and words of the fans on the bus. However, I do believe you have the ability to get control of the students’ hurtful and hateful chanting.

If you made it this far, thank you for listening. If I am mistaken about any actions that were or were not taken as a result of the chanting, please feel free to correct me.

I would welcome the reassurance.

Sincerely,

Brandi Hicken

A fellow college football fan
A Mormon
A Christian
A mass casualty hate crime survivor
A human deserving of respect”

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

Not every day that the Mayor of Los Angeles goes on national television and calls you a liar. You’re right, Karen Bass, it’s not just Spencer Pratt. Thousands of Palisades residents got screwed over by your failures and we aren’t going to stay quiet.

[Chris Purves @Purves7Purves]

@DChadwickAuthor @DrJulieHanks I’m a buyer! Which one should I start with?

[Dave Chadwick - Supernatural Americana Author @DChadwickAuthor]

What Christian’s online do wrong when they try to evangelize to Mormons and how they can fix it.

[Steve Hilton @SteveHiltonx]

Yep, and the most insane thing is that the gas in Arizona most likely came from an oil field in California, @fixingcali!

[Ⱥlex | france.algo 🇫🇷 @algerstmehn]

This should be all over the news.

Algorand is the first blockchain ever to execute a post-quantum transaction on its mainnet!

The cryptographic transition is happening, and Algorand has some of the best PQ experts in the world.

You're not bullish enough on $ALGO! 🔥