Ben S

PhD, Am Religious History, minor Reformation+ history of science; MA, Semitics. Apple fan, LDS, francophile, bibliophile, gourmand, cyclist, husband.

[Ben S @BSpackman]

My dissertation is now available! A history of creation/evolution conflict in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 20th century. Honestly, some ground-breaking stuff. https://t.co/z5695ej4fr

[Ben S @BSpackman]

@JWhitebread1 @kiwiinarizona Very interested in more of this history, privately if you want

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯 @japan_nobunaga]

In 1944, thousands of Japanese on Saipan hid in caves, sure the Americans would torture them if they came out. Many families chose the cliffs instead.

An 18-year-old American Marine from East Los Angeles walked up to those caves at night, alone, and called to them in Japanese.

His name was Guy Gabaldon. He was a Mexican American kid who had grown up partly in the home of a Japanese American family, the Nakanos. That is where he picked up his Japanese. When the war came, the Nakanos were sent to internment camps. Their twin sons, Lane and Lyle, joined the U.S. Army anyway and served in the 442nd.

Fifty years later, he still said it plainly: "These were Americans."

On Saipan, Gabaldon was a scout with the 2nd Marine Regiment. Right after landing, he slipped off on his own and came back with prisoners. His commanding officer, Capt. John Schwabe, threatened him with a court-martial for leaving his post.

The next night, he came back with about fifty.

After that, they let him go out alone.

He crawled to the cave mouths in the dark and promised the people inside water, medical care, and that nobody would hurt them. Night after night, ten or twenty at a time, they followed him out.

On July 8, by his own account, about 800 came out in a single day. Schwabe remembered that day too. It was the day they tagged him the Pied Piper of Saipan.

Not everyone listened. At the cliffs, he begged a mother not to kill her child. He watched her throw the baby and jump. He was still talking about it fifty years later.

His Navy Cross citation says that on Saipan and Tinian he brought in "well over one thousand enemy civilians and troops."

Schwabe recommended him for the Medal of Honor. He received the Silver Star. Sixteen years later, after Hollywood made a movie about him, the Navy upgraded it to the Navy Cross.

He died in 2006 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

I am Japanese. Those caves were full of my people, frightened, starving, and certain that the Americans were monsters.

An American teenager walked toward them in the dark and offered them water.

On this Veterans Day, Japan should know his name.

[Dem Saints @LDS_Dems]

Phew. Never happier to be left out of the club

[Ben S @BSpackman]

@BlackBlessedLDS What can we reasonably expect prophets to know? They’re not human avatars of divine omniscience. https://t.co/mMmV9ln6Aj

[Ben S @BSpackman]

@JXakc @BlackBlessedLDS It’s not good framing, for one thing

[Ben S @BSpackman]

@saltyprotestant And you posed not a single follow-up question to this “close friend”?

[Ben S @BSpackman]

@SecretCityChez I… don’t think so?

[Ben S @BSpackman]

It's important to make notes. I've got a sample chapter on note taking what/how/why at https://t.co/diwfQZADQr

[Cheryl 🪔 @SecretCityChez]

I joined the Church's of Jesus Christ in January 2024, which happened to be the year for studying the Book of Mormon. I was just revisiting my notes from the first time I read it. It's interesting to see what I thought was worth noting.

[Shailin Thomas @shailinthomas]

Please for the love of all that is holy listen to doctors and give your newborn the vitamin K shot.

This is an absolutely devastating read.

Doctors don’t stand to gain anything from administering vitamin K other than helping ensure your newborn stays healthy.

[Ben S @BSpackman]

We're exceptional y'all :)
Cutting the Gordian knot (and ironically closer to Old Testament teachings)

[Phil Vischer @philvischer]

Going to leave this here for all my new friends…

[Ben S @BSpackman]

New trail run route today. New challenges, new beauties and joys. Really technical in spots

[Ben S @BSpackman]

@Dred_DelGath @BlackBlessedLDS Never published.

[Ben S @BSpackman]

THE most corrupt president of all time.

[Jamie Metzl @JamieMetzl]

I have a history PhD from Oxford and try to support all of my historical claims with strong evidence, particularly when regarding the president of the United States.

But based on a comprehensive review of 250 years of American history, it is simply irrefutable that Donald Trump is by far the most corrupt president in U.S. history when it comes to using the office to enrich himself and his family.

Here are the facts, and why there isn’t even a close second.

Trump’s own federal financial disclosure reported more than $1.4 billion in 2025 income from family crypto ventures, including about $635 million from his meme coin and nearly $800 million from World Liberty Financial. Reuters separately estimated that the family added at least $2.3 billion to its fortune from crypto ventures after Trump returned to the White House.

The clearest example of how Trump used the office came in May 2025. The 220 biggest holders of his meme coin were invited to dine with the sitting president at his private golf club. The coin jumped more than 60 percent when the dinner was announced. To get a seat at the table, you had to buy and hold a product that made the president money. Trump turned access to the presidency into a sales pitch.

The foreign dealings raise an even more serious question. Four days before Trump took office, an investment vehicle backed by a UAE national security official agreed to pay $500 million for nearly half of World Liberty Financial. The Wall Street Journal reported that $187 million of the initial payment was directed to Trump family entities.

Trump is clearly not the first United States president to be guilty of corruption, but the size and scale of his malfeasance put him in a league of his own.

Under Ulysses S. Grant, whiskey distillers and federal officials pocketed money by cheating the government out of liquor taxes. Under Warren Harding, Interior Secretary Albert Fall took bribes in exchange for leasing federal oil reserves. Richard Nixon had a personal tax scandal, but his defining abuse of presidential power was the Watergate cover-up, an effort to protect his hold on office. LBJ’s political connections helped turn a small Texas radio station into a family broadcasting empire.

By September 2025, less than eight months into Donald Trump’s second term, he and his family were roughly $5 billion richer than they had been around the 2024 election, according to Forbes. In comparison, a reasonable estimate is that all 44 other U.S. presidents combined added about $250 million to their wealth while in office, adjusted to today’s dollars. That puts the Trump family’s gain at about 20 times the estimated combined total for all other presidents over the course of two and half centuries.

The election results were, at least in part, a clear repudiation of this staggering and historically unprecedented corruption. Congress now has a mandate to investigate, follow the money, pursue the recovery of all ill-gotten gains, and enact enforceable safeguards so that no president can ever again use the White House as a vehicle for personal enrichment.

[Ben S @BSpackman]

"Republicans got their clocks cleaned this week because they made Trump the center of their universe, as if Congress did not exist other than as a presidential pom-pom squad. Unleashed, Trump has governed like a lunatic." https://t.co/mglfWuUpWl

[Ben S @BSpackman]

@LauraRbnsn @Pastor_Gabe ancient Near Eastern texts disagree ;)

[Ben S @BSpackman]

@SecretCityChez Ooh, full study-size margins!

[Dan Wuori @DanWuori]

Your baby loves repetition.
Your baby loves repetition.
Your baby loves repetition.

It’s true. Routines and rituals help your child to feel safe and secure.

And predictable patterns not only help your little one to make sense of the world - but gradually assume roles of their own.

Watch this fantastic video, edited together by alliewojciak on IG.

Each day as they arrive home from preschool, Allie greets her son in the same way as they get out of the car: a dramatic door open that reveals her smiling face and a tender “Hi.”

You can tell this is a beloved ritual.

Watch her son’s expectant face in videos shot across multiple days. He knows just where to look and what’s coming next - greeting mom with the same delighted grin each and every time.

After enough repetitions, he begins beating her to the punch - taking responsibility for the daily “Hi!”

Isn’t it lovely? Mom has made the whole thing possible by making this interaction so predictable.

As adults, endless repetition can sometimes be a little maddening (when your little one wants to read the same book for the 20th time this week, for example) but know that the routines you are establishing are a normal part of development - and provide not only comfort, but a familiar foundation from which your toddler can begin inserting themselves into the process.

So cool!

[Dan Alexander @DanAlexander21]

1/ I'll explain exactly how this happened because I'm the person at Forbes who calculates these numbers.

This is going to take some unraveling, but here's a spoiler: The president's answer here is nonsense.

[Chef Joe Gera 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇮🇹 @redhotnerd]

Ok, I didn’t expect a story time on Saturday, but here we go. What I’m about to write is TRUE. It is insane, stupid, and very dumb, but it is true. Earlier today Donald J Trump, the p[resident of the United States, posted that he had offered the job of Press Secretary to Dana White. Well, it was the wrong Dana White… 🧵

[Laura Robinson @LauraRbnsn]

Now project them in the sky with cannon fire like it's the Hunger Games