Chip Unicorn

A perpetual student, here to read from more knowledgeable people more than to write. Software engineer, furry. Icon created by @rowyn

Suspected Mexican and Canadian sympathizer!

pronouns: they/them and he/him

Public Key

npub1jn2eupsx3ksc2kqeqqlkkrmtk5zwlm02mdrm5sqcmln7fry5rctsnpcegt

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsff4v7qcrgmgv9tqvsq0mtpa4m2p80ah4dk3a6gqvdlely3j2pu9cprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmnt22dd27

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub1jn2eupsx3ksc2kqeqqlkkrmtk5zwlm02mdrm5sqcmln7fry5rctsnpcegt

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Last Notes

2026-05-17 20:47:35 UTC

For the very first time, I cooked hash browns completely from scratch.
I learned two secrets:<li>After I cut the potato into cubes, put it in the microwave for 4 minutes. That softens the potato, making it ready to fry.</li><li>The secret spice for hash browns is paprika. Use lots.</li>
I will definitely cook this again!
#cooking

2026-04-02 20:14:38 UTC

In honor of Artemis II, what is your favorite space- or space travel-related song?
I'll toss out one favorite:
[Ayreon -- To The Quasar](ww.youtube.com/watch?v=MwkLyw7VKrE)

2026-03-28 21:45:51 UTC

I'm mentally hiding out from the crowd by listening to a *damn* good band of immigrants playing salsa, tropicalia, and Caribbean rhythms.
The crowd is dancing along!
(Okay. I might have hurt my voice singing "La Vida es un Carnaval" at the top of my lungs.)
https://im-in.space/system/media_attachments/files/116/308/990/423/218/850/original/b4a7c82d8967f6f7.jpg

2026-03-28 21:26:18 UTC

I am at the main #NoKings protest in downtown Los Angeles.
My first thought was: This is smaller than last time.
Then the first of many protest marches (just the teachers' march) arrived.
More marches will be arriving soon.
Many, many people.

2026-03-27 01:35:13 UTC

I'm at my favorite Korean restaurant, Ma Dang Gook Soo.
I wanted to try something I've never had before: Acorn soy bean noodles.
It's a cold, summery dish. The "broth" is a very thick soy milk, about as sweet as cow milk. The most unusual thing about the broth is how thick it is; my tongue easily separates tofu from whey. There's a tiny amount of salt in the tofu, but it's otherwise mostly flavorless. (I added a little more salt.)
The noodles, though perfectly cooked, don't have much difference in texture or flavor from wheat noodles.
I can see how this would be comfort food, as a summertime version of macaroni and cheese. I didn't grow up with it. So I'm putting it as a food I would eat again, but not something to seek out.

2026-03-03 16:19:45 UTC

Programming haiku:
You have a problem.
You say: I will ask an LLM to solve this problem!
Now, you have 2 problems.

2026-02-22 19:48:32 UTC

I am at the Lunar New Year's Parade in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles's Chinatown is not the same as San Francisco's Chinatown. Or the San Gabriel Valley. It was an earlier wave of immigrants; they speak Cantonese instead of Mandarin; and they turned out less wealthy.
They turn to the community around Chinatown to fill out the parade. It makes the parade feel like a small-town parade. Before I moved to Los Angeles, I had never seen bagpipes or salsa dancing in a Lunar New Year's Parade.

2026-02-15 21:41:52 UTC

I had some excitement today.
https://youtu.be/e8SUyY9TgN4?si=2CFs324c8e3H1FAe

2026-02-06 21:27:49 UTC

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Samuel R. Delany is one of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association's Grand Masters, a member of the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, and a member of the American Academy of Art and Science.
If you've never read [Babel-17](https://www.worldswithoutend.com/novel.asp?ID=324 ), his first Nebula award winner), borrow it from your library. The novel is about language as a literal weapon, rewriting people's minds.
His later work heavily deal with gender, sexual, and racial differences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_R._Delany
#BlackHistory

2026-02-05 19:32:20 UTC

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Happy Black History Month!
Sarah Breedlove was born in 1867, the child of two former slaves. By age seven, she was an orphan. By age 14, she married to escape an abusive brother-in-law.
In her early twenties due to overwork and financial problems, she started losing her hair. She tried many solutions for her hair loss, started selling one made by another black woman entrepreneur, and moved to Denver as a sales agent.
In Denver, she created a better scalp conditioning and healing formula and took on a new name, "Madam C J Walker". She extensively promoted her product through the South and Southeast -- and they sold very well.
Eventually, she built a factory, hair salon, and training school. She gave high commissions to her sales representatives -- but still grew to become one of America's wealthiest citizens.
She fought lynching, became a leader of New York's NAACP, and led by example.
#BlackHistory
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/madam-cj-walker
https://indianahistory.org/education/education-resources/educator-resources/famous-hoosiers/madam-c-j-walker/
https://madamcjwalker.com/about/

2026-02-05 00:00:31 UTC

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Oddly enough...
...
...it was.
It was a reliable, if very broad, resource about all the countries. It was VERY accurate about requirements for normal citizens getting into and out of countries (what visas were required, where to get them, et cetera.)
There was only about 2 pages for every country, but the information about the countries was accurate.

2026-02-04 18:55:21 UTC

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Happy Black History Month!
Dr Mark Dean is one of the main geniuses behind the AT bus (which allowed hardware to easily communicate) and the original IBM PC. He was director of IBM’s Austin Research Laboratory, and under his leadership, IBM developed the first 1GHz processor. In 1999, he led the team to create "Blue Gene", the fastest computer at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Dean_(computer_scientist)
https://www.ibm.com/history/mark-dean
#BlackHistory

2026-02-03 20:05:31 UTC

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Happy Black History Month!
At a time when American flight schools accepted neither African Americans nor women, Bessie Coleman was the first known African-American to get an international pilot's license. She learned French then moved to Paris, France to get her license directly from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. She continued her studies with the head pilot of Germany's Fokker Corporation.
When she returned to the United States, she made her living as a daredevil pilot in airshows. She would stop at nothing to complete difficult stunts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessie_Coleman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ix41L7iWjc
#BlackHistory

2026-02-02 17:41:44 UTC

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Happy Black History Month!
[Dr. Ernest J. Wilson](https://uscthirdspace.com/article/team-member/dean-ernest-wilson/ ) is an educator and social scientist devoted to soft skills in the digital age.
He founded the [Center for Third Space Thinking](https://uscthirdspace.com/about/ ) at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. He is also a professor of political science, a faculty fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School, a board member for the Pacific Council on International Policy and the National Academies’ Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
#BlackHistory

2026-02-01 19:15:43 UTC

#BlackHistory
Happy Black History Month!
Granville T. Woods was a prolific inventor, with over 50 patents.
His most significant patents included multiplexing telegraph wires to allow multiple Morse code conversations and telephone calls over one wire, and safer ways to transfer electricity from wires to train cars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granville_Woods

2026-01-25 20:08:39 UTC

I'm at another Mexican-owned and -run restaurant. Everyone around me is speaking Spanish or Spanglish.
Across from me is a couple. She's speaking Spanish; he's speaking English.
The waitress came to their table. The waitress did something I had never heard. She mostly spoke in Spanish but she described the food in English. This is the *opposite* to how I've heard and read Spanglish in Los Angeles; almost all of the time for bilingual people, the food is named in its original language. Menus always keep that rule.
Are there any linguists studying Los Angeles Spanglish out there? I think that would be a *fun* project...

2026-01-06 19:52:39 UTC

One coworker -- who I'll call Xavier -- does everything through LLMs. He's the kind of developer that managers who have never been programmers *adore*: 3000 lines of code per day.
I just realized that Xavier cannot read code, even code that he submits for review. He "understands" code by running it against test files and seeing whether results are reasonable. He can only say what the code does, not what causes it to behave in a way.
But that has several problems. An obvious first issue is that if a problem doesn't show up in the test file, then it will never be fixed. A less obvious issue is that his code is brittle and it generalizes very poorly.
Because Xavier doesn't read code, he has a very tough time imagining "What might go wrong?" And because he relies on the LLM, he misses very broad solutions, like using well-established libraries that solve dozens of problems at once.
Programmers who dive deep are still very, very useful.

2025-12-24 22:40:39 UTC

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FYI --
The scale made up of the five black notes on the keyboard isn't the same as the scale that would happen if we divided the octave perfectly into five notes.
Same thing with 7 white notes.
(You can see this easily with the white notes -- the difference between "E" and "F" sounds very different from the difference between "F" and "G".)

2025-10-13 17:22:45 UTC

Happy #IndigenousPeoplesDay !
What do you most celebrate from Indigenous people?
I'm going to move away from my usual answer of food (though Mayan food is *utterly amazing*.)
[Tisquantum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squanto ) ("Squanto")'s story should be a major motion picture, and it's *far* more interesting than just the founding of Plymouth. He was idnapped, brought to Spain, learned Spanish, brought to England, learned English, got himself back to his own land, discovered that the rest of his village had died, joined the Pokanokets, *then* helped the migrants from England found Plymouth... and he kept them from starving or being slaughtered by other nations.

2025-10-12 03:08:56 UTC

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Kid2 has talent!

2025-10-06 03:10:02 UTC

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Give a broad solution to this problem:
RACIST joins fediverse site A.
Does a racism against an innocent Fedizen.
Site A bans RACIST.
RACIST joins fediverse site B.
Does a racism against the same innocent Fedizen.
Site B bans RACIST.
RACIST joins fediverse site C.
Does a racism against the same innocent Fedizen.
Site C bans RACIST.
Et cetera for the thousands of Fediverse sites.
This assumes that all Fediverse sites would ban someone over racism. And that RACIST doesn't start their own Fediverse site. And...

2025-10-05 03:01:51 UTC

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Yes, but the sum of the lengths of track would still be 0+0+0+0+... .
Even a countably infinite sum of zeros is still zero...

2025-10-04 19:52:51 UTC

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That's exactly what I'm interested in. My *intuition* says:
If k = 100, then the best track would bisect the square.
If k = 200, then the best track would divide the square into quarters.
If k = 400, then the best track would divide the square into nine equal squares.
If k = 600, then the best track would divide the square into sixteen equal squares.
But I don't *know* that. And my intuition has multiple ideas for when k % 100 ≠ 0.

2025-10-04 18:54:06 UTC

I have a question for mathematicians out there...
Start with a square 100 km on a side.
An inhabitant of this square has two ways to travel: walking, which can be done from any point to any point at a pace $p_w$ seconds per kilometer, or going by a train which needs laid-down tracks but goes at a pace $p_t < p_w$ seconds per kilometer. The inhabitant can combine the two ways of travel -- for example, she could walk to the train, take the train, walk to another train, take that one, and walk to the final destination. If she walks 2 kilometers and takes the train 9 kilometers, her total time in travel would be $2p_w + 9p_t$.
Here's the catch: There's a limited amount of train track available. We can't just cover the square with train track.
If the start and end of the trip were uniformly randomly chosen after the train track layout were set, what layout of the track would minimize the expected time of the trip?
Would it be a grid with squares? Or something more interesting?
#mathstodon #geometry

2025-10-04 16:34:58 UTC

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A calendar of trains posted on the Fediverse?
Your website will melt down from all the eager clicks!
(I hope that it sells amazingly well!)

2025-09-17 21:36:27 UTC

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From 2014 through 2017, Patel [worked in the counterterrorism division of the Department of Justice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kash_Patel ).
If he's not lying, he's dangerously incompetent.

2025-09-01 01:02:00 UTC

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"What's your favorite xyz?" also makes me nervous.
I listen to a *lot* of music. But if someone asks me, "What is your favorite band?" I have a hard time. The part of me that most loves music is often mute, able to recall songs well but not give meta-information like the names of bands. (I mark songs by how much I enjoy them and play the ones I love most the most.)

2025-08-31 23:58:22 UTC

This is the completely unofficial Mastodon Cat Verification Service.
If you have or are a cat, please verify by posting photos.
Failure to do so will have no effect on your Mastodon service. I just want to see photos of cats.

2025-08-30 02:32:22 UTC

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I have a lot of the same interests, but sadly, I live in the United States and I tend to post about politics.
I will be replying to you, however... Keep up the upbeat messages!

2025-08-06 19:21:22 UTC

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Crap. Thanks for the notice.

2025-07-25 22:52:50 UTC

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More information about Trump Model Management can be found in [Mother Jones](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/donald-trump-model-management-illegal-immigration/ ) .

2025-07-20 01:52:19 UTC

Life is returning to Los Angeles.
Taco trucks are returning. I was so grateful to see a fruitera in my neighborhood that I immediately bought a $10 cup of fruit from her.
I don't know whether it means that the ICE attacks are slowing, but I'm very grateful.

2025-07-18 17:31:45 UTC

Question of the day:
Congratulations! You are starting a new religion.
You need to decide on your Ten Commandments.
What would one of those commandments be?

2025-06-13 18:03:27 UTC

Hi, fountain pen lovers.
A friend gave me an antique fountain pen that they could not figure out. It had been stuck together. A *lot* of cleaning and elbow grease unstuck it.
Can anyone identify it?
The oddest part is the brass-covered, magnetic weight on the cap. I guess that it was to hold the pen vertically with nib down?
On the weighted cap is the brand "Parker".
On the back of the nib is the letter M.
Can anyone further identify it? Are there other photos that might help?
#FountainPen #Parker
https://im-in.space/system/media_attachments/files/114/677/370/267/374/193/original/e2026ed81d9ec6d8.jpg
https://im-in.space/system/media_attachments/files/114/677/370/360/143/443/original/29fd5e0b342e339e.jpg
https://im-in.space/system/media_attachments/files/114/677/370/432/193/001/original/d3f375e630a1c2cf.jpg
https://im-in.space/system/media_attachments/files/114/677/370/510/649/268/original/6707403dd913ee16.jpg

2025-05-21 16:30:37 UTC

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*looks at the paper*
Wow. No one has ever, uhmmm, measured the speed difference between four of the most common text formats before. We definitely need to use a hypothetical computer for that!

2025-05-14 20:49:01 UTC

At https://calc.datova.ai/ , you can do "word calculation", where you add and subtract ideas from words.
For example,
unicorn - horn = mare
or
United States + Canada + Mexico = North America (mostly right)
Here's a few of its observations:
intelligence + wisdom + beauty = appreciation
business - worker = commercial enterprise
president - intelligence = corporate executive
creativty - intelligence - practice = Godard
strength - wisdom - morality = Molossidae (according to Wikipedia, a free-tailed bat)
person - man - woman = avalanche
fox - intelligence = vixen (hey, wait a minute!)
vixen + intelligence = bitchery (okay. This I agree with.)

2025-03-05 18:25:51 UTC

I just read about Payton McNabb, a volleyball player who suffered a concussion, brain bleed and permanent whiplash when a transgender opponent spiked a volleyball into her face. Later, she said she dealt with partial paralysis and vision problems. ( https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/payton-mcnabb-trump-honors-volleyball-player )
I sympathize with Peyton. That injury was terrible.
I disagree that the problem was that her opponent was transgender. She was one of about 35,000 injuries from volleyball that required an emergency room that year. (Source: https://orthopedicreviews.openmedicalpublishing.org/article/123665-volleyball-related-injuries-in-adolescents-a-decade-of-data )
I couldn't quickly find any studies that compare injury rates among mixed-gender volleyball games against female-only volleyball games. But that would be a first place to look.

2025-03-01 18:34:45 UTC

Dictators love having control over the official sources of information.
They want to be able to say: No, H5N1 isn't spreading among people. Get back to work!
But when the official sources of information aren't trustworthy, rumors flood the world. And -- more importantly -- there's no easy way to stop them. The Streisand effect guarantees that trying to quench rumors will spread them further.
Yes, Elon could ban anyone who uses the phrase H1N1 from X. Just ask anyone who has ever visited a social network how well automatic bans on exact phrases work.
We saw this effect when COVID struck the United States in 2020: people quickly organized unofficial information brigades to try to figure out what they could, while Trump's CDC claimed that COVID wasn't in the US. (It already was, and it came in on both coasts.)
People will route around the US government -- and that won't be good for Trump.

2025-02-27 20:21:31 UTC

Today I learned:
The White House's primary telephone at (202) 456-1111 only accepts phone calls for messages between 11:00am and 3:00pm Eastern Time.

2025-02-02 19:50:26 UTC

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
Bessie Coleman was the first Black Woman to gain a pilot's license.
Rejected by American schools for training to become a pilot, she learned French and went to France to get the first international pilot's license issued to any American. She returned to the United States to spread the idea that the sky should never be the limit for African Americans.
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/bessie-coleman

2025-02-01 23:16:44 UTC

Twenty specific things Americans can do to oppose Trump:
https://propagandaprofessor.net/2017/02/03/simple-steps-to-overcoming-trumpery-an-action-guide/

2024-12-16 23:22:03 UTC

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<li>Do you speak Portuguese? Are you enamored with their history, their culture, or their food?</li><li>Here's one source about the speed of Portuguese internet: <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-speeds-by-country" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no">https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-speeds-by-country</a> Better than Estonia, worse than New Zealand.</li>

2024-11-29 05:01:54 UTC

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Bloodywood is *amazing*.

2024-11-22 22:44:20 UTC

I have COVID.
A one-mile walk to the drug store for Paxlovid wore me out.
I have learned.
I am resting the remainder of the day.

2024-11-16 23:59:56 UTC

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Do you know of a similar group in Los Angeles?

2024-11-09 19:57:24 UTC

People ask how to show their support for people who will be hurt by Trump's policies.
They want something simple, like wearing a safety pin or rebroadcasting a meme that says "You're safe with me."
Here's the problem: Anything with no *cost* can be imitated by those who want gay, trans, mixed-race, immigrants, or whatever other group of people to come out of hiding so they can be attacked.
I don't post memes here saying that my feed is safe for trans people because it might not be safe. The Fediverse is public. Someone with bad intentions can follow who I follow and find a lot of people they would really like to attack. I can't do anything about that.
How can you be trusted? Act. Show up. Make sure gay people, trans people, immigrants, et cetera are protected. Pay the cost.
It's worth the cost for a better world.

2024-11-05 15:02:31 UTC

If you're in the US, what are you doing today to get through today?

2024-11-04 17:24:08 UTC

What was your favorite music that Quincy Jones wrote, recorded, mastered, or otherwise vastly improved?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Jones_production_discography

2024-10-30 01:34:28 UTC

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You can't leave us hanging...
What is the difference between a pergola, a gazebo, and a verandah?

2024-10-14 21:27:34 UTC

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Sesame Street was always amazing.

2024-10-13 18:33:31 UTC

Question of the day:
What do you call the dish where you start with bread, tear out a small piece, fill that hole with egg, and fry the bread and egg together?
(I have two or three names for it.)

2024-10-07 17:39:02 UTC

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Trump might be on to something...
The 2017 Las Vegas shooting was done by Stephen Paddock, a white male.
The 2012 Sandy Hook shooting was done by Adam Lanza, a white male.
The 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting was done by Devin Kelley, a white male.
The 1991 Luby's shooting was done by George Hennard, a white male.
The 2019 El Paso Walmart shooting was done by Patrick Wood Crusius, a white male.
The 1984 San Ysidro McDonald's Massacre was done by James Huberty, a white male.
The 2023 Lewiston shootings was done by Robert Card, a white male.
That's seven of the deadliest ten shootings in the United States!

2024-10-05 21:02:39 UTC

I am at the Polish festival in Los Angeles. I had forgotten how heavy Eastern European food really is!

2024-09-08 19:54:48 UTC

The moral implications of being a moderately successful computer scientist and a woman
These assumptions keep half of Western society from real leadership.
Understand what many women go through.
https://www.sigops.org/2024/the-moral-implications-of-being-a-moderately-successful-computer-scientist-and-a-woman/

2024-09-05 20:49:34 UTC

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Are you staying cool?

2024-09-05 05:02:58 UTC

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Happy birthday! Summer is very excited for you!
(Summer is *always* excited for you.)

2024-08-21 19:52:29 UTC

Marijuana is now so common in California that beverages are advertising themselves as "cannabis free".

2024-08-13 15:46:45 UTC

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Here is a source, including the recording, of when Trump said he'll move to Venezuela: https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-flee-venezuela-loses-election-elon-musk-interview-1938321

2024-08-11 02:49:09 UTC

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Donald Trump is sure that North Carolina is in play.
Source: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/events

2024-08-04 01:02:46 UTC

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I had to look it up; I had ALSO seen the word "church" outside of the building.
You're right; it's officially a temple. https://www.wlabt.org/

2024-08-03 22:52:12 UTC

I am fighting depression.
If you are in the #LosAngeles area, I would love to meet up at a *public* spot.
If you're not in Los Angeles, I would love any clues of how to find similar people to me. I'm so depressed that I'm planning to go to a church(*) tomorrow.
(*) It's a Buddhist church. Ought to be similar to Baptists, right?