Dear Ann Cannon • My parents have been divorced for 20 years now, but my dad still refuses to show up anywhere if my mom is going to be there. I love both my parents and want to include them in my kids’ lives and activities, but instead I’m busy juggling everybody’s schedules so my parents’ paths won’t cross. The stress of doing this is getting to me. Help! What can I do?

— Frazzled

Dear Frazzled • I suppose there’s such a thing as an “amicable divorce,” but I’ve never seen one go down when a couple is first divorcing. Over the years, however, people often figure out how to move on — and that includes finding ways to deal civilly with an ex-spouse for the sake of the kids. I’m sorry this hasn’t happened in your case.

It sounds like the divorce was particularly traumatic for your dad, and that’s hard territory for sure. In my opinion, however, it’s time for him to grow up and stop acting like everything is all about him. (Wait! Did that sound harsh?!) Anyway, if you haven’t done so already, let your father know that his decision to stay away really isn’t in anybody’s best interest, including his own, and that you’ll no longer run family events separately to accommodate him, which may or may not make him come around. I hope for everyone’s sake that it will. Good luck!

Dear Ann Cannon • I feel embarrassed to admit this, but I am bothered that my grandkids spend so much more time with their other grandmother than they do with me. Whenever I look at Instagram, I see them doing fun things together. Part of the problem is that they all live in the same town, whereas I live in the next town over. Also, I still work, which the other grandmother doesn’t. She’s also able to give them more materially than I can and provide them with more opportunities to do fun things. I don’t want to feel resentful. I just want my grandkids to like me as much as they like their other grandmother.

— Second-String Grandmother

Dear Second-String Grandmother • Your feelings are both natural and understandable, but to the extent that you can, try not to turn this situation into a Grandma Derby where you view the other grandmother as a rival competing for the hearts of your mutual grandchildren. I’m guessing there’s enough love to go around for everybody, even if you can’t see the grandkids as often as she does.

Meanwhile, focus on the ways that you can be present in their lives. Little things — phone calls, sending letters in the mail, sleepovers, Sunday dinners — can go a long way when it comes to creating memories and forging bonds. Feel free to include the other grandmother in some of your activities, too, which can help the two of you build a friendship. And who knows? Maybe she’ll even reciprocate and include you in her family activities. The truth is that children are lucky to have as many loving adults in their lives as possible. Keeping that in mind may (sort of) help lessen feelings of jealousy and resentment.

I hope this helps. Best wishes!

Dear Ann Cannon • I’m a woman in my late 60s who regularly attends my grandkids’ swim meets. The problem is that people often stand in front of me like I’m not even there. I realize that older people are often invisible to younger people, but seriously? What can you even say to people who are so oblivious? Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.

— Please See Me

Dear Please See Me • You politely say, “Excuse me. You’re in my way.”

Ann Cannon is The Tribune’s advice columnist. Got a question for Ann? Email her at askann@sltrib.com or visit the Ask Ann Cannon page on Facebook.

Wiz Khalifa is best known for a decade’s worth of platinum-selling hip-hop hits such as “Black and Yellow,” “We Dem Boyz,” “Work Hard, Play Hard,” the Snoop Dogg collaboration “Young, Wild & Free,” and the Golden Globe-nominated “Furious 7” soundtrack theme song, “See You Again.”

Oh, and also for smoking weed. A lot of weed. Like, $10,000 a month worth of weed.

Given that Utah is not necessarily known as a hotbed for either rap music or marijuana legalization, Khalifa’s decision to include West Valley City’s USANA Amphitheatre on his Decent Exposure Tour might be curious to some. Except that he’s been appearing here for more than a decade now — and he keeps coming back.

What does he see in Utah’s culture that makes him comfortable returning time and again (including this Thursday at USANA)? In spite of the state’s quasi-puritanical reputation among outsiders, he said, he’s always managed to have a good time here and has been made to feel at home.

“I noticed that people smoke a lot of pot out there. That people love just music in general. I think the couple of times that I did come out there, I was either with Snoop or just on my tours like in the summer — it was just really good fun,” Khalifa said. “For the early stuff in my career too, I would always end up in Salt Lake City doing radio runs or car shows and stuff like that. So, I feel like it’s a pretty decent market for music touring and all of that, whether you’re up-and-coming or already established.”

The 31-year-old Khalifa was born Cameron Jibril Thomaz in Minot, N.D. His military parents were constantly on the move — which meant he lived in Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan during his childhood. After his parents’ divorce, he and his mother eventually settled in Pittsburgh.

His stage name was derived from a pair of childhood nicknames. His Muslim grandfather took to calling him Khalifa, an Arabic word roughly translating to “successor, ruler, leader.” Friends, meanwhile, referred to him as “Young Wiz,” because, he said, “I was good at everything I did.”

Apparently.

Khalifa started learning production at the age of 12, and by 15 was doing consistent recording and production work at Pittsburgh’s I.D. Labs studio. As a high schooler, he was signed to the independent label Rostrum Records. In 2006, he was named an “artist to watch” by Rolling Stone. A year later, he had a deal with Warner Bros. In 2008, he made his first appearance at USANA as part of the U92 Summer Jam. By 2010, he was on the cover of XXL magazine and included in that publication’s annual “Top 10 Freshmen” list — a prestigious honor for rising hip-hop stars.

Ever since, the 6-foot-4 rapper has maintained a sizable presence in the public consciousness thanks to a seemingly never-ending slew of album and mixtape releases — up through this past April’s “2009” joint effort with Curren$y.

He’s also now staying busy in myriad other ways, including doing voice work for such television shows as “American Dad!” and the upcoming “Duncanville,” starring in the movie “Mac & Devin Go to High School” alongside Snoop Dogg (with a sequel reportedly on the way), an Apple Music docuseries, doing mixed martial arts training alongside former UFC title contender Cat Zingano, and parlaying that mind-boggling weed habit into a partnership with RiverRock Cannabis, which developed a “Khalifa Kush” strain now sold through medical marijuana chain Reef Dispensaries.

Khalifa said he’s always on the lookout for a new project, whether in the studio or otherwise.

“I’m always wanting to somehow top myself musically. So, there’s new music on the way,” he said. “Stuff for TV, animated series, executive-producing TV shows, working with my artists, and making sure that their careers go the way that they’re supposed to go. Just taking care of my son. Those are like my main goals for real.”

In spite of all that other stuff, he added, “My favorite life experience so far — 100 percent — has been my son. Spending time with him, rolling with him.” Six-year-old Sebastian Taylor will soon start first grade, and Khalifa said no success he’s had compares to the joy of seeing his child grow.

“That’s an experience that's just always fun,” he said. “It’s getting better and better as time goes on.”

For now, though, Khalifa’s time is focused on the Decent Exposure Tour, which began July 9 and will wrap Aug. 15. The stop in Utah will include French Montana, Moneybagg Yo, Chevy Woods and DJ Drama (Playboi Carti will not appear as originally scheduled).

As with everything else in his career, he said, his live performances continue to evolve and improve.

“I just really want to get this as the best experience, just get bigger and better,” Khalifa said. “Technology changes and there’s always new ways to do things and to make the package feel the same but be different. So, that’s main goal, is to always just level up so that people can have a better experience. ... That’s really what goes into me trying to make the best show, and especially for this year, I got a lot of new things that I’m going to be doing and trying out. So, it’s something that’s really exciting.”

The Discovery Channel’s “Serengeti” is filled with spectacular footage of African animals, filmed over two years in the wild. It is not, however, a documentary. It’s more like a six-part animal soap opera.

Seriously. And you don’t have to take my word for it: “It’s not a documentary,” said director and producer John Downer — although he doesn’t exactly admit that it’s a soap.

“We’re faithful to the animals’ behavior, and the animals’ behavior informs the storyline,” he said “It was a messy, complicated film because we wanted to tell it not like a normal natural history film.”

It is, instead, a dramatic reality show with animal actors. The man behind it — the man listed as the show’s creator — is “American Idol” producer Simon Fuller.

“I was thinking ... how could I maybe create a show that might just allow a viewer to have a different perspective of animals that might just encourage a closer connection,” Fuller said. “And, hopefully, encourage more respect and more care.”

“Serengeti” is sort of “The Real World” for animals living together and having their lives filmed. And having their lives edited into cohesive storylines by producers.

Downer disputed the idea that the storylines are imposed on the animals. The story arcs were “built” by following “characters” and incorporating “events that were life-changing for any animal,” Downer said. “We like to think the animals were telling their story because we didn’t force a narrative on them, but we took the narrative from them.”

The only thing missing is the “Real World” confessionals, where the participants sit in front of a camera and talk about what’s happening to them. Instead, the narration — by Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o — attributes human feelings and motives to animals.

At one point, viewers are told that a baboon is not just lovesick, he “spends his days brooding on the injustice of it all.”

Do baboons brood about injustice? I don’t know. Neither do the producers of “Serengeti,” but that doesn’t keep them from attributing emotions to him.

“We would just sort of say, well, is this a significant story point? Is this something that’s happening or could happen to one of our characters?” Downer said. “And then that will be incorporated into the storyline.”

There are lots of characters ... er, uh, animals, so they give them names. There’s a zebra named Shani; a lion named Kali; an elephant named Nala, who’s dealing with sibling rivalry — we’re told — between her offspring.

There’s absolutely no question that “Serengeti” is gorgeous to look at. Filmmakers spent two years on a nature preserve in Tanzania and came up with all sorts of astonishing footage.

(While filming lasted for two years, the conceit of the series is that it’s a year in the life of the animals.)

And “Serengeti” is definitely fun to watch. You’ll oooh and aaah over the cinematography. You’ll fall in love with the animals. You’ll be devastated when some of them die.

You’ll roll your eyes when Nyong’o tells you that a female baboon gave that lovesick male “something to fight for.”

It’s silly when sportscasters tell you what athletes and coaches are thinking during a game — apparently employing their mind-reading abilities; it’s outlandish when Nyong’o tells viewers the feelings, emotions, motivations and thoughts of animals.

And as much as Fuller and Downer want us to believe that they’ve come up with something revolutionary, “Serengiti” is anything but. One critic compared it to old Disney nature “documentaries like the 1967 film ‘Charlie the Lonesome Cougar,’” which was sort of mean but not inaccurate. It’s sort of dorky.

But it’s also not altogether safe for young children, who are going to freak out when an animal “character” they’ve come to love dies violently.

“Serengeti” premieres Sunday at 8 p.m. on Discovery and Animal Planet; the first episode will air without commercials.

I’m not a trained vocalist or anything, but I doubt the random person would know that if they’d heard me nailing “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Disney’s “Mulan” a couple of weeks ago.

It was a hot Friday afternoon and I was driving up U.S. 89 with my kidlet, Harvey, in the backseat on our way to my parents’ place for the weekend. My wife, Elenor, was off to Los Angeles for a couple days to help my brother-in-law after a major surgery, so I was singing for the two of us.

There wasn’t a single note of that poor song that wasn’t about to be hit by my vocal chords with perfect precision (and had it been safe, I probably would‘ve had one hand to an ear and the other Christina-Aguilera-ing to the high notes).

But as I was nailing some totally on purpose harmonies, I was drowned out by a sound much less awesome.

Screech. CRUNCH. Hisssssss...

I had been coming to a stop, unbeknownst to the driver behind me, and he plowed right into me.

Wait, us — I was just in a wreck with my toddler in the car.

Years of postpartum anxiety fueled largely by visions of car crashes with my child on board led to an adrenaline rush that made my ears ring and the air really thin.

But nothing fuels clarity and focus like motherhood under pressure, and so I went from singing Chinese warrior to stunned lady with chirping birds around her head to Dr. Mom all in a fraction of a second.

Despite Harvey describing the situation as having hurt his feelings, he was and is totally fine.

Phew.

But I don’t think even now that my nerves have fully calmed. Part of that is whiplash, another part is the tiny rental car I’m driving while they fix the more than $7,000 in damages to mine, but the bulk is the nauseating reality of how our metal road missiles are ticking time bombs.

Then, a couple of days ago, I learned this from my colleague: According to recent research out of the University of Virginia, women are 73% more likely to be seriously injured or killed in car accidents.

What the truck?!

You want to know why researchers think this might be? Because manufacturers didn’t start making female crash test dummies until (sit down) 2003, and even now, the lady dummy is all of 5 feet and 110 pounds, making it several inches and nearly 60 pounds different from the average real-life woman. She’s the Barbie of dummies (Is that redundant?).

So, apparently like most astronaut suits (remember when the all-female spacewalk was canceled in March because NASA didn’t have enough suits to safely accommodate women’s bodies?), cars are made primarily with only men’s safety in mind.

Cool, cool.

Maybe the auto industry is trying to make men out of us, too. *sword swish*

But for an economy that likes to profit off the fragility of women (can’t forget those lady tools just for our feeble hands), this seems like a pretty egregious oversight in safety regulations.

So, it looks like in addition to stunning live concerts in my car, I’ve got another reason to raise my voice.

Marina Gomberg is a communications professional and lives in Salt Lake City with her wife, Elenor Gomberg, and their son, Harvey. You can reach Marina at mgomberg@sltrib.com.

Utahn Stephanie Sosa came oh-so-close to making the finals of “So You Think You Can Dance” last year, only to be cut when the field was trimmed to the top 10.

But she mustered her courage, convinced her brother to audition with her, and — a year later — the 19-year-old who grew up in Provo and Orem is one of five remaining female contestants in the Fox dancing competition. And her 18-year-old brother, Ezra, is one step away from joining her.

“Coming back was really scary,” Sosa said. “When I was cut, I was devastated. But I told myself I’ve got to work my butt off and I’m going to come back stronger.”

There was certainly no guarantee. And she acknowledged that it would have been “embarrassing” if she fell short of her goal a second time.

“But I guess that’s how it is as a dancer,” Sosa said. “You have to keep trying and trying, because you’re going to fail more times than you succeed.”

This time around, she returned as part of a team — at least at the audition. Stephanie and Ezra Sosa — the children of immigrants from Mexico and Argentina — wowed the judges when they auditioned together.

“I knew I wanted to go back. And I know that we’re stronger together, so I was, like, ‘Will you audition with me?’” Stephanie Sosa said. “And he said, ‘I want to get you in that top 10.’”

What they didn’t anticipate is that both of them would get through the auditions and advance to the final rounds of the “So You Think You Can Dance” competition. “We honestly didn’t think that we would both make it to the top 20,” she said. “That was crazy.”

Even when they were competing against each other in recent episodes, their bond remained strong.

“He brings out the strength in me and I bring out the strength in him,” she said. “So I love partnering and dancing with him. We get along so well and we work so easily together. We know each other inside and out. Just having him there was so great.

“I could go and talk to him and say, ‘Hey, how did I do?’ And he would actually give me an honest opinion. He actually cares about me instead of it being just a competition.”

In last week’s episode, viewers saw Stephanie Sosa advance with four other women, forming half of the top 10 dancers who will begin dancing in the “live” episodes next week — Monday, Aug. 12, at 8 p.m. on Fox/Channel 13. (The episodes will air on tape-delay in the Mountain Time Zone.) Ezra Sosa’s half of the competition airs Monday, Aug. 5, at 8 p.m. — an episode taped about three months ago.

Stephanie Sosa can’t reveal any spoilers, but she did say, “Not only did I have to worry about myself, I had to worry about my brother at the same time. That was the most stressful day of my life!”

Stephanie — and, possibly, Ezra — will be facing more stress when the live episodes begin next week. They'll be facing not just the “SYTYCD” judges, but the viewers, whose votes will determine who stays and who goes.

“It’s kind of the same feelings of, I don’t know if I’m going to come back next week. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to pick up the choreography,” Stephanie Sosa said. “It’s definitely kind of back to square one. But it’s on a bigger platform and I’ll be competing on live television, so I’m very excited.”

And she’ll rely on advice from several of the umpteen former “So You Think You Can Dance” finalists from Utah — to be herself.

“Last year, I wasn’t technically ready. But also, I don’t think I was authentically myself,” Sosa said. “And I went into this year being, like, I’m just going to be me. I’m going to show them my style, and if they don’t like it, then this isn’t right for me. I went with that mentality and I made it this far.”

Much has been said about the lack of health care and its costs. Here is my story.

I recently underwent four months of prostate cancer treatment at Gamma West at St. Mark’s Hospital. I initially received a shot that cost $2,500.

Then I had a mold made of my body from just above to just below my private parts. This included three permanent tattoos to guide the radiation. I went to Gamma West for 28 treatments. This consisted of technicians aligning my body each time. It took approximately five minutes at a cost of $525.

Then the radiation treatment at a cost of $1,460. These lasted approximately nine minutes. Remember, this occurred 28 times.

There was a SpaceOar procedure to insert a dissolvable packet to separate the space between my rectum and prostate to lessen the chance of perforating the rectal wall, at a cost of $11,392.

The IMRT plan, $6,365.

A special treatment plan, $1,175, twice.

Brachytherapy plan, $1,000.

Hyperthermia treatment, $2,913, twice.

A simulation plan, $1,500, twice.

Brachytherapy 12-channel treatment, $3,750, twice.

Physician consult, $275 per week. These lasted maybe five minutes, max, six times.

Weekly clinical management, $900, six times. I have no idea what this was for.

You get the idea.

I never saw less than 20 molds in the closet, so I guess you could multiply all of the above by 20. This is just for the prostate guys. Gamma treats all cancer types.

My total came to $150,600.82. I have great insurance, so my out-of-pocket was only $4,900.

Make no mistake, all the people involved were highly educated and trained. After the last of the 28 treatments, I got a “Graduation Certificate” signed by all the staff. Kind of hokey, I thought.

The best part, though, was a coupon for a milkshake at Iceberg ($4.29 value). It was delicious.

Mike McManus, Salt Lake City

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How is it that a failed, cowardly politician who abandoned his post when things got hard still rates the front page of the newspaper? Why should anyone give a damn or be interested in what Jason Chaffetz’s opinion is? Does The Tribune have a piece of the next book he is writing? Why else give him the free publicity?

The false equivalency of his argument to let Rep. Elijah Cummings and the White House Embarrassment “duke it out” is ridiculous. While Cummings is trying to do his job and investigate issues pertaining to his role on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, all Trump can do is throw a temper tantrum and call people names.

Trump has no understanding of the issues and no ability to bring the country together by creating consensus by debating the actual issues. To claim that the two sides are equally valid is so demonstrably false it is stunning that the paper sees fit to put it forward. You should at the very least put a “Paid Advertisement” border around it like those ads for the gold coins.

When Chaffetz declared his intention to not run for governor, The Tribune wrote an editorial basically stating that he was not a good choice for the position. Chaffetz went back to the sewer known as Fox News, never to be heard from again by decent people. For some ungodly reason — like the monster who is thought to be dead at the end of the movie only to rise again — you give him space on the front page when he should be relegated to the Mix on Sunday with the other theatricals.

The newspaper is such a critical part of keeping the nation free, and democracy alive, that The Tribune should show better judgement in who it puts forward as having an opinion worthy of the name.

Douglas D. Reilly, Logan

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NuScale’s nuclear power project is too much of a financial and environmental risk when there are cleaner energy alternatives.

Not only will NuScale’s virtually untested nuclear technology be an estimated 40% more costly than renewable energy portfolios, the project in Idaho Falls, Idaho, will also likely go exceedingly over budget.

Many recent nuclear projects nationwide have resulted in extreme cost overruns and project cancellations, the burden of which has often fallen on ratepayers. For instance, ratepayers in South Carolina will end up owing more than $6,000, to be paid in monthly installments for the next four decades for a failed nuclear power plant. And just this year, the Department of Energy gave $3.7 billion in taxpayer money to the ailing Southern Co.’s nuclear power project near Waynesboro, Ga.

Yes, UAMPS has promised a rate cap in order to protect ratepayers. But if the new, first-of-a-kind project goes over budget, will that rate cap stay? Will NuScale Power, an Oregon-based LLC, step up and pay the extra expense?

City officials in UAMPS districts should look beyond NuScale Power’s promotional presentations and consider economically competitive, safer and more sustainable energy portfolios through a more transparent, independent and robust procurement process.

Robert Goodman, Salt Lake City

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If you are a regular here, you may have heard this story before. But it bears repeating.

In 1958, George Wallace ran for governor of Alabama against John Patterson, a fire-breathing segregationist. Wallace, though also a segregationist, was considered enough of a racial moderate to be endorsed by the NAACP. So naturally, he was trounced.

Sometime afterward, as recounted by biographer Marshall Frady, a rueful Wallace made a defining declaration to a room full of politicos: “John Patterson out-nigguhed me. And boys, I’m not goin’ to be out-nigguhed again.”

As history shows, he never was. Which is to say Wallace, who became governor in 1963, was never again found deficient in stoking racial animosity for political gain. He understood its power to drive white voters to the polls.

As is beyond obvious by now, Donald Trump does, too. His Twitter attack on Baltimore over the weekend -- "a disgusting, rat and rodent-infested mess," "a very dangerous & filthy place" -- was but the latest in a long line of racist invective designed to gin up white support.

The tweets -- they came in a rebuke of Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Trump critic whose district includes much of the city -- set in motion a sequence both predictable and unavoidable: condemnation from those still possessed of working souls, rationalization from those who are not. Baltimore is a troubled place, said his enablers. How is it racist to say that?

But America is full of troubled places. The Fifth District of Kentucky, for instance, has the nation's second-highest rate of opioid use, its second-lowest median income, its highest poverty rate and its lowest life expectancy. But unlike majority-black Baltimore, the Fifth is one of the whitest (over 96 percent) places in the country, its congressional delegation uniformly white and Republican.

So you'll never hear Trump disparage that region in terms that otherize and dehumanize its people. Its desperate condition notwithstanding, he'll never call it a place "where no human being would want to live." No, that kind of abuse is reserved for black and brown places with black and brown leaders.

That said, Trump himself is not what should trouble us most. After all, we've seen his type before. He is a throwback, retro as a Jordan jersey, latest iteration of a long line of racist blowhards stretching back to Wallace and beyond.

No, what should trouble us -- what should leave white people in particular offended -- is Trump's implicit bet that what worked for Patterson in 1958, what worked for Wallace in 1962, what worked for Nixon in 1968, what worked for Bush in 1988, will work for him, now. As low an opinion as Trump holds of black and brown people, his opinion of white people is nothing to write home about.

He is wagering his presidency, after all, that they share his patronizing disdain for people of color, his atavistic fear of the coming America, his slimy bigotry. He is betting that if you use every hateful word but the one that begins with "n," if you thereby give them room to rationalize and equivocate, you'll find that white people are essentially the same now as 60 years ago.

Is he right?

That's the question upon which the future teeters. It's been said that Trump is framing this election as a referendum on race. What he's really doing, albeit unintentionally, is framing it as a referendum on white people, on how they have changed -- or have not -- in the past 60 years. Trump is betting on the latter. He thinks white people are an ignorant rabble, readily roused by appeals to their basest, most racist selves.

Fifteen months from now, we'll see how many prove him right.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald. lpitts@miamiherald.com

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has one of the most difficult jobs in the U.S. government: convincing a highly intransigent and violent insurgency to make peace with an Afghan government it despises and dismisses as a foreign puppet. It’s the diplomatic equivalent of pounding a square peg into a round hole.

Yet, as frustrating and cumbersome as the diplomatic process has been to date, all of the other options available to the United States in Afghanistan are even worse. The only other alternatives are continuing the war in an endless and inescapable loop or unconditionally extricating all U.S. troops from the country, thereby leaving the Afghan government in Kabul vulnerable to collapse.

From the moment President Donald Trump authorized direct talks with the Taliban more than eight months ago, the effort has been criticized by many pundits, analysts and ex-government officials as a sign of weakness, desperation and naïveté. The Taliban, we are told, has no intention of signing a peace deal — and that if the movement did miraculously sign on the dotted line, it has no interest in upholding its commitments.

The talks have been blasted as an inappropriate concession to brutal Islamic zealots who once ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist, stoning women, persecuting minorities and sheltering Osama Bin Laden from justice. Others have labeled Khalilzad’s diplomacy as a unilateral surrender to the enemy, akin to the U.S. experience at the Paris peace talks during the closing months of the Vietnam war.

Ask these very same critics what they would recommend instead, however, and you will get a recitation of the status-quo ante that has dominated U.S. policy for nearly 18 years. Presumably, all the United States needs to do is grind it out and use the time to pummel the Taliban on the battlefield. With enough bombs dropped on their heads, so the theory goes, the Taliban will eventually reach the point where it sues for peace in a far weaker position.

It’s an appealing strategy that may indeed work in a conventional conflict between traditional armies. But in a country like Afghanistan, more war does not necessarily produce a better peace. The Taliban has proven itself to be a resilient adversary, one whose ideology resists any notion of surrender to a foreign power. Suspending the current U.S.-Taliban discussions would in effect mean gambling on a strategy of attrition that will only lengthen a war a majority of Americans and veterans no longer view as worth the fight and investment.

Nobody likes sitting down with people who have tried to kill you. Too many of our brave men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces have paid the ultimate sacrifice — 2,430 to be exact. Tens of thousands of additional servicemembers have suffered grievous injuries.

The Afghan national security forces have sustained even more casualties, not to mention the tens of thousands of civilians who have died just walking in the marketplace. Given these circumstances, diplomacy is a painful endeavor.

For the United States, however, diplomacy is also the only way out of an otherwise endless conflict. War without end is not what the American people want, nor is it what the U.S. military signed up for.

We will have to wait and see what kind of agreement with the Taliban Ambassador Khalilzad comes back with — assuming the talks go that far. At that point, the foreign policy community and the American people will have the opportunity to judge the agreement on its merits.

Any deal must include a Taliban break from Al-Qaeda and an ironclad commitment by the group to assist in preventing transnational terrorists from using Afghan territory to threaten the United States, its allies and Afghanistan’s neighbors. Because it would be reckless to simply take the Taliban’s word on implementation, there will need to be an ironclad international monitoring regime to verify whether the movement is indeed abiding by the letter and spirit of the deal.

But until such a deal is presented, we would all be wise to let the diplomatic process work its will. This is ultimately the best way to meet our counterterrorism objectives while preventing yet another generation of U.S. combat troops from deploying to Afghanistan.

Maj. Gen. Peter S. Cooke (Ret.), North Potomac, Md., was director of government operations at the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce from 1976 to 1978 and is the chairman of the board of the American College of National Security Leaders.

Reno, Nev. • People driving between Reno and Las Vegas probably won’t notice anything unusual as they pass Walker Lake, located at the base of Nevada’s Wassuk Range in one of the least-populous counties in the United States.

But people who waited decades yearning for the lake to recover from its human-driven death spiral are marking a historic milestone.

On July 5, for the first time since Europeans settled the remote and scenic Walker Basin, there is water flowing through the Walker River exclusively for the benefit of the lake’s fish and wildlife.

"It's kind of a historical moment," said Jeff Bryant, executive director of the Walker Basin Conservancy.

That's because from 1936 until April 16, it was illegal for the federal water master, or anyone else, to move water through the Walker River for anything other than nourishing crops or cattle.

The Walker River Decree that established those restrictions didn't include the health of fish, wildlife or people at Walker Lake among "beneficial uses" of Walker River water.

The result was that for 83 years, the only time river water flowed into the lake was when the Sierra Nevada winter produced so much snow at the headwaters farmers and ranchers in the valleys below couldn't use it all.

That changed July 1 when a staffer at the Walker Basin Conservancy placed a water order with the federal water master who authorized an additional 7.75 cubic feet of water per second to pass through Bridgeport and Topaz reservoirs for the sole purpose of replenishing the lake.

"We are trying to make the river reliable again," Bryant said. "It is something we talked about since I was a 10-year-old kid."

For the past 150 years, Walker Lake's story was a story of two vital signs moving in the wrong direction.

Since 1868, the lake's water level has been going down while the concentration of total dissolved solids went up.

That's because the late 1800s is when newly arrived settlers began diverting Walker River flows mostly to power economic growth on farms and ranches in Nevada's Smith and Mason valleys.

The diversions were great for raising cattle and crops along the river. But they were devastating for fish, wildlife and wetlands at the lake, which lost a reliable source of inflows.

"It was a real lifeline for that lake," Bryant said of the river.

Walker Lake, like Pyramid Lake northeast of Reno, is what’s known as a desert terminus, or terminal, lake. That means it is located at a low point in a desert basin and has no natural outflows besides evaporation.

Terminus lakes can be healthy, vibrant places as long as they have steady inflows. The problems happen when those inflows don't arrive.

When water evaporates, the water vapor floats off into the air and the solid material gets left behind.

When there aren't enough inflows to keep up with evaporation, the solid material concentrates and diminishes water quality.

As Walker Lake declined by about 150 feet from 1868 to 2018, the concentration of dissolved solids tripled.

The result was a slow, depressing decline in fish and bird populations accompanied by a decline in the overall aesthetics and vibe of the lake itself.

Bryant, 39, grew up in nearby Hawthorne, Nevada and watched as once-bustling bait shops, marinas and lakeside parks withered and died. Around 2011, the fishery, for all intents and purposes, finally blinked out.

"It was really hard to watch," he said. "It was incredibly depressing, the fishery finally died."

Bryant and others in Hawthorne were far from the only people harmed by Walker Lake's demise.

It also hit hard the people of the Walker River Paiute Tribe, who have been in the basin for time immemorial.

The Paiute people were so intertwined with the lake they were referred to in their native language as Agai Dicutta, or trout eaters, because they caught huge trout from the lake.

"Our portion is badly drying up and receding," Tribal Chairman Amber Torres said. "We would love to see it replenished."

The additional water flowing to Walker Lake is just a fraction of what it's going to take to restore it to vibrancy.

And it has taken more than 30 years, tens of millions of dollars and acts of Congress just to get to that point.

When Bryant was growing up, the work was barely getting started, in large part due to the interest of a newly elected U.S. senator from Nevada.

In an interview with the Reno Gazette Journal , former Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he first set eyes on Walker Lake around 1968 when he was a new member of the Nevada Assembly. The sight of the lake glistening in the desert stuck with Reid and after he was elected to the Senate he ushered into law the Desert Terminal Lakes Act in 2002.

The original law and subsequent versions led to around $300 million in funding for acquiring water rights and other actions to revive the lakes and their watersheds. A 2009 version established the Walker Basin Restoration Program, which eventually turned over to the Walker Basin Conservancy.

Through the legislation, the organizations have spent more than $80 million buying water rights sufficient to deliver water to the lake at 108 cubic feet per second, which represents about 44 percent of the water needed to restore the lake’s fishery.

The money from Congress helped purchase water rights from farmers and ranchers. But that wasn't enough to get additional water into the lake.

As long as the Walker River Decree didn't include in-stream flows to the lake as a beneficial use, there was no legal way to shift the water from agriculture to restoration.

The Fish and Wildlife Foundation filed its first change application to do just that in 2011.

It took eight years of legal wrangling in federal court before the application was approved and the decree was amended to include in-stream flows.

Although the application only covers about 7 percent of the water rights the Conservancy controls, Bryant is hopeful it sets a precedent that speeds up the change application process for the remaining rights.

"This is a turnaround point," Bryant said. Now, "The lake has a water right."

More water and fish should also help bring back birds and make the lake more attractive to people for fishing, boating and swimming.

“It is one of the great restoration stories of the West if we can pull it off,” Bryant said.

A new poll of Salt Lake City voters conducted ahead of this month’s primary election shows residents see air quality as the most pressing problem facing the state’s capital — and it’s an issue on which several say they have based their pick for mayor.

Take Elizabeth Ballantyne, a 53-year-old Sugar House resident who believes the state’s dirty air negatively affects both the community’s health and economic vitality. She’s voting for David Garbett, a former Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance staff attorney, because she feels he has the best plan to make meaningful progress on the issue.

Ballantyne “especially” likes “his hope to remove the refinery and the power plant from our city,” she said. “I think those things are important contributors to our air quality problem and I’d love to see them go.”

About a third of 444 residents surveyed this week by The Salt Lake Tribune and the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah agreed that air quality is the top issue in the city. But several mayoral candidates who have vowed to make that issue their top priority, including Garbett, aren’t polling as well in the race.

In a local nonpartisan election, voters “tend to react and respond to personality, in part, because they don’t have partisanship as an easy way to sort people out,” according to Matthew Burbank, a political science professor at the U.

Local issues like air quality “are clearly important” to voters, he said. “The trick, however, is often that connecting a particular candidate to a particular issue in a way that says, ‘Aha, this candidate has a plan for addressing this issue that I think is important but nobody else does,’ that usually is not a feature of these kinds of elections.”

Salt Lake City is ranked 23rd among U.S. cities for the highest number of health impacts from outdoor air pollution, according to a recent report published in the American Thoracic Society’s medical journal. Some research also has shown there are more school absences across the Wasatch Front on poor air quality days, meaning the issue is affecting some students’ education.

Nearly all of the eight candidates in the race have expressed a desire and a commitment to address these issues. The exception is Rainer Huck, a retired electrical engineer whose campaign has said he sees the issue as a “misdirection” from other serious issues, like crime and police brutality.

Some candidates have made cleaning the air a bigger focus of their campaign than others, with Garbett and former Salt Lake City Councilman Stan Penfold the only ones to list it as their No. 1 priority if elected. Businessman David Ibarra has listed “the environment” more broadly as his focus.

A recent poll of the race showed Garbett with 9% support, Penfold with 5% and Ibarra with 6%.

Garbett has argued the city needs to put together a comprehensive plan for how to get to clean air. He also has promised to create a litigation wing at the city’s attorney’s office to go after polluters and to move the refinery and power plant, telegraphing to “any interested developer that the city is very interested in helping them to remove that.”

He and Penfold, who has advocated for free-fare transit across the city to reduce emissions and improve air quality, signed on together earlier this year to a call for action to expedite Salt Lake City’s net-100% renewable energy goal seven years sooner, from 2030 to 2023.

Ibarra has advocated for more aggressive green building standards, ending parking lot requirements for new construction and getting more people into affordable housing so they have shorter commutes and pollute less.

While Salt Lake City Councilwoman Erin Mendenhall listed her top priority as basic infrastructure and streets, she also has called air quality “the single biggest threat to livability in Salt Lake City.”

The candidate got her entrance into politics through the air quality world, helping co-found the clean-air advocacy group Breathe Utah and currently serving as chairwoman of the state Air Quality Board.

As a mayoral hopeful, Mendenhall has advocated for more aggressive carbon reduction goals, incentives to clean up the dirtiest buildings in the city and creation of a program for residents to swap out polluting snowblowers and lawn mowers for climate-friendly ones.

That background, combined with her other city-rooted experience, is why Brad Slaugh, a poll respondent who lives in the East Liberty Park neighborhood, said he is supporting Mendenhall for mayor.

“She has been an outstanding representative for a really long time on that particular issue,” he said. “I think that issue is just really difficult, and she’s handled it in a thoughtful way.”

Slaugh, 53, also expressed some frustration with what he perceives as a lack of support for addressing air quality issues in the Republican-led Legislature — the very group some candidates are counting on to help clean the air.

State Sen. Jim Dabakis, who polls show is currently leading among the candidates, has said he would work with the state to get funding for free-fare transit across the city as well as to create more funding for wood-burning stove exchanges in an effort to improve air quality.

“We need a village here,” he told The Tribune in a recent interview, arguing that he is best positioned to act as a “liaison with the state” to cultivate big, rather than incremental, changes on emissions.

State Sen. Luz Escamilla, who polls show in second place close behind Dabakis and closing, has expressed a similar position but points to her legislative record on air quality, including her work to increase the statute of limitations for polluters. If elected mayor, she has said she would partner with the state on other initiatives, as well as work to decrease vehicle emissions.

Following air quality, 18% of voters surveyed in the poll pointed to homelessness and 17% to affordable housing as the biggest issues in the city. Opinions on the relative importance of the inland port, a massive distribution hub planned for the city’s northwest side, and on taxes and roads fared at 10% and below.

Several poll respondents reached by The Tribune on Friday said they plan to support the two front-runners in the race based on their stances on those issues that they see as the most important facing the capital.

Bill Finney, 78, said he sees addressing homelessness as a top priority and is voting for Dabakis because he believes he has the temperament, personality and relationships necessary to address it and other big issues.

“He did a good job at the Legislature in trying to create some balance, and I think he’ll do a good job at the city,” Finney said. “He’ll be a good voice. I don’t think he’ll do anything to embarrass us in any way and will represent the people fairly.”

Paula Espinoza, a 52-year-old Glendale resident, is particularly concerned about affordable housing and said she is drawn to fellow west-sider Escamilla, who lives in Rose Park.

“Luz is really on the ground with issues; she’s in touch with people” Espinoza said. “She’s been very vocal about working to keep services more toward the west side, so I think she’s going to really fight for some of the things that people on the west side really need.”

Some 28% of voters remain undecided in the Aug. 13 race and say they’re still eyeing candidates’ positions in an effort to decide whom they’ll support in the final days of the primary campaign.

The Tribune-Hinckley poll, conducted Monday through Wednesday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.6 percentage points and employed a mix of phone calls to landlines (35%) and cellphones (56%), as well as an online portion (9%).

By the thousands, onetime Latter-day Saints have turned to an immigration lawyer in Salt Lake City for help. They want to resign their church membership without having to interact with a bishop or any other lay leader.

Mark Naugle, largely through Reddit, has cultivated a unique and free service through his QuitMormon website.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has largely complied with the more than 40,000 legal letters Naugle has sent its way since late 2015, but it recently added a new restriction amid some growing frustration.

Those who use his service to resign their membership must now provide a notarized letter.

The reason? An attorney for the church says Naugle and QuitMormon.com have sent too many fraudulent requests, including one for Thomas S. Monson, the late church president.

“In other cases, signatures have been forged and the names of minors have been fraudulently removed without the knowledge and authorization of parents/legal guardians,” attorney Daniel McConkie, with the Salt Lake City law firm Kirton McConkie, wrote to Naugle in a June 27 letter. In the letter, McConkie says the church has received “many fraudulent requests” but doesn’t put a number on it. He did write that dozens were submitted for people who were not members or who had already had their records removed.

He added: “The problem is that your automated, largely impersonal system does not truly screen for fraudulent or erroneous submissions.”

Letter from LDS Church to QuitMormon's Mark Naugle by The Salt Lake Tribune on Scribd

Naugle concedes the Monson mistake but said he caught it in February 2018 and notified the church promptly. As for any sort of widespread fraud, he says neither the church nor its attorneys have brought any cases to his attention. He believes the letter isn’t really about fraud.

“It is a pretty transparent way to throw sand in our gears and slow us down again,” he said.

McConkie also complained that, in hundreds of cases, Naugle sent multiple requests for the same person.

Naugle says that’s true.

“That’s because they didn’t get back to me.”

Naugle’s persistence isn’t going to end. He says McConkie should expect more resignation requests soon, after he adapts his website in the next few weeks to start accepting notarized letters.

The church repeatedly has spelled out that there are other ways people intent on resigning can do so. They can talk to their bishop “who will ensure the person understands what this will mean for their membership,” said church spokesman Daniel Woodruff. Or they can send a notarized letter directly to the Office of the First Presidency, the faith’s governing body.

Beyond that, they can hire a lawyer. The church promises that these legal requests will be “promptly processed,” even more so if “an attorney who, because of ethical obligations, will verify the identity and desire of the individual,” said Woodruff, obviously trying to draw a distinction between Naugle’s service and the work of other lawyers.

“In discussing this issue, it is important to note that every person is valued and loved. They are our brothers and sisters, colleagues and friends,” Woodruff said. “Each makes their own decisions about their participation and church membership. Regardless of their choice, we love them and wish them well and hope they will find the support and answers they seek.”

How QuitMormon came to be

Naugle, now 34, didn’t set out to be the main source of resignation requests. QuitMormon was something he fell into, and yet it all stems from his own personal experience.

His whole family — including his mom, dad and brother — resigned church memberships when he was 15 years old, after his father’s internet research led all of them to believe the church was based on falsehoods.

In the days that followed, people from his ward, or congregation, visited frequently, urging them to return, saying they were sinners and that they just gave up their eternal lives. Naugle remembers times when his family members hid in their house when ward members would approach.

He deadpanned, “It wasn’t a great experience.”

Naugle went on to law school at the University of Utah, graduating in 2009. He sent a few resignation letters for family and friends after that, and then he went on the r/exmormon page on Reddit and offered his services. He got a few hundred responses.

In 2015, the church implemented a new policy identifying members in same-sex relationships as apostates and saying their children could not be baptized. It caused an uproar within the church and in the ex-Mormon community. He re-upped his offer on Reddit.

“And it just exploded,” he said.

He started getting thousands of requests, many from Utah but also from throughout the country and beyond. What started as individualized letters became standardized. Volunteers helped him build his website and create an automated process that he turned into a nonprofit organization. He doesn’t charge people, but he does accept donations and sells coffee mugs.

For the next three years, he sent big batches of resignation letters and got a list of those the church processed every Friday.

Among those who filed were angry former Latter-day Saints who stopped going to church years ago and those who were triggered by an action, whether it was the church policy involving gay children, which has since been rescinded, or the high-profile excommunication of Kate Kelly, who sought the priesthood for women.

That latter group includes Ashley Thalman, an Ogden photographer.

Thalman was living a pretty straightforward Latter-day Saint life. She grew up in the church, served a mission in Russia and loved it. She got married in the temple and had two children. She held a number of callings and then, around 2011, she became a Gospel Doctrine teacher. The class included a trans woman and a gay man and an outspoken feminist. Her plan was to meet them where they were and tackle issues head-on.

It was the start of her own feminist awakening. She stood with Kelly, seeing no reason why women shouldn’t be priesthood holders, and it led her down a path that ended at QuitMormon in early 2017.

“My brain expanded and it was like, ‘I think everyone can have some kind of connection to God on their own,’" she said. “'Why do we need bishops then? Why do we need the temple? Why do we need the priesthood? Why do we need any of it.'”

When she moved, she went to her new ward once and then stopped going to church altogether.

“To say my transition out of Mormonism wrecked me would be kind of an understatement,” Thalman said. “It was incredibly difficult. It was like, ‘What is the point of living anymore.'"

Over time, she said, she started to “feel more free, more like myself. I had more capacity for empathy and love.” And a strong desire to have no connection with the church.

When she was younger, she’d take note of the new membership numbers announced by church leaders at the General Conference each April. The rising total was a sign of the faith’s unending expansion.

She didn’t want her name to be among that total any longer. She went to QuitMormon.com, and saw the stats that Naugle updates here and there. “I wanted to be part of those numbers. … I made my peace with it, and I didn’t want to be associated with a church that doesn’t want to represent my values.”

Thalman filled out the forms, and a few weeks later received confirmation that she was Mormon no more.

Why use QuitMormon? Why not just go directly to the church with her resignation request? Thalman said: “I didn’t feel like I owed the bishop or anyone else an explanation.”

Naugle said that Thalman’s experience is similar to that of many of his clients.

The church, through Woodruff, promises that “no ecclesiastical proceeding is required” and that any interactions with the resigning member “would be based on their desires.”

Naugle said that isn’t the lived experience of some former Latter-day Saints.

“As it stands, people see a value in my service because they don’t have to go talk to their bishop, don’t have to go to church court or face excommunication,” he said. “The [women’s] Relief Society presidency doesn’t show up at their door, and they can quietly resign without a hassle.”

St. George resident Sharrin Fuller said she sent four resignation letters over a span of eight years — the first, in 2001, to her bishop. Three others went to church headquarters. She never received a response. And every time she moved, which was frequently for work, her now estranged father would make sure her membership records were transferred and there’d be a knock at her door.

Sometimes it would be a quick interaction in which she’d say she had no interest, and they’d leave her alone, but, in 2007, she says a stake president got past her gate and made it to her front porch on a secluded property in the San Diego area. He was insistent and demanding. He told her that she wouldn’t be resigning her membership and that he expected her to be in church that Sunday.

Fuller stopped attending in 1999 after the temple ceremonies stunned her.

“Some of the rituals that they do freaked me out,” she said, “Made me feel like we were in a cult.”

She acknowledges being an unquestioning member before that, attending church, but not studying the faith, its tenets or practices. Her dad, though, was devout and angry that she had stepped away. She believes he urged the stake president to visit her in California. The next time she moved, she signed up for a P.O. Box and stopped giving her parents her address.

“Now they leave me alone,” Fuller said.

She eventually moved back to Utah and being in a Latter-day Saint dominated culture brought back unresolved issues. She heard about QuitMormon on Facebook, filled out the online form in 2017 and received her confirmation six weeks later. As a thank you, she provides free accounting services to Naugle’s nonprofit.

“It was a relief."

The church’s concerns

Like Fuller, Thalman described her resignation process through QuitMormon as seamless, and Naugle said his interactions with the church membership department were professional and straightforward.

The only point of contention was a growing concern from Naugle and his clients that the names of unbaptized children remained somewhere in the church system since ward members would continue to seek them out, even though their parents had resigned their memberships. Woodruff said those children have “canceled records” that should not be accessible to lay leaders, though they could be connected to another family member who has retained his or her membership.

In November 2018, Naugle received his first letter from Daniel McConkie, a top attorney with Kirton McConkie, which represents the church. The attorney wrote that Naugle should no longer send letters to the membership department; instead, they should all go through the law firm. McConkie also complained that some of the letters appeared to be fraudulent, writing that Naugle needed to verify the identity of his clients and suggested that he do that using their driver licenses.

Naugle responded in January, saying he’d comply. He set up a new part of his website where clients could upload a picture of their license for him to review. Naugle said he has checked every submission since then.

The second letter came in late June. Woodruff said church authorities had created “a specialized process” just for QuitMormon.com letters and that is “now being discontinued because of abuses of that process.”

Naugle and Thalman said the notarized letter requirement is a hassle that could lead a person who wants to leave the church to face an awkward conversation with a notary, a moment of potential shame. He’s trying to avoid that, having posted a request on Reddit for notaries willing to provide their services for free. So far, he has a list of 55 and hopes to have his revamped system available in early August.

This change is less convenient for his clients but will save Naugle time. He no longer needs to verify the person’s identity against a driver license.

Once he gets the online form in place, Naugle says he’ll send McConkie dozens — likely hundreds — of notarized letters, and he expects the church to promptly respond.

The impact of QuitMormon on membership

Matt Martinich, an independent Colorado-based researcher who focuses on Latter-day Saint membership and congregations, believes there has been an uptick in resignations in recent years. But he says that’s hard to quantify because those numbers are obscured by other reasons a person’s membership ends, such as death and excommunication.

“What QuitMormon has done is it has really kind of streamlined it for a lot of people who have wanted to leave,” he said, noting that roughly half those resignations have come from Utah, according to numbers Naugle has posted on his website.

That means Utah’s resignations are overrepresented when compared to the church’s membership in the United States and worldwide. If all resignations were spread out evenly, QuitMormon should get less than a third of its requests from within the state.

But the overrepresentation makes sense to Martinich. People who are disaffected are more likely to resign their memberships in a place where the church has an outsized cultural influence. Former members in a place where the church holds little sway may not think about it as much.

“That is much more of a Utah phenomenon,” he said.

While each resignation is a big deal in the life of that person, the departures don’t move the needle a whole lot for a church that counts 16.3 million members.

“Really, these resignations are a drop in the bucket in terms of how they impact membership numbers as a whole,” Martinich said.

Naugle said he has no idea what the church’s membership is, and since resigning his membership, he has not tried to engage in the latest issues surrounding his former faith. Outside of his occasional post about QuitMormon, he’s not on Reddit.

“I moved on with my life for a reason. I don’t want to be neck deep in it anymore," he said. “Outside of what I do, I try to live my life as separate from the church, its people and its thoughts as possible.”

And how long does he plan to volunteer his time helping people resign their membership? Indefinitely.

I build innovative tech products for a living and moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Utah about a year and a half ago. Recently, I was in a meeting and realized that I have been forgetting to deploy my standard meeting “tools”: I haven’t been resetting my chair height uncomfortably high to appear as tall as the guys and I have been jotting down notes for all to see. And yet, no one at Recursion, my high-tech biotech employer here in Salt Lake City, has asked me to be the permanent official note taker or bring in more coffee.

In other words: I’ve taken down my defenses and been able to focus on the technical work I do best — without being consistently reduced to “office housework,” a duty scholars show is more likely to fall on women than men.

Here’s some sobering statistics: Utah has the nation’s largest gender wage gap. And women are the least likely to be employed in a STEM field in the Beehive State. But I’d like to propose another emerging stat: Utah could become one of the best places to be a woman in tech.

In the tech community, Silicon Valley is the model for all other tech hubs. Before you shake your head, consider all the names aspiring hubs give themselves: Silicon Slopes in Salt Lake City, Silicon Alley in New York City, Silicon Hills in Austin. The list goes on. But what if the world’s global center for high-tech is the past, not the future? Particularly for women.

Roughly 20 percent of technical roles in Silicon Valley-tech companies are held by women. Female-led companies get a mere two percent of venture capital funding. Women have higher career dropout rates and lower participation in leadership, too.

I work at a machine learning-biotech startup in Salt Lake City. But I have also spent nine years in the San Francisco Bay Area.The dynamics of being a woman in tech are simply different in Utah. We have been given both a risk and an opportunity to shape its future.

In the book “Brotopia,” reporter Emily Chang writes about the origins of Silicon Valley’s often toxic gender dynamics: how the culture, practices and employees of a small initial ecosystem of tech startups during the dawn of the commercial internet age in the late 1990s — the “PayPal Mafia” — spread across the industry. Today’s California tech companies have inherited a culture that over-values ruthlessness, homogeneity, and a path to success driven by “bro-networks.”

Many Silicon Valley companies are investing heavily in fixing these imbalances, which disproportionately affect women and minorities. But even the ‘equality trailblazers’ are struggling to make progress within this large, established ecosystem. Facebook, for example, has a massive gender equity effort supported by the vision of COO and “Lean In” author Sheryl Sandberg. Still, the company reports mere 1-3 percent yearly increases in the number of females in tech roles. In the industry more broadly, the numbers, and gender dynamics, are barely budging.

Salt Lake City has a chance to change that. Today, we have a small but rapidly growing ecosystem of modern high-tech firms. This means that seemingly small, initial actions by the leaders of these companies can have larger ripple effects than Facebook could achieve in Silicon Valley (and despite its massive investment).

For example: when the CEO of Recursion sets concrete company goals on diversity in recruiting and encourages community events like our Women in Science and Technology speaker series, this really matters. But when another Utah CEO stands up in front of thousands at the region’s largest tech conference and demeans the women attendees by suggesting they only showed up to crush on a certain pro-athlete guest speaker, this also really matters. We are setting the tone for the tech expansion to come.

This is a call to action for Utah tech leaders. We have all the pieces for Silicon Slopes to emerge not as a belated Silicon Valley clone, but as a next-generation tech hub. The way you shape diversity at your companies today — from large-scale policies to the 140 characters you tweet — will affect not just your company’s success, it will shape the way our local tech community grows. It is up to you whether Utah is the best — or the worst — place for a woman in tech.

Lina Nilsson is senior director of data science product at Recursion Pharmaceuticals. She has written about women in tech in venues including the New York Times.

A Scottish member of Parliament recently was called out because of his religious beliefs. Stephen Kerr, a Tory from Stirling, is also a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In other word(s), Mormon.

A pro-Scottish independence columnist satirically seized on Kerr’s religious beliefs, writing about Kerr’s claim that Scotland could not afford to be an independent state while he simultaneously held a belief in angels. As if one had everything to do with the other.

Kerr was understandably upset. There isn’t much he can do about it, though. The columnist is entitled to express her opinion about certain beliefs.

It brings up an interesting question here in one of the most religious states in America, a place where religious belief indeed has an impact on the political landscape.

We all know (whether or not we agree) that it’s illegal to assault people, vandalize their places of worship, or discriminate against them professionally based on their religious beliefs.

We can, however, say whatever we want about the beliefs themselves.

For example, the belief that God so loved the world that he drowned nearly everyone in it is both a perfect example of irony but also utterly idiotic.

What? Yes, as well as never having happened.

There will be repercussions for me saying that, primarily from people who believe that Noah had a couple of T. rexes on the ark. But I expected the outrage before I made the observation in the first place.

The question really is how much respect you should show people whose religious beliefs are nowhere near your own. A good answer is a quote from U.S. essayist and satirist H.L. Mencken:

“We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”

Suppose you’re speaking with someone who won’t shut up about how beautiful his spouse is and how their children will no doubt get full-ride scholarships to Harvard.

Now, the truth might be closer to the fact that the guy’s wife is a bridge troll, and their kids are in high school but still need help getting their shoes on the correct feet. Should you bring all that up?

Well, it depends on what kind of relationship you expect to have with the guy in the future. If you don’t care, then there’s no loss in giving him both barrels of truth.

But if you want to keep the lines of communication open and the relationship on a civil level, politeness suggests that you let him have his cherished belief so long as it doesn’t negatively affect your freedoms.

Most of my closest friends have different religious beliefs than my own. For some reason, it doesn’t matter. I think it’s because the subject rarely comes up. We aren’t friends because of religion.

In the years of doing crazy stuff with Sonny, not once has religious belief ever posed a problem in our friendship.

Wait. I take that back. We made a bet once about the power of a particular cannon. A month of coming to church with me against a tattoo if a projectile failed to accomplish a certain amount of destruction. I ended up with a tattoo.

Even my wife and I have different beliefs. But regardless of what I might think, her feelings matter most to me. If it comes to that, I 100% believe that I’d rather be married.

Robert Kirby is The Salt Lake Tribune’s humor columnist. Follow Kirby on Facebook.

Dayton, Ohio • A gunman in body armor opened fire early Sunday in a popular entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, killing nine people, including his sister, and wounded dozens of others before he was quickly slain by police, city officials said.

Connor Betts, 24, was killed by police less than a minute after he started shooting a .223-caliber rifle in the streets of Dayton's historic Oregon District about 1 a.m. in the second U.S. mass shooting in less than 24 hours. Police haven't released further information about Betts or publicly discussed a motive.

His 22-year-old sister Megan, the youngest of the dead, were all killed in the same area, police said. The other men and women who were killed ranged in age from 25 to 57.

Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said the shooter was wearing body armor and had additional high-capacity magazines. Had police not responded so quickly, "hundreds of people in the Oregon District could be dead today," she said.

The neighborhood, home to bars, restaurants and theaters, is "a safe part of downtown," said police Lt. Col. Matt Carper.

Whaley said at least 27 people were treated for injuries, and at least 15 of those have been released. Several more remain in serious or critical condition, hospital officials said at a news conference. Some suffered multiple gunshot wounds and others were injured as they fled, the officials said.

Nikita Papillon, 23, was across the street at Newcom's Tavern when the shooting started. She said she saw a girl she had talked to earlier lying outside Ned Peppers Bar.

"She had told me she liked my outfit and thought I was cute, and I told her I liked her outfit and I thought she was cute," Papillon said. She herself had been to Ned Peppers the night before, describing it as the kind of place "where you don't have to worry about someone shooting up the place."

"People my age, we don't think something like this is going to happen," she said. "And when it happens, words can't describe it."

Tianycia Leonard, 28, was in the back, smoking, at Newcom's. She heard "loud thumps" that she initially thought was someone pounding on a dumpster.

"It was so noisy, but then you could tell it was gunshots and there was a lot of rounds," Leonard said.

Staff of an Oregon District bar called Ned Peppers said in a Facebook post that they were left shaken and confused by the shooting. The bar said a bouncer was treated for shrapnel wounds.

A message seeking further comment was left with staff.

President Donald Trump was briefed on the shooting and praised law enforcement's speedy response in a tweet Sunday.

Gov. Mike DeWine issued his own statement, announcing that he ordered flags in Ohio remain at half-staff and offering assistance to Whaley and prayers for the victims.

Whaley said she has been in touch with the White House, though not Trump directly, and with DeWine. She said more than 50 other mayors also have reached out to her.

The FBI is assisting with the investigation.

A family assistance center was set up at the Dayton Convention Center, where people seeking information on victims arrived in a steady trickle throughout the morning, many in their Sunday best, others looking bedraggled from a sleepless night. Some local pastors were on hand to offer support, as were comfort dogs.

The Ohio shooting came hours after a young man opened fire in a crowded El Paso, Texas, shopping area, leaving 20 dead and more than two dozen injured. Just days before, on July 28, a 19-year-old shot and killed three people, including two children, at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Northern California.

Sunday's shooting in Dayton is the 22nd mass killing of 2019 in the U.S., according to the AP/USA Today/Northeastern University mass murder database that tracks homicides where four or more people were killed — not including the offender. The 20 mass killings in the U.S. in 2019 that preceded this weekend claimed 96 lives.

Whaley said the Oregon District is expected to reopen Sunday afternoon, and a vigil is planned Sunday evening. The minor league Dayton Dragons who play in nearby Fifth Third Field postponed their Sunday afternoon game against the Lake County Captains "due to this morning's tragic event."

The shooting in Dayton comes after the area was heavily damaged when tornadoes swept through western Ohio in late May, destroying or damaging hundreds of homes and businesses.

"Dayton has been through a lot already this year, and I continue to be amazed by the grit and resiliency of our community," Whaley said.

Associated Press writers Julie Carr Smyth in Dayton, Michael Balsamo in Orlando, Fla., and Kantele Franko in Columbus contributed.

Britain Covey returned to Utah’s football practice field last August, eager to enjoy “the greatest time in your life” after two years away from college. Yet he understands why teammates would walk away from the game.

Ute coach Kyle Whittingham is proud of the staff’s record of sending players to the NFL. But he’s aware of the commitment that’s required to stay and play at that level.

Retirement stories have become common around Utah’s program, and they’re not unique to the Utes. The latest, and most surprising, move came just before preseason camp started last week when starting linebacker Manny Bowen told coaches he was leaving for “business opportunities” rather than play one season for the Utes as a graduate student. After spring practice, projected starting kicker Chayden Johnston gave up football with three years of eligibility remaining.

In the NFL, former Ute offensive linemen Isaac Asiata and J.J. Dielman retired last week, having started training camp in their third pro seasons. In the spring of 2018, ex-Ute defensive linemen Filipo Mokofisi and Lowell Lotulelei walked away from NFL opportunities soon after signing as undrafted free agents.

Those moves are not easy for outsiders to understand, considering how few athletes get such chances. Society would say college players are supposed to maximize their scholarships; NFL players should pursue the game until they’re denied every last shot.

The takeaway: Football is not for everybody, and certainly not forever — even those who excelled in the game at every level, as their careers evolved.

“It is so demanding and consuming that if you're not passionate about it and all in … you can't survive,” Whittingham said.

Bowen’s case is different from the others, due to the timing and the perception that he let down his teammates by leaving a big vacancy in Utah’s defense. Whittingham was taken aback, because the football season is viewed as a reward for going through the drudgery of the summer conditioning program, as Bowen did. How much good would he have done the Utes, though, if he wasn’t committed to playing?

As for the NFL retirees, the reality is that fighting for roster spots or practice-squad positions every year and hoping to hang around the league is a difficult existence. Being drafted or signed by a team creates an opportunity, but that’s all.

Asiata, from Spanish Fork High School, was waived by the Miami Dolphins in June, receiving an injury settlement after spending two years with the team with varying status. He considered retiring then, but he signed with the Buffalo Bills to give himself another gauge of whether he really wanted or needed to play football at age 26. He left training camp last week, for good.

In a lengthy, thoughtful social media post, Asiata wrote in part, “I have lived the last two years of my NFL career waging war with myself mentally. With constant anxiety, persistent worry and fear of the unknown and what comes next if I were to be done. … The fear of failure consumed me to the point of questioning myself and my ability to play this game. I no longer played this game because I loved it. … I also placed the unnecessary burden on my shoulders of never wanting to let people down or to disappoint those around me. Afraid of being 'a draft bust' or just another guy who couldn't cut it in the league.”

View this post on Instagram

Always & Forever -Isaac Andrew Asiata #54 • #68 • #72

A post shared by Isaac Asiata (@asiatafive4) on Jul 30, 2019 at 12:58pm PDT

That’s the part Covey understands, after being part of Utah’s 2015 team that included Asiata as an emotional leader. Utah’s junior receiver has gone through rehabilitation of a knee injury this summer, amid the anticipation of those who want to watch him play. This process followed a demanding 2018 summer of training after returning from a mission to Chile for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“It's such a brutal game, especially in the NFL,” Covey said, pointing to his repaired knee. “I just really appreciate Isaac and I feel for him, because coming back from this injury, you always want to do things for other people. Half the time, I wanted to get back for my family or the fans … but there came a point where I realized I've just go to do what's best for me.”

Covey continued, “After a while, [with] the stress of everything, you get to a point where you realize what's most important. So I totally understand Manny, Isaac, all those guys.”

Covey and his Ute teammates will keep going, persevering through practices in the August heat, with the rewards of the college football experience to come. It’s not all fun, and being a football is not their only identity. Yet they’ve decided it is worthwhile, for now.

Jo Adell covered the 38 miles from Orem to Smith's Ballpark faster than anyone in the Los Angeles Angels organization ever navigated that I-15 trek.

He made it in two years, even with a major detour around second base in Mesa, Ariz.

Ranked the No. 4 prospect in Major League Baseball, the 20-year-old outfielder has joined the Salt Lake Bees in an advancement that’s significant for his own career and for the Angels system. Adell would have arrived sooner, if not for the baserunning accident with the freakish combination of straining his left hamstring and spraining his right ankle in an Angels spring training game in March.

The recovery took more than two months, but he has responded well and kept his career trajectory on an upward swing. And now he's in Salt Lake City, presumably through the Labor Day end of the Pacific Coast League season.

“The whole organization's interested to see him perform here,” said Bees manager Lou Marson. “It's going to be a fun month.”

Leading off and playing right field, Adell went 3 for 11 at the plate with one double in his first three games for the Bees, who conclude this homestand Monday vs. New Orleans. Adell is in the Bees’ outfield spot that Brennon Lund, from Bingham High School and BYU, was staffing well before being injured in mid-July.

Adell’s journey through the Angels’ organization is not quite like that of Mike Trout, who skipped Orem and Salt Lake on his initial climb to Anaheim in 2011, then started the 2012 season with the Bees before becoming a big-league star.

Adell has appeared at all six minor-league levels of the farm system, making the steady progress the Angels hoped when they made him the No. 10 overall pick in the 2017 draft out of high school in Louisville, Ky. As team executives promised him, “The moment you show you can handle a level, you move,” Adell reflected. “So that’s what happened. It’s pretty awesome to be with these guys.”

It might be the beard. Maybe it’s the deep voice. Adell comes across as remarkably mature for someone who turned 20 in April. That trait enables him to deal with everything that’s expected of him in a franchise that needs homegrown talent to start making an impact. At 6-foot-3, 215 pounds, he looks like an athlete who could play any sport, and he’s in tune with the daily nature of baseball.

“I know my capabilities and what I can do on the field,” he said. “Now, am I going to do ’em every day? No. It’s really about bringing the best I can to the field, and everything will take care of itself.”

If that sounds like a standard answer, Adell responded to an earlier question about the road from Orem to Salt Lake City with an anecdote about texting with his host family from the Owlz days, and how the Utahns were happy to have him back in the state two years later.

I always say the road from Orem to SLC is the longest 35 miles in pro baseball. Jo Adell made it in 2 years. He comes across as incredibly mature. Talent also helps. pic.twitter.com/Jzp6a93tEq

— Kurt Kragthorpe (@tribkurt) August 3, 2019

The injury in spring training could have derailed Adell’s 2019 season. But he rehabilitated in Arizona, made a brief stop at Class-A Inland Empire in late May and thrived at Double-A Mobile, where he had played 17 games for Marson last summer.

“Two, three weeks not being on the field, that was the toughest part of rehab,” he said. “Once I got back on the field and started doing practice stuff, it got better from there.”

He batted .308 with eight home runs in 43 games at Mobile, where he had hit .238 last summer. Adell attributes the improvement to being in a more comfortable routine, compared to 2018, when Mobile was his third stop. He’ll likely to settle in with the Bees for the remaining four weeks of the season.

And then, who knows? Adell could receive a September call-up to the Angels, and he may never return to the Bees. Or he could start the 2020 season in Salt Lake.

To be safe, fans should catch him here this month, joining those who were lucky to witness Trout in April 2012.

For however long he’s in Triple-A baseball, Adell just wants to maximize the experience. “The more I can learn, the better,” he said. “A lot of these guys have big-league time, and [I’ll] just soak up all the information I can.”

A fire broke out at a packaged food company early Sunday morning, according to a report by FOX 13.

Investigators say a spontaneous combustion was caused by oily rags stores in bins. No injuries were reported, but the damage at WhiteWave Foods, 1658 South 4370 West, is estimated to be between $80,000 and $100,000.

According to FOX 13, firefighters had the fire under control within about 30 minutes of arriving just after 1 a.m.

Video footage as crews first arrived at this morning’s fire: pic.twitter.com/JV3YF7swAU

— Salt Lake City Fire Department (@slcfire) August 4, 2019

The Salt Lake Tribune and FOX 13 are content-sharing partners.

Here are three takeaways from Real Salt Lake’s 3-1 win over New York City FC.

1. RSL showed a different kind of resilience

For the entire season going into Saturday, if RSL conceded the first goal, the game was effectively over. It didn’t matter when that goal came, or if the team got one back. In 10 games, Real didn’t come away with a win if it fell behind first.

But that changed against NYCFC. After giving up a goal within the first five minutes, Salt Lake scored three unanswered goals and earned the full three points.

“I think it was a really good response,” Kyle Beckerman said. “I think nobody panicked.”

Beckerman said despite the team not being sharp to start the game, it was able to settle in and start creating chances. Tying the game before halftime helped matters as well.

Assistant coach Tryone Marshall called the conceded goal “unfortunate.” But he was pleased that RSL got back to its game plan quickly and called the team’s reaction to the goal “fantastic.”

Beckerman thinks getting that type of game under their belt will help Real in future games should they fall behind first again.

“It’s a good result with that in mind,” Beckerman said. “So now when we go forward in the season and we go behind, we know we’ve come back from being a goal down to win. So it’ll give us some confidence going forward.”

2. Nick Rimando still has it

It’s still hard to believe sometimes that Rimando has played professional soccer for 20 years and that he’s 40 years old. On Saturday, he looked just as spry as he did earlier in his career when he was winning championships.

Rimando provided six saves against NYCFC, only the third time this season he’s recorded more than four. Goalkeepers probably don’t want to have too many games when they’re relied upon that much to keep opponents from scoring, because usually that means there are defensive breakdowns higher up the field.

But in the event one has to make that many saves, a keeper’s job is to deliver. And boy, did Rimando deliver Saturday.

Just look at the first save he had to make not three minutes into the game. More times than not, that’s a goal.

And right out of the gate with the 🐐 pic.twitter.com/Oa5KnbIp2P

— Real Salt Lake (@realsaltlake) August 4, 2019

Rimando doesn’t have many more games left in his career. He’s retiring at the end of the season. So every time he makes a spectacular save, fans should cherish it from now on. Because when he’s gone, there’s no telling when there will be another keeper like him.

3. A win many weeks in the making

The results in recent weeks may not have been completely indicative of it, but RSL has put together some really good games lately. Other than the home game against Minnesota they feel should have been a win, the blowout against Philadelphia and the draw against Dallas were both solid efforts. And although the Leagues Cup game against Tigres was a 1-0 loss, the team created enough chances to win that game.

So when Salt Lake was faced with the second-best team in the Eastern Conference on Saturday and won the way it did, it was the culmination of those last few games where it had chances but just couldn’t finish them.

Marshall said the message to the team before the game was to put away its chances to score. Those chances found the back of the net against NYCFC.

“[Saturday night was] a great culmination of everything,” Marshall said.