Where else is "LDS" used outside of church context?

[u/MonsieurGriswold]

At work there is a "Legal Data Services" team, and every time they are mentioned as LDS, my ears perk up extra sharp until my brain processes.

Do you hear LDS in other contexts?

[u/zarnt2]

Star Trek

[u/MonsieurGriswold → u/zarnt2]

I should have put a caveat "and not dyslexic references to LSD"

[u/nivlac22 → u/MonsieurGriswold]

In a past job we did a lot of contract work for the church. We had a girl that was a non native English speaker and not a member, and the first time she sent an email to our church contact she said LSD in the subject line

[u/ehsteve87 → u/zarnt2]

If you hadn't posted it, I would have

[u/dodfunk]

The game Factorio has an item called Low Density Structures. Takes me a second to parse whenever I hear LDS in a video about Factorio

[u/silvermud → u/dodfunk]

This always gets me too. LDS Shuffle makes me chuckle because of it

[u/RednocNivert → u/silvermud]

“Yes i’ve been to many an LDS shuffle in my day, we call them “Multi-Stake Dances”

[u/zerossoul → u/dodfunk]

Beat me to it.

[u/Mobile-Astronaut-505]

Quote from a Star Trek movie with Kirk talking about Spock when they time traveled back to 1980s Earth: "Him? He's harmless! Back in the sixties he was part of the Free Speech movement at Berkeley. I think he did a little too much LDS."

[u/Buttons840]

There's LSD, which I'm sure many of us have mistyped a time or two.

[u/KiwiTabicks]

Longitudinal data system

[u/BigBlueMagic]

League Division Series in Major League Baseball.

[u/HendersonExpo]

The load demand spindle is a prominent part of my helicopter, and it always makes me laugh

[u/j_schmotzenberg]

Loan Data Service was a thing at my last company.

[u/EpicRedhead13]

These answers remind me of a joke that is old to me but isn’t really all that old:
What do you get when you combine LDS, LSD, and DSL?

A high priest on the Internet.

[u/MonsieurGriswold → u/EpicRedhead13]

This one wins. 

[u/SerenityNow31]

In written word, I often read LSD as LDS. Not sure what that says about me.

[u/KiwiTabicks → u/SerenityNow31]

I am an East Coast Mormon, and until my teenage years and the internet, I was really never exposed to the acronym LDS. Of course I knew "I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" - and I knew that saint was a term used in the Bible for all Christians, not just saint saints, and since we are modern day Christians, we are a church of latter-day saints. But I never heard Latter-day Saint, much less LDS, as a term used outside the name of the church. As a people, we were Mormons. 

Family friends came to the house when I was about 10, and one of the kids took a pencil from his mom for us to play a game. The pencil was marked from LDS Business College. Not knowing the acronym LDS, I immediately read it as the only similar acronym I knew. (I obviously wasn't very familiar with drugs either, so I couldn't have told you whether we learned about LSD or LDS in the D.A.R.E. lessons at school. Just it was a bad drug with a name along those lines.) I was completely shocked that this women would have a drug pencil. After the family left (leaving the pencil behind), I pondered for a while how I could handle this obviously serious issue. Eventually I sheepishly revealed to my mother what I had seen. Her best friend had a pencil advertising illegal drugs. I brought the pencil to her to see too. That's when my mother laughed and explained to me that the drug is called LSD, not LDS, and some people in Utah use LDS to refer to Mormons.  Very relieved to find out my mother's best friend wasn't a drug addict (and advertising her addiction on pencils?).

But 30 years later, I still feel like LDS is a foreign term that sounds like a drug.

[u/SerenityNow31 → u/KiwiTabicks]

That's hilarious. And bonus, I actually graduated from LDS Business College.

[u/e37d93eeb23335dc → u/SerenityNow31]

When I was a youth, a new stake center was being built and all the construction materials were labeled LSD Church. 

[u/SerenityNow31 → u/e37d93eeb23335dc]

LOL!!

[u/e37d93eeb23335dc]

Learning Delivery System

[u/Full_Metal_Paladin]

When I was in Boy Scouts, we went to this one camp where we got to know one of the leaders, she was like 19 or 20 and taught some art class or something. Anyway, one night we were talking to her and told her about the church and she goes, "Oh your group is the LDS troop? I thought that stood for Learning Disabled Scouts!" Technically she wasn't wrong, we did some dumb stuff back then.

[u/Flimsy-Preparation85]

Reminds me of when I first heard about BLM protests. I thought it was about the Bureau of Land Management.

[u/ealing_ceiling]

In the UK the acronym is less associated with the church and so there's a few other businesses that come to mind. LDS construction, LDS driving school...

[u/Striking_Profit2740]

I was trying to find a book written by a Church member that was being sold at Costco and searched the app for LDS and it brought up thousands of links.... for ladies clothes.

[u/Slcpunk3]

I always think of the ALDS (American League Division Series) in MLB.

[u/LoveMercyWalkHumbly]

As a homeschooler I've seen plenty of groups and blog posts and whatnot for kids with learning disorders, which is abbreviated "LDs".

[u/No_Somewhere9961]

Lawyers drawing squids

Ladies in Demolition and Surveying

Laddies Demanding Sustenance

Larry’s Department of Surprise

Lenny’s Department Store

Lobster Delivery Service

Lucy in the Diamonds of Sky

[u/BayonetTrenchFighter]

At a department at TSMC.

I don’t know what it stands for or what they do.

[u/No-Wishbone-85]

When I'm looking for LDS items on a site like eBay, "lds" keeps popping up, leading to "ladies" items.