MacGyver

My in laws live on the river a few miles down river from there. I’ve always had good luck with in-line spinners - especially the holographic ones from Walmart. Those are really my go to lure. Don’t neglect a trout magnet under a float either. In sections of the river where you’ve got some ripples, they really do catch fish.

Prayers continued for y’all. I’m sure her doctor will suggest it - but monoclonal antibodies really seem to help so long as they’re delivered in the first 10 days. Hopefully by Tuesday this is a complete non-issue for her. Do let me know if y’all need anything.

In a polite society, the open display of weapons will never seen as normative. Open carrying is seen by the public at large as potentially disruptive to preserving order. We have people that we choose to put forth as a community to protect that order (law enforcement - at least in theory.) When an individual or group takes it upon themselves to open carry, it’s making a statement that they’re operating outside of societally agreed upon bounds. It’s always going to be anti normative. None of that affects an individual’s right to defense. You can carry a gun for defense. When you make the choice to strap on a gun you either become an asset to society or a liability. When you open carry the community around you also gets a vote. Choose wisely.

Honestly, y'all are going to have enough to deal with in the coming days - that I don't know that it makes sense to add a dog to the mix in the near term - especially one that hasn't already had extensive previous training. A lot of dogs can be taught the brace command - but having a true service dog involves a lot more.

Please reach out directly if there is anything I can do to help, or we can do as a community.

Is there an Asian grocery store that isn’t good? Seriously. If they’ve got a plate lunch, I’m in.

A little over 3” here at my house last night. Minor flooding around town in all the places that are prone to that.

Early on in my career, someone told me something that's stuck with me for a lot of years. There is no them. Even if there was some organized cabal - they're just not smart enough to pull anything off on that kind of scale. Rephrased - never assign to malice what can reasonably be attributed to incompetence.

Most of the manufacturers have good, free planning tools, too. You can do the design on a great system and then install it in whole or in parts.

Here in Nashville my neighbor was quoted around $5500 for irrigation in a relatively small suburban yard - maybe 1500 sq ft once you take out all his landscaping He wound up doing it himself.

Monoclonal antibodies are as close to a miracle treatment as we have for this thing - so long as they diagnose early and you get them early. Prayers for him and y’all. Keep us posted.

They made the decision not to evacuate the hospitals in New Orleans since there are no beds in Texas or elsewhere in Louisiana. I get it, but that’s going to be a nightmare scenario if Ida does in fact make landfall as a Cat 4.

The new generation “meatless” burgers are strange when you look at how it’s made. They’re taking protein from plants - adding enzymes - and basically making lab grown meat. It didn’t come from an animal - but it’s meat. I channel my grandfather on the stuff. He would have said, “I trust cows more than I trust chemists.”

Was listening to a farm trade group this morning talking about the long term risks they see in a warming climate pushing yields way down. There were people in the group working on heat tolerant varieties - but then they were like, “but we can only do so much and expect yields to be impacted.” It was also interesting to hear them talk about hot air being able to hold a lot more water - thus producing more events like the one this weekend in Waverly - and how that much rain is basically as bad as no rain in a growing season. I’m just a data guy, but big agriculture is super interested in all this stuff.

I’m so sorry to hear this.

We’ve known for a while that one of the common lasting side effects of COVID is erectile dysfunction. That alone should be enough motivation for some folks.

Hey, @maroonandwhite like most things Scientific American does, this is a pretty nerdy article, but has links to all the underlying studies on pregnancy and COVID. Definitely talk to your doctor - but this should give you good, evidence based information going in. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-vaccines-show-no-signs-of-harming-fertility-or-sexual-function/

A lady in our office turned down the shingles vaccine and came down with it two weeks later. It’s been months and she’s still not fully recovered. She said there were a couple of days where she thought it was going to kill her and that it would have come as a relief.

FG and Alberto knots are both pretty easy to tiE and work well on tiny lines/leaders. With thin braid like the Suffix Ghost, I may do 15-20 turns. That said, don’t shy away from just loading up some simple monofilament and going fishing.

He’s required to file a financial disclosure form with the Office of Government Ethics. It’s a public document so I’m sure it’s available online. If you dig into it, let us know.

I’ll pull it when I’m not on mobile - which as of about 15 minutes ago may be a day or two. But, the data is available and public. There’s no secret cabal guarding it. It’s a matter of public record. The short answer is this - this vaccine has been developed more in public - and there has been more data gathered than any other vaccine we’ve ever developed. I’d actually be willing to wager we’ve got more data on these vaccines than we do every vaccine in history since we were blowing dried cow puss up peoples noses. The stakes were that high. Now, there have been other highly contagious, high stakes diseases. Think polio. But they just didn’t gather as much data back then. Same with small pox. Now, of course there have been volumes of data collected over time - both good and bad - there’s a reason they tell you that a possible side effect of that tetanus booster is paralysis or death. But, also remember that we’re not starting from zero. A lot of the science behind vaccine development isn’t new. Sure, mRNA vaccines are new. And if we’re honest, the risk associated with them is non-zero. But, it’s very low - and it’s certainly lower than the risks associated with COVID. If anything you can see the process working by how slow the approval process is actually going. You saw the pause in the Spring while they investigated the blood clot issue. That’s not a sign that they’re taking shortcuts. That’s a sign that the process is as rigorous as it should be.

For what it’s worth, if you’ve got ETFs in your retirement fund, you’ve probably at least got Pfizer and J&j in there I deeply care about this community - and if I can help anyone - that’s all the reason I’ve got and all the motivation I need. Full stop. As a forensic professional I’ve had too many heart wrenching conversations this year with folks who have lost their loved ones. I’m not a front line worker by any stretch. But I’m so tired. Everyone I work with is just flat exhausted. I worry for our nurses’ and ambulance drivers’ mental well being. How many hands can you hold and cry as they die without their loved ones near? There is a metric ton of bad information out there. It’s become hard to figure out who to trust. If I can use my voice to help people find their way through it I will. Offer stands. DMs are open. Happy to talk anytime.

First and foremost, your wife should have a conversation with her Ob/Gyn. It sounds like he or she has brought at least one child into the world for you - so they have a relationship with you and your wife and have your wellbeing at heart. There's a reason most doctors are going to ask about maternal vaccinations as a part of standard prenatal care. It's because mothers pass antibodies to their babies. So in that critical time in the first days of their life - they're still receiving protection from their mothers. Any doctor should be willing to spend the time with you to have this conversation. If they're not - it's a good prompt to find another doctor. You can always ask them to print you a copy of the UpToDate reference on anything. If you're not familiar with this - it's a resource that basically rounds up all the evidence-based clinical support data in one place https://learn.uptodate.com/global Here's specifically the resource for COVID-19: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/covid-19-epidemiology-virology-and-prevention And specifically on pregnancy questions here: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/covid-19-and-pregnancy-questions-and-answers?search=covid pregnancy&source=search_result&selectedTitle=2~150&usage_type=default&display_rank=2 To quote the relevant section But, the best answer overwhelmingly is to talk to your Ob/Gyn

Do y’all use it under a float? I find that helps a bunch. I don’t know that I’ve ever used the SOS. I always mean to pick one up. I think I usually just use some Seagur Blue Label. Man that stuff is hard to tie. I can barely see it.

I think we've all witnessed a giant failing in our public health arm of the government. Here's some stuff that I expect y'all have been thinking about same as me. I wonder if we were so ill-prepared for this because for decades we thought pandemics were things that happened in places that we don't really care about? That may be overly critical, but the CDC and others really seem to have been caught flat-footed here. This is a place where "the media" hasn't helped. Wanting to drive clicks by looking at "both sides" hasn't helped to get people better data to make better decisions. I think our public health infrastructure has really done a disservice by talking in "faculty lounge language" instead of speaking plainly to the American public about what we know and what we don't know. So many of these folks have focused more on being right than they have in admitting that we're shooting at a moving target and what we thought 8 months ago may have changed. Lesson learned - going forward, we need to train/hire more science communicators who can take complex data and put it into a form that we all can understand. I do want to address the vaccine development. To be clear the only things that were shortcut in the Warp Speed process were the funding delays that are normal in vaccine development and the government bureaucracy (to a lesser extent - government is going to government). We have more actual data regarding these vaccines than we have any vaccine in history. The average vaccine development timeline is about 12 years. There's not 12 years of science happening in there. There is 12 years worth of waiting on funding and need studies and places like the FDA where pay day is still on Friday whether they pick up your application or not. It's totally fair to be a bit nervous about trusting something new. mRNA technology has been around for a while - but we've not applied it like this. To be clear - one of the geneticists I mentioned in my post above who I would absolutely trust my life to - waited a couple of days to really dig into the data before she made the decision to vaccinate her children. It's okay to acknowledge that nervousness - and not beat people up about it. The hard thing right now is that this virus is demanding that we move very quickly - and that's something that we're generally just not built for. There are things we still don't know. Could there be some long tail side effect of mRNA vaccines we don't know about - you bet there could be. But, we've been researching these things since the late 60's and haven't seen evidence of it yet. So, measured against the potential side effects of COVID - which are death at worst and increasing long COVID cases - it's probably worth it to choose the vaccine even in light of the unknowns.