MacGyver

If you separate your kids from the community they inhabit - then it’s unlikely to be a priority. Kids generally have strong immune systems and are low risk for serious disease. But, for most of us, we can’t separate them from the community around us - and don’t want to. We go to church around older people. They go to school with older teachers. They take piano lessons. We hang out with friends who are immunocompromised. We’re a part of a larger community. So we vaccinate because while it’s low risk to our kids, we care about the community around us.

Would you believe me if I told you the speed in developing these vaccines was due to cutting bureaucratic red tape and removing the funding delays that typically slow things down? That’s how we got it from an average of 12 years down to 11 months. I’m not a public health person - but I am a scientist - and I can say confidently that there’s not been a vaccine developed since they started blowing dried pustules from cows into open lacerations on people that has been done in a more open and public manner. These are literally the most advanced vaccines that have ever been made. And with the success of the mRNA technology that Moderna and Pfizer have brought to market - if you pay attention over the next ten years you’re going to see advancements against diseases that have plagued humanity for hundreds of years. Moderna has already gotten good phase I results from a malaria vaccine. That has the potential to change the world for the better. Now to testing, I get the hesitancy over the EUA. It was a trade off to combat a disease that went from zero to a top 3 cause of death in a year. Is there risk there? Yes. But it’s a measured (and closely monitored) risk with limit stops in place. You saw the J&J vaccine get paused to study the risk of certain blood clots. That’s the system working as designed. The process to full FDA approval can’t be shortcut. There is data required that has path dependencies that are time based. We need six to nine months to collect those samples. On the plus side, we’ve got a huge pool to draw from - so that path should be shorter rather than longer. I know there are talking heads who are saying these were rushed, not designed well, and not tested. Of course there was a rush - but there is a robust testing process that is working. You can see evidence of that by the vaccine candidates that didn’t move forward.

You can read Nixon in his own words to Congress: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-proposing-national-health-strategy If it walks like universal healthcare and quacks like universal healthcare - it's universal healthcare. This would have been a bigger overhaul than even the ACA was under Obama 35 years late.

For what it's worth, I work with someone who didn't worry about getting the shingles vaccine - and then came down with shingles. She described it as the worst choice she's ever made. She was out of work for almost a month - and still isn't back to 100%. You definitely made the right choice.

Nixon was pro universal health care in the ‘70s. Had Watergate not brought him down he probably would have passed it. For a long time it was pretty bipartisan - let’s say Truman through Clinton with a few notable exceptions in there.

Any day you come back with all of your gear counts for something. Nice day out there today.

Yeah, they make fine shark bait. But when we’re throwing hard swim baits in the surf, we catch a lot of them. They’re such fighters that they really wind up wounded a lot. I feel bad putting a fish back that isn’t going to survive. A guy I worked with years and years ago down in the Gulf showed me a trick that changed my mind on ladyfish. You just run a fillet knife quickly down the backbone and remove both fillets bones and all - literally two passes less than 10 seconds. Then, you take a spoon and just scrape the meat off and the bones stay behind. You’re left with a nice white meat about the consistency of canned tuna. We either shape it into a sort of croquet shape and sauté it with whatever seasoning we have on hand. Or, we put it on the smoker with the equally plentiful whiting we catch and makes loads of old Florida style smoked fish dip. It’s surprising a really clean tasting fish.

Mark my words. We’ve not seen the fallout from that yet. But we’re going to. And I’ll bet real money it’s going to be me and you bailing out a bunch of billionaire real estate investors from their paper losses that somehow threaten to tank the entire economy.

Today was a gorgeous day for some fishing. Wish I could have been out there too.

The pandemic has probably pushed the remote work conversation ahead by 15-20 years. We'll have some companies trying really hard to keep their thumbs on their employees by forcing them back - but for a lot of companies this year has been an experiment that turned out way better than they might have expected. A bunch of companies are embracing work from home and I expect will see productivity gains as a result. There is going to be a lot of maturing of processes, monitoring, security, culture etc. that needs to happen - but there's a lot of opportunity there.

Our buildings over beside Target are probably 50% unoccupied. That’s not - “oh we’re still working from home and will be back.” It’s shops that have decided to make the shift permanent and have totally given up their space.

In a survey of some very large companies, employees were asked whether they would rather work from home permanently or receive a $30,000 raise. https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/news/2021/05/13/wfh-work-from-home-raise-salary-google-facebook.html I'm curious about what the results would be here. Tennessee salaries are typically lower than you're going to see in California or New York - much less the FAANG-type companies interviewed here. So, if you're in a job that was sent home this last year and were presented with an option, which would you choose - work from home forever or a $30k raise?

He was larger than life.

I wonder if she even made it home?

When I was a kid, one of my dad's friends had an old M1 with a selector switch - which I guess would have technically made it an M2. Even as a kid, I though that was the goofiest little selector switch. But man that thing made you giggle when you shot it. They did an estate sale when he died several years later. To this day it's the only estate sale I've ever been to where the ATF was there too.

I've got a bunch of Mora knives, and they're great high carbon knives that are pretty easy to sharpen. When it comes to other carving knives for specialized stuff like spoons, bowls, etc - I've had good success with some of the BeaverCraft products. Their kits are a pretty inexpensive way to dip your toe in the water - and will last into the future if you find you enjoy the hobby. Don't forget a good strop.

They won’t be back online until the weekend at the earliest. So, it’s worth getting gas sooner rather than later. There are a lot of resources being marshaled because of the critically - but this stuff takes time. We’re dealing with sophisticated attackers these days. We’ve seen them recon networks from the inside for months. We’ve seen backups infected and deleted. With SCADA access, it’s possible to cause actual physical damage. This is the real deal - and likely the tip of a larger iceberg. It’s the kind of stuff that leads to kinetic responses.

That's a fun project.

Did you try the "host it yourself" version of WordPress or the one they host for you. WordPress.org is the open sourced version that's available to anyone to install and run. WordPress.com is the commercial variant where they host it for you. SquareSpace is pretty drag and drop - and there are some good tutorials. We'll get you running one way or another.

If I was going to start a simple blog today, I’d probably go with Wordpress.com. I think they have a free plan, and a really cheap personal plan that removes their branding if that’s important to you. From there, I’d probably choose SquareSpace. Again, cheap and simple. I think Google is still supporting Blogger - which was super simple back in the day. The only limitation there is you’re tied into the Google universe. Share a link when you get it up and running.

Hey congrats! TTU and UT Martin are hands down the most underrated programs in the UT system.

If they got that much equipment, it was a pro job. I bet it’s already in a container heading overseas. I hope they had decent insurance.

We’re really in the money on strawberries. I wintered some, and they’ve really taken off this spring.

I recently got the dealership to show me the 0w-20 after they did my oil change. Whatever kind of filter they're using must be doing it's job - because after 10k miles the oil didn't really look any different than it did when they put it in.

Honestly, when we’re catching fish - I’m just thrilled to be catching fish. We’ve had as much fun seeing what we pull up on a Sabikii rig as we do pulling in giant bull reds. My youngest and I have had a contest for the last few years when we fish in the surf to see who can catch the smallest fish within 5 feet of the shoreline. We use tiny tiny hooks and have caught some no larger than the nail on your little finger. It’s a blast. Gotta have a lot of them to make a taco though.