MacGyver

He’s the guy you have to thank for the round. As popular as it is, .458 SOCOM isn’t really a plug and play platform. Rock River is about as close as it comes commercially. Even then you’ve got to really be dedicated.

Back in the day, Marty wouldn’t sell a barrel without a corresponding bolt that was matched to headspace correctly. I think both my .458 SOCOM and .338 Spectre barrels were sold as a pair with a bolt.

Good fishing on priest today. Took my kids down to paddle the creeks. I fished while they played. 25ish assorted panfish. 2 largemouth. 2 smallmouth. Decent catch for as much noise as they were making.

I tried to set him up, but he got all squirrelly and bit somebody when I told him he’d have to fill out the paperwork for accounting.

I fished out at the southern end of Priest on Saturday - was actually not too far away when the plane went down even though it’s so skinny back there I had no idea. I was in the kayak fishing for panfish on an ultralight rig. Really just out there to enjoy the weather. The bite was pretty good, though.

I would say every creature inside that fence got really lucky they didn’t get mauled.

I bet you can feel the muzzle blast on that thing the next county over.

That looks like a solid, scriptural dinner.

There are some things we know from the last several decades of vaccine science - coupled with things we've learned about this virus in the last year. 1. All of the vaccines available here in the US - whether you're getting one of the mRNA variants or a traditional viral vector variant like J&J - generally will generate a higher antibody response than the body will generate on its own in response to the getting the virus. There's a lot of well studied science here - but think of it like this - while you're fighting the natural variant - you're body is already compromised. It's not going to perform at its best. 2. People who've recovered from the virus successfully will naturally have some immunity. What's unknown is how strong and how long lasting it's likely to be. There are a lot of studies that are ongoing with people that got the virus early on trying to see what level of immunity they still have. 3. This is why early on when vaccines were scarce - providers were generally recommending people who had recently had the virus not rush to get the vaccine unless there were other mitigating conditions. 3. Even after the your bodies original antibodies have faded - your body's T cells and B cells will remember how to make the antibodies. To what extent is a topic that's getting a lot of research right now. Obviously we'd like to see a strong response years from now - but that's unlikely. 4. The virus is mutating - rarely do mutations become less effective. 5. The current vaccines respond well to the current mutations. Off the top of my head in order of effectiveness - Moderna, Pfizer, then J&J. 6. There are a bunch of mutations around the world that are being closely monitored. We don't want breakouts. If I could suggest one reason for getting vaccinated here in the US it's this. The longer we delay full vaccination here - the longer it takes the rest of the world to get vaccinated. And a major event in a place like India or Brazil will have follow on effects on the world economy. 7. Fading immunity from whatever vaccine you received plus mutations that break out will likely require most people to get a booster. Will that be yearly like a flu shot? Every 10 years like a tetanus shot? We just don't know yet. Here's what we don't know - we still don't really have any idea why this virus is a relative non-event to some and kills other people like @Steelharp. Until we do, I'm going to hedge my risk and get the vaccine.

The biggest issue you’ll have is keeping it in the smoker long enough to absorb much smoke. I don’t know that I’ve ever had one in more than about 2 hours at 225F.

Venison can use all the fat it can get - but the smoker is a great way to cook it. I’d wrap it in bacon. Any decent rub would do. Salt and pepper would be fine. So would about any store bought rub for beef. I’d add a little brown sugar and coat it the night before to tenderize it some - it shouldn’t need it but it definitely improves even a good backstrap. The real key is to watch your temperature with a good meat thermometer. Assuming I know the source and that the deer was treated with integrity after the kill, I like mine below 140F for a nice medium rare. Take it up to well done temperature and you might have a dry piece of meat.

Someone described goats to me the other day as livestock that actively looks for ways to kill themselves and wreak the maximum amount of havoc in the process.

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.