MacGyver

They may be left leaning - and I’m capable of filterIng through that. But they break some local stories because they have people on the ground in the community. Phil Williams was the reason Rep. Campbell resigned last week after harassing/potentially assaulting a couple of 19 year old interns. I can’t speak to their broadcast news - I don’t have a TV that receives it. But I guarantee you that Cameron Sexton is sleeping a little less easy tonight knowing that he’s looking into his per diem reimbursements as speaker - knowing our last mayor pled guilty to a crime that kind of rhymed with that. Truth be told, I’m going to purposefully seek out things that I don’t necessarily agree with. I’m an adult who can glean from all kinds of sources. Your mileage may vary. You’ve got to find something that works for you.

Oh, and don’t discount your local investigative reporter. There’s not an elected official in the state of Tennessee whose breath doesn’t catch when they see Phil Williams’s name on their caller ID.

It takes a commitment to doing actual work to be an informed citizen these days. There's not a single source you can just turn to outright - but there are some that are better than others - and when taken in combination can be helpful. Here's some of what I do personally: I consume *a lot* of sources. I don't consume *any* Fox News, barely any CNN or MSNBC - these aren't news sources. At best they're opinion entertainment that sometimes parallels real world events. I don't consume *any* Facebook. They've shown over and over again that they can't be trusted with our data. They're an active threat whose business model incentivizes them to weaponize our data. Both of the above exacerbate the problem of Balkanization. That is - their algorithms really only present me with stuff they already know I'm interested in. Or, I only follow people who largely agree with me. I'm not right about everything. I need to be challenged on my beliefs - and give myself the grace to be able to change as we move into the future. I am on Twitter - for now. I do expect Elon to burn it down. But, I still use it mostly because a major part of my media diet is a group of people that I trust as reliable actors. Note, these are individuals not organizations. The more local you can get - the better. I don't take the Tennessean since it got bought out by USA Today - but their local reporters are great. They generally only stick around a few years - but they reliably live tweet the city council meeting every Tuesday night. Same for the school board meeting. Whatever. Don't discount the alt-weekly in your town. Papers like the Nashville Scene are great for local news. The New York Times is still the paper of record - but isn't as good as it used to be. The Wall Street Journal really shattered the wall between the news room and the opinion desk. It's just another piece of the Murdoch empire these days. The Washington Post is doing some great work - especially when you consider it as a paper reporting on local DC happenings. When talking local reporters - don't discount your local NPR station. They've got local beat reporters who are likewise a fixture at community events. One thing about NPR - you may or may not necessarily align with some of their worldview - but they always source their work. So, if you're interested - you can listen to a story on NPR and link back to a primary source. We live in a world where more data is public than ever. It's worth having a working knowledge of how to read datasets Sites like OurWorldInData are great for collecting publicly available data and putting it into forms that the average person can consume. In all of that - you probably also have to be comfortable knowing that you can't know everything about all the things. But, you can pick some things that matter to you and be well informed about them.

We spent some time in Corolla back during the pandemic. My kids loved spotting three bears in a tree right around the corner. The horses are fun. Cumberland Island National Seashore - the southernmost barrier island in Georgia has horses too. It's worth taking the ferry out there if you ever get a chance.

We've pretty well out kicked our evolution at large when it comes to technology. When you think about it - society has changed more in the last 50 years than it has the last 50,000. Multiple things can be true at the same time -and actually we're seeing Gen Z'ers with better relationships with technology than the older generations. Especially amongst the oldest generations - there are some troubling patterns. But, with all that - we've documented the harmful effects that things like Facebook/Instagram have on kids. Facebook did the study - and then didn't release it because it showed such harms - especially to teenage girls. I'm convinced that in 50 years - assuming we're still here as a species - our grandkids will look at our use of social media much like many of us looked at our grandparents who smoked 18 hours a day. They'll look at us with a, "how could you not have known that was bad for you" mentality.

FWIW - from someone who teaches a couple of times a year at the graduate level. First - while it's generally considered impolite to say it out loud - it's really hard to run a $23T economy without either a. having tons of kids die in industrial accidents or b. by finding a way to keep them safe and occupied while their parents are engaged with the various engines of the economy. Primary and secondary schooling serve a critical societal function in keeping kids alive while their parents are at work. (It's worth pointing out that we lose enough kids to school shootings that it would probably get into #s/100k that OSHA would start to care about if it were an actual industry.) Second, primary and secondary schools - and to some extent colleges and universities in the last generation serve to make cogs that fit into the above engines of the economy efficiently. People have always liked to argue "kids these days" - but the schools generally perform the above function within parameters that are acceptable to industry. Third, empire is hard - and across the empire you'll have better and worse implementations. For better or worse (maybe better and worse) this American Republic kind of incentivizes that. It's built into our federalist system. Fourth, every kid is different - and those differences are probably more pronounced right now than they ever have been in history. We need educational options for all of those kids. I know some kids who at 13 - via what they've already learned in school and on their own could fit right in as a junior developer in a whole bunch of shops. At the same time, not every kid is going to be interested in or be capable of going down that path. We need options for everyone - and for the last generation (as student loans have become easy to get as they're backstopped by the government) we've kind of shoehorned everyone down one path. Fifth, there is dignity and respect in the trades - and we need SO MANY MORE people in this space. If I could change one thing in our schools today - it would be to incentivize more people down this path. It's a great pathway into the upper middle class - and we need it as a nation. A great opportunity for the next generation is to take things like coding - that to this point have required some type of college degree - and make it a reliable blue-collar job that can be done from anywhere. Last, don't discount today's kids. I work and teach in STEM fields. The kids I work with today are absolutely the smartest, most capable kids I've ever met. They have so much opportunity in front of them. I kind of envy them

These all went to the Delayed Bills Committee - which means they went nowhere. To advance a bill out of delayed bills the Speaker, Majority Leader, and Minority Leader have to agree unanimously to advance them. The legislative session also closed for the year on Friday - so those are all dead. The governor is making a big push to call a special session to address gun reform - but we'll see if that happens. I doubt he'll call it at all if Sexton doesn't have the votes.

So, I'm going to briefly veer into the political just to back everyone off the cliff a bit. Bottom Line Up Front - there's a *ZERO* percent chance this becomes law. So now the details - roughly from memory - I can source it if people are interested. These proposed "cuts" are part of Kevin McCarthy's bill last week to use as a part of the negotiation in raising the debt ceiling. It calls for a $130B cut to non-defense discretionary spending below 2010 levels (which was the high-water mark if you will) by 2033. If you look at the federal budget like a pie - it's divided up into three major pieces: There's a big chunk that's "mandatory" spending. This is defense spending, entitlement programs like social security and medicare, farm subsidies, and veteran pensions. This is sort of a third rail of budgeting - that is there is law surrounding it - so it's not a part of the annual appropriations process. This is roughly 70% of the federal budget. Then there's "defense discretionary" - these are all kinds of military-related projects that fall outside the DoD's budget above. These are the weapons programs, ship building, raises for the military, etc. This was about $800B last year - or roughly 15% of the budget. Then there's "non-defense discretionary" - this is everything else. Education, transportation, and homeland security all fall into this category. Veteran's healthcare sits here as well. This is likewise about 15% of the total budget. This is the part they're willing to play with. To get to the levels proposed above you'd need to cut all of NDD by about 22%. Take VA-healthcare out of the mix and you'd need to cut the rest of it by about 58%. This is not a serious proposal for a lot of reasons. First and foremost - McCarthy can't get 218 votes amongst his caucus to pass it. For what it's worth - I doubt he can get 218 votes on anything budget related as there are some members of the caucus that seem pretty dead set on voting against any raising of the debt ceiling. Second, this is a non-starter everywhere else. Even when the GOP has been in power, they haven't even been able to come anywhere close to meeting these kinds of cuts in the past. They know this - that's why they're not proposing specific cuts or a path to get there. I could go on - but I'm going to step back out of the political and just reassure everyone that this isn't something that has any chance of becoming law in the immediate future. I do find it interesting that the VA is messaging like they did above. Call your representative, I guess. Two more notes on the way out. First, remember that the debt ceiling has nothing to do with future spending. It's about paying the note on debt that past Congresses have already incurred. Second, my prayer is that one day our country does at least as good a job of taking care of our veterans as it does making new ones.

FWIW, I can remember where I was and what I was doing the day Bernie Kerik (Giuliani’s police commissioner) was indicted for corruption. I was so disappointed to see someone I had respected indicted and convicted. Looking back that respect wasn’t earned. As much credit as Giuliani gets (takes) for “cleaning up” New York City - the broken windows initiative pre-dated him by at least a decade. The transit authority hired one of the authors of Broken Windows as a consultant - and one of his protégés, David Gunn started implementing it in the subways around 1984. That was later continued and expanded under Bill Bratton (who full disclosure I worked with) both at the transit authority and then as police commissioner. Giuliani came in as politicians often do to grab credit for something he actually had little to do with. I say all that to say there was a time in my life when I would have been an advocate of this style of policing. I’m not anymore. Personally, giving myself to a grace to change my mind has been helpful. But that’s not to say that just because broken windows style policing doesn’t work, that we’ve not learned some things about what does work. That’s a much longer post and unfortunately the political incentives are much more aligned with a tough on crime approaches.

If you’re interested - I can recommend some good resources on broken windows policing. There are good resources from both a conservative and progressive perspective. Before Giuliani and Kerik went down that path in New York City - the person who came up with the idea was a criminologist named James Wilson. He died a few years ago - but lived long enough to collect a lot of data and see his ideas experimented with in a lot of places. On that note - it should be noted that the particulars of the implementation really matters. There are better and worse implementations of broken windows policing. Giuliani went after “squeegee men” - some of y’all will remember homeless folks “cleaning” your windows at stoplights to shake you down. But at its core broken windows policing says if we vigorously prosecute low level crimes like vandalism and petty crime - then higher level crimes will decrease too. The data mostly shows us that those two things aren’t linked. There are a whole bunch of reasons for that. Areas that have had better luck with it have taken a whole lifecycle approach to policing in very small geographic areas. Areas that haven’t had good experiences wind up targeting specific groups or areas. It becomes quota based and often winds up with abuses like we’ve seen recently here in Tennessee.

I remember the first time I flew on a commercial airline into Saudi Arabia. Their customs form was like any other one you might fill out - but in big red block letters at the bottom of the form it said, “I understand and acknowledge that possession or use of illegal drugs in the Kingdom is a crime punishable immediately by death.” I was traveling for work at the invitation of the king, so I asked someone who knew about it later. That person told me that, “no our numbers are just as bad as anywhere else.“ They had more or less stopped executing people for using - even though the did a few dozen publicly each year. They would execute people caught dealing or trafficking right then and there. And yet there numbers were still basically the same. The heart of the matter is “tough on crime” sounds great. But the data just doesn’t support it - even at the extreme end of the spectrum.

It ought to be noted that there are countries in the world where the penalties are quite extreme. Their numbers aren’t that much different than ours.

It’s a good podcast on good intentions and how those can morph into overreach. We’ve had some good examples of that here in Tennessee. I did learn a lot about Paddlefish.

There was an interesting podcast on a big investigation that happened at Lake of the Ozarks a few years ago:

An honest question then - who are the people in your life that you *would* trust? This is a thread on mental health - and we have shooting after shooting nationally where mental health is an issue that's brought right up front and center. I get it that so many of us are skeptical of "the government" being able to take away your guns and due process and all of that. I totally understand that. But who are the people you'd trust to ask, "are you okay? have you had thoughts about hurting yourself or someone else? would it be helpful for me to hold onto your guns for a minute?" I have had people's guns in my safe. I have a couple in there right now - for people in my life who I care deeply about - and for whom I was able to get past myself and ask them, "can I hold your guns for a minute." One friend may well be alive today because of it. It's probably worth going through that thought exercise - and asking both, "who are the people in my life whom I'd trust with my guns" and "who are the people in my life who would trust me with theirs." That second one might be a bigger circle than you think.

That’s a warranty issue. The tolerances on OTFs is way closer than you might think. It doesn’t take much to throw it off - we’re talking a few thousandths of an inch. They ought to replace it for you.

Any of y’all can call me. Anytime. I’ve lost too many people that I care deeply about. Some here. Way too soon. There are a whole lot of reasons for that - and there aren’t any easy answers. It sucks. But the heart of the matter is if you need someone to listen, or someone to yell at, or someone to cry with - I’ll be there. Anytime.

The Spyderco PM2 is the best folding EDC ever made - full stop. It’s the Glock 19 of knives. Find one in m390. Mod it with whatever scales fit your fancy. Strop it to keep It sharp.

I suspected some TGO’ers were the ones boo’ing Pence this afternoon…

On a practical level - I would just love to know who the House GOP caucus has speaking truth to them. They've been told to pack for a long week next week - because they're going to do everything they can possibly do to end the legislative session and get out of the spotlight.

Y’all are both longtime forum members - and @Links2k is a far cry from anti- gun. The man has sold more high end pieces than about anyone here. I’d encourage anyone participating in these threads to argue specific points not passion.

As to the, “there’s not a bill yet” - Bob Freeman and Heidi Campbell filed one last week. I’m not certain - but I think this would fall under “late bill” criteria - meaning the Speaker, the Majority Leader, and the Minority Leader would have to unanimously agree to take it up. Sexton wants to be Governor awfully bad. I don’t know that he’d go for it - even after last week.

This video has serious "it's not a toll road, it's a choice road" vibes. I post it here not to make a comment on Red Flag laws - we can do that elsewhere. Rather, I post it as an example of a representative who must just think his voters aren't that smart. That's all.

The old bolton’s on 8th was wonderful. Their hot fish was so good. They went out of business when Hattie B’s opened a franchise across the street. AJ’s Hot Fish and Chicken was great too. My favorite was when they were out of the trailer on Ashland City Highway. I like Prince’s fine. I think their chicken is the best - but people are going to take people to Hattie B’s so they can get some sides. If something is good - someone is going to come along and try to make some money off of it. I’ll have to try the Publix variant.

Of course here’s the other thing that happens when you shine a light into a corrupt darkness: https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2023/04/11/tennessee-gov-bill-lee-calls-for-order-of-protection-law-on-guns/70102868007/ They’ll do damn near anything to get that light off of them.