MacGyver

Unfortunately - assuming you’re within city limits in any metro area in Tennessee - everything you want to do and all your proposed methods for doing it are quite illegal. While a pellet gun *might* be looked on with less disdain than an actual firearm - your concern about the road beyond your target means that you’d almost certainly be breaking a fundamental rule of firearms, “know your target and what’s beyond it.” Starlings are a pain - but you wouldn’t be able to kill enough of them to make a difference - and in your case would almost certainly open yourself up to the judgement of your neighbors and the complex management. The Aguila SSS is probably the quietest option mentioned - but it still sounds like a gunshot. A modern pellet rifle propelling a projectile over 1040FPS isn’t quiet either. You need another deterrent.

I may be misremembering off the top of my head - but weren’t the minis included in the ‘94 ban?

It’s amazing that this seems so out of place on 2023. I’m so thankful for that - and it kind of serves as a reminder of how much things have changed and how quickly. In our grandparent’s generation “dental infections” were a top 10 cause of death in the US.

So glad to hear this.

One more brief note I guess on having antiquated infrastructure as a limiting factor in the economy. The US is responsible for about 25% of the world’s GDP. We are the world’s reserve currency. That is - the world trades most major commodities in dollars. You and I benefit from that. There are a lot of groups that would very much like to *not* have the dollar as the reserve currency. To be a 21st century player - you kind of need to not make other global entities wait a week while your systems catch up.

If this is something that does worry you - I might encourage you to model out what you think actually happens behind the scenes when you use your check card - or write a check - or pay a bill online. If an out of control government wanted to take all your money or whatever - they don’t need this system to that.

This is from the CBC - so maybe if you move to Canada, I guess? The Federal Reserve is concerned (by law) with liquidity amongst financial institutions. They don’t have visibility into individual customers - and don’t care. Now, banks have to comply with OFAC (the Office of Foreign Assets Control) as instituted by the Treasury. That’s very much concerned with terrorists. But the key word in OFAC is *foreign*. As a citizen it doesn’t apply to you.

I can speak to this in detail. I’ll do it in general terms here just to make it understandable - but if anyone wants more detail we can do that too. Bottom Line Up Front: The regular outrage brokers are getting people all spooled up about something they have no need to worry about. So here’s the deal. The payment rails on which our modern $23T economy rides on are really antiquated - much like a lot of the rest of our infrastructure. When you think about a bank - we kind of think of them in “old west” type terms. I’ve got some actual money - and it’s sitting in a vault somewhere - and when I need it, I’ll go see the teller and they’ll give it to me. Thats a fine representation of a bank up until around the middle part of the last century. You can still think about a bank that way - except now it’s all digital “marks” in a ledger that denotes how much money you have. And, when you make a big purchase or pay your mortgage or whatever, the computers banks have in their back office make all the appropriate entries - and for the most part we’re good. * Let’s take out some of the lending/financial engineering that modern banks do that’s *very much* not like the banks of old and we’ve seen go *very bad* recently with the likes of SVB and FRB. * The infrastructure problem comes into focus because even though you the consumer expect your bank transfers to be instantaneous (and most of the big banks kind of play along to make it look like they are) - from a back office perspective those transfers are *not* instantaneous. The current primary rails that these back office payments ride on is the ACH system that went into service in 1970ish. It literally turns off every weekday at 5:00. It’s closed on the weekend. The ACH system is built more for those “old west” type banks than it is a modern banking system. It’s no way to run an economy. As middle and upper class, Americans, most of your banks extend you the courtesy of not really having to deal with any of this very much. Maybe you see it when you go buy a car. You might see it when you make a car payment or a mortgage payment and you have to get it in before 3 o’clock or it doesn’t post until the next day. You see it when you close on a mortgage because those funds have to be cleared before you can go to closing and ACH causes a delay there. But, for most of us it’s not really a big deal at all in our daily lives. But, by enabling real time payments - this system will markedly, improve the banking experience of a lot of lower income users. For those users, they are banks are typically not extending them the courtesy that they extend all of us. When you work paycheck to paycheck and have to wait 4 days for your check to clear - that’s a big deal. I could go into the limiting factor that our old banking infrastructure actually puts on economic growth - because that’s very much a thing - but this post is too long as is. But, no one here needs to worry about this. Seriously, you don’t need to spend any more brain cycles on it. If you’re worried about whoever being able to seize your money - that ship sailed a long time ago. But that’s another post for another time.

Let me offer this from personal experience - as someone who’s married to a teacher who was in one of those “liberal” school districts. Even if there were some agenda to be pushed - there isn’t the time, will, or resource to push it. She spent her days making sure her kids had enough to eat. There’s no telling how many coats and pairs of shoes we’ve bought. She spends her off hours creating resources to use in the classroom because there aren’t curriculums to use. She has had two books that her students love and cause them to grow in the reading levels banned - Hatchet and Love that Dog. She manages behaviors instead of teaching - again due to lack of resources. She’s got a job that she loves - but constantly thinks about leaving the profession because of the damage it does to both her mental and physical health. I’m sure there are teachers who would love to push some type of agenda. But I don’t know who they are. There are way more that come home at the end of the day exhausted like my wife. My oldest two kids are at the most diverse school in the state. They go to school with all races, genders, sexual identities, and everything else - both at the student and teacher level. We have conversations about what they’re experiencing at school all the time - like weekly. My wife and I believe that stuff like that isn’t the school’s job - it’s ours. But, in all those conversations I can’t remember the last time where they were exposed to something in the classroom that my wife and I weren’t comfortable with - maybe a middle school extracurricular reading club selection? Now one thing is true. My kids are more compassionate and empathetic just by being present with people who aren’t like them. I think this probably registers on some people’s scale as more “liberal”. This would make some people uncomfortable. I’m okay with it. I know the voices that speak into their lives. *edited to remove me quoting @BigK - made it look like I was responding directly to him - and this was more general observation

That’s right The horses their belonged to the Carnegie family who owned the island. It’s expensive - but a stay at the Greyfield Inn - which was one of their mansions converted into an inn is worth it.

I think one should definitely approach schooling and whatever choices they make around that as a part of a larger system. Someone a few years ago put it to me like this: "We view our role at (this school) as a partnership between us at (the school), your family, and the local church you're a part of. All of those are critical elements in raising a healthy child - and if any one of those is missing - the whole stool is less balanced and may tip over."

This is something I’d like to know more about than I do. I’m assuming a mixture like this is going to kill anything it comes in contact with - grass included?

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.