There’s a saying out there something along the lines of: a complex design has a lot of failure points, so it isn’t a good design. Something like that. Of course, sometimes the additional complexity outweighs the detriments. For example, safeties! I very much appreciate that my pistol has dual safeties, because even though their necessity might be low and cause a malfunction, to not have them at all presents potentially lethal consequences.
But this does not apply to all safeties, because the consequences of misuse are not always so extreme. For example, my coffee bean grinder! Am I thankful that the manufacturers took the precautions that prevent me from turning in on and being able to stick my finger into the gears? Um, kind of indifferent there, as that’d be difficult to do even intentionally. But am I annoyed that the spring switch broke inside it and bricked the damn thing? Yes, yes I am. So I opened it (the act of which many designers take pains to prevent, so they can sell me a new product), removed the switch and wired a bypass circuit. Now I can use it again, though I have to be careful to not snake my finger down and around and up inside the extractor chute (again, never a problem to begin with). Bad design!
But the Ninja blender was especially egregious! I always had it in for this thing, because it’s designed to be a smoothie maker primarily, which is fine if that’s all you want to do with it, but the lack of top access prevents other culinary applications, like making emulsions or staging liquid additions. Plus, it’s all made of plastics – yes, the material that makes it possible…to break and have to buy a new unit. Because it’s of course non-user-serviceable (unlike the grinder), and replacement parts are more expensive than the unit!
Specifically, the Ninja is armed with a convoluted safety that stops the blades from spinning if I take off the lid. This alone isn’t a bad idea, since the full-length blade setup needs to be secured by the lid or it’d wobble and fly off across the kitchen. That at least is understandable. What isn’t, however, is everything else I just mentioned. It’s cheap material, the lid keeps breaking, and I can’t buy reasonably-priced parts. The lid activates the safety, so warped lid = no blending.
So at the risk of making a negligent mess or poking out an eye, I again bypassed a safety, because the warped lid still works! I pine for the days before my own when things were actually made to last – a defunct concept gone before I was born. Sigh.
Anyway, here’s what I did, for the archives:
Safety tab #1 determines which modes can be used with which attachments. Whatever.
Safety tab #2 is the universal failsafe. If it’s not depressed, then the unit won’t run. The warped lid failed to depress this sufficiently, so…
I drilled a small hole through which I could insert a toothpick to depress the safety all the way. It’s far enough down that the lid’s safety doesn’t get snagged on it, and I snapped off the excess wood.
And so, anti-consumer hostile design thwarted. Suck it, SharkNinja LLC!
(Did you notice I added word count and read time? I always thought this was silly myself when I come across it, because if I actually clicked on the article, it’s probably going to interest me enough that the world count disclosure wouldn’t dissuade me. But, ADHD as we are, I’ll start providing the courtesy.)
To char-grill, or smash burger? Ah, such is Man’s burden – to be forced to decide between coal-fired crisp or succulent smooshed sear. The former produces thick patties encrusted with Malliard’s magic, but can all too often result in dry burgers that don’t retain cohesion upon flipping. The latter produces crisp edges and juicy interiors, but lacks the char crust and retains too much grease for comfortable digestion. So we must choose a preference, and I don’t like those restrictions!
What if there were a way to have your burger and eat it too?
Introducing: Simon’s Patenty Patented Patty Prep!
Step 1, line a grilling cage with aluminum foil. I prefer grilling foil to those sissy skimpflated hair-dying foil sheets they pass off at the grocery now. No really, I had budget foil melt on the grill before. Don’t use it.
In this instance, I’ll layered patties. It’s an alternative that avoids over-working the meat when mixing. But don’t add cheese here. It just melts and runs out.
Step 2, spray the foil in oil and arrange your patties. Leave sufficient room between them to allow for smashing. Season.
Step 3, close the cage around the foil and patties, and lock.
There will be some runoff, but that’s unavoidable. I’ve countered this by adding melted butter and extra moisture in the form of Worcestershire to the grinds. It’s okay, because unlike grilling on the bare grate, the flareups won’t burn the meat.
Step 4, perforate the foil on both sides. This will allow the excess grease to drip out and the smoke to add seasoning.
I used a skewer in this case, but bigger holes can be made depending on preference.
Step 4, place the cage over direct heat and grill. It will take longer due to the added mass and foil shielding, but be patient and don’t worry about the flareups. They won’t burn. Use an instant-read thermometer to monitor progress. Some of this will be more instinctual since you can’t visually inspect.
I use firefighter gloves for this part. And the other perk here is flipping is a simple turn of the cage.
Step 5, flip accordingly, but don’t flip too early or you’ll miss out on browning. Pull the patties when the internal temperature is where you want it.
These particular patties were a mix of deer and beef, so I browned them less to avoid drying.
Step 6, add cheese and rest the patties while still on the foil. It will cool quick enough, but retain enough heat to gently melt the cheese.
Step 7, of course, is to stuff face hole.
And there you have it! No crumbled patties from a botched flip. No need to add binding agents to hold the patties together. Hole size can be customized to determine level of runoff and browning. The slight smash of the cage offers a compromise between char-grill and smash burgers. And the properly-oiled foil doesn’t stick to the patties how even the most clean of grill grates always tends to.
You may license my patent for $1 per patty. Happy grilling.
As a freshwater angler, there aren’t really a lot of fishing knots that need to be known. The general formula is to balance tying ease, friction, and shear force distribution; so that you don’t spend forever fiddling with stiff line but still end up with something that will hold but not snap under pressure. To achieve this end, there’s a million damn knots out there in the community’s collective. And no, I don’t want to argue about them.
But I couldn’t find the one that I had been taught to use some 30 years ago. I’m guessing that some knots just fall out of favor. Modern fishing line can take more punishment than what I grew up with, so that probably allows for easier knots by sacrificing on shear force resistance. The knot I was taught to use was like a double passthrough version of the clinch knot, but in reality more like a modified noose. And it’s also entirely likely that I unintentionally modified the knot I was taught because I was too proud to ask for help more than once. (That, and I also remember needing a refresher and my dumb uncle told me to just tie a series of overhand knots. The knot failed as soon as I hooked a fish.)
In any case, I wanted to know the name of the knot I had been using, and it took me forever to find online, but it does in fact exist. I finally have a name for it: The Swivel Braid Knot. Which should not be confused with the Braid to Swivel Knot, or the Offshore Swivel Knot. I told you there were millions of these things.
So to document it before I forget what it’s called, I’m posting it here. And to give credit to the visual reference that helped me with identification, here’s the link. Although amusingly enough, the link is broken. The forum doesn’t appear to exist anymore. So again, it must indeed be an archaic knot:
I’m guessing by the name that it’s designed to resist torque, so that the swivel turns instead of twisting the line. Whatever its intent, you can see the bold claim for its use in the above image.
I rarely use it anymore unless I’m intentionally going after big fish with bigger lures, because it does indeed seem very strong compared to most knots. But mostly I use the Palomar Knot for shore fishing. It’s super easy to tie and to teach, and never had one fail on me.
But now, at least for posterity’s sake, I know the name of the classic knot that Dad may or may not have taught me sometime around 1995. Closure.
And its history and cultural significance. Also: should civilians be allowed to own one?
AR-15s. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Yes, this needs to be done, for once by someone who doesn’t feel strongly about them either way.
But first, let’s begin with the gun’s origin. As in, guns in general. The gun, having been invented after humanity’s shift from hunter/gatherers to farming and ranching, did not originally serve the primary purpose of food attainment. It was quickly adapted of course, but it’s imperative to understand that the design of guns has not historically considered hunting as its primary function. They are, above all, intended to kill people. They are weapons of war.
But many guns are also built on adapted platforms in order to boost their hunting and target-shooting efficacy at the cost of human-killing practicality, and I’m glad myself because these pursuits certainly interest me more than people-perforation. They became popular with rural dwellers because their environment benefited from them. Shooting crows and raccoons was necessary to protect crops. And hunting, while not necessary, added meat to the table. My father was a farmboy and taught me how to hunt. Gun ownership, for recreational non-people-killing uses had become cultural in our evolving society. Their use had changed in their civilian functions.
But now it’s shifting back away from practical civilian rural use and into military. Family farms gave over to conglomerates and our economy doesn’t support rural life nearly as much as urban. Simply put, the gun culture of practicality waned, and far fewer people now grow up familiarized with guns. Now, most peoples’ initiation into the gun world is through watching, rather than doing. And guns in media lean heavily to the people-killing variety.
So what does this mean for the AR-15? Well, now let’s look at modern military gun design.
M1 Garands – a battle rifle. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
If we begin the story with the standardized bullet cartridge design, then I can confidently say that the first modern guns were battle rifles, which are defined as single and semi-auto full rifle cartridge weapons. They have long barrels and large bullets. They hit hard and have a long range, but are unwieldy in close quarters.
M1 Carbine. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
So the carbine was developed. Arguments abound on their definition, but I would say that they’re short rifles designed around pistol cartridges, although they certainly have their share of custom-designed rounds. They sacrifice power and range for maneuverability.
Browning Automatic Rifle – a light machine gun. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
To support these weapons, light machine guns were developed. They took the power and range of battle rifles and added automatic fire. Obviously they were not maneuverable, but that automatic fire was also then employed for…
Thompson submachine gun. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Submachine guns. They sacrificed even more power and range than carbines in favor of maximum maneuverability and automatic fire, using pistol cartridges so they could be somewhat manageable.
StG 44 – the OG of assault rifles. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Herein lied the gap. An intermediate weapon was needed that was somewhere around a carbine in terms of maneuverability, but with more powerful rounds and fully automatic capability. And so, in the later stages of WWII, the assault rifle was born. It uses an intermediate rifle cartridge that’s controllable under automatic fire, with the bonus of adding a select fire switch so the user can choose between firing speed and accuracy tradeoffs. It became the base for all modern military loadouts. And one of these designs became the M16, the US military’s standard light arm until very recently.
M16 – the American assault rifle. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Ah, but the M16 isn’t the AR-15. True. The AR-15 became a civilian variant of a rejected military design to build a semi-automatic full rifle cartridge battle rifle/carbine hybrid, originally the AR-10, (losing out to the M14), but its design was later used as the base for the M16. The AR-10, which fired a full (short-stroke) rifle cartridge, was also later produced as the AR-15, which uses the smaller assault rifle cartridge. Thus began the US military’s switch from battle rifles to true assault rifles.
M4 carbine. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Furthermore, the M16 later underwent an adaptation into a reduced frame version, the M4, as urban warfare became the more common engagement environment, highly resembling the civilian AR-15.
So where are we at now?
As stated above, gun culture has shifted from recreational to paramilitary, and as a result people buying guns now gravitate to ones that resemble military guns in form and function. And the primary American armed forces gun in use for decades matches very closely the AR-15. And with its design patent expired, it’s also now cheap and widely available. Hence its popularity.
And now, with the AR-15’s origin explained along with the history of America’s shifting gun culture adopting it, the question remains: should civilians be allowed to own one?
Not so fast. Now we have to explain exactly what it is.
Politically-motivated pedants will be quick to point out what it isn’t: an assault rifle. They do this to discredit their opposition, who often refers to it as such. Because the “AR” in “AR-15” doesn’t stand for “assault rifle”, it stands for “Armalite rifle”, it’s original designer and manufacturer. Yes – it’s an easy mistake to make, and while I hate the smugness of those who make that correction, it is an important distinction. The original AR-10 design – a battle rifle – became both the M16 – an assault rifle – and the AR-15 – not an assault rifle by definition. Technically, it’s called the AR-15 carbine, but I think this is wrong too. I consider a true carbine to be a reduced frame battle rifle. No, the AR-15 is a reduced frame assault rifle, which needs a different definition (there is also the PDW, which I’ll just quickly define here as a submachine gun that shoots reduced-intermediate assault rifle cartridges), but even then there’s some inconsistencies with the definition because an assault rifle has automatic fire capability selection (I consider burst-fire automatic fire).
So we can’t define it on existing definitions. There – I said it. It’s a hybrid weapon: an assault rifle/carbine. It doesn’t fit into a nice box.
So should civilians be allowed to own one?
Promoters call it a “modular weapon platform” or other such weasel terms. Fine, I’ll agree with the platform being modular, but it’s this modularity that detracts from its credibility in the civilian gun culture. Sure you could eradicate varmints with it, but it’s overkill. And if you went hunting with it, you’d get your ass laughed out of the woods by old-timers. And its cartridge isn’t even legal for deer in many states, so I dunno what game you’d take with it.
The self-defense promoters lean on its people-killing effectiveness, which I can’t argue against. And that’s the double-edged sword right there. Defense…or offense via mass shootings?
And the Second Amendment-ers simply say it’s their American right. Which is dubious ground to stand on, even if a valid argument.
That question, I’m not going to answer. If the answer were easy, it would have already been answered. But hopefully this will provide some background on the damn thing’s origin and culture of ownership.
There are two ways to turn an extracurricular or hobby into a chore: make it competitive, or do it as part of a job. Myself, I never bought into the idea that if you do something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. Bullshit. Once something becomes a critical source of revenue, failure can no longer be an option. And sometimes I just want to do something for fun. I don’t want to compare my performance to every single person out there who also participates in the same activity.
And at the school level especially, it can quickly become a personal confidence-killer.
So it was that the kid lost interest in music. Because in the affluent Centerville, there’s always a Korean kid forced into practicing to exhaustion on threats of violence. Even during my shitty Lubbock public education there was that kid: the quiet, broken shell. He played multiple instruments and was always on 1st clarinet with kids 2 years his senior, and solved every math problem on the board. Had he played trumpet, I would have given up, too.
But now the kid is in archery. And she’s pretty good, and enjoys it. She doesn’t have to practice to the point of misery just to keep up, or be forced to compete.
And from my viewpoint, I say: when the world ends, the zombies won’t care that she can play the violin, but they will care when she can shoot them in the head.
Maybe a goofy way to make the point, but I’ve always viewed martial skills as having more practical application beyond the classroom anyway. And by “classroom” I mean the academy, because nothing that involves a weapon will ever be integrated into the American school system. No – taxes should be spent on learning sportsball.
My grievances with the Karen-catering school system aside, here’s the kid completing her introductory training.
And going freestyle.
And as a dad who also enjoys the sport, I’m glad I can take some interest finally in her activities. We might even have something to bond with now! So long as she can stand being seen in public with her dad. I’d better start practicing.
