Too Flexible Endmill

Why was my rectangle not completely square?  I do not mean in the corners where a round emdmill necessarily guarantees the corner will be limited by the diameter of the endmill.  Then I watched the endmill cutting circles.  It was definitely bending.

This is a Kodiak 1/8" diameter, 3" long endmill, made in USA.  This is a tradeoff issue. The extra length means deeper reach, but also it can bend a little.  This also makes it less likely to break when overloaded.  I am now using my Taiwanese Speed Tiger end mills which are 1" long.  They seem to flex less.  Again, this is a question that requires a level of knowledge by the machinist that I just starting to reach.  Do you need the deeper reach?  If so, slower feed rates to reduce flex, or a shorter endmill.

The flex doubtless increases vibration, making the endmill holder set screws less effective.  I need to put a flat on the SpeedTiger endmill shank too.

When Grinders Go Bad

 I was about to use my bench grinder to put a flat in my 1/8" carbide endmill when the grinder shorted out in a most spectacular way: sparks from the switch.  I'm glad I was not close.  Rather than buy a new bench grinder, I decided to buy one of these:

LINE10 Tools 1/2-Inch Drill Arbor Adapter for Buffing and Grinding Wheels.  

I was able to mount my buffing wheel and grinding wheel (both of which I removed from the grinder before burial at toter), in my drill press.  They work perfectly here and I have one less tool consuming desktop space.

.

17 Strikes and Your Out? How Many Strikes if You Are POTUS?

Time (no date):

Sex trafficking on Meta platforms was both difficult to report and widely tolerated, according to a court filing unsealed Friday. In a plaintiffs’ brief filed as part of a major lawsuit against four social media companies, Instagram’s former head of safety and well-being Vaishnavi Jayakumar testified that when she joined Meta in 2020 she was shocked to learn that the company had a “17x” strike policy for accounts that reportedly engaged in the “trafficking of humans for sex.” 

“You could incur 16 violations for prostitution and sexual solicitation, and upon the 17th violation, your account would be suspended,” Jayakumar reportedly testified, adding that “by any measure across the industry, [it was] a very, very high strike threshold.” The plaintiffs claim that this testimony is corroborated by internal company documentation.

The brief, filed by plaintiffs in the Northern District of California, alleges that Meta was aware of serious harms on its platform and engaged in a broad pattern of deceit to downplay risks to young users. According to the brief, Meta was aware that millions of adult strangers were contacting minors on its sites; that its products exacerbated mental health issues in teens; and that content related to eating disorders, suicide, and child sexual abuse was frequently detected, yet rarely removed. According to the brief, the company failed to disclose these harms to the public or to Congress, and refused to implement safety fixes that could have protected young users. 

I hear a lot of leftist whining about how greed drives so much. It does. So that is why Meta backed Biden. It is not like Zuckerberg is going to be out on the street, begging for clicks and food.

 

Blogging Up a Storm

 I am supervising the mill.  While watching it cut pieces, I am sitting in front of a PC anyway.  The replacement of the slow WiFi adapter with a fast one makes blogging possible.

Will Avi Loeb's Reputation Ever Survive 3I/ATLAS?

When Professor Loeb started talking about 3I/ATLAS as an interstellar spacecraft, it was an interesting, but implausible idea. But he is sticking with this idea in absurd ways.  11/21/25 Medium:

Today a new image of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS was taken by M. Jäger, G. Rhemann, and E. Prosperi and reported here. The image stacks 20 exposures of 100 seconds each, observed at 4:15 UTC on November 20, 2025. The displayed field has dimensions of 16.7 arcminutes on a side, equivalent to 1.6 million kilometers at the 3I/ATLAS distance of 326 million kilometers from Earth. The image shows two narrow jets directed opposite to each other and oriented vertically from the 3I/ATLAS-Sun axis. Together with the tail and anti-tail along this axis, the sideways lines constitute an X-shaped pattern. They extend out to a distance of about a million kilometers from 3I/ATLAS.

The simplest interpretation is that these lines are the streak of an Earth-based communication satellite which coincidentally intersected 3I/ATLAS in projection in the sky for a few seconds. There is another line near the bottom of the image, also likely to be a satellite streak....

If not a satellite streak, these straight and narrow sideways-jets is that they are lines highlighting the trail of gas or dust associated with the linear path of small mini-objects that departed from 3I/ATLAS. If the mini-objects started their journey near perihelion — at closest approach of 3I/ATLAS to the Sun on October 29, 2025, they traversed a distance of a million kilometers in 22 days. This corresponds to a speed of 500 meters per second relative to 3I/ATLAS.

The mini-objects could either be pieces of ice that broke apart from the surface of a natural comet nucleus or small probes that were released from a technological mothership. By monitoring these components in the coming weeks, we should be able to distinguish the two interpretations.

Occam's Razor.  Of course, if we see this:

 

All my snarky criticisms go away.

 

 

Having Fun With a Serious Scientific Subject

11/20/25 Scientific American:

Roughly four and a half billion years ago the planet Theia slammed into Earth, destroying Theia, melting large fractions of Earth’s mantle and ejecting a huge debris disk that later formed the moon. Scientists have long wondered what Theia was made of and where it came from. Now they have evidence that it formed very close to home.

The original giant impact model of the moon’s creation, proposed in the 1970s, predicted the moon was made mostly of Theia’s material. This scenario implied there should be differences in the chemical composition of the moon and Earth, but research has found that the two are nearly identical—far more similar than two independent planetary bodies should be. A new study, published today in Science, took a close look at other things Theia gave us beside the moon: additional molybdenum and iron left behind in the collision.

Ancient Earth would have had these heavy elements accumulate in its core but not in the rocky mantle closer to the surface, so any iron present now in Earth’s mantle likely came from Theia and can tell us about that planet’s composition, says study co-author Thorsten Kleine, director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen, Germany.

That is the teaser for a serious article from a publication largely taken over by the left since I stopped subscribing about 1981.  The fun aspect is how the 11/20/25 New York Times covered this with a title that mocks the "9/11 Was An Inside Job" bumper stickers popular with the Alex Jones fans:

The Moon Was an Inside Job

New research suggests that Theia, the object whose collision with Earth is theorized to have caused the formation of the moon, came from closer to the sun.

 

Why Does Andromeda Strain Come to Mind?

11/20/25 NBC News:

For nine months in 2022, moss lived in space.

It wasn’t in a lab aboard the International Space Station, like other gardening experiments conducted in orbit — rather, the moss was attached to the station’s exterior, fully exposed to the harsh environment of the cosmos.

The purpose of the space moss test, reported in a study published Thursday in the journal iScience, was to see if moss — an early land plant capable of thriving in some of the most extreme environments on Earth — could survive long-term exposure to the vacuum of space.

Surprisingly, the researchers found that the moss spores not only endured, they “retained their vitality” and were still capable of reproducing when they eventually returned to Earth.

“Most living organisms, including humans, cannot survive even briefly in the vacuum of space,” Tomomichi Fujita, the study’s lead author and a professor in the department of biological sciences at Hokkaido University in Japan, said in a statement.

If you read Crichton's phenomenal novel (in my case, at one sitting; was I wreck for high school the next morning) you will recall that Project Scoop, which brought the nasty organism to Earth was a space survivor of early Earth organisms.  The idea of anything surviving the extraordinary conditions of space (vacuum, no water, radiation, heat, and cold, is like implausible science fiction.

 

The Far Left (as Opposed to the Fascist Left) Opens the Raincoat

 11/21/25 TruthOut:

n 1947, the United Nations General Assembly committed the UN’s original sin when it partitioned Palestine to create Israel. This launched the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous people, and the establishment of a settler colonial state.

Now, 78 years later, the UN Security Council has committed the UN’s second cardinal sin. It enshrined Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, put its imprimatur on Israel’s genocide, and granted colonial control over the lives of the Palestinians to the United States, which has aided and abetted the genocide.

Another bunch of idiots who do not know what genocide means.

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The IDF's actions are not targetting Palestinians, Arabs, or even Gazans.  They are targetting military forces of a group that has engaged in acts of war (and not even lawful forms of war) against Israel.  Arabs in Israel are in no danger of disappearing, or elsewhere, hence the willingness of Arab nations to go along with this treaty.

Why Foreign Campaign Contributions Matter

 111/21/25 BBC:

WhatsApp messages have revealed how a prominent MEP for Nigel Farage's Brexit Party took bribes as part of a pro-Russian influence campaign in the European Parliament.

Nathan Gill, who went on to become leader of Reform UK in Wales, has been jailed after admitting taking money from an alleged "pawn" of the main security agency in Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Gill was paid thousands of pounds to give TV interviews in favour of a key Putin ally and to make speeches in the European Parliament between December 2018 and July 2019.

The 52-year-old father-of-seven had pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery and was sentenced to 10 and a half years at the Old Bailey on Friday.

Prosecutors found WhatsApp chats between Gill and a Ukrainian called Oleg Voloshyn, a former member of the Ukraine Parliament for a pro-Russian party.

Gill, an MEP for six years, was also paid to host Putin's most trusted associate in Ukrainian politics at the parliament in Strasbourg.

The problem with foreign influence on our elections far precedes the recently exposed proxy funding of Obama's election. 6/23/2000 New York Times:

Mr. Gore then replied, "Well, that's right. That is more accurate. Let me, let me amend that. That was first time it was alleged to be, to have been a fund-raiser."

The Hsi Lai event, which was held on April 29, 1996 in Hacienda Heights, Calif., was one of the most embarrassing episodes of the 1996 campaign finance scandal. The event was organized by Maria Hsia, a longtime political ally of the vice president who had collected money before the event from monks and nuns, some of whom had taken vows of poverty.

As a tax-exempt religious institution, the temple was not allowed to serve as a venue for political fund-raising or to make political donations itself. Mr. Gore was asked repeatedly in late 1996 and 1997 about whether he knew the event was a fund-raiser, and according to Mr. Conrad responded with differing statements.

Ms. Hsia was convicted in March for hiding $109,000 in illegal contributions and making false statements to federal regulators about the temple luncheon. She is awaiting sentencing.

More from the far left 2/19/01 American Prospect:

 The Buddhist temple. In April 1996, Gore attended a fundraising luncheon at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights, California. This event, which was organized by Maria Hsia and John Huang, raised $166,750 for the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Much of this money was raised illegally; the laws broken were far from being trivial or outdated. There were $55,000 in contributions laundered through monks and nuns, who made the contributions in their own names and were then reimbursed by the temple from its general funds. At least three of the contributors were foreign nationals. In addition the temple, which enjoys tax-exempt status as a religious institution, was used illegally for partisan politics. Insofar as the monks were reimbursed with temple funds that came from tax-free donations, American taxpayers indirectly subsidized Gore’s fundraising effort.

1/12/01 BBC:

An Indonesian businessman has agreed to plead guilty to making illegal campaign contributions to US President Bill Clinton, US officials said.

The US Justice Department said that billionaire James Riady had agreed to pay an $8.6m fine for contributing foreign funds - the largest fine ever levied in a campaign finance case.

Mr Riady pledged $1m in 1992 to back Mr Clinton, then Arkansas governor.

Foreign campaign contributions are illegal under American law.

The businessman has agreed to surrender and was scheduled to appear before a judge in Los Angeles on Tuesday, despite Indonesia having no extradition treaty with the US.

I sometimes wonder how much of Tucker Carlson's Hitler whitewashing is his pursuit of clicks vs. foreign funding.

I Learned Something New Today About Machining

When telling your program where your coordinates are, using the left edge of the mill vise jaws as 0 is pretty obvious.   Using a workpiece stop like this also means every part up against that bar will be in the same relative position. 

While watching Blondihacks videos about machining  (often very funny, although not as consistently as This Old Tony), she mentioned something that was in the "Duh" category but I never thought about it before.  The rear fixed jaw is always in the same relative position unless you remove the vise from the mill table.

Why this matters: if I remove a workpiece that is 3" wide in Y and put in a workpiece that is 2" wide in Y (or worse, 2.2678" wide), I need to use the edge finder to determine where Y=0 is located so that I can set that location as zero.  All my programs have relied on Y=0 being at the front movable jaw.  Every change of workpiece width means another rwe moving a cutting tool to put on an edge finder and back again along with a bit of + and - with X, Y, and Z to find the spot where the edge finder stops jumping away from perfectly round so that I can mark that location as Y=0.

It is certainly simpler to think of a part with Y always going from 0 to the y coordinate.  Thinking of Y going from 0 back to Y coordinate will save a lot of time setting Y=0.

Polishing Carbon Fiber Composite

I mentioned a while back that when I received my last CFC order, one sheet i apparently ordered glossy.  I found a YouTube video about polishing CFC.  My, what an improvement!

It turns out that raw CFC can not be polished to that pretty state, at least directly.  I sanded a piece with #60, #120, #320, #600, #5000.  Then I buffed it with the white buffing compound then Mother's Mag Wheel polish.  It looks better but there seemed to be no big gain after #5000 sandpaper.

From what I am reading, after sanding the gloss finish is a clearcoat on top of that beautifully sanded surface.  I may buy the glossy stuff for future parts and use the raw stuff for parts already in process. 

I may have spoken prematurely. I started over and included some #1000 sandpaper this time before moving to the buffing wheel and the polisher. It feels better. Does it look better to you? 

 

 

In case it is not obvious, i polished the piece with the hole.

Do You Ever Wonder How Obama Won?

11/17/25 CBS News:

Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel "Pras" Michel of the Fugees was sentenced on Thursday to 14 years in prison for a case in which he was convicted of illegally funneling millions of dollars in foreign contributions to former President Barack Obama's 2012 reelection campaign.

It was not much--Michel received $120 million from an Indonesian millionaire and put some of it to Obama's campaign 

I Asked Copilot How to Make a Mount for An 52mm Achromatic Lens

Mirror mounts are obvious.  I have done them before.  It gave me a very detailed explanation for making it out of PVC with drawings.

🛠 Materials

• 52 mm achromatic doublet lens (crown + flint, already matched)
• PVC pipe with inner diameter slightly larger than 52 mm (commonly 2" schedule 40 works well)
• PVC coupler or end cap (for rear support)
• Thin brass or plastic shims/spacers (0.1–0.2 mm thick)
• Retaining ring (can be cut from PVC or aluminum stock)
• Black matte paint (for internal surfaces)
• Small screws (optional, for collimation adjustments)

⚙️ Step‑by‑Step Build

1. Prepare the PVC tube
• Cut a section of PVC pipe ~60–70 mm long.
• Bore the inner diameter on your lathe to a snug fit for the 52 mm lens.
• Leave ~2 mm clearance so the lens can drop in without binding.
2. Machine the lens seat
• Face one end of the tube flat.
• Cut a shallow internal shoulder (~2 mm deep) so the front crown lens rests squarely.
• Ensure the seat is concentric with the tube axis.
3. Insert the crown lens
• Place the convex crown element facing outward.
• Add three tiny foil or plastic spacers evenly spaced around the edge to maintain the air gap.
4. Add the flint lens
• Place the concave flint element behind the crown, aligned with the spacers.
• Check that the doublet sits flush and centered.
5. Secure with retaining ring
• Turn a PVC or aluminum ring on your lathe to thread or press into the tube.
• The ring should hold the lens gently — not tight enough to pinch.
• If threading PVC is tricky, you can cut a groove and use a snap‑in ring.
6. Blacken the interior
• Paint the inside of the cell with matte black to reduce reflections.
• Also blacken the lens edges if not already done.
7. Rear support / mounting
• Attach a PVC coupler or end cap to the back of the cell.
• Bore it to fit your telescope tube.
• Optionally add three push‑pull screws around the perimeter for collimation.
8. Final assembly
• Test fit the cell into your telescope tube.
• Adjust screws (if used) to align the optical axis.
• Verify that the lens is secure but free to expand slightly with temperature.

📐 Simplified Cross‑Section Drawing (textual)

Code

   Front (sky side)

   -----------------

   | Retaining Ring |

   -----------------

   | Crown Lens     |

   | Spacer Foils   |

   | Flint Lens     |

   -----------------

   | Rear Support   |

   -----------------

Telescope Tube Connection

This diagram shows:

• Retaining ring: Holds the crown lens from the front
• Crown lens: Convex side facing outward
• Spacer foils: Maintain air gap between crown and flint
• Flint lens: Concave side facing inward
• Rear support ring: Secures the lens stack from behind
• PVC tube body: Main housing, lathe-bored for precision
• Telescope tube interface

Machining Tolerances & Dimensions

🔹 PVC Tube Body

• Inner diameter (ID): 52.2 mm ± 0.1 mm
• Slight clearance for the lens stack (52.0 mm nominal lens diameter)
• Shoulder depth: 2.0 mm ± 0.1 mm
• For seating the crown lens
• Tube length: 60–70 mm
• Allows space for lens stack + retaining ring

🔹 Crown Lens Seat

• Seat diameter: 52.0 mm ± 0.05 mm
• Snug fit without binding
• Flatness: ≤ 0.05 mm deviation
• Ensures optical alignment

🔹 Spacer Foils

• Thickness: 0.1–0.2 mm
• Use 3 evenly spaced shims
• Material: Brass, Mylar, or thin plastic

🔹 Flint Lens Fit

• Same diameter: 52.0 mm ± 0.05 mm
• Should rest flush against spacers

🔹 Retaining Ring

• Outer diameter: Match PVC ID (52.2 mm)
• Thickness: 2–3 mm
• Fit type:
• Press-fit: OD = 52.3 mm ± 0.05 mm
• Threaded: Cut internal threads in PVC, external threads on ring

🔹 Rear Support Ring

• Outer diameter: Match telescope tube ID
• Mounting method:
• Press-fit or screw-on
• Optional: 3 push-pull collimation screws (M3 or M4)

🌡 Thermal Expansion Allowance

• PVC expands ~0.07 mm per 10 °C per 100 mm
• Leave ~0.2 mm axial clearance to avoid lens stress
• Avoid tight radial clamping — use gentle retaining pressure

🎨 Surface Treatment

• Blacken interior: Use matte black paint or flocking
• Edge blackening: Paint lens edges to reduce stray light
• 
  
  
  

The Most Discouraging Article Today

11/19/25 City Journal:

“The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer”

How some of the state's welfare funds ended up in the hands of a terror group

Worth reading in full and getting angry.

Is the Goal Better Teachers or Better Paid Teachers?

 From a study of incentives on teaching skills in North Carolina at the National Bureau of Economic Research:

Graduate degrees 

One of the most counterintuitive findings to emerge from the basic models is the small or negative effects of having a graduate degree. Most of those degrees are master’s degrees that generate higher salaries for teachers. A negative coefficient would suggest that having such a degree is not associated with higher achievement.  Thus, if the goal of the salary structure were to provide incentives for teachers to improve their teaching, the higher pay for master’s degrees would appear to
be money that is not well spent, except to the extent that the option of getting a master’s degree keeps effective experienced teachers in the profession.

This News Story Has Every Hot Button

 Associated Press article lacks date:

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A Philippine court on Thursday convicted a former mayor, who officials say is a Chinese national, of human trafficking charges for helping establish an illegal online gaming complex in a northern province where hundreds of Chinese and other foreign nationals were forced to conduct scams.

The Pasig city regional trial court in metropolitan Manila sentenced Alice Guo to life in prison with seven other Filipino and Chinese co-accused, and ordered them to pay a fine of 2 million pesos ($34,000) each and compensate several trafficking victims, who filed the complaints.

Guo denied all allegations against her and says she is a Filipino citizen.

Vast online scam centers have flourished in Southeast Asia in recent years, especially in the border areas of Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. The U.N. has estimated that hundreds of thousands of people have been trapped in virtual slavery by gangs who force them to financially exploit people around the world through false romances, bogus investment pitches and illegal gambling schemes....

Philippine authorities allege that Guo is a Chinese national named Guo Huaping, who faked Filipino citizenship to run for mayor of the town of Bamban in northern Tarlac province, where she ran a sprawling illegal scam compound near the town hall....

Last year, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered a ban on hundreds of mostly Chinese-run online gaming operations, which proliferated under the administration of previous President Rodrigo Duterte. Marcos accused the gaming operations of crimes including financial scams, human trafficking, torture, kidnapping and murder.

Many have been raided and shut down since then, with tens of thousands of trafficked workers rescued and sent back to their home countries. But more scam centers remain in operation, officials said....

Philippine security officials and Hontiveros have said the scam centers operated by Guo and other Chinese nationals may have also been used for espionage by China, which has had increasingly fierce territorial conflicts with the Philippines in the South China Sea and has strongly opposed the presence of American forces in the country. The Philippines is the oldest U.S. treaty ally in Asia.

Illegal aliens, human trafficking, Chinese spies.  What, no extraterrestials, mutilated cattle, AI?

 

Okay, Let's Take This News Story to 1950s America

 Try to imagine their attempt to understand it, socially and technologically.  11/19/25 Fox News:

The estranged wife of a NASA astronaut pleaded guilty to lying to law enforcement over what was alleged to be the first crime to be committed in space. 

Summer Worden now faces up to five years in federal prison and a possible $250,000 maximum fine in relation to the false reports she made about Anne McClain, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas. 

"In July 2019, Summer Heather Worden alleged her estranged spouse had guessed the password and illegally accessed her bank account while the spouse was deployed to the International Space Station," the office said.

Estranged wife of someone named Anne?  How do you go to the teller of a bank from a space station?  What is a space station, much less an international space station?

Even If They Are Not Implicated in His Crimes, A Lot of Important Americans Are Going to Look Bad

 11/20/25 CNN:

They are titans of industry and best-selling authors, world-renowned scientists and banking moguls, top-tier journalists and political power players.

In message after message, they often turned to the same man for advice, for connections, and to banter and trade gossip about President Donald Trump.

That man, Jeffrey Epstein, was already a registered sex offender after a 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution with a minor – but that did not seem to deter his pen pals, some of whom even looked to him for guidance on avoiding their own sexual scandals.

There are scads of references to Trump but as the article admits, they are overwhelming hostile statements by Epstein, with no evidence of Trump's involvement or knowledge of Epstein's crimes.

There is Something Called Double Hearsay in Law

When A reports what B told him that C told B.  As flaky as that sounds, Federal Rule of Evidecce sec. 805:

Hearsay within hearsay is not excluded by the rule against hearsay if each part of the combined statements conforms with an exception to the rule.

This must be why reporters are relying on what I would have to call the "double hearsay of scum" rule.  11/18/25 Newsnation:

(NewsNation) — Mark Epstein, the brother of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, tells NewsNation that his brother revealed he had “dirt” on President Donald Trump.

Epstein joined “CUOMO” days after Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released thousands of never-before-seen emails.

Earlier Monday, Trump called for the release of the files, in a reversal of course for the president. Mark Epstein told NewsNation that he believes the FBI is participating in a cover-up of the files relating to his brother, Jeffrey.

Mark Epstein alleges an FBI cover-up

“I’ve been recently told the reason they’re going to be releasing these things, and the reason for the flip is that they’re sanitizing these files,” Epstein alleged.

“There’s a facility in Winchester, Virginia, where they’re scrubbing the files to take Republican names out of it. That’s what I was told by a pretty good source,” he added.

Epstein doubled down on his claims, alleging FBI Director Kash Patel is participating in a cover-up of the way his brother died behind bars.

“He was the one who said in his testimony ‘you know a suicide when you see one.’ I had a laugh. How many suicides has that j****** seen?”

I am also trying to figure what slur starts with J applies to Patel.

Yes, a guy who pimps out teenagers is such a reliable source of moral judgment.  And secondhand?

 

 

More Trump Misuse of Power

11/19/25 CBS News:

Federal charges were filed on Wednesday against a man accused of setting a woman on fire on a CTA Blue Line train in downtown Chicago this week.

Lawrence Reed, 50, was charged in a criminal complaint with committing a terrorist attack or other violence on a mass transportation system — a federal offense rather than a state offense.

Later in the article is discussion of video showing him buying gasoline, his long criminal history, and his bizarre behavior before the judge.

Mental illness is at the core of much of what is wrong in most big cities.  This guy's release without bail is another consequence of seeing racial equity as an important part of the criminal justice system.

Still Winning

11/17/25 Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia:

"The outlook for growth in the U.S. economy looks marginally better now than it did three months ago, according to 33 forecasters surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. On an annual-average over annual-average basis, the forecasters expect real GDP to grow at an annual rate of 1.9 percent in 2025 and 1.8 percent in 2026. These annual projections are 0.2 percentage point higher than the estimates in the survey of three months ago. The growth projections for 2027 and 2028 of 2.1 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively, remain unchanged compared with those in the survey of three months ago.

"The projections for the unemployment rate are nearly unchanged from those of the previous survey. Like the previous survey, the unemployment rate is projected to be an annual average of 4.2 percent in 2025 and 4.5 percent in 2026 before falling to 4.4 percent in 2027, and 4.3 percent in 2028."

Tap Follower

Whoever suggested using a tap follower to get reliably tapped holes: thank you.  I bought a Browne & Sharp spring-loaded tap follower.  (There were no markings as to manufacture nation on packaging, so I guess made in USA.)  Getting consistent and reliably tapped holes just got easy.

Del Toro's Frankenstein

I just watched this.  It is an amazing film at so many levels: technical; philosophical; theological; literary. If I manage to hit all of them before I run out of energy, I will be surprised. 

First of all, it deviates far from Mary Shelley's novel in many details.  A straightforward retelling of it would be worthwhile on its own although I think Kenneth Branagh's version a few years back did that well.  You have read it, right?  It is a Romantic reputation of Enlightenment confidence in scientific rationalism, arguing that there is more to living creatures than bags of chemical reactions.   I read it because while doing my MA in History, my wife was doing her MA in British Literature.  I read many of her assigned novels as she did.

The cinematography is gobsmacking.  Lots of interesting uses of color for various themes.  Awesome costumes and sets.  The Arctic which is the framing location in both book and film is marvelous. It is grisly in places.  As the Monster says at one point, "I was born of a charnel house."

It has been years since I read it but the Monster learnis to read in a Swiss cabin from Genesis and Paradise Lost and i do not think that was in the book.  This scene ends up with a profoundly Christian observation from the old blind guy in the house.  The entire set of ideas of Creation and the soul will cause some serious conversation and confusion in some audiences. 

I really enjoyed it.

It Was Foggy and Misty...

No, this is not a variant of "Twas brilliant and the slightly toves...."

I needed my rear windows defroster on.  Not seeing a button obviously enough labeled, I pressed the microphone button and said, "Turn on rear defroster," and it did.

Ordinary Men

Netflix has a documentary of this title built around Christopher Browning's book by this title.   It was profoundly disturbing. Like Leni Yahil's The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, Browning points out the officers in charge of the Einsatzgruppen were highly educated (usually with two doctorates) cultured middle class men.  

The parallels to today are worrisome: the younger members of Police Reserve Battalion 101 were more likely to carry out orders to exterminate Jews because they had been educated in hatred their entire lives.  Those a bit older and thus not victims of K-12 education under National Socialist rule were more likely to refuse those orders.  

The Poison Ivy League and their state university peers have been doing this same job of educating the young to hate and avoid nuanced examination of claims.  They are producing the same highly credentialed intellectuals that can sway those of weak moral character to do evil.  If the current Democratic Party ever gets back in control with their current rage, Jews and those of us who qualify as Jew-adjacent will need to be ready to deal with this before they start herding us into boxcars or bullet trains to central Nevada for re-education.  (I am kidding about bullet trains; they will never get them working soon enough for extermination.)

Ken Burns' American Revolution

I saw a positive review at The Federalist.  My wife and I watched it last night.  I was pleaaed.  You might expect a lot of leftist whining but really it was not much different from how teach it.  American settlers upset about the Proclamation Line of 1763 protecting the Indians from white encroachment on their lands contributes to Colonists anger about taxation.  Even the discussion of the contrast between "liberty" and slavery emphasizes where this will eventually lead: abolition.  I am sure President Trump would approve. 

A New Victim Group

 11//18/25 BBC News:

Two Ukrainian citizens who long worked for Russian intelligence have been identified as the suspects behind two acts of sabotage on Poland's rail network, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.

One suspect had already been convicted in absentia of acts of sabotage in Ukraine, Tusk told parliament.

On Monday, he visited the scene of an explosion near Mika, south-east of Warsaw, which damaged the railway line leading to the Ukrainian border at the weekend, and called it an "unprecedented act of sabotage".

Another incident down the line near Pulawy on Monday forced a packed train to stop suddenly and damage was found to overhead cables.

The Kremlin brushed off suggestions of Russian involvement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said: "It would have been really strange, if Russia hadn't been blamed first."

"Russia is accused of all acts of hybrid and direct war... in Poland," he told Russia's state-run media, adding: "Russophobia is certainly rampant there." [emphasis added]

Of course, it would be a sign of mental disturbance to think Russia might want to block arms shipments to Ukraine.

We Would Be the Laughingstock of the World if We Elected Trump

 Remember how all the smart people warned us that Trump's belligerent and ignorant style would impair international diplomacy?  11/17/25 Guardian:

UN security council votes to endorse Donald Trump’s Gaza plan

The resolution, which includes references to an independent Palestine, was passed by a vote of 13-0 with China and Russia abstaining...

The resolution, passed by a vote of 13-0 with abstentions by China and Russia, charted “a new course in the Middle East for Israelis and Palestinians and all the people of the region alike”, the US envoy to the UN, Mike Waltz, told the council chamber.

The inclusion of references to an independent Palestine was the price the US paid for backing from the Arab and Islamic world, who are expected to provide peacekeepers for an international stabilisation force (ISF).

 

Slippery End Mills

I have previously discussed the problem of 1/8" end mills not having a flat spot to lock them in end mill holders.  I focused on how vibration made them work loose, causing the end mill to fall out after last cutting pass.  Today's discovery is that if trying to cut vertically at too high a speed can cause it to retract back into the holder.  This means the 0.4" deep cut turns into about 0.2" actual depth.

Democrat Epstein Campaign Takes a Democratic Scalp

11/17/25 ABC News:

Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and the former president of Harvard University, said he's stepping back from public life after his apparent conversations with Jeffrey Epstein were released last week by the House Oversight Committee.

"I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein," Summers said in a statement on Monday.

Summers is currently a member of Harvard's faculty, according to the Harvard Crimson.

"While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me," he said.

It has been previously reported that Summers maintained a relationship with Epstein for many years, particularly during Summers’ term as president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006.

He flew at least four times on Epstein’s aircraft, according to flight records made public during litigation against Epstein, and he was the top official at Harvard during a time when the university received millions in gifts from Epstein.

All of those gifts were received prior to Epstein’s guilty plea in Florida in 2008 to charges of solicitation of prostitution with a minor, according to the university’s review of its Epstein connections....

No Epstein survivor has alleged wrongdoing by Summers and there is no public record evidence to suggest Summers was involved in any of Epstein’s crimes. However, the newly released emails suggest a closer bond between the two men than has been previously reported. [emphasis added]

The messages just made public include a number of exchanges about dating advice that appear to demonstrate a close relationship between the two that continued long after Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida, and lasted until at least a few months before Epstein's death in August 2019.

In one March 2019 email exchange, Epstein gives Summers advice, though the context is unclear and the woman involved is not named. “I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy’. I said awfully coy u are,” Summers wrote to Epstein in the lengthy email. “Shes smart. –making you pay for past errors,” Epstein responded, in part.

 Summers' error was keeping in contact with a convicted child molester and pimp.  Whatever professional contacts Epstein could provide would seem irrelevant with Epstein's history.

 

 

GunBroker.com

 Have any of you used GunBroker.com or similar services to sell guns?  I have several guns in my safe that it I think I should sell before moving to Tennessee.  These are guns for which I do not see any particular utility (the S&W 629 .44 Magnum was bought for camping in grizzly bear country).  

Moving will require me to ship them.  I will not be driving  there, and UBox and PODS both prohibit shipping guns in their containers.  I could ship them to my new home but that requires me to have a new home address before we leave Idaho.  It is just barely possible (and my preference) we might sell our Idaho house first, stay in an AirBnb for a few weeks while buying a new house.  I could ship to an FFL in Tennessee, but if I do not need them at the far end, liberating the capital and decluttering my gun safe would be good.

I could sell them here but I would prefer some confidence that they were not going to prohibited persons.  An auction site is likely to get a better price as well.

The guns that want good homes are 

1. A S&W 629 .44 Magnum stainless steel.  I have fired less than 50 rounds through it all shortly after I bought it in the 1990s.  It has the original box.

2 A Remington 870 12 gauge riot gun (18" barrel).  This has the three round magazine extension.  Shortly after I bought this, Remington started dimpling the 5 round magazine so these magazine extensions would not work.  This has been fired less than 40 times.  I have not fired it in at least 15 years.

3. A Ruger 10/22 with a 3x-9x scope and a sling.  I have no idea how old it is.  I bought it used in 1990 just before California banned private firearms transfers.  It functions perfectly.  I have a dozen or so 25 round magazines for it.

4. A Remington Model 7 bolt action in .308 Winchester with a 4x-12x 40mm scope.  I have no idea how old it is.  I bought it used in 1990.  It functions perfectly.  

5. NIB Browning Hi-Power.  I am not sure if this is dark blued or Parkerized.

Less Crime in D.C. and Why That is Bad

8/27/25 PBS News Hour:

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser gave an update Wednesday about the increase in federal personnel in the nation’s capital at a press conference where she discussed the takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department, the crime situation and the future of Union Station....

Bowser said the federal surge has helped in fewer gun crimes, fewer homicides and led to an extreme reduction in carjackings.

But the surge has led to a “break in trust between, police and community, especially with new federal partners.”

Yes, I can see why reducing crime would break trust between carjackers and community. 

How Bad Do You Want Taiwan?

11/16/25 New York Times:

 China escalated its diplomatic feud with Japan on Sunday by sending Coast Guard ships to patrol near islands the countries both claim, and warning Chinese students in the country about what it said were risks to their safety.

The escalation came after comments this month by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan about Taiwan, a self-governed democracy that China considers part of its territory. Ms. Takaichi told the Japanese Parliament that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Tokyo.

Parts of Labour Party Faces Reality; Others Do Not

 11/16/25 Guardian:

Shabana Mahmood has warned Labour MPs that “dark forces are stirring up anger” over migration, amid growing alarm among senior party figures over the most sweeping overhaul of refugee rights in a generation.

On Monday, Mahmood will announce controversial new laws to overhaul refugee status, which must be reassessed every two years, as well as curbing asylum appeals and toughening the approach to rights to family life.

The home secretary warned in an article for the Guardian that anger about illegal migration could turn on second-generation immigrants such as her and rupture community relations.

“I know that a country without secure borders is a less safe country for those who look like me,” she said.

Unsurprisingly, other Labour Party MPs are prepared to risk "dark forces" coming to power to stop the Pakistani rape gangs. Certainly Labour does not care enough.

Dry Fire Training Systems

Do any of you have experience with dry fire pistol training tools?  Strikeman makes one that seems well-regarded.  Being able to get immediate feedback about why you are off and being to able to practice at home is attractive. 

Gold Prices

I saw news coverage recently that China might be manipulating gold prices.  Today the price was $4097/ounce.  If you bought gold a year ago and sold yesterday you made a pretty penny. If you bought several weeks ago at $4250/ounce, not so much.  Precious metals are inflation hedges.  They are not investments.  There is no return on investment nor is it clear that they even successfully and reliably stay ahead of inflation. 

Adventures in Optics

One of my great frustrations from moving out of the mountains of Horseshoe Bend was that I had magnitude 6 skies. (The Milky Way was so bright it washed out the constellations.)  Where i am now, magnitude 2 stars are about all i can see. Diffuse magnitude 4 objects like Orion Nebula are visible but the loss of so many fainter stars means finding obscure objects like Ring Nebula is not practical.   It seems about 40% of the distance between beta and delta Lyrae.  These are magnitude 3 stars. 

Optical aids for telescopes are in two major categories: 0x red dot devices that most shooters know, and finderscopes that are a small refractor with crosshairs.  

The red dot devices are very natural to use and have full field of view of the naked eye. If you can see an object unaided you can move your telescope so the object is in the center of the illuminated red circle.  Because they have glass concentrating light, you het whatever your natural limiting magnitude is.

Finderscooes are little tefrwctors with a crosshair eyepiece.  These range from 5x24mm to 9x60mm.  The magnification is useful for picking out details on the Moon or other large objects.  The light gathering lets you see fainter stars.  A 50mm objective gives 10x the diameter of the average older adult pupil so 100x the light.  

However, the exit pupil of the finder is objective diameter divided by magnification.   If you get a 10mm exit pupil, half the light will be useless for your eyes.

What is need is a very wide angle finder that gathers a lot of light.   Ideally, a 0x50mm finderscope.  These do not exist.  I have found a source for 50mm achromatic lens focal length 153mm.  I can buy cheap 40mm Plossl type eyepieces.  This would give me 3.82x.  Apparent FOV would be 13 degrees.   Exit pupil 10.4mm. More than half the light wasted but still 40x brighter than baked eye or four magnitudes deeper than naked eye. 

I would need to machine a housing for the lens and an adapter to interface one of my existing helical focuses to the tube.  I can do it for about $40 in parts. 

Prototyping

I thought I had the dimensions right for this slow motion control but once assembled, it was obvious that the worm gear was. 23" above engagement with the spur gear.  Also putting the pillow blocks on screws in two different slots was less convenient for vernier positioning than I had hoped.  Solution: mount both pillow blocks on a .25" thick carrier plate and use the slot to position the pillow blocks side to side relative to the worm gear.   Using .25" thick plate both solves positioning problem while adding one slot to the base plate and solves the vertical positioning problem.

I briefly tried prototyping in acetal but acetal is so slippery that I cannot get a good grip on it with my mill vise.  Perhaps if I mounted spikes on the jaws.  CFC is rough enough that it clamps well 

Changes in Latitude

No, I am not going to break out singing Jimmy Buffet songs, although I enjoy his work.  A downside of living at 43 degrees latitude is thst days and nights tend to extremes depending on the season.  Moving to eastern Tennessee means 36 degrees latitude.  The very long days in summer at high latitudes are hard on amateur astronomers because you have to wait late into the evening for observing. Being able to be out in summer means you can observe in warm weather. 

This will still require adjusting the equatorial platform on which Big Bertha tracks the sky.  I am hoping a seven degree change will not be too dramatic a change. 

This Worked So Well in the 2000s

Fannie Mae is dropping the minimum credit score requirement for home loans.

"Fannie Mae announced that beginning November 16, 2025, Desktop Underwriter® (DU) will no longer require a minimum credit score for loan eligibility. Instead of relying on the traditional 620-minimum rule, DU will evaluate homebuyers using a holistic, risk-based assessment.

"This shift impacts first-time homebuyers, credit-invisible buyers, and realtors helping clients navigate mortgage requirements. And yes,  it could open the doors to homeownership for thousands of people who previously couldn’t qualify."

I am sure there are perfectly good credit risks who have never held a credit card.  I am pretty sure that they are outnumbered by people who pay cash for everything because their customers pay entirely in cash.

Remember "stated income loans"?  People who could not provide any evidence of their income.  "Trust Me."

This will work so well. 

Cutting Little Gouges

I mentioned a few days ago solving the problem of cutting degree markers in a 6" hemisemicitcle for the mount by cutting gorges in CFC, painting the entire area, then using a fly cutter to remove all areas above the bottom of the gorges to get excess paint off.  This did not work as well as I hoped.  The paint did not accumulate very deeply in the .120" wide gorges and this was spray paint.

The .008" end mills arrived yesterday.  Yes that is really tiny.  

Because these are likely quite brittle, I was feeding at .1 inch/minute, in .01" depth cuts.  Nothing broken.  

My wife had a good idea as she usually does.  Fill in the lines with spackle and wipe off the excess.  You can press the spackle into the .02" deep gorges.

It actually looks pretty good.  Taking .0005" off the top should cure anything that does not wipe off.

Talk About Connected!

11/14/25 PBS article:

By the time Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, he had established an enormous network of wealthy and influential friends. Emails made public this week show the crime did little to diminish the desire of that network to stay connected to the financier.

Thousands of documents released by the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday offer a new glimpse into what Epstein’s relationships with business executives, reporters, academics and political players looked like over a decade.

Curiously, while many emails mention Trump none are with Trump.  Epstein clearly hated Trump.  This alone argues in Trump's favor: a pedophile hated Trump.

I Have Never Been a Fan of Capital Punishment

 It is certainly constitutional.  Indeed, it is one a few punishments expressly mentioned there.

I cringe at the lackof Undo, if you discover later, "Whoops!"  The evidence must be pretty overwhelming.  Our legal system has made a wrongful conviction pretty near impossible in a way that life imprisonment does not.  This execution in South Carolina seems to not have much doubt.

My current research project has led me to read some pretty awful news articles.  One from 1967 involved parents charged with poisioning their seven children with parathion, an insecticide of the nerve agent family.  The sheriff was investigating the suspicious death of the father's six previous children.  Yes, he had life insurance on them. Some monsters are so horrible that letting them live seems hard to justify.

Obsessing Over Trump

11/14/25 CNN:

CNN’s review of thousands of pages of Epstein’s emails shows that Trump was one of the figures he returned to often. Across exchanges with lawyers, journalists, business contacts and familiar acquaintances, Epstein repeatedly invoked Trump — sometimes to offer analysis of his behavior, sometimes to gossip, and sometimes simply to position himself as someone with rare insight into the man who had become president.

The emails suggest that Trump remained a fixation for Epstein, as he’s frequently mentioned numerous times over a span of nearly a decade — including long after their friendship ended.

And now Democrats are obsessed about Epstein and Trump.  The CNN article lists lots of emails but mostly deals in innuendo:

In one exchange with former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, discussing Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer who had flipped on him, Epstein added, “i know how dirty Donald is.” 

The Democrats are reading pedophilia into that.  I could read real estate development practices into that.  Or adultery.  There is nothing the Democrats can seem to find.