Projection As the Best Way to Understand Progressive Thought

 5/21/25 Columbia Journalism Review:

Wesley Lowery—the winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award, and whose work in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, chronicled the organizing power of Black Lives Matter—is, at thirty-four, one of the most recognized journalists in America. He has reported for the Washington Post and CBS News. He is the author of two books: They Can’t Kill Us All (2016), about unarmed Black men killed by police, and American Whitelash (2023), a history of violent white resistance to people of color. Among young reporters, he is perhaps best known for questioning traditional journalistic objectivity, noting its failures to reckon with racism.

But for some women in journalism, his standing is more complicated. Imani Moise, a Wall Street Journal reporter, remembers that when she met up with him at a bar, in December of 2018, for what she thought would be a professional conversation, he’d ordered her a cocktail before she arrived. Olivia Messer—a journalist who is now the editor in chief of the Barbed Wire, an independent outlet focused on Texas—recalled that, in January of 2020, at a happy hour with Lowery, he was ready with more alcohol every time she returned to the table. In the spring of 2022, after two drinks, a journalist with whom Lowery matched on Bumble said that she had reached her limit, and he entreated her to get a third. (This journalist spoke on the condition of anonymity, because even a first name would make her easily identifiable, and she feared how her family would react.) A writer and researcher noticed that, in February of 2024, when she and Lowery went to a bar, he had a drink waiting for her whenever she got up to use the bathroom. (This woman, too, did not want to be named, because of the toll she said the experience has taken on her mental health.) In each case, these women wound up leaving with Lowery, who they said then sexually assaulted  them.

"I Will Unleash Angry Kittens On You": No, Not an SNL or Monty Python Skit

2/20/26 TWZ:

A group of Block 52 F-16CJ Vipers belonging to the South Carolina Air National Guard was recently spotted heading east across the Atlantic as part of a huge build-up of U.S. forces ahead of potential strikes on Iran. Each of the Vipers was notably seen carrying an Angry Kitten pod, a new electronic warfare system that helps defend against anti-air threats, and that may now be headed for its first use in real combat. Angry Kitten also has a very unique genesis, which we will dive into in a moment. These particular F-16s are primarily tasked with the Wild Weasel mission and are optimized for neutralizing enemy air defenses, something that would be crucial in any future operation aimed at the regime in Tehran. They can fulfill many other types of missions, as well.

The 12 F-16CJs arrived at Lajes on the island of Terceira in the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the mid-Atlantic, on February 17 and left the next day. The Vipers are readily identifiable as ones assigned to the South Carolina Air National Guard’s 169th Fighter Wing by the “South Carolina” emblazoned on many of their tails, as well as distinctive markings reflecting the wing’s nickname, the “Swamp Foxes.” They were accompanied by at least one KC-46A Pegasus tanker. A substantial U.S. Air Force tanker force is now also forward-deployed in Lajes to support the ongoing build-up.

They Chose Poorly: I Hope They Do Better Next Time

2/21/26 Wall Street Journal:

 Months before Jesse Van Rootselaar became the suspect in the mass shooting that devastated a rural town in British Columbia, Canada, OpenAI considered alerting law enforcement about her interactions with its ChatGPT chatbot, the company said.

While using ChatGPT last June, Van Rootselaar described scenarios involving gun violence over the course of several days, according to people familiar with the matter.

Her posts, flagged by an automated review system, alarmed employees at OpenAI. Internally, about a dozen staffers debated whether to take action on Van Rootselaar’s posts. Some employees interpreted Van Rootselaar’s writings as an indication of potential real-world violence, and urged leaders to alert Canadian law enforcement about her behavior, the people familiar with the matter said. 

OpenAI leaders ultimately decided not to contact authorities.

A spokeswoman for OpenAI said the company banned Van Rootselaar’s account but determined that her activity didn’t meet the criteria for reporting to law enforcement, which would have required that it constituted a credible and imminent risk of serious physical harm to others.

I would not want the Department of Pre-Crime making decisions about gun rights, but certainly a mental evaluation could be justified. 

When NPR Reports It...

2/21/26 NPR:

Researchers analyzed health data on 460,000 teenagers in the Kaiser Permanente Health System in Northern California. The teens were followed until they were 25 years old. The data included annual screenings for substance use and any mental health diagnoses from the health records. Researchers excluded the adolescents who had symptoms of mental illnesses before using cannabis.

"We looked at kids using cannabis before they had any evidence of these psychiatric conditions and then followed them to understand if they were more likely or less likely to develop them," says Dr. Lynn Silver, a pediatrician and researcher at the Public Health Institute, and an author of the new study.

They found that the teens who reported using cannabis in the past year were at a higher risk of being diagnosed with several mental health conditions a few years later, compared to teens who didn't use cannabis.

Teens who reported using cannabis had twice the risk of developing two serious mental illnesses: bipolar, which manifests as alternating episodes of depression and mania, and psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia which involve a break with reality.

Now, only a small fraction — nearly 4,000 — of all teens in the study were diagnosed with each of these two disorders. Both bipolar and psychotic disorders are among the most serious and disabling of mental illnesses....

Silver points out these illnesses are expensive to treat and come at a high cost to society. The U.S. cannabis market is an industry with a value in the tens-of-billions — but the societal cost of schizophrenia has been calculated to be $350 billion a year. 

The Christchurch study also controlled for prodomal symptoms of mental illness (was this person showing signs that this was there first?) as well. While only "a small fraction" became mentally ill, these illnesses, especially schizophrenia, are terribly destructive to a society, along with the afflicted individuals. Hence, George Soros' funding of legalizing marijuana.

I Have Been Sending Emails From firstname @ firstnamelastname.com Which Do Not Seem to be Arriving

 If I have been unresponsive to an email, this is why.

My Wife Thought the Thumbscrews on the Wide Angle Finderscope Were Too Long

It looks much better now.

And you can see the packaging from Thumbscrew Depot (a US maker with a very narrow niche name).

More Evidence Fact-Checkers Are Statistically Ignorant

 2/20/26 Crime Prevention Research Center:

A widely cited February 2024 report by Politifact claimed: “No evidence of rising LGBTQ+ violent extremism or ‘trans terrorism.” A follow report by them in September 2025 that examined both the FBI’s definition of active shooting attacks and the notion of mass shootings concluded: “Are trans people ‘statistically’ more prone to commit gun violence? Data shows a different picture.” It looked at the period from 2018 to 2024 that we examine here.

Unfortunately, these and similar claims make a basic error: they look only at the share of attacks committed by transgender individuals and fail to adjust for transgender individuals’ share of the population. That is an obvious statistical mistake. If a group makes up just 1 percent of the population but commits 10 percent of the attacks, no one would dismiss that disparity simply because the group accounts for “only” 10 percent of active shooting attacks.

Excel and Access Do Not Play Well Together

I have been working on a spreadsheet that does some data analysis on what the antigunners now call "high-fatality mass shootings" (6 or more killed in one incident). Their expert submitted a declaration that plotted the number of incidents and deaths since 1974.  It was a scarily rising line but not adjusted for population growth (which was pretty substantial)  i have been using the data from my mass murder database to extend high-fatality mass shootings back to 1891. Adjusted for population growth, the trend lines for both incidents and dead slightly declined 1891-2023. 

This involves Excel querying the database and a bit of processing of data. I already had a spreadsheet that did this, but it was not entirely my work and if called to testify about the methodology, I might have had to admit that I was not as sure as I would like, so I am recreating it.

This has been a booger to do.  I have been Microsoft CoPilot to help me and I am glad that I did. There are so many aspects of the interaction that are error-prone as even CoPilot admits that i would likely never have gotten as far as I have. At least it is something that I understand, but I find the nature of its failings overwhelming. 

Yes, if a field contains 1890 is formatted as text not number, i can see why VLOOOKUP might be unable to use it to do a numeric match. The obvious solution would be for VLOOKUP to be smart enough recognize and make the conversion.

Worse, 1891 converted to Number formatted cell apparently automatically converts to floating point, so VLOOKUP does recognize that the lookup of an integer 1891 should match 1891.00000.

The way that Excel does Access queries is also stupid. If you change the query in Access and refresh the query, it does not run the query against the named query but refuses a cached copy of the SQL from the last time. Fixing this is not as simple as saying to clear the cache or just making a fresh call to Access with that named query. What a mess.

Property Liens

This was one of the scams by the Freemen, a check fraud scam with pretensions of antigovernment political sect some years back.  They would file property liens alleging unpaid bills against...it seemed anybody they wanted to harrass.

So this 2/14/26 New York Post article about someone filing hundreds of millions in property liens for cleaning and financial services against Benedict Canyon homes surprised me not much except for the scale of the chutzpah.  The person filing the liens is a "life coach" who speaks very broken English.

Perhaps she needs an ICE visit.  

We Rescued a Chicken

A Polish White Crested which looks like a visit to the hairdresser went badly. It was in the field in front of our house driving our dogs nuts. (They like chicken even though it am sure that though I am sure they do not connect sautéed chicken Breast with that silly bird outside the fence.)

It was getting cold and the chicken probably could not call Uber. Rhonda knew of a house that had this particular breed so we drove it over there, where disclaimed knowledge of it, but happily put in the branches of a tree with the other chickens. 

As Rhonda was getting out of the car, the chicken thanked us by laying an egg. It went into an omelet this morning. 

Free AI Reputed to be Inferior to Paid AI

 This article asserts that the paid versions of AI are far superior to the free versions and the speed of improvement is accelerating:

I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job. I describe what I want built, in plain English, and it just... appears. Not a rough draft I need to fix. The finished thing. I tell the AI what I want, walk away from my computer for four hours, and come back to find the work done. Done well, done better than I would have done it myself, with no corrections needed. A couple of months ago, I was going back and forth with the AI, guiding it, making edits. Now I just describe the outcome and leave.

Let me give you an example so you can understand what this actually looks like in practice. I'll tell the AI: "I want to build this app. Here's what it should do, here's roughly what it should look like. Figure out the user flow, the design, all of it." And it does. It writes tens of thousands of lines of code. Then, and this is the part that would have been unthinkable a year ago, it opens the app itself. It clicks through the buttons. It tests the features. It uses the app the way a person would. If it doesn't like how something looks or feels, it goes back and changes it, on its own. It iterates, like a developer would, fixing and refining until it's satisfied. Only once it has decided the app meets its own standards does it come back to me and say: "It's ready for you to test." And when I test it, it's usually perfect....

How fast this is actually moving

Let me make the pace of improvement concrete, because I think this is the part that's hardest to believe if you're not watching it closely.

In 2022, AI couldn't do basic arithmetic reliably. It would confidently tell you that 7 × 8 = 54.

By 2023, it could pass the bar exam.

By 2024, it could write working software and explain graduate-level science.

By late 2025, some of the best engineers in the world said they had handed over most of their coding work to AI.

On February 5th, 2026, new models arrived that made everything before them feel like a different era.

If you haven't tried AI in the last few months, what exists today would be unrecognizable to you....

What you should actually do

I'm not writing this to make you feel helpless. I'm writing this because I think the single biggest advantage you can have right now is simply being early. Early to understand it. Early to use it. Early to adapt.

Start using AI seriously, not just as a search engine. Sign up for the paid version of Claude or ChatGPT. It's $20 a month. But two things matter right away. First: make sure you're using the best model available, not just the default. These apps often default to a faster, dumber model. Dig into the settings or the model picker and select the most capable option. Right now that's GPT-5.2 on ChatGPT or Claude Opus 4.6 on Claude, but it changes every couple of months. If you want to stay current on which model is best at any given time, you can follow me on X (@mattshumer_). I test every major release and share what's actually worth using.

Second, and more important: don't just ask it quick questions. That's the mistake most people make. They treat it like Google and then wonder what the fuss is about. Instead, push it into your actual work. If you're a lawyer, feed it a contract and ask it to find every clause that could hurt your client. If you're in finance, give it a messy spreadsheet and ask it to build the model. If you're a manager, paste in your team's quarterly data and ask it to find the story. The people who are getting ahead aren't using AI casually. They're actively looking for ways to automate parts of their job that used to take hours. Start with the thing you spend the most time on and see what happens.

I am going to ask the subscription Grok to review a spreadsheet that I created to evaluate it for errors in assumptions and math. Yes, it found errors.  It is not perfect but it is getting me where the data is something that I can say that I understand.

Even SuperGrok has some resource limits and I reached them trying to get Excel charts to make sense. So I switched to CoPilot figuring it would understand a Microsoft product. After several hours trying to get data that plots fine as a line chart to become an XY scatter plot because trendline is only valid with XY scatter plot even though Excel will let you add a trendline to a line chart. I do not see how anyone uses Excel charting without AI.

"That Thing That Never Happens is Now Happening Every Day"

Small Dead Animals exaggerates but still.  2/17/26 CTV News reports on a shooting at a Rhode Island hockey game that left three dead including the murderer:

"Goncalves identified the shooter as Robert Dorgan, who she said also went by the name Roberta Esposito and was born in 1969."

MT3 Arbor Question

I have a 13" Harbor Freight floor drill press which uses, I think, an MT3 arbor for the chuck. 

I also have a Tapmatic reversing tapping tool.  This is a marvelous tool. You lower the tap into the pilot hole and it slowly taps the threads. You release it and it reverses direction backing out of the hole. For most tapping operations it is a joy to use. I have only tapped relatively thin aluminum and sometimes fairly thick Delrin where it is elegant. It has a 1/2" shaft which fits in the 5/8" drill chuck and works just fine. There is supposedly an MT3 arbor that accepts a 1/2" shaft and likely is held in place by a nut or lock screw.

I have just put the 1/2" shaft in the drill chuck until now, but using an arbor reduces the vertical clearance required and may have better concentricity. Am I imagining such an adapter? I am not finding it on Amazon. 

When Their Lawyers Show They Do Not Know the Law Very Well

 I mentioned a few days ago, that California is suing a Florida company for distributing 3D printer files for firearms.  They filed the suit in San Francisco Superior Court. But they are suing citizens of Florida. U.S. Const., Art. III, sec. 2 provides that federal courts have jurisdiction in cases "between a State and Citizens of another State," because of Amendment 12 (1795). This matters why? Where are the defendants more likely to get a friendly judge and jury. They are moving the suit to Middle District of Florida federal court.

Please Explain Why This is Derogatory

In 2015, I quoted a Washington Post story about rising death rates among whites and I was just notified that ads could not appear there because it was derogatory. To who?

Stories That Are Heart-Warming to Engineers Everywhere

The video was so heart-warming that I did some searching to verify the story.

Mass Murders That Make No Sense

 Carlinville, Ill. (1968)

12/18/1968: The public welfare office was the scene of a planned family reunion party. The father of ten, 35, brought two pistols, shot to death his wife, a caseworker at whom he had shot some months before, and two other workers at the agency. He also wounded four of the seven children at the planned party. The murderer then went to his brother’s house and confessed his crime. While waiting for police, he left and shot himself to death.

Category: public

Suicide: yes

Cause: unknown

Weapon: pistol[1]

---

[1] "Father Of Broken Family Kills Wife, 3 Others, Self," [Brownsville, Tex.] Brownsville Herald, Dec. 19, 1968, 10.

If there was no prospect of reunion, this might have a sad logic to it. But this was a family reuniting. There are no indications that he had a mental illness. People do the dumbest things.

Lost History

When I think of black militants in the 1960s, I think Black Panthers.  Imagine my surprise at how the Boston police characterized this group.

Boston, Mass. (1968)

11/13/1968: Three men forced their way into the offices of a black civil rights group, described by police as “a responsible militant,” yelling, “Where’s the money?” and shot to death the blind director and two other officials. They also wounded two others. It does not appear that there was any money.

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: robbery

Weapon: firearm[1]

---

[1] "Boston Civil Rights Group Founder Slain," [Longview, Wash.] Longview Daily News, Nov. 13, 1968, 1.

And yes, militants. They had a group with walkie-talkies acting as buffer between blacks and police.

If Godzilla Owned a Machine Shop

 I have a benchtop lathe:

Here is a big lathe:

Entertaining Explanation for Why Coal is Not Going Away

 And particularly why China, India, and Indonesia are not giving It up. Listen carefully while Mother Earth and Greta Thunberg cry. Hint: where we buy our products just exports coal burning.

Wide Angle Finderscope Complete

I still to need to touch up the paint.  I am waiting for some glossy white touchup paint.  The thumbscrews are longer than they need to be. I have ordered 3/8" and 1/2" long versions to replace them.  The battle to get the helical focuser is complete.  

In case you are unfamiliar with helical focuser, they provide a way to get very precise focus. They have a very limited range, but that is why it is inserted in that extension tube which provides coarse focus.  I am expecting a clear sky tonight for faintness of star checking. 

This has the Svbony 25mm Plossl eyepiece.   It is a beautiful 48 degree appparent field of view eyepiece.  I am expecting an 8 degree field of view.

I needed a dustcap at the front. That thing at the end is threaded to fit on the tube.  I saw that at Home Depot and decided that was better than the usual crummy dustcaps.

We had a rare clear night. Fifth magnitude stars immediately above Orion's belt are clearly visible even with my not night-adapted eyes.  I suspect this probably takes me down to magnitude 6 which was my goal 

When You've Lost the Atlantic

2/12/26 The Atlantic admits that the argument for transgender mutilation has collapsed, pointing out the ACLU's defense of child sexual mutilation before the Court admitted that there was no evidence this barbarism reduced suicide, only "suicidal thoughts."

Elon Musk's Sense of Humor is Fully Nerd

He responded to this picture:

With:

"Still kinda hot tbh."

My Fingers Are Grateful

I bought a parting tool for the lathe.  This is a very sharp thin blade that mounts on the cross-slide for cutting off pieces of the victim at precise locations. 

In the past, if i need to cut a small amount off of a tube, I had to either hold the tube closer to the blade than I preferred or if the amount was small enough, use the lathe to slowly plane off a few thousandths of an inch, again and again.

In this case, I needed to remove 1.85" from the PVC tube.  It was so elegant. 

Why I Think The World-Shattering Nature of AI is Hype

This is not the first time a new technology has appeared with the fear that existing workers will soon be unemployed in vast numbers.  Remember that in 1790, 98%+ of Americans worked on farms. Yet we do not have a 98% unemployment rate.

The development of machine tools and other elements of the Industrial Revolution did not cause mass unemployment. Instead, there was something called "de-skilling." What had been highly skilled craftsmen were replaced by lesser skilled operatives using mills, lathes, and similar tools to mass produce identical parts that other lesser skilled workers assembled into clocks, guns, then eventually cars, aircraft, and houses. All these less skilled workers were paid far better than their craftsmen predecessors because the highly efficient factories were so profitable that employers could afford to pay high wages to attract workers.

How many Americans in 1790 owned a click or a watch.  Far fewer than today.  None could own modern marvels such as cars, revolvers, semiautomatic rifles, or dishwashers. Yes, none of those existed in 1790. That is my point. Each step forward created unimaginable wealth and creativity that allowed for new technologies and jobs to go with them. 

There are jobs that AI will destroy, the equivalent of individual flintlock rifle makers. Such makers continue to work into the mid-1800s. What they did was obsolete but they soldiered on and retired. I doubt many young men in 1840 looked for a chance to apprentice to one of these old-fashioned craftsmen,'who retired or died.

More Evidence AI Is Mostly Hype

2/10/26 Ars Technica:

Alphabet has lined up banks to sell a rare 100-year bond, stepping up a borrowing spree by Big Tech companies racing to fund their vast investments in AI this year.

As others have observed, few companies from 1926 have survived 100 years without completely evaporating (e.g., Texaco) or defaulting on their bonds (GM).  How many tech companies of 2000 are anything like their former importance?  A few. Many others are either gone or of such limited importance as to be unrealistic payers of bond interest.

For You Materials Science Nerds

 Why 304 stainless steel is less corrosion resistant than you may assume:

And if, like me, you have ever wondered what distinguishes 304 from 18/8 stainless steel.

It Is Still in Need of Some Editing and Paint Touch-Up, But It Works

That is a 25mm eyepiece in it, not what I will use in it for the wide angle, high brightness finder.  

.

The tube needs to be shortened another inch to get more infocus distance for the helical focuser to go between extension tube and eyepiece. Then a little touch up paint on the PVC. I am pleased with the optical quality of what was a $15 objective lens. This has not received much of a test; chromatic aberration is more of an issue as magnification and brightness go up 

With the 25mm eyepiece, I get 6x, 7.5 degree field of view. The exit pupil is 10mm so roughly 75% of the light gathering capacity is lost going into a 5mm human pupil.  That is still more than three magnitude deeper into the sky than the naked eye.  I have no stars available for testing but used outdoors, the image is noticeably brighter than naked eye.

A couple possible choices of eyepiece for finder. The Svbony 25mm Plossl is cheap. It would give me 6x, but the Plossl design has a slightly wider apparent field of view, so i would get 8.2 degrees of sky. The Svbony 40mm Plossl would get me 3.8x and more than 10 degrees of sky. AstroMania 40mm is a bit wider so 12 degrees of sky. I am not sure that the extra field of view is really necessary and lower magnification means giving away light 

Cutting Off Oil to Cuba

Are they not on board with reducing greenhouse gases?

What AI Is Good For

Define the problem.

For a 6" diameter 6061 aluminum disc supported at three edges with a 20 pound weight at center how thick should it be?

After showing how it calculated it. Grok said 0.04" then said triple that to avoid any problems with the various ways to interpret support positions. This is really quite a bit thinner than I expected. I had planned on 1/8" thick for CFC.

Switching to Aluminum Has Some Advantages

I had planned to cut a 6" disc from CFC.  Aluminum disc's 6" diameter are readily available. 

FreeCAD Tutor

Grok has been helping me figure out how to replace CFC with aluminum tube with minimal weight increase. It appears that .5" OD .035" wall is slightly stiffer than the CFC tube that I now use for the axes. This lets me reuse my existing polar and declination housings, bearings, and drive gears.

I have been attempting to learn to use FreeCAD and no tutorial seems to get me over the first step of converting a two dimensional drawing into a 3D object.  I know at least one of you has admitted FreeCAD experience. I would be quite happy to pay someone to use Remote Desktop Connection and help me past this obstacle.

UPDATE: Just realized that I do not need to replace existing housing and axes  They are already cut 

Bad Bunny's Performance

 It was widely claimed that he was going to wear a dress.  I asked Grok:

The idea that Bad Bunny was going to wear a dress during his Super Bowl halftime show (at Super Bowl LX on February 8, 2026) originated as a rumor circulating online in late January 2026, shortly after his selection as the headliner was confirmed.

Reports from outlets like Radar Online (cited in various articles) claimed anonymous sources close to his team—including a stylist and a "pal"—said he planned to wear a dress as a bold statement honoring queer/LGBTQ+ icons from Puerto Rico or drag culture, with quotes like "He is 100 percent going to wear a dress. A political thunderbolt disguised as couture" and "The dress is already being sewn." This fueled speculation and backlash, particularly among conservative circles on social media, where it sparked boycott calls and tied into broader culture-war complaints about the performance.

The rumor gained traction through viral posts on platforms like X (formerly Twitter), including amplified claims that Bad Bunny himself said things like "I'm wearing the dress, if that bothers you… don’t watch." Some posts shared fabricated or satirical images (e.g., AI-generated ones from accounts like Qbanguy on Facebook showing him in a dress in provocative scenarios, later debunked by Snopes)....

The rumor appears to have stemmed from Bad Bunny's well-documented history of gender-fluid fashion (e.g., wearing skirts, dresses, or non-traditional outfits in videos, red carpets, and performances), combined with speculation about a provocative halftime statement amid his cultural significance as the first primarily Spanish-language headliner. It spread rapidly in politically polarized online spaces but was never confirmed by Bad Bunny or his team.

That this reported rumor was amplified by conservatives is no surprise. (I mean what would you expect the Colin Kaepernick league to do except offend their audience?) But where did Radar Online get this rumor? Many possible explanations:

 1. Someone with Bad Bunny floated this as a way to get publicity. (There is no such thing as bad publicity; people are talking about you.) Someone misunderstand an overheard conversation and filled it in based on previous clothing choices. "How will you be dressed?"

2. Someone just made it up. Reporters do that, especially when chasing the Almighty Clicks.

This is Becoming a Pattern

The correlation of mental illness and mass murder goes back centuries. 2/11/26 Sunday Guardian reports the recent school massacre murder was by someone born male but dressing as female.  (The article has a picture reminding you that men pretending to be women are profoundly ineffective.)

It has been clear for some time that while the Professional Caring Classes deny it, these people are mentally ill. Amplifying this are the legacy media and antisocial media. Transgender are now a disproportionate part of mass murderers.  Encouraging confused people to take hormones for the opposite sex seems like a recipe for confused or overwrought emotions. 

From Crime Prevention Research Center, "Updated Detailed Information on Mass Public Shootings from 1998 to 2025":

57.5% of the US population was non-Hispanic white in 2025, with 1.06% being Middle Eastern and North African (MENA), so about 56.4% are non-Middle Eastern whites. With 55.0% of the murderers and victims being non-Middle Eastern whites, whites are slightly below their share of those involved in these attacks. 

With all the discussions about the racial motives of shooters, blacks are underrepresented as a share of the victims. Blacks comprise 17.4% of the murderers but only 9.9% of the victims. That 9.9% is less than their 13.7% of the general population. 

Hispanics are underrepresented as a share of mass murderers. 11.0% of these mass murderers are Hispanic compared to Hispanics, making up 20.0% of the general population. But their 17.1% share of the victims is close to Hispanics’ share of the general population.

Compared to Middle Easterners at 1.06% of the general population, they are overrepresented as a share of mass murderers (6.4%) and slightly underrepresented in terms of victims (0.9%).

Asians make up 6.7% of the population, but they are overrepresented in both mass murderers (7.3%) and even more overrepresented as victims (9.5%). Interestingly, 50.6% of the Asians murdered in these attacks were murdered by other Asians.

Trans individuals are well over-represented in terms of attacks. There are three estimates of the percentage of adults who are trans (CDC’s Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) finds 0.5% between 2017 to 2020, Gallup shows 0.7% in 2021, and the Census puts it at 1% in 2023). These numbers are clearly increasing over time, so an average for 2018 to 2023 years would probably overestimate the rate, but the average is 0.73%. Trans share of mass public shootings over the 2018 to 2025 period is 6.2 times their share of the population. The Nashville Catholic School shooter in 2023 and the Club Q murderer who identified as nonbinary and used the pronouns they and them in 2022 were transgender individuals.

Over the period from 1998 to 2025, 50% of mass murderers have seen mental health care professionals before their attacks.

Insomnia

From Berlin Diary, January 9. 1940 quoting an officer of the American Embassy in Moscow concerning the invasion of Finland:

"Harry says everyone in Moscow, from Stslin down, thought the Red Arny would be in Helsinki a week after the attack started "

Putin's fantasy of s high-speed special military operation is not the first Russian delusion. 

Good News! Pakistani Rape Gangs Do Not Discriminate

2/6/26 Sun has a sickening account of a Pakistani raoe gang where the victim was daughter, granddaughter, and sister of the rapists starting at 6. (All were just sentenced.) Mom got quite upset when she blew the whistle at school.  I am not going to quote anything.  It is too disgusting. 

Removing CFC Dust From the Air

My wife is not happy at the CFC dust that milling and turning CFC puts into the air. (I wear a respirator.)  This stuff goes everywhere, leaving a fine coat on everything.  She wants me to stop machining it for that reason.  If I had a completely separate shop instead of the garage, this would less of an issue.  (Next house will either have a separate building or i will have one built.)

I suspect that someone sort of ionic air filter would pull this stuff out of the air and either leave on an anode or drop it in a neat little pile.  Shops that work will this stuff must have a fix.

UPDATE: I asked Grok. It suggested the Jostart KL306 which uses carbon fiber tips to produce ions to clump carbon fiber dust together immediately around the tool. These came in a 3 pack. I will try one at the mill to see if it works well.  If it does, one for the lathe, drill press, and sander.

UPDATE: My wife read the hazard description for CFC and it is now permanently banned.  I will sell the remaining pieces on eBay.

I Have Not Rolled the 5" Refractor Out in Some Time

It has the advantage that you do not a ladder to get to the eyepiece and it is a spectacular apochromat. But once I was outside, I discovered the focuser would not move.  Not even a little.

Cold weather froze grease? Cold tightened a close tolerance too much? Were the screws that hold the rear plate to the focuser axle too tight?

No, simpler than that but only after I brought in back inside, removed it from the mount and started disassembly. Thus is a rock and pinion focuser and the rack along the tube had gone beyond the pinion.  I needed to gently pull the focuser tube out far enough for rack and pinion to mate.  I think i will epoxy a piece of plastic at the last slot in the rack that will prevent him from going too far in again.

Turning Workpieces That Are Too Short for Chuck

I am about to make handles for turning the slow motion handles. I made a couple of these a while back but they were not attractive being sort of a Greek cross made from 1/2" CFC.

My plan was to cut two 1" circles with a .25" hole in the center where the D-shaft. While clearing around the mill, I found a 1" (actually. 951") diameter CFC piece that fell out when cutting a 1.25" hole. Perhaps, I could reuse this piece? 

So I mounted it in the lathe and drilled a .25" hole through the center. 

But there was some crud on one end that needed turning off.  But the jaws were not deep enough to hold a 1/2" thick workpiece with the end exposed.  So I dug through my screws and scraps and made this up.

The white acetal locks in the jaws.  A 1/4-20 screw passed through it, locked by a nut, and then the workpiece, locked in place by another nut. Now the workpiece was entirely outside the jaws where I could turn the exterior.

Bog Iron: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Skill?

 I actually think existing scrap steel supplies will be adequate but it is always good to know how to make your own iron.

"Trump Must Have Known About Epstein"

This has become the preferred narrative for people who can't find evidence that Trump was involved. And private citizen Donald Trump was supposed to do what? Go make a citizen's arrest? 2/9/26 Miami Herald:

President Donald Trump has repeatedly maintained that he had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes. But in July 2006, just as Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal sex charge became public, Trump called then-Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter to tell him that Epstein’s activities with teenaged girls were well known in both New York and Palm Beach.

“Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” Trump told Reiter, according to a 2019 FBI interview with Reiter contained in the Justice Department’s Epstein case files. The interview, conducted in October 2019 and not previously reported, has shed new light on Trump’s involvement in the early stages of the 2006 Jeffrey Epstein investigation in Palm Beach, Florida. It also raises questions about how much Trump knew about Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes. Reiter told FBI agents that Trump revealed that Epstein’s associate, Maxwell, was Epstein’s “operative,” and that Trump said “she is evil and to focus on her,” according to the report. Trump told Reiter that “he was around Epstein once when teenagers were present and Trump ‘got the hell out of there,’” the report said. Trump also told Reiter that he threw Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club.

If This Was Not Reported by Local TV News With Video Showing This Stupidity, I Would Assume a Racist Used AI to Make This

 2/9/26 WDRB:

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Jefferson County judge has sentenced a convicted felon to 30 years in prison, declining to follow a jury’s recommendation of 65 years in a case involving robbery, kidnapping, sodomy and sexual abuse.

Christopher Thompson, 24, was sentenced on Feb. 2 after a December conviction tied to a 2023 attack in which prosecutors said he abducted a woman, robbed her and sodomized her twice.

Court documents say Thompson kidnapped the woman in her own vehicle and forced her to perform oral sex on him in a school parking lot. Then, he drove her to an ATM, robbed the woman, drove back to the school lot and sodomized her at gunpoint again.

Thompson's sentencing hearing was marked by repeated disruptions, profanity and direct insults toward Judge Tracy Davis.

“Before we even get appearances, Mr. Thompson, I’m going to need you to be respectful,” Davis said.

“I ain’t doing nothing. Eat my d**k,” Thompson responded.

Moments later, the exchange escalated.

“It’s fine. Okay? It’s fine,” Davis said.

“If I could spit on you, I would,” Thompson replied.

“At the end of the day, I’m the one with the pen,” Davis said.

“I don’t care,” Thompson said.

Despite the continued outbursts, the court proceeded with sentencing. Prosecutors urged Davis to impose the jury’s recommended 65-year sentence.

“I don’t have sympathy for nobody. I don’t have sympathy for you, the victim, the victim’s family, I don’t care. Boo hoo,” Thompson said during the hearing.

Davis ultimately imposed a 30-year sentence, citing Thompson’s age and the possibility of rehabilitation — even as Thompson continued interrupting.

“I don’t care. I don’t care,” Thompson said.

“Unfortunately he fell through the cracks and ended up in this court as an 18 or 19-year-old,” Davis said. “This court does not believe Mr. Thompson, if given the resources that he can get while incarcerated, is beyond being rehabilitated.”

One of the longstanding hopes of having women on juries and the bench was treating rape as a serious crime. The judge's comments make it clear that she sees Thompson as a victim because he is black. Say no to racism.

Blackening Aluminum

That lens cell needs to have no reflections.  Flat black paint is one solution but I wanted to not change the dimensions.  Hence using blackening compounds that promise they are non-dimensional.  In this case, Birchwood-Casey Aluminum Black. This is really for fixing scratches on your AR15  but dunking the cell in it and leaving it there for an hour seemed to be adequate. 

The label warns that it is corrosive.   I did not feel any effects but watching the aluminum bubble in it tells me that there is some acidic reaction under way.

The next step is going to a friend with a retaining ring wrench to put the ring at the back of the lens.

Another Advantage of Mill Collet Over Endmill Holder

An endmill holder drops the end of the mill an inch below the quill compared to a collet that slides inside the quill.  I am almost never short of space in Z but it is still nice.

The Goal of the Welfare State Seems to Have Been Misplaced

 2/7/26 New York Post:

In October, federal agents arrested Cody Holmes, the 31-year-old former CFO of Shangri-La Industries, a downtown Los Angeles-based developer who was supposed to be providing housing for homeless people in Southern California. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California, a Trump appointee, charged him with mail fraud.

Holmes, who pleaded not guilty, is accused of embezzling more than $2 million in taxpayer funds slated for homeless housing construction to host extravagant parties; a $46,000-per-month Beverly Hills mansion; private jet travel; leases of exotic cars; high-end handbags totaling $128,000; a $35,000 diamond watch; and 20 VIP passes for the 2023 Coachella Music and Arts Festival.

Meanwhile, Shangri-La Industries executives showered Newsom and Los Angeles County Democrats with political donations as they were applying for some $100 million in state contracts that the CFO later allegedly looted to fund his and his ex-girlfriend’s lavish lifestyle.

Even after federal prosecutors exposed the massive fraud, Newsom and L.A. Democrats haven’t severed ties with the embattled developer and have kept political donations from the firm’s executives. Newsom has also allowed the construction firm to continue to tout his endorsement on its social media.

I support the government providing some level of assistance for those in need of basic shelter, food, medical care, and clothing.  This need not be overly generous; we can meet basic needs without making the system dangerously attractive for those too lazy to work. Advocates of the welfare state should be concerned about widespread fraud of the system so that people too lazy to get real jobs abuse the system in this way. Every penny that ends up leasing a Ferrari is a lot of food and shelter that should be going to the needy, not the greedy.

Remember When Bodycams Needed to be Mandatory for Police?

 2/7/26 Politico:

A push to put body cameras on all ICE agents has Democrats running headlong into a new problem: fear that the technology will provide another avenue for mass surveillance of protesters.

Congressional Democratic leaders have made universal use of body cameras one of their prime demands for imposing accountability on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, especially after federal agents fatally shot two American citizens in Minneapolis. But after an outcry from privacy advocates that surveillance tools will allow ICE agents to identify and track protesters, Democrats are also calling for restrictions on how the body cameras can be used.

Lawmakers and legal observers have accused ICE of leveraging a variety of cameras to surveil protesters, feeding pictures into license plate readers and facial recognition systems. Democrats now worry that the body cameras they’re demanding could be used for similar purposes.

It could not be because bodycams have repeatedly showed police responding appropriately to really messed up people, could it? 

This Guy Thinks He is So Clever

 A New York University bioethicist at the World Economic Forum argues for infecting people with a disease to make them give up red meat (to save Mother Earth from a fever) because they will get sick from eating it. Do you wonder why may Americans throw themselves into the camp that regards academia as an evil to be barely tolerated? This guy is not typical, but he is not alone.

Always Look At Your Collection of Tools First

I had some Sherline collets that hold a 1/8" shank endmill but I could not figure the drawbar that pulls it up into the mill.  So I thought I needed the 8mm WW collet drawbar and adapter. It arrived and was clearly the wrong part, intended to grab collets with external threads.

So i dug through my collection of drawbars for which I have never figured out a purpose and found one that pulls the collet into position and locks it down good and tight. Collets are also supposed to provide better concentricity than end mill holders. I am sure far better than the drill chuck i was using for the 3/16" endmill.  I have collets for 1/8", 3/16", and 1/4" shanks. 

Is Traditional Hollywood Dead?

 A couple examples of AI-created videos:

I was never able to raise the money to make my script The Laws of Men into a movie:

I wonder if I might try to do this with AI.

This Is Not Fox Tossing or Model-T Bullfighting

 Like this hysterical book documents.  Nor is it the depravity of masked fox-tossing:

At some of the German Courts, fox-tossing remained long in favour; Landgravine Emelie of Hesse was a great patroness, but it was left to Duke Louis of Brunswick to add a further element of grotesque absurdity to this pastime by inventing masked fox tossing. Not only did the tossers dress themselves up in bizarre costumes as Dianas, nymphs, hobgoblins, centaurs and other creatures of mythology, but these master-buffoons did the same thing to the animals they tossed. By means of tinsel, gaudy bits of cloth and wire, the wretched foxes and hares-the latter being the favourites for this purpose-were dressed up either in the most fantastic manner they could invent or to represent unpopular personages or political foes in the most life-like manner that could be contrived.

 

An Entertaining and Unexpected Parallel

From a student essay:

English colonial expeditions were often funded through early forms of crowd funding

Yes, in a sense, a corporation is a type of crowdfunding. 

The Ad is a Year Old, But Still Troubling

UK National Health Service:

Close Relationship Marriage Nurse / Midwife NICU - 2 yrs...

The CRM neonatal nurse/midwife will provide comprehensive care and support to families who have recently had a baby and are close relatives (e.g., cousins, uncles, aunts, or other closely related family members). They will work with a multi-disciplinary healthcare team to ensure the well-being of neonates, particularly in the context of genetic risks and health challenges that may arise from consanguinity. The role includes monitoring, assessing, and advocating for the health and developmental needs of newborns, as well as offering guidance to families on genetic and medical considerations.

Rife for First Amendment Challenge

 California v. Gatalog (Sup.Ct.Cal. 2026):

The People bring this action against Gatalog Foundation Inc., CTRLPew LLC, Alexander Holladay, Matthew Larosiere, and John Elik (a/k/a “Ivan The Troll”) for unlawfully distributing computer code for 3D printing firearms and prohibited firearm accessories and for promoting and facilitating the unlawful manufacture of 3D printed firearms and firearm accessories in violation of Civil Code sections 3273.61 and 3273.625 and the Unfair Competition Law (Bus. and Prof. Code § 17200 et seq.). 

I had no idea that distributing computer code was unlawful.

Dow 50K

The last several days have been minor disappointments. Today the Dow 30 broke 50,000. If you have an IRA or 401k (and I hope you do) you can see results right now.

If True, Good News

 Back during the Depression, Congress decided to protect poor people from investing in small companies by setting a minimum level of wealth you had to have to invest: one million dollars (excluding value of your home). Really, the goal was to make sure big opportunities were limited to those already wealthy. But of course, these being Democrats, they had to pretend they were helping the poor.

The only significant exception was Incentive Stock Option plans that were how those of us who worked for startups were allowed to enjoy.

2/6/26 Yahoo Finance:

In a recent appearance on The Iced Coffee Hour podcast, Robbins pointed to a recently passed House bill that he says could open the door to investing strategies once reserved for the country’s “very wealthy.”

“Did you see what they passed in Congress two days ago? It’s really important,” Robbins said (1), referring to the Incentivizing New Ventures and Economic Strength Through Capital Formation (INVEST) Act, which passed the House of Representatives in December 2025 (2).

One of the most consequential changes, Robbins argued, involves who is allowed to invest in private markets.

“It used to have a minimum net worth you have to have, or a minimum income,” he said (1). “They just changed the rules … all you have to do is take a test.”

Under current securities laws, access to many private investments is limited to accredited investors — a designation that generally requires a net worth of at least $1 million (excluding primary residence) or annual income above $200,000 for individuals, or $300,000 for couples (3).

Those thresholds have historically restricted participation in private equity, venture capital and other alternative investments to institutions and high-net-worth households.

The INVEST Act includes a provision titled “Equal opportunity for all investors,” which aims to update that framework.

Instead of qualifying solely through wealth or income, the bill would allow investors to become accredited by passing an exam approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission — potentially expanding access to millions of Americans.

I am not thrilled about the test requirement, but it at least no longer actively discriminates against little people. Standard Oil made some pretty ordinary employees very rich. 

Here is the Congressional elevator pitch for the law.