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.

Lens Cell

 This is the last component. It holds the lens in a cell that can be adjusted for tiny angles by set screws in the tube impinging on the outside of the cell.

The OD is 59mm to fit in a 59.28mm PVC tube. That lip near the bottom is 50.08mm ID (the original tube ID). The bored section above is 52mm ID.  This is just large enough for the 51.90mm OD lens to slide with slight encouragement (not a hammer) down to the lip. I will put a rubber O-ring at the lip to cushion the lens, then another O-ring on top of the lens, then a 52mm retaining ring to keep it in position.

Lessons Learned

I cut a 1.30" section off the tube.  Then I squared it and trimmed it to .875" long.  Then I turned the exterior to 60mm OD where I discovered that the workpiece was not exactly centered in the 3-jaw chuck.  Why? Aren't 3-jaw chucks self-centering? I had removed the jaws to reverse them. While reversing the jaws, I did not reinstall them correctly, so they were not centering the workpiece on the axis of rotation. The exterior trim had the jaws holding the interior of the tube and the 2.5" 3-jaw chuck cannot enlarge enough to firmly hold a 60mm tube. 

Fortunately, one of the useful aspects of a lathe is minor discrepancies like this are not terminal. Once properly centered, turning the tube to 60mm OD meant that I could now hold the tube on the outside and turn the interior to a properly centered bore.

Once turned, I discovered the lens cell would not quire go into the PVC tube which was actually 59.28mm. So back to the lathe to turn off another mm. (I need a little slop so that the set screws in the PVC tube can move the lens cell.)

Cutting the tailpiece tube adapter from a 1" thick piece of Delrin was a win. I am not sure how much of the inability of the extension tube to stay square was that the adapter made of CFC was 1/2" thick and how much was that I bored the entry hole slightly too large, but with the hole 0.05" larger than the extension tube, it is now a snug fit that can be pulled or pushed with just a little effort before locking down with an 8-32 thumbscrew.  (The extension tube is really just a coarse focus with a helical focuser in the end to provide fine focus, held by an 8-32 thumbscrew, so it does not need to move effortlessly.)

I had been worried that I might need to bore a compression ring channel on the inside of the tailpiece tube adapter. Telescope eyepiece holders can go cheap and use just a thumbscrew to hold the eyepiece in place. A little fancier model has a brass compression ring sitting in a channel inside the tube.

The thumbscrew squeezes down on the ring, applying pressure around the eyepiece barrel, thus avoiding marring the eyepiece barrel. These are boogers to do. You need to cut typically a 1/2" wide, .01" deep channel on the inside of the tube to accept the brass. I have done this once at special request for ScopeRollers for an Astro-Physics mount where the finish on the legs is so beautiful you do not want to scratch them. This required making a reverse rake boring bar.

The helical focuser is at lower left. Yes, the PVC tube needs to be painted bright glossy white again.

Where Worship of Anti-Racism Takes You

Long, profoundly sad, well-sourced 2/4/26 Substack article about how the terror of being called prejudiced against Muslims took Britain to a place that makes Epstein into small potatoes. It should be read in full. Just a couple of excerpts to catch the flavor:

 In September 2012, The Times published an extensive overview of the phenomenon.3 The paper reported that for more than a decade, organised groups of men had been able to groom, exploit, and traffic girls across multiple towns and cities in Britain, often operating with minimal interference from authorities....

Yet, event The Times underestimated the scale of this. By early 2015, senior police figures were publicly acknowledging the scale of the crisis. One officer spoke of “tens of thousands” of current victims of grooming gangs. A Member of Parliament, representing a constituency widely associated with the problem, went further, suggesting that the total number of victims nationwide, past and present, could reach as high as one million.4

These figures are almost impossible to comprehend. They refer to school-aged girls systematically identified, isolated, and exploited over many years. And yet, despite the magnitude of the harm, perpetrators were able to operate with remarkable impunity.....

Across policing, social services, local government, and related professions, many officials felt unable to speak frankly about the defining characteristics of the problem. Not because those characteristics were unclear, but because acknowledging them carried perceived risks, to careers, professional standing, and social legitimacy. The boundaries of what could be said narrowed to the point where silence became the safer option.

This produced a self-reinforcing cycle. As fewer people were willing to speak openly, institutional inaction deepened, and the cost of dissent appeared ever higher to colleagues and peers.

In some instances, professionals were directly cautioned against drawing attention to ethnic or cultural patterns. In most, it appears such warnings were unnecessary. The fear of being accused of racism ensured that, for decades, there was little formal recognition of the grooming-gang phenomenon as a distinct and systemic form of abuse.

That the victims were overwhelmingly young white schoolgirls, while the perpetrators largely muslims with darker skin, proved decisive, not in prompting action, but in paralysing it. This dynamic allowed abuse networks to operate with remarkable freedom, even as evidence accumulated.

So again, to ask the central question: how could an abuse network of this scale persist for decades without decisive intervention?

The answer is stark in its simplicity. It was not fear of the crime that silenced authorities, but fear of a word: racist....

To understand the scale and nature of the grooming gang scandal, one must first confront the cultural context from which the perpetrators emerged. The statistical overrepresentation of men from Pakistani and other South Asian heritages in these specific group-based exploitation networks has been documented by multiple inquiries and judicial remarks.6 The abuse is rooted in a specific worldview imported from rural, patriarchal societies where the status of women is determined by rigid codes of honour (sharaf) and where non-Muslim or “out-group” women are viewed through a lens of religious and racial contempt.7

Central to this incompatibility is the existence of a dual morality within the perpetrator networks. While the women within their own communities are often cloistered and protected to maintain family “honour,” Western women, particularly those who are liberated or vulnerable are viewed as “immodest” and therefore “fair game” for sexual predation.8 This perception is reinforced by the use of dehumanising language, such as the term “kuffar” (non-believer) or “khal” (black/outsider), which serves to strip the victims of their humanity and justify their exploitation.9...

Perpetrators in Rochdale were explicitly told by Judge Gerald Clifton that their treatment of victims was influenced by the fact that the girls were “not of your community or religion”.10 This judicial acknowledgment confirms that the selection of victims was not random but was driven by an “us versus them” mentality that prioritised tribal and religious identity over the laws of the host nation. The victims were not only objects of sexual desire but symbols of a “conquered” or “inferior” culture to be dominated.11

The frequent use of racial slurs such as “white trash,” “white slag,” and “white meat” indicates a racialised hierarchy in which the victims were viewed as having no inherent value.12 In Keighley, a victim reported that when she attempted to stop working as a drugs courier for her abuser, she was called a “little white slag” and a “little white bastard” while being raped.13 These terms are ideological markers that define the victim’s place in the perpetrator’s worldview, a place of total subservience and worthlessness.

It is an article of faith in some circles that "outsiders" are only a small part of this problem. The vast numbers in Britain argue otherwise.  Hat tip to Small Dead Animals.

Wow! That Was Fast!

 That $2 million damages must have speeded up review of the "science." 2/5/26 Advocate:

The American Medical Association, which has long supported gender-affirming care for transgender youth, has now endorsed some restrictions.

The AMA recommended Wednesday that any gender-affirming surgeries be delayed until adulthood, The New York Times reports. While genital surgery is almost never performed on minors, some teens undergo top surgery or facial modifications. Gender-affirming care for youth more commonly includes puberty blockers, hormone therapy, social transition, and counseling.

The AMA’s policy shift comes a day after the American Society of Plastic Surgeons recommended that surgeons delay breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery until a patient is at least 19 years old.

Gender-affirming care for minors has been under attack from conservative politicians for several years. Twenty-seven states ban all or some such care for minors, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld Tennessee’s law restricting the treatment. A year ago, Donald Trump signed an executive order banning federal funding for any institution that provides the treatment to people under 19. He has also ordered the National Institutes of Health to study transition regret.

How long before the psychological, counselling, and social worker associations realize that they threw away their credibility supporting sexual mutilation to be among the "cool kids."

Gold and Silver

1/30/26 Investing.com:

Investing.com -- Gold’s powerful rally across precious and industrial metals is increasingly showing signs of speculative excess, according to Peter Berezin, chief global strategist and director of research at BCA Research, who warned that prices may have moved “too far, too fast.”

In a new note to investors, Berezin outlined a long-term scenario where gold could theoretically lose almost all of its value.

Any commodity with irrational components to its demand either pretty or overhyped is easily manipulated  

Trump’s Upset About the Fed

2/3/26 TheFP:

Joseph Wang left his job at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he came across an odd new research paper from his former employer. Wang had been a senior trader on the Open Market Trading Desk, carrying out the Fed’s monetary policy. In his five years there, the usual Fed research covered topics like inflation, labor markets, and bank capital. This paper, though, was titled “800,000 Years of Climate Risk.”

“I thought that was very strange,” Wang recalled. “The Fed writing about CO2 concentrations."

The article lists other areas where the Fed seems to have branched from economics to leftist activism. Perhaps a bit more adult supervision is in order. 

I Went Full Clanker on Drilling Pilot and Final Holes

I had to drill pilot holes with a center drill as well as a full hole with a twist drill so I wrote a program for all three holes.

A Nice Surprise: US-Made Thumbscrews

 I needed stainless steel 8-32 x 1" thumbscrews. Amazon had them, and American-made.

#8-32 x 1 Thumb Screw Stainless Steel - Black Knurled Round Plastic Knob - Standard/Coarse Thread Thumbscrew - Length: 1.000" - Proudly Built in USA - Package of (4)

Reading William Shirer's Berlin Diary

This is mostly his daily diary from 1934-1941 as he watched firsthand (sometimes as Hitler walked past him in restaurants) the Gleichschaltung in Germany and then the cowardly turning over of Sudetenland Czechoslovakia to Germany. 

I have read much about this over the years. Watching the Biden Administration was uncomfortably similar, although the resistance of some news organizations to the effort is a counterpoint. To be fair, the National Socialist suppression of alternative points of view was imposed with force, in a way that was unneeded with the fascist leanings of most American news organizations. 

One other very important difference was the courage of Elon Musk spending an incomprehensible amount of money to buy Twitter and open it up to alternative points of view. If there had been any similar courage and alternative media in 1933 Germany, think of the lives not lost, the bright and creative outputs not going up chimneys in German extermination camps. Think of Eastern Europe not suffering under decades of Soviet tyranny. 

While I think it important not to suffer from the mindless optimism of Francis Fuyukama's "The End of History," imagine the resources wasted during World War Ii and the Cold War spent on human development.   

Of course, without those wars, we would never have landed on the Moon, put satellites in orbit, invented Teflon, and arguably the U.S. Civil Rights Movement might have been delayed decades. World War 2 also hastened the end of European imperialism. I confess whatever the justice of the resulting devolution of power, it is not clear that this was a win for the hundreds of millions who suffered and still suffer under corrupt and brutal thugs in the Third World.

Shirer's diary has a depressing immediacy as he describes day-to-day at the front events. If you want to write historical fiction for this time, here is where you go for the daily living that will add versimiltude to your book. Where did correspondents eat dinner, what did they do in their office hours, how did Getapo intimidate citizens of neutral nations?

There are events that even having read Shirer's magisterial Rise and Fall of the Third Reich were new to me.  They seem small in the larger scheme of this disaster.  There was an American Jew who was arrested entering Germany with a suitcase of bombs and guns and was beheaded for it. His German lawyer argued unsuccessfully that he may not have known what he had been asked to take to Germany. I confess I would find that implausible. Just an event that was, to my surprise,unknown to me.

The Strongest Argument Against Billionaires

 2/3/26 New York Post:

Anti-ICE protests in Minnesota may appear to be “grassroots” efforts organized by concerned citizens, but they’re really funded with megadonor money — some coming from China.

A so-called “ICE Out” march drew an estimated 15,000 left-wing political activists to a frozen, snow-covered Minneapolis on Friday, with attendees chanting “ICE out now” and demanding an end to federal immigration enforcement in the city.

Although framed as a spontaneous uprising of concerned, everyday people, the demonstration — like countless that have regularly metastasized during President Trump’s terms — featured a familiar cast of politically obsessed activists and terminally online characters.

They organize on radical message boards and encrypted texting apps, but are backed by funds created by radical leftist billionaires.

“My team’s best judgement is that it’s the Neville Singham network that is most active [in Minnesota], partly because that’s the most crazy network. But they aren’t alone,” Scott Walter, president of Capital Research and an expert on dark money outfits, told The Post.

Walter was referring to the People’s Forum and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, both funded by China-based former software exec Singham.

Both groups promoted the “ICE Out” protests — which were organized by another group, called 50501 — through social media, and Walter said their members were in attendance, but he noted they have recently been getting their members to blend in more with the crowds.

“What’s new is, we are seeing truly extreme Communist splinter groups showing up alongside an American Federation for Teachers union or the Ford Foundation.

“That’s a disturbing trend for us who follow these things. Normally, they wouldn’t have been cheek by jowl publicly with those people,” Walter said. 

“That kind of self-policing on the left seems to be disappearing.”

Singham, who did not respond to a request for comment, has become a major funder of left-wing activist networks, including protests in Minnesota and other cities, all coordinated from his base in Shanghai.

This is the downside of capitalism.  It creates pockets of guilt-dominated wealth intent on making sure no one else gets that rich. 

Watching My Grandson Playing Basketball i Suddenly Thought...

How interesting it would be if played from the backs od Shetland Ponies or chariots (bigger court of course) 

It Looks So Advanced!

I mentioned that the tailpiece adapter did not have an adequately square hold on the extension tube and that I thought it might be partly because the adapter was only 1/2" thick preventing a sufficient imposed parallel between walls and tube.  (I might also have bored the interior hole slightly too large.) So a 1" thick block of Delrin arrived today and I have the mill hard at work.  I will try for a near-interference fit on the tube.

I bored the adapter hole  004" larger than the extension tube OD.  This was a near-interference fit, so i took a file to the interior of the hole. Now it is .005" larger and the extension tube presses or pulls with some slight friction.  Next step is 6-32 tapped holes for mounting it to the PVC tube and an 8-32 tspped hole for the thumbscrew to hold the extension tube 

Weldon Flat

This is the formal name for the flat on an endmill shank.  I have whined in the past thst 1/8" carbide endmills seem to not come with Weldon flats.  Grinding one on produces a less than perfect flat.  Today's attempt created an endmill that when tightened down was not concentric so not worth using.

I ended up using a 3/16" carbide endmill instead.  Even in a drill chuck instead of an endmill holder concentricity was not obviously defective. Larger diameter means I am wasting more material but it does fall out of its holder.   On the other hand, it is stronger and seems at little risk of breaking even at a higher feed rate.

So I asked ChatGPT about this problem.  Apparently, Weldon flats on 1/8" endmills are rare, and non-existent for carbide.  It may make more sense to buy a 1/8" HSS endmill and just accept that it will wear out quickly on CFC.

The Supply of Racism is So Limited That it Requires Manufacturing

2/2/26 Free Beacon recounts the story of a widely reported racist incident from 2021 that a racially mixed jury has concluded never happened. 

"The ruling followed a civil trial in October 2025, where the jury determined that Cole and Smith cooked up the scheme to raise their public profiles during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and to rake in money through GoFundMe."

Is there racism against Blacks in America? Yes. But the constant need to make up such incidents suggests it is in short supply compared to what some people want.  

Is there racism against Whites and Asians? Yes, and universities have argued in favor of it before the Supreme Court. I no longer pay any more attention to cries of racist than "fascist," a word so widely and wrongly applied as to mean "not prepared to help me loot others."

Precious Metal Vampires

Gold and silver prices have been on an apparently unstoppable rise the last few weeks.  Gold and silver vampires can never stop praising how these metals are unstoppable and a great investment.   2/2/26 DW (Die Welle, a big German news entity) explains why the prices are now coming back to reality.

Precious metals are at best a hedge against inflation not an investment.  They return nothing while held, only when sold.  If you bought an ounces last Thursday, it can now be sold for $1000 less.

Precious metal mining companies can be an investment because they invest capital in mines that extract precious metals from the ground.

The companies insisting that gold is the only safe investment make no sense.  If gold is only going up, why would you sell any? Even if you need some cash to buy another yacht, you would sell enough for that instead of making it a regular business.  I am sure they buy gold in the valleys and sell at the peaks.  Your chance of knowing when those are as an average buyer are tiny.

If you think the dollar and stock market might collapse in the near future having some gold or silver in your safe makes sense. (Ammunition, food and guns make even more sense. They have immediate utility.  Precious metals are onky money. They wil not feed or protect you.) Long-term only the vampires win.

If you want a low-risk investment, municipal bonds of your state likely make more sense. A couple days ago, there were Idaho munis for sale with yields to maturity of 5.5%.  That interest is exempt from both federal and state income tax.

If You Know the Story Behind How the Band Three Dog Night Came Up With That Name

Why AI May Be Useful for Skilled Craftsmen

My wife's 2022 Hyundai Tucson Limited has exhibited signs of demon possession for some time.  If we both have our key fobs, behavior is different than if only one of us does.  The dealer has no idea what the problem is, probably only one fob is there at a time.

So I asked ChatGPT to explain why if we both have our key fobs, pressing the external handle lock button does not work.  It gave a very clear explanation. The car has no idea if one fob is in the car or not so it does not lock.

It answered a couple of other??? questions as well.  If I do not carry the fob into the car with my wife for a couple of days her fob starts working more reliably. ChatGPT explained that if a fob does not move for 72 hours, it becomes secondary fob.

Maybe They Are That Stupid...

My wife has long believed that Gov. Newsom is not really getting elected (at least by the voters, as distinguished from the vote-counters).  2/1/26 New York Post:

A staggering 60% of California voters back the billionaire wealth tax proposal, even though they admit it will spark businesses to flee the state and kill jobs, a new poll found.

Even when presented with a “full battery of economic and political arguments” against the wealth tax, Californians still back it by 54%, according to the poll of likely voters by public affairs firm Nestpoint.

“California voters are signaling something very clearly,” John Thomas, a veteran Republican political strategist who co-founded Nestpoint, told The Post.

“They are far more concerned with cost of living and public services than with the financial well-being of billionaires or the warnings coming from political and economic elites.”

A firm 52% of likely voters admitted that the tax will push entrepreneurs and jobs out of the Golden State, but only 48% agree that there are concerns with long-term revenue from a wealth tax, while 42% had concerns about Silicon Valley getting damaged, the poll found.

I think the theory is that it won't kill their jobs.  They seem oblivious to the fact that the revenue collected from the billionaires will be small compared to revenue lost from hundreds of thousands of Californians not having paychecks from which taxes are withheld.  

No problem. We can adjust it to be a millionaire's tax. Then a hundred thousandaire's tax.  Then they will get hit themselves. Whoops!

Maybe, the purple-haired, septum-ringed crowd really do run California. 

Keeping the Sabbath With Disaster Movies

I am trying to keep the Sabbath by not doing business or working. I turned on the TV and looked at what Google TV suggested. Somehow, I ended up in a disaster movie category. Some were familiar such as Armageddon.  Many are familiar plot ideas. London is flooding. Mom must escape with her child. 

Way too many involve one maverick professor or grad student trying to save the world from a disaster that has a several hour timeline. 

A few that I started such as 2012: Ice Age start with such horribly overdone dialog and "sciencey-sounding" phrases that i had no hope for something that would entertain me without making me cringe. It really is not that hard to write a sci-fi script that is actually somewhat based on real science.  Pretty clearly, it is very easy to raise money to make several million dollars movies with horrible scripts.

Is AI Going to Give Us the Star Trek Universe?

Star Trek universe: no on seems to have perceivable pay checks ot need.

1/30/26 The Hill article claims AI is going to cause mass unemployment almost at once, requiring Universal Basic Income. The author claims he has always opposed UBI as a liberal pipe dream but that in the next several years most white collar jobs will cease to exist leading to mass unemployment because our society has no plan for reskilling the newly unemployed white collar workers. 

Color me skeptical for several reasons:

1. So far, I have seen AI doing some things tolerably well and many things at a clever but not brilliant assistant level. Grok seems to be reasonably competent at revising C code to produce mildly complex gCode. CoPilot and ChatGPT not so much. 

2. For historical research, I have not seen spectacular skills at searching primary sources that are open source and in one case, ChatGPT even directly claimed it could not search books.google.com but suggested how i might do that. 

3. In the medical and legal arenas, its hallucinations are well known. Failing to do the job is bad. Producing bad work is worse.

4. That article is focused on white collar workers. Yes, there are many white collar workers who are likely to end up redundant. Some of the examples he provides are arguably of questionable value right now:

"Then it moves into clerical roles, basic accounting, paralegal research, routine journalism, marketing copy, and compliance work."

Oh yes.  All jobs for which no one can be reskilled. And every one of them essential to a modern society.

What is left out in his white collar myopic worldview is the need for blue collar workers who will increasingly use AI tools for troubleshooting complex systems .