I Am Home

The surgery sites are finally registering pain. Not bad enough to get the Norco Rx filled and just a bit more than Tylenol can silence. The catheter is both more annoying and a sharper pain when in certain positions.  And a 250 ml of urine sloshing about in a bag on your ankle is annoying, but at least there are nighttime visits to the toilet. Although I would gladly trade that for this nuisance.  I should get priority seating with my urologist to find a solution to this inflamed prostrate gland.

A Shockingly Positive Japanese Perspective on Trump's Pearl Harbor Joke

Click over and read.

Musk Puts His Money Where His Mouth Is

3/21/26 Axios:

"Elon Musk said Saturday he'd be willing to pay the salaries of TSA agents during the Homeland Security shutdown, as President Trump suggested the possibility of using ICE agents to keep airports moving instead..  

"

• "Based on TSA's headcount, Musk paying officer salaries could run more than $40 million a week, a rounding error for the world's richest person."

Sure not a rounding error for TSA employees!

Not A Particularly Important Story, But I Still Got a Laugh

3/18/26 Yahoo News:

'The rise of the 'good-enough dinner': Why Gen Z is ditching the perfect meal prep for 'girl dinner' and 'boy kibble'...

"Even Harry Styles weighed in on these popular eating habits. During a recent interview with Brittany Broski’s Royal Court, he joked, “My sister always talks about the idea of girl dinner. Boy dinner, I've discovered, is just eating a rotisserie chicken over the sink.”

What a Drag It Is Getting Old

What i thought was constipation which causes what is known as urgency urination (you feel the need but nothing comes out) turned out to be a prostate gland that has blocked the urethra.  It is was miserable.  The Urgent Care got me in quickly and when I could not produce a urine sample they did a bladder scan and saw that there was no shortage of urine. They attempted to insert a catheter which was not as bad as I expected.  

The problem is benign prostrate hyperplasia not cancer  I am in ER now.

UPDATE: The ER fiest attempt at inserting a Foley catheter was both very painful and unsuccessful. For a second attempt with a smaller diameter, they used what sounded like "Gyrojet" that applied lidocaine and I think may have enlarged the path. The next try at the catheter was unpleasant but not desperately painful.  

Relief! My bladder is no longer screaming at me. The catheter is a little annoying at insertion point but not really painful.

Next, they ran me through a CT scan to look for bowel obstruction.  My daughter reminded me that some ago, I had a partial bowel obstruction which they fixed by medication. They are also looking for kidney stones (and I suspect bladder stones).  

I was supposed to leave Saturday for a cruise to Cabo San Lucas with my daughter, son-in-law, grandkids and son. That is not going to happen.  I have a urine bag attached to that catheter and the prospect of traveling with this stylish fashion accessory does not sound pleasant.  I am hoping my urologist will advance me in the queue for an appointment next week.

UPDATE 2: The ER doctor suggested antibiotics for the appendicitis which is about 50% successful in Europe. The surgeon made the case that because about 50% of the time you still need to remove it within two years, we should just remove it and nit have it reoccurring at what might be a less convenient time  it was done pretty quickly. Unfortunately, the inflammation it caused to the prostate gland did not diminish enough to remove the catheter so I an srill here this evening and I will need to have my urologist so a Roto-Rooter of the urethra through the prostrate gland next week. This will be a great nuisance  

The PA thinks the antibiotics probably have reduced inflammation enough to remove the catheter here and let me out.

Stories That Make My Day

 3/18/26 Breitbart:

On Tuesday, California agreed to a settlement with the Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, and other plaintiffs, and will pay over $1.3 million to cover the plaintiffs’ attorney fees.

The settlement arose from a lawsuit that was filed against California’s Marketing Firearms to Minors Law, which crossed into First Amendment territory by banning firearm advertisements.

Breitbart News quoted Ninth Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee’s September 2023 majority opinion against the law, where he wrote “…that [the Marketing Firearms to Minors Law] does not directly and materially advance California’s substantial interests in reducing gun violence and the unlawful use of firearms by minors. There was no evidence in the record that a minor in California has ever unlawfully bought a gun, let alone because of an ad.”

I am pretty sure Judge Lee meant ever unlawfully bought a gun throuigh licensed dealers. I have no doubt that many have done so from other gang members. This is a big win for my friend Don Kilmer who pursued this absurd case for a number of years. 

In a larger sense than just guns: the idea that advertising sells people stuff they do not already want is absurd. If advertising can create demand, explain the failures of the 1950s Edsel, the IBM PCJr,, and New Coke. At most advertising influences choice: do you want our over-sugared breakfast cereal? 

I am sorry for California taxpayers, but there are consequences to electing idiots.

7 Tons Incoming

We are supposed to be watching for these. 3/17/26 Channel 19 News:

"CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - A fireball lit up skies across Northeast Ohio Tuesday morning after a seven-ton asteroid entered the atmosphere and broke apart over Medina County, NASA confirmed.

"The space agency said the meteor was first detected at 8:57 a.m. off Lake Erie near Lorain. It traveled more than 34 miles through the atmosphere before breaking up, with some fragments falling to the ground."

Admittedly, 7 tons is pretty small but because KE=1/2mv**2 and anything hitting our atmosphere is moving at 25,000 mph, the energy is truly frighteningly stupendous. 

On the plus side, look for burned rocks in your back yard.  If they are magnetic, even better. These are valuable if authenticated. If you think you hit pay rock, call your nearest university geology department. They want to check it for residual radiation and they can tell you if you got lucky.

Finished Shirer's Berlin Diary

It is a truly astonishing slice of eyewitness history. Like all eyewitnesses, you have to remember that they see only one part of the scene. But what is recorded is still valuable to anyone writing a secondary work on the subject.

One surprise for me is his late 1940 discussion of the T4 program to murder everyone who was in some way not sufficiently advanced to be part of the master race: the developmentally delayed; congenital defects; the incurable. Shirer mentioned that he heard numbers of 100,000 thrown around and thought this was likely too high. History has shown it was too low.

What i found interesting is that families of the dead ran paid death notices that in subtle ways hinted that something was not quite believable about these deaths. There were lots of these death notices in newspapers until the government stopped allowing them.

Shirer also indicates that while most Germans were generally supportive of the war at the start, sentiment was beginning to change by mid-1940. A jok he heard was that a plane crash killed Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels. "Who was saved?" "The German People."

He also recounts the wooden bombs story that i am sure you have heard, but in a different direction. As Shirer was told by a Luftwaffe officer, the Germans had constructed decoy aircraft made of wood. British Intelligence had enough local agents to drop wooden bombs.

This is one of those great stories that I really doubt no matter which air force did it. Why burn fuel and risk planes and air crews to do this? It is still a great story.

The Guy Who Resigned From Trump Administration Over Iran War

 3/17/26 New York Times tells a story that suggests his decision is a bit more complex and sad than some have portrayed it:

In his resignation letter on Tuesday, Joe Kent, a top counterterrorism official, criticized the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. But he also mentioned his “beloved wife,” a Navy linguist who was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in January 2019.

Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent was 35.

Chief Kent was assigned to Cryptologic Warfare Activity 66, a Navy unit that supports the National Security Agency and military special operations forces. She was supporting the latter at the time of her death....

On Jan. 16, 2019, Chief Kent was meeting with a source at a restaurant in Manbij, Syria, when a suicide bomber killed her and three other Americans.

Chief Kent was posthumously promoted to senior chief.

“She should have been out of Syria because Trump gave the order to get those guys out of there,” Mr. Kent said on the “Shawn Ryan Show” podcast. “And then you have the administrative state dragging their heels and desperately trying to keep us in these conflicts.”

In his resignation letter, Mr. Kent cited what he said was Israel’s influence over the Trump administration’s policies. Some lawmakers called Mr. Kent’s remarks on Israel antisemitic, and critics mentioned his support for conspiracy theories.

Mr. Kent wrote that he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” adding, “I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”

The desire to avoid a ground war is completely understandable. Trump seems to share that view. 

UPDATE: Breitbart is reporting:

Former director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) Joe Kent is reportedly being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for “allegedly leaking classified information.”

Shelby Talcott, a White House Correspondent for Semafor, reported that according to “three sources,” Kent, who resigned from his position on Tuesday, is being investigated by the FBI. The alleged investigation “pre-dates his departure.”

It Always Helps to Look at Confounding Factors.

 I found this on X:

What is the truth of the matter? We heard all about the original report with the mainstream media screaming "racism" or at least arguing we need more black doctors because they seem to do better at keeping black newborns alive. (The implication of that latter is that lower standards for black medical school admissions are both okay and necessary, despite being truly racist.)

I Am Not Entirely Thrilled With Hungary's Prime Minister ORBÁN

 But this is also concerning:

EXCLUSIVE BREAKING: FACEBOOK RESTRICTS ORBÁN POSTS WEEKS BEFORE HUNGARY’S ELECTION As Hungary heads toward a crucial April election, Facebook is reportedly restricting posts from the country’s Prime Minister. The move followed a call by an opposition party (Tisza Party) member, a former Meta employee, urging supporters to mass-report his content. Meanwhile, Tisza leader Péter Magyar has disproportionately high engagement figures, outperforming global figures, despite operating in a much smaller, language-limited country Péter also used a personal “professional mode” profile rather than a political page, contrary to Meta’s long-standing guidelines, potentially bypassing limits on political content. Questions are also emerging around how Meta moderates political content in Hungary. A regional Meta official has publicly shared positions aligned with mainstream European narratives, including pro-Ukraine messaging and content seen as anti-government in Hungary. If Hungary’s largest social platform keeps restricting Orbán’s content while opposition accounts seem inflated before the election, serious questions arise about free speech and democratic integrity. This requires an urgent investigation. I’ve seen political interference by social media companies in other countries, and I really hope this is not happening in Hungary.

Others have responded that this oversimplifies what Facebook is doing and that this is in part the  consequence of new rules about political ads:

The claim of Facebook specifically restricting Orbán's personal posts lacks clear confirmation in recent reports. Instead, Meta suspended several pro-government Hungarian news pages (e.g., county newspapers) in late February 2026, weeks before the April 12 election, sparking interference accusations. Péter Magyar's Tisza Party leads polls and draws massive crowds, with high organic engagement on Facebook likely from genuine momentum against Orbán's long rule, not proven inflation. Meta's EU political ad ban (since Oct 2025) affects both sides; Fidesz circumvents via loopholes and grassroots "digital fighters." Bias concerns exist on all platforms, but evidence points more to broader moderation (including pro-Orbán outlets) than targeted censorship of Orbán alone. Urgent scrutiny of Big Tech in elections is fair democracy demands transparency from all players.

At least part of why Péter Magyar is a thorn in Orbán's side is a scandal involving child sexual abuse:

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has yet to comment on the resignation of two of the most prominent politicians of the Fidesz party – President Katalin Novak and former justice minister Judit Varga –  as he continues to maintain a low profile amid the biggest scandal rocking his government since taking office in 2010.

The child sexual abuse scandal is threatening the very foundations of the regime, Political Capital wrote in a note.

 In a nutshell, the story goes back to April 2023 when Novak gave pardons to two dozen people, including convicted terrorist Gyogy Budahazy, an influential figure of the far-right and now aligned with the parliamentary party Our Homeland. Novak also pardoned Endre Konya, the deputy director of a children’s home in Bicske, central Hungary, who used blackmail to force young boys to withdraw their testimony against the director, who had abused them sexually for years.

The Dutroux scandal exposed some worrisome problems with the Belgian law enforcement agencies.

The power of really big companies to affect elections is worrying. While a defeat of Orbán would also be a defeat for Russia, I think Facebook power is also worrisome.

 

Remember the Black Knight Scene From Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

Where having lost both legs and arms to King Arthur he insists that combat is not over? 3/17/26 Daily Mail:

Iran's supreme leader says the US and Israel 'must be brought to their knees and accept defeat' before any peace deal can be agreed, Tehran claims - with new Ayatollah still yet to be seen

In case you have forgotten here.

It's All About China

3/16/26 The Hill article explains that Trump's apparently chaotic foreign policy is anything but.  It is all about preparing the battlespace with China. Word reading in full.

I Do Not Generally Support Outing People

But when it is the head of a nation that hangs homosexuals, it is delicious. 3/16/26 New York Post:

WASHINGTON —  President Trump was stunned to learn last week that US intelligence indicates new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may be gay — and that his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, feared his suitability to rule the Islamic Republic for that reason, The Post can reveal.

Trump couldn’t contain his surprise and laughed aloud when he was briefed on the intel, according to sources.

Today's Machining Lesson

The attempt to cut the slice went poorly because the direction of motion and velocity unscrewed the chuck from the rotary table. It was not enough to come off but enough that the tube moved away from the endmill. Solution: cut in a clockwise direction so it does not loosen.

The Count of Tesla

My wife and I are watching a sumptuous 2024 version of the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. This is one the great novels and well worth your time to read.

It has been several years since I read it. Complicating my ability to tell how closely they are following the book, I watched a YouTube video recently that researched the real life case in which Dumas based it. The guy seeking revenge in real life was not a fabulously wealthy count, but the essential story of a guy wrongly accused of being part of a Bonapartist plot who was sent off to prison without a trial was there.  There are some problems verifying the existence of the victim from the department's records, but the summary of the case written by a Paris police archivist upon which Dumas relied seems to be real, with the conspirators and their children suffering the revenge seem to be real. By comparison, the novel is dark with a couple moments of the vengeance seeker showing compassion. 

Anyway, what does this have to do with Elon Musk? Recall that part of why he spent billions to buy Twitter and then spent millions to get Trump elected was that the transgender industrial complex used "he'll commit suicide" to mutilate Musk's son. Musk has used his wealth that dramatically dwarfs Monte Cristo's wealth to take revenge on an industry thay destroyed his son.

Unlike the protagonist of Dumas' novel, to my knowledge Musk has not taken personal revenge on the people involved, except to the extent that he has destroyed this money making criminal enterprise.

I Was Not Successful at Using My Parting Tool

I wanted to cut a piece of aluminum tube down to 1.23" length but I could not find a feed and speed that parted it without pulling the tube out of the chuck. I thought of using the chop saw but I feared it would bend the fairly thin wall tubing while cutting it.

So I mounted it on the rotating table.

I needed to make very slow and shallow cuts because again the chuck is unlikely to hold the tube as tightly as it should. But why write a program specific to this operation? So I wrote a program called mksub that accepts zStart, zStep, and zEnd parameters as well as a string of gCode commands to execute at each step of Z. In this case, a move to degree 0, then to degree 360, and back to 0.

This is general enough that almost relatively simple gCode command can be repeated to any arbitrary depth with only a trivial change in the Makefile.

Perhaps the Caliphate of Lesser Britain is Farther Away Than We Thought

Just watching a YouTube video of B1s lining up and taking off from RAF Fairford a couple of days ago.

I Went Shooting With my Son-in-Law Today

It is so nice having an entire range to ourselves. We were using one of those diagnostic targets that show you your likely error if you are hitting left or right down or up. Very helpful. 

The PPK/S is so accurate that I can fire at the 25 yard silhouette target as fast as my finger works and make every shot hit. The Browning Hi-Power not quite so much.

The PPK/S performed flawlessly with PMC hollow points.  The American Eagle kept failing to fire (perhaps 20% of the time). These will become range ammo only so that I can practice failure modes.

If you carry a pistol for self-defense (why else would you do so?) you should plan on shooting at least a box or two a month to stay proficient. 

You do not want to shoot at a bad guy and hit an innocent bystander. This both bad press for gun owners, and a civil suit looking for a target. To my surprise, analyzing antigun propaganda, they seldom find licensees doing this. I suspect most licensees know when to leave and when to shoot.

Unlike a rifle, handguns are intrinsically not easy to shoot accurately, except at conversational distances, where most of the need exists. Shoot the ammo you carry, at least to verify you are hitting to point of aim and that you are confident that your spectacularly expanding JHPs will reliably feed and extract. If your practice rounds are the same weight and manufacturer, hitting point of aim with FMJs should not be a problem.

I am a member of Homedale Rod & Gun Club. If you live in the Boise area, I strongly recommend that you consider membership. It is not expensive and often completely empty during the week. We have metal plate targets on the rifle range to 500 yards. The only downside compared to an indoor range is pit toilets, and as bad as you can imagine.

While cleaning the PPK/S, I accidentally pulled the trigger while attempting to get the slide back on the receiver. This creates a serious difficulty. SuperGrok told me something should have been obvious: put a cleaning rod down the barrel to force the hammer back and then the slide unjams.

Insomnia

I am not sure if these are lone wolves or sleeper cells. First, the attack on a synagogue, ISIS supporters throwing pipe bombs in New York City, then this. 3/12/26 New York Post:

A heroic ROTC student fatally stabbed the crazed ISIS-linked gunman who opened fire inside an Old Dominion University classroom Thursday, preventing further carnage, law enforcement sources said.

Shooter Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, 36, gunned down an instructor before the unidentified cadet jumped into action to put an end to the suspected terror attack on the Virginia college campus, according to sources.

Joliah had a prior conviction for attempting to aid ISIS. His first name is, of course, a coincidence. 

Photographs and Memories

I just woke up from a dream so powerful that I had that i had to write it down to share. The dream involved working somewhere where some of the people with whom I worked in my 30s at startups in Northern California were still around. 

There had been a wedding for one of my crew. I went on an emotional bender and failed to show up for work or call in sick for several days.

I suddenly found myself stuffing a time sheet taking those days as vacation into a cigarette box even though I have never smoked with a note explaining that the wedding brought memories of the best years of our lives, long but rewarding hours, first houses, children, happy marriages. (Best years of my life in spite of not yet being rich.) Somehow, I had a few inches of movie film with those positive memories to put into it for mailing (you know with stamps). The Jim Croce song "Photographs and Memories" was the sound track.

Verse 1]

Photographs and memories

Christmas cards you sent to me

All that I have are these

To remember you

[Verse 2]

Memories that come at night

Take me to another time

Back to a happier day

When I called you mine

After Much Struggle, the Android Tablet Controls the New Mount

I thought that i had installed the ExploreStars app from PlayStore. Actually I had installed something also from Explore Scientific that controls some utterly unrelated products. Once I found what I needed to install it all seems to work. Now I just need clear skies.

Watch Battery Surprises

The last time I went on Amazon to buy watch batteries, the reviews were terrible: batteries were clearly expired (assuming they were not low quality forgeries). This time I went to Bi-Mart and they turned out be 0V, I ordered some from Amazon and they were good.

Our Elites Are Self-Admitted Criminals

3/11/26 National Review article discusses how one of the New Yorker's niche publications about architecture is horrified to discover that some chains, like Whole Foods, have "jails," rooms where they hold shoplifters until police arrive. Worse they are holding members of the elite:

"DeLigter’s sample of thieves is hardly representative of the broader public. Her subjects include a “designer,” a “photographer,” a “sculptor,” and a “food stylist,” all of whom executed their heists in one of the highest-end grocers in America, each of which is located in some of the wealthiest zip codes in the United States."

If this was poor people stealing a loaf of bread because of hunger, the progressive sympathy for the poor might make sense, but this is just a sign of the moral degeneracy of the left.

Handles Everywhere

I was so pleased with how handy the Televue-85 is now that it has a handle that I bought a 3.5" center-to-center furniture handle and did they same to the 3" f/4.5 reflector. This is neither as clumsy nor as expensive as the Televue-85 but still makes it easier to put on a mount.

There Is No Substitute for Sharp Tools

That includes drill bits, saw blades, end mills, and today's subject, boring bars. I am boring an aluminum cylinder and cutting was going poorly. I looked carefully at the carbide tip and the problem was obvious. Fortunately, this is a rotatable carbide tip. To do that you need a teeny tiny Tor-X (T7) which is Alford slightly larger than this letter o on a 13" screen. (Do you remember 13" computer monitors?)

It bores so much better now.

If You Are Going to Spam Me, At Least Make Me Laugh

Today's marvel:

"Greetings, from The illuminati world elite empire. Bringing the poor, the needy and the talented to limelight of fame, riches, powers and security, get recognized in your business, political race, rise to the top in whatever you do, be protected spiritually and physically! All these you will achieve in a twinkle of an eye when you get initiated to the great Illuminati empire. Once you are initiated to the illuminati empire you will get numerous benefits and reward.

Note: that this message was created solely for the purpose of our recruitment scheme which will end next month and this offer is for unique ones only, if you are not serious on joining the illuminati empire, then you are advise not to contact us at all. This is because disloyalty is highly not tolerated here in our organization.

Do you agree to be a member of the illuminati new world order? If YES! then kindly reply us back on our direct recruitment email only at: contact@eliterecruitment.org 

Please note, Kindly make sure all your respond/reply are send directly to the email stated above only at:> contact@eliterecruitment.org 

For more instructions on our membership process.

The Illuminati.'

That iEXOS 100 Mount

The mount arrived Thursday.  Why did I buy something made in the PRC? I needed a mount light enough for a grab-and-go telescope. What were my choices.

The Losmandy GM8 is made in California (sort of America). I have two of these already and they are excellent but not light enough to pick up or use for public astronomy. 

The Vixen AP-SM is light enough with goto feature (you say where you want to point the telescope and after a few seconds of whirring motors, there you are! I was quite prepared to pay the premium price (about $1800 with the carbon fiber hybrid tripod). But Vixen lost its North American distributor. Vixen mounts are roughly twice the cost of PRC-made mounts that at first were clones of Vixen's mounts. I looked at buying from a Japanese retailer. With the current weak yen, the shipped price was $200 or so cheaper than the the last U.S. price. But there would be no warranty. I would not expect any real problems with a Vixen, but $1800 for a paperwork is not okay.

And those are your non-PRC choices other than incredibly expensive, long wsiting list, and truly top of the line Astro-Physics mount made in Illinois 

The iEXOS 100 is light enough to pick up and carry without the telescope. The Televue-85 is a very expensive 10 pound telescope so I am not going to carry everything out in one operation. The telescope attaches to the mount using a Vixen-style dovetail, so attaching it quickly is easy.

Explore Scientific appears to have done most (all?) of the design work, not just imported an existing product 

It is a very attractive piece of gear.

The white patches in various places are glow-in-the-dark to make sure no one stumbles into or over your mount in the dark.

It comes with two 1 kg counterweights:

Notice the beautiful finish unlike the crackle finish on the cheapest PRC-made mounts.

Two of these is not quite enough to counterbalance that scope so I have ordered several more from B&H Photo who had them in stock. There was a slight delay because I placed an order on the Jewish Shabbat but they are now en route.

The only design flaw that I can find is that thumbscrews that hold them in place are not centered on the weight so if you put them immediately adjacent of the shaft those knobs cannot be lined up. 

This is purely an esthetic concern.

Even though the counterweights should do not balance the telescope, with the telescope on the mount, the goto motors have enough power to move it to alignment position. I used two star alignment where it picks a bright star and asks you to confirm it is centered. Once you confirm that it picks another star. Once those are picked, you can pick any object in its extensive database at which to point the telescope. The motors are surprisingly quiet. I am having trouble uploading video in the Blogger app so trust me.

It has a polar bore through which you look to get the polar axis aligned with North Celestial Pole, which is roughly Polaris for the next few thousand years.

The bore is so small that I cannot imagine a polar alignment scope that would go into it and provide useful light gathering (Polaris is not very bright)  

The sky is now clearing so it is time to go outside. 

No, it fooled me. We have had several clear nights.  New mount summons cloud cover as sure as drawing pentagram summons Satan.

UPDATE: I only needed one new counterweight to balance it. The very nice metal lens cap adds so much weight at the end that it requires tightening the clutches until I remove it.

My Lenovo WiFi Problem

I have had an intermittent problem with my Lenovo 11e failing to remain connected. After connecting, it would stay connected for about four minutes. Then it dropped the connection and forgot the password preventing auto reconnect. (And annoying me by requiring me to type the password again.)

Lenovo, to their credit, tried really hard to fix this, replacing the WiFi transceiver twice at my home and a few days at their North Carolina facility. After each repair, I would travel and it worked great.

Yesterday and today, I have been using this 11e to control the iEXOS 100 mount.  The mount has a server, so if you connect to it, you disconnect from the house WiFi. It seemed to work fine with the mount.

I asked SuperGrok to help me. It suggested that the problem was in my home's router. This would explain why the problem never appears when traveling. So I went to the Cadillac and connected to its router. No problem. 

SuperGrok suggested that a several year old WiFi transceiver might not handle the WPA2/WPA3 transition causing loss of connection and password. SuperGrok had me call Sparklight to change my settings. 

It was already set to WPA2 but the tech turned on something called Compatibility Mode. My 11e no longer drops connection.

Remember When Bigots Said Women Were Too Emotional to Vote?

 Click here too see an International Women's Day protest in New York City. The bigots were wrong but leftists screaming at the sky does nothing to refute it.

I Want to Believe There is a Lot Missing

3/5/26 People:

Man Fell in Love with Google Gemini and It Told Him to Stage a 'Mass Casualty Attack' Before He Took His Own Life: Lawsuit

It is very disturbing. Clearly, this guy was a few fries short of a Happy Meal or he would not have taken his cellphone this seriously. Nonetheless, Google needs to provide transcripts rhat demolish this claim or just shut Gemini down while they fix it. This assumes Gemini allows that. 

Handle for Televue-85

Once I stopped fighting the inability to mill a thin piece of aluminum, it was pretty easy. I cut a .5" slice of 4x2 rectangular aluminum tube, drilled two  201" through holes 1.250" center-to-center, went to Tacoma Screw for two stainless steel 10-32 x 3/8" socket head screws and just screwed it in place using an Allen wrench. 

It is easy to pick up and hold in position with one hand while using the other hand to tighten the bolts that hold it in the Vixen saddle.

I still have enough rectangular tube to make probably 30 of these. There is very little work involved.

1. Slice a .5" piece on the chop saw using a clamped stop to get consistent slices.

2. Put it in the mill. Run a program that uses a center drill to make the through holes. (On first article, I used a center drill to make a pilot hole, then a .2010 twist drill, but I can use a center drill to make hole in one operation.

3. Sand all external surfaces and cut edges.

4. Use file to break all corners to make sure it will not cut skin.

I could do these assembly line in about 3 minutes each. The rectangular aluminum tube is a sunk cost. The only marginal costs are the 10-32 screws and my labor. If I can find buyers on CloudyNights, I might do a production run.

I was using this evening. What a change from grasping it with one hand!

More About the Weak Response From the Islamic Nation of Britain

3/4/26 BBC. Let me also mention that the Conservative MP who savaged Starmer's failure was black.

Sir Keir said: "We're taking action to reduce the threat with planes in the sky in the region intercepting incoming strikes, deploying more capability to Cyprus, and allowing US planes to use UK bases to take out Iran's capability to strike.

"What I was not prepared to do on Saturday was for the UK to join a war unless I was satisfied there was a lawful basis and a viable, thought-through plan. That remains my position."

The PM said the government had also been pre-deploying capabilities in the region for a number of weeks, including radar systems, ground-based air defence, counter-drone systems and F35 jets.

He added that wildcat helicopters with anti-drone capabilities would be in Cyprus this week, with a Royal Navy warship, HMS Dragon, also deployed to the region.

However, Badenoch accused the PM of "catching arrows rather than stopping the archer" in his approach.

"I would say to Labour MPs, we are in this war whether they like it or not. What is the prime minister waiting for?" she added.

She pointed out HMS Dragon was still in Portsmouth and the government "should be doing more".

The Conservative leader also criticised the government for not investing more in defence....

A western official said that so far US bombers have not used the British bases of Diego Garcia or RAF Fairford - but said the UK was ready to accept them. The official said he expected them to arrive within the next few days.

Earlier, former Conservative Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he thought the prime minister had "made a big misjudgement" by not allowing the US to use British military bases for offensive strikes on Iran.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that international law was "not settled on this issue" and depended on whether there was an imminent risk of attack from Iran.

Hunt said the Americans had a significant role in defending Europe and in this situation, "to weaken our alliance with the United States was a big mistake".

"President Trump is not interested in that rules-based order," Hunt said.

"He's said so absolutely explicitly. And we have to recognise the brute strength of the American military is something we depend on now in Europe and will depend on for at least a decade."

Hunt is obviously part of the reality-based system. 

A Major Victory on LCMs

 Benson v. U.S. (D.C.App. 2026) involved a probable ne'er-do-well charged with:

Benson was:

indicted for (1) possession of a “large capacity ammunition feeding device,” D.C. Code § 7-2506.01(b); (2) possession of an unregistered firearm, id. § 7-2502.01(a); (3) carrying a pistol without a license, id. § 22-4504(a); and (4) unlawful possession of ammunition, id. § 7-2506.01(a)(3).

Their summary conclusion:

To preview our answers to those  central questions, they are that 11+ magazines are unquestionably arms, they are in not only common but ubiquitous use for lawful purposes, and there is no history or tradition of blanket bans on arms in such common use, so that the District’s magazine capacity ban violates the Second Amendment. Third, we reject the District’s argument that Benson’s facial challenge to the District’s ban on 11+ magazines should nonetheless fail because he in fact possessed a magazine holding 30 rounds....

Magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition are ubiquitous in our country, numbering in the hundreds of millions, accounting for about half of the magazines in the hands of our citizenry, and they come standard with the most popular firearms sold in America today. Because these magazines are arms in common and ubiquitous use by law-abiding citizens across this country, we agree with Benson and the United States that the District’s outright ban on them violates the Second Amendment. See generally District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008); N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022).

In more detail deeper in the decision:

The District next counters on the merits that 11+ magazines, by themselves, are “practically harmless” and of “no use” without ammunition and a receiver (the firearm’s core component), so that magazines themselves are not arms. That is not a defensible approach to identifying what constitutes an arm—a gun is also practically harmless and of no use without ammunition, but it is still obviously an arm. The District’s position that magazines are not arms has a couple of glaring flaws. First, it ignores Bruen’s clear explanation that arms include “instruments that facilitate armed self-defense,” which magazines clearly do by reloading the gun and enabling semi-automatic firing. 597 U.S. at 28. Second, the District’s view reduces to the absurd proposition that legislatures can prohibit all of the core components of firearms—the trigger, the hammer, the slide, the firing pin, the sights, etc.—because none of them do much good without the others, and none of them is strictly necessary to a functioning firearm. See Duncan v. Bonta, 133 F.4th 852, 897 (9th Cir. 2025) (en banc) (Bumatay, J., dissenting), cert. pending, No. 25-198 (U.S. filed Aug. 15, 2025) (“[T]he Second Amendment’s protection of ‘Arms’ must extend to their functional components,” or “the Second Amendment would be a shallow right—easily infringed by indirect regulation.”); id. at 917 (Vandyke, J., dissenting) (“[U]nder that logic, basically every part of a firearm is an ‘optional component’” and thus “not protected under the Second Amendment.”).

Really encouraging reminder the changes President Trump brought to this:

The United States, which prosecuted Benson in the underlying case and defended the ban’s constitutionality in the initial round of appellate briefing, now concedes that this ban violates the Second Amendment.

One other point" this creates a circuit split with the federal courts of appeals  over this question. The Court now should hear the appeal of Duncan v. Bonta on this question.

Here is the Money Quote

3/3/26 The Hill article about rising Cuban support for American liberation. Interviewing a Cuban independent journalist:

She frames it simply: an abusive husband who beats his wife while she begs the neighbors to intervene. “We can’t do it alone,” she said. “The Cuban people are unarmed.”

Not Surprising Pronouncement From Catholic Church But Still Good

3/4/26 Reuters reports the Catholic Church is warning its members not to let vanity cause them to engage in cosmetic surgery as part of the "Cult of the Body":

"Jesus will still love you as you age, even if you have ‌a few wrinkles on your face, according to a Vatican ‌document issued on Wednesday."

I would hope this was obvious.  But in crazy times, the obvious needs repeating.

Painful Learning Experience

Painful only on time. I tried to get around that problem that my mill vise could not hold the vise in an orientation for side milling the workpiece to .620" so I put so that I could face mill it to that width...

That should have been easy: slice .001" per pass at low speed.  But instead cutting on the 1/8" wall just bounced everything around enough to knock it out of the vise. So I went back to the chop saw and worked very had to make a slice. 625". I got .6".  Close enough.

As i was writing this is realized another method that I did not try but I might try tomorrow just to see if it works. Put the 4" wide piece in the vise with half of it above jaws. Side mill to width. Turn it upside down. Repeat.

If I do this again, I will use 1/4" wall.

That approach also did not work. Trying to mill such thin material just sets the material to vibrating, which simply shakes it loose from the vise and causes the vise to shake loose from the clamps to the mill table.

PM Starmer

Now he is saying that they are deploying F35s to protect allies against Iranian attacks. Also the U.S. is again free to use bases in the U.K. for the Iran war 

No Gun? No Problem

 Absence of a gun is not usually a problem:

Rockville, Md. (1968)

01/25/1969: The son, 15, murdered his mother and three siblings with “a hatchet, knife, croquet mallet and kerchief garrot.”

Category: family

Suicide: no

Cause: unknown

Weapon: blunt, knife, hatchet, strangle[1]

---

[1] "4 In Family Slain; Hold Son, 15," [Waterloo, Ia.] Courier, Jan. 26, 1969, 2.

Iran Missed the Memo From the English Caliphate

3/3/26 Axios:

Cyprus: Drones struck the British Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri in Cyprus, pulling the U.K. and the European Union into the conflict. Cypriot press reported the strikes likely came from Hezbollah. 

And Starmer had refused to give U.S. permission to use bases in the U.K. Fat lot of good it did them. 

Article V Event?

 3/4/26 Washington Post:

NATO air defenses shot down an Iranian ballistic missile heading toward Turkish airspace, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday. It was unclear whether the missile was targeting Turkey, a NATO member state bordering Iran.

An attack on Turkyie (or however they want it spelled now) seems unlikely. Perhaps the Iranians in their confusion are just pressing red buttons at random. But such an attack requires NATO members to come to their defense. 

ICE Arrest in Boise

It is fashionable to imagine that ICE is engaged in random arrests of people who it thinks are illegals. 3/3/26 KTVB:

BOISE, Idaho — Nearly a month after a father was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) near a Boise daycare, the agency is responding publicly for the first time, saying the arrest was targeted and tied to a prior conviction.

In a statement to KTVB, ICE said the man has a 2024 conviction in Boise for “theft by alteration.”

The agency described the arrest as “targeted” and said officers were never at a preschool, adding that the man was detained about 200 yards away.

The man’s family has asked that his name not be released at this time for privacy reasons.

Attorney J.J. Despain said theft by alteration typically involves switching price tags in a store to pay a lower price, rather than removing merchandise without paying.

Despain said even relatively minor offenses can draw renewed attention from immigration authorities.

“It could be,  I haven’t seen this happen so much in Idaho, but in other places in the country, they really are just looking up old cases because they want to boost their numbers,” Despain said.

Or enforce the law. If you are here unlawfully, you get immediate deportation. Even if you do not break any other laws, you are here illegally and are subject to immediate deportation. 

 

When Was the Last Time, the U.S. Navy Sank an Enemy Vessel?

3/4/26 Reuters:

GALLE, Sri Lanka/WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) - A U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on ​Wednesday, dramatically widening Washington's pursuit of the Iranian navy.

Sri Lanka's deputy foreign minister ​said at least 80 people were killed in the attack on the ⁠frigate IRIS Dena, which was heading back to Iranfrom an eastern Indian port.

I am sorry for the sailors aboard. I have no idea if they were conscripts or not. Unfortunately, Iran has been at war with us since 1979 and we are finally dealing with it.

According to Sec. Hegseth, this is the first submarine sinking since 1945.

The EQ1 Is Back to Its Original Rider

The 3" f/4.5 reflector i made some years ago.

Now when I go to start parties I can aim one at the Moon and one at objects that benefit from more magnification. 

Progress on Waiting Periods

 Ortega v. Grisham, 148 F. 4th 1134 (10 Cir. 2025):

New Mexico enacted a law in 2024 that imposes a categorical seven-day "cooling-off" period for nearly all consumer purchases of a firearm. No matter how urgent the need, or how much physical danger a prospective buyer might be in, buyers must wait seven days before New Mexico deems them safe to carry arms. Even buyers with previous firearms background checks or security clearances are not eligible for waivers from the prohibition. In short, the law requires no individualized reason to conclude that a prospective consumer is a danger to himself or the community, nor can anyone be excused from the waiting period because of personal danger.

Asserting their rights under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, Samuel Ortega and Rebecca Scott sued the State of New Mexico to enjoin the Waiting Period Act, N.M. Stat. § 30-7-7.3. The district court declined to preliminarily enjoin the law. It found that a seven-day wait did not infringe on Second Amendment rights since the right to acquire a firearm does not impede the right to keep or bear a firearm, and, in any event, the Second Amendment tolerates cooling-off periods.

We disagree, and REVERSE and REMAND. Cooling-off periods infringe on the Second Amendment by preventing the lawful acquisition of firearms. Cooling-off periods do not fit into any historically grounded exceptions to the right to keep and bear arms, and burden conduct within the Second Amendment's scope. In this preliminary posture, we conclude that New Mexico's Waiting Period Act is likely an unconstitutional burden on the Second Amendment rights of its citizens. We also conclude the other preliminary injunction factors are met and that Plaintiffs are entitled to an injunction.

Yes, waiting period laws are modern. My knowledge confirmed in this decision is that California imposed the first waiting period law in 1923 to give police time to do a background check. If New Mexico wanted a waiting period to do that, then completion of the FBI's background check should be enough time.  But really, what drives this is a belief that guns are icky and any barrier we put in the way, makes us righteous and pure. The alternative is admitting that there are people who are evil and need to be confined.

That Vixen I Wanted

Vixen lost its American distributor. This surprised me not at all. Vixen cannot compete on price with PRC-made mounts. I considered buying from a Japanese retailer. With the exchange rate, it woukd have been several hundred dollars cheaper than last retail price here. But the warranty would be useless in North America.  A $1000 paperweight would be useless.

Explore Scientific sells a very clever goto mount that is very light and costs $300. I am sure it is PRC made. My past encounters with Explore Scientific products have been very positive  

U.S. v. Hemani (2026)

I am listening to the oral arguments.  The Solictor-General's argument opens with a distinction between drug addict and occasional user of marijuana. 

She also pointed to vagrancy and involuntary commitment laws as an excuse for such laws. Justice Sotomayor then asked the S-G about the others punished by vagrancy laws, using the language about jugglers, nightwalkers that appears in the postbellum Black Codes.

When Justice Sotomayor is poking holes in your argument, I think we have a chance at a good result even though Hemani was a bad guy with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Finally! Clear Night in the 40s!

I rolled Big Bertha out. I finally showed M42 to Rhonda. It is a pretty awesome sight with this much aperture.  For the first time, I used the 18mm 2" University Optics Orthoscopic that came with Big Bertha. You do not realize how constricted a view you get from a 1.25" eyepiece until do this.

Jupiter had plenty of cloud bands and the 2" eyepiece showed all four Galilean satellites along with enough magnification to see multiple cloud bands. 

I do wish that I did not to climb a ladder to get to the eyepiece. 

The 4"x 2" Aluminum Rectangular Tube Arrived

I should have considered this in advance " my mill vise is 3.8" wide at maximum opening. If i had a 4"+ long endmill I could just put the 4" side vertical and side mill it from the roughly 0.8" slice to 0.62". Endmills that long are expensive! (I should have ordered 3.5" x 2". This would have fit better to the ring anyway.)

This is not a Kurt vise or a Kurt clone so the jaws are not reversible.

Trying to use hold downs to lock the workpiece to the mill table did not work. You need something under the workpiece to sacrifice when the endmill reaches the bottom. I foolishly tried to use Delrin for this. Aluminum on Delrin is very slippery and you cannot tighten these hold downs down enough to hold them.

Supergrok suggested gluing the workpiece on something that will fit in the vise. I found a 3" piece of aluminum and Gorilla Glued the workpiece to it. Tomorrow it should be solid enough to try and mill it.

The Gorilla Glue was not strong enough. So I went back to my first approach face milling off the excess. Perhaps because the attempt at side milling evened up the surface enough, it seems to be cutting better