More Evidence Antisocial Media Needs to Die

 5/23/26 New York Post:

A 14-year-old boy is dead and an 18-year-old is fighting for his life after a subway surfing stunt turned tragic on the Williamsburg Bridge Friday evening.

However much you love antisocial media: if v you feed the beast, kids will still do stupithings for attention.  Starve the beast; restore civilization.

Capitalist Meets Astronomer Need

Results: magnificent.  How Telescope Rancher Became the Hot New Job in Texas.

Red Flag Law Failure

5/21/26 New York Times:

More than a year before Caleb Vazquez and a friend attacked a mosque in San Diego and killed three people, the police were so alarmed by Mr. Vazquez’s behavior that they secured a court order to confiscate his father’s guns.

“Child was involved in suspicious behavior idolizing nazis and mass shooters,” a police officer wrote in a January 2025 protective order.

Mr. Vazquez, who was found dead on Monday shortly after the police say he and a friend attacked the Islamic Center of San Diego, had at some point been placed in an involuntary psychiatric hold, according to documents filed at San Diego Superior Court.

He must have been pretty dangerous to get an involuntary psychiatric hold. Before red flag laws, people that were thought to be dangerous to self or others would be subject to psychiatric observation. Taking away guns was not the goal. It was making them nit dangerous with all weapons: guns, gasoline, cars, knives, baseball bats. But red flag laws are gun-specific because they are not about public safety but gun confiscation.

5/21/26 New York Post:

One of the deranged teens behind the San Diego mosque shooting walked away from a mental health facility the day before carrying out Monday’s deadly attack, sources said.

Caleb Vazquez, 18, left the Park Mental Health Treatment Center the morning before killing three people at an Islamic center with 17-year-old Cain Clark, law enforcement sources told The Post.

What does "walked away" mean? He was apparently on a temporary psychiatric hold which could mean Welfare & Institutions section 5150 (72 hours for observation)  or 5250 ("not more than 14 days of intensive treatment related to the mental health disorder or impairment by chronic alcoholism"). Neither of those something from which you "walk away." Both are part of the deeper problem of deinstitutionalization. As the psychiatrist who treated my brother during his first 5250 stay put it: "Anyone who still appears dangerous to a judge after 14 days of Thorazine, is pretty scary."

Looking for Dark Sky Rental in Southwest Idaho or Northeast Oregon

 I would love to rent a place for a night or two with a dark sky: somewhere where you can see the Milky Way, ideally that accepts dogs. Asking AirBnb hosts how dark their skies are is akin to asking if they are fluent in APL. Vale, Oregon is pretty dark, but there are no lodgings there. Bruneau Dunes has cabins but they have no toilets in the cabins. I would prefer not driving to Sun Valley.

Screwing Around

I am sorting hundreds of screws and nuts. Twenty years ago, I paid my son to sort all the fasteners that ScopeRoller used, with each drawer labeled by thread, length, and drive type (socket head; Philips, standard). 

Over time, entropy happened because I was often too busy filling orders to return fasteners to the right drawer.

You may be wondering, "Isn't your time worth enough to throw them all away, and buy what you need, when you need them?" 

Right now, I live a short drive from a Tacoma Screw retail store, Ace Hardware, and True Value. I am hoping for a Milky Way sky in the new house. I will have few nearby hardware stores.  At least some of the current hodge-podge was because I could not find screws (especially thumbscrews) that were present in one of dozens of drawers, so i bought another bag retail or from Amazon. 

The sorting process is easier than I expected. The 6-32 and 8-32 screws are easily distinguished visually. Ditto for 8-32 from 10-24 and larger. In some cases, looking in a container of nuts and bolts, you can immediately see that these ten nuts are the same size. Length and finish are also useful. The aluminum 1/4"-20 hex head screws (that I bought to see if I could make ScopeRoller less marring to tripod legs) stood out from finish alone. 

I was thinking last night that a fastener equivalent to CoinStar would be useful. You drop bags of fasteners in the top and it sorts them by diameter and length, rhen attempts to gentlely turn them into threaded holes until it finds a match.  I would have paid $30 to have used such a machine to produce bags of M3x0.6, M4x1.0, 4-40, 6-32 etc. If it could sort them by other criteria (head type, fully threaded, finish), all the better.

Banning Cellphone Use in Schools

5/14/26 New York Post:

"NYC teachers say phone ban in classrooms has caused ‘jaw dropping’ change in students’ attention"

DoorDash As a Human Right is Coming

Wonderful X thread where trendy leftist Taylor Lorenz explains that poor people cannot get by because reliance on DoorDash and eating out leaves them very little money for other things. Presumably, like pots, pans, utensils, and cookbooks.

I hear a lot of GenZ whining about Boomers consuming "infinite resources." I think some of these people need to learn to cook.