We Still Are Not California

10/27/25 KTVB:

 BOISE, Idaho — Nearly 100 cows hoofed it into Boise's Northend neighborhood early Friday morning, turning city streets into an impromptu cattle drive. 

The herd thundered through the intersection of Bogus Basin and Cartwright roads just after 1 a.m., making a beeline for downtown, an udder disaster.

Boise Police Department officers and dispatch worked to track down the owner while residents reported cattle sightings across multiple blocks. The wayward cows were spotted at 18th and Sherman streets, 18th and Eastman streets, 15th and Harrison streets and on Dewey Avenue....

The situation reached a head when many of the animals congregated in an alley between 18th and 19th streets near Hill Road. Officers managed to corral the herd with the owner's help, who arrived with a trailer to transport the animals.

Why China is Likely Not the Threat They Appear

Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog gathers a variety of sources to report on Chinese efforts to reverse engineer high-end chip lithography machines.

Semiconductors are hard. Not only do you have to exactly machine the thousands of painstakingly precise parts in the equipment itself, you need to possess the deep institutional knowledge necessary necessary to tweak the thousands of differing process parameters for different types of chips. Steppers, the lithography machines that actually project the patterns necessary to make each layer of the chip, are at the very top of the mountain in terms of technological complexity, and ASML dominates the stepper market. If it was easy to build steppers, Applied Materials, LAM, or Tokyo Electron would have come out with their own steppers long ago, and they haven’t.

But China would love to get their hands on that technology, which is why they tried to disassemble and backward engineering an ASML DUV stepper and ended up ruining it in the process.

A Chinese firm reportedly has sought technical support from ASML, the world’s largest chipmaking equipment supplier, after it failed to reassemble a deep-ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machine following an internal teardown for alleged reverse engineering.

How Large of an Ammunition Stockpile Makes Sense?

 I hear from readers of friends with 3/4 million rounds.  My first thought was: The income that could be realized on that much invested capital is pretty impressive. Assuming this averages $0.50 per round (.223 and .308 are not cheap), this is $375,000.  Invested in an effectively risk-free Idaho municipal bond, this means forgoing $1800 per month in untaxed income.  This would allow you to buy 1000 rounds a month from just the interest.

My second thought: how will you use it?  The only TEOTWAWKI scenarios where really large quantities make sense are thermonuclear war and invasion by extraterrestials.  Even then, how much will you need for hunting, self-defense, or barter before you die of some illness or confrontation with a better fighter?  If you are 30, and live to 70 (a long life in a TEOTWAWKI scenario), this is 18,000 rounds per year.  Your guns will cease working reliably or accurately about ten years into this disaster at that rate of consumption.  

In the  thermonuclear war scenario especially, this is silly.  Our society would rebuild, I think, within about ten years.  A far poorer society than now, but with much of the most destructive elements of our society gone in the initial flashes.  (Are there any Poison Ivy League schools not in big cities?)

Other scenarios: 

Collapse of civil order with Blue mobs burning out Blue cities: this will be self-limiting.  Even with a Blue national government assisting, these mobs will not last long outside Blue cities.  Demand for blue hair dye and septum jewelery will collapse as well.

Financial collapse: Like the thermonuclear war scenario, this will correct within ten years as we revert to a subsistence agrarian society.  Ammunition will remain valuable even in the aftermath of recovery as capital to build ammunition plants and supply chains are likely to not be on the top of anyone's priority list.

Earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters short of planet-killer asteroids again will be short-term collapses.

Why, then, do people stockpile wealth-destroying quantities of ammunition?  

1. Slippery slope beliefs about security. "I need 5000 rounds to deal with Blue city rioting spreading to civilization.  I feel secure.  Maybe 10,000 rounds will make me feel more secure.  If I have 100,000 rounds, I will be immune!"

2. Failure to appreciate the destruction to wealth that results from investing too much capital in objects with no return on investment.  As much as I like my Cadillac, if I was not fairly rich, it would make no sense to own it.  As it is, because I am making payments and the capital that buying it cash would have lost a greater than 17% annual growth, it is really not any substantial loss of ROI.  Buying a $25,000 car would have been cheaper, but what is the point of being rich if you cannot indulge yourself?

3. A lack of faith that God provides even in such little things as decent fellow humans.  As my blog points out at the top: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." -- Rom. 8:28  Before becoming a Christian, I often worried a lot about the future.  My experiences since then have given me strong confidence that I have little to fear.

This is Almost Like a Babylon Bee Title

Alas, it is just a reminder that evil people flock like vultures.   10/27/25 BBC:

Prince Andrew hosted Epstein, Maxwell and Weinstein at Royal Lodge

Still Thinking How to Mark Fine Divisions in CFC

It turns out that USA made .008" carbide end mills are not expensive.  I am thinking of cutting a 5.5" quarter circle for the part that holds the polar axis housing.  It needs markings for latitude.  (The polar axis points to the North Celestial Pole and thus needs adjustment for your latitude.)  I would need ideally one degree divisions.  

Because of how I need to hold this part when turning a sheet of 6" x 6" into a quarter circle, I will be cutting a 5.5" x 5.5" part.  This will give me a 4.31" hemisemicircumference.  For 90 one degree divisions, those would be .0479" apart.  The ten degree markers will be longer and marked with degrees.  (There is a font library in linuxCNC.)  The 5 degree lines will be shorter and the one degree markers shorter still.  The .0120" end mill should allow clear spaces between degree markers.   

These are very thin, and brittle cutting tools.  I will be cutting in .0001" cuts (probably to .002" deep) at probably .5 inches/minute until I am sure this is safe.  (Yes, I will buy two.)

Once cut, I will use the finest brush that I can to fill in with phosphorescent paint.  Then to remove overspray, I will run a flycutter across the surface .001" deep, leaving a painted set of lines.

UPDATE: This US made .005" diameter carbide  endmill is reasonably priced.

Inventorying Ammo in Preparation for Moving Next Year

 Movers will not move ammo.  (Guns, yes.)  PODS will not allow ammo to ship in their units.  Since we do not plan to drive to Tennessee, I am figuring out the UPS shipping cost and selling any ammunition in excess of forseeable needs.  The TEOTWAWKI scenario will likely have substantial warning with which to buy ammo; the Auschwitz scenario will have substantial warning.  Democrats control both houses and the White House does not happen overnight.

In one sense, much of this absurd quantity was built around the Auschwitz scenario but arming other, less wealthy Resistance fighters.

But how did I end up with 4000+ rounds of 5.45 NATO? And 1000+ rounds of 7.62 NATO?  I was too tired to count boxes of .380.  (I have less 9mm than I would prefer.  Once moved, I will try and swap some of my excess .45ACP for 9mm.)  The 2300 rounds of .22LR is obvious: cheap, takes up no space.

If you are local, and want ammunition at the current mail order bulk price, contact me.  Better you take this weight off my hands and not pay retail prices.

Wow! Resistance to Corrosion

I was looking for M3 PTFE set screws.  I need low coefficient of friction but this description of its corrosion resistance:

"Polytetrafluoroethylene has excellent chemical stability and corrosion resistance. It is one of the best corrosion-resistant materials in the world today. It can withstand all other chemicals except molten alkali metals, chlorine trifluoride, chlorine pentafluoride and liquid fluorine. It does not change even when boiled in aqua regia."

You can see why DuPont invented it for the uranium hexafluoride gas diffusion plant at Oak Ridge.