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.

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.