We Had a Dry, Warm Winter

We are noe having a cold wet spring. We need the water but it is a bit dreary.

Third World Employment: Be Glad You Live Here

 Painfully manual and inefficient processing to get gold out of computer circuit boards. It looks like they are adding sheets of lead, probably to bind non-gold materials. I am pretty sure that making aqua regia (hydrochloric and nitric acids) which dissolves gold. I do not want to see the livers of these Indians or Pakistanis doing this awful work. The only advanced technology I see is a 5L Pyrex beaker.

I Think I See Where the Money Is Going

4/15/26 City Journal:

Last month, we received a report from a whistleblower who claimed that illegal aliens were staying in San Francisco’s homeless shelters. Following up on the tip, we visited numerous publicly funded shelters in San Francisco, and spoke to employees and residents about their policies, sometimes through a translator.

We discovered not only that the shelters were housing illegal immigrants but also that they were apparently housing a population of male-to-female “transgender” illegal aliens, who had hoped to obtain “gender-affirming care.” And, to our shock, state and local governments apparently are providing it.

Not only providing an unnecessary service but for illegals.  According to some that they interviewed, this is widely known back home that break the law to come here and California will do your sex-change for you.  Of course, California's Medi-Cal program (Medicaid but handled by California) is only administered by California. All U.S. taxpayers are paying for it.

An ICE Fraud

I figured since this fraud is widely distributed among progressives, I would share this correction.  4/10/26 ABC Chicago:

DODGE COUNTY, Wis. (WLS) -- Law enforcement officials are saying a Chicago-area woman's claims of being detained for two days were a hoax.

A Wisconsin sheriff is now suing Sundas "Sunny" Naqvi for defamation, claiming she lied to the public last month, when she said she was held in the Broadview U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility and transferred to Dodge County, Wisconsin....

Schmidt, in his lawsuit, outlined what he calls a hoax allegedly carried out by 28-year-old Naqvi.

Naqvi's supporters spoke out last month, after the Evanston native claimed she was detained at O'Hare airport by Customs and Border Protection for 30 hours.

Her family said she was then sent to the ICE detention facility in Broadview and later taken to a facility in Dodge County, where they said she was released Saturday, March 7.

According to the lawsuit, Sheriff Schmidt says Naqvi was actually staying at a hotel near O'Hare and allegedly sending text messages from her room.

"She checked into the Hampton Inn and Suites in Rosemont, Illinois for the entire duration of this alleged event, traveled from the Hampton Inn and Suites in Illinois to the Holiday Express in Beaver Dam, (Wisconsin), was done to complete this hoax. She scammed a victim out of thousands of dollars in pursuit of this hoax against the federal government and the Dodge County Sheriff's Office," Schmidt said.

So not just political, but also scamming some gullible progressive. 

Knowing the Limits of AI

There is something like panic going on about AI in some circles. All the jobs that will be lost, student fraud on papers and tests, the inability to distinguish real photos and videos from fakes, the use of AI to plan mass murders as in this recent Florida case.

Of these, only student fraud seems a serious hazard to me. We can fix this for exams by going back to Blue Books.  (Remember those?) Of course, we thwn need to teach cursive. 

What I am doing for research papers in my U S. History class  is scheduling a 10 minute Zoom oral defense at the end of the term. If you cannot answer questions about your paper off the top of your head, it suggests you did not even read the paper you turned in. 

This reminds me of a funny story. English Composition at USC. The terribly nervous, chain-smoking (this tells you how this took place in a galaxy far, far away, and long, long ago) grad student teaching the class asked one of the football players to read an especially good essay that he had turned in. As he read it, it became obvious, at least to me, that he had never seen this essay before.

Anyway, job loss: AI has no idea what the task is. You need to give it prompts of some sort that tells it what you need. AI makes the task simpler, much like a word processor makes writing essays much easier. (For that English Composition class, I typed my essays on a Royal Ultronic.) Compared to the manual Underwood on which I learned to type, this was an unfair advantage.

Fake pictures and videos. PhotoShop already crossed this boundary with the picture of Boy George in the Oval Office with President Reagan. Hollywood has long had the ability to create films so good at bending reality that this is also not a new issue. AI can do it cheaper and faster is all.

Mass murder planning? Americans have been doing this just fine by themselves for more than a century. This new paper by me demonstrates that there has actually been a very slight decline in high fatality (6 or more dead) mass shootings in America since 1890.

I have become a big fan of SuperGrok (the subscription version of Grok with more capacity). It is more useful for technical problems than CoPilot or CHATGPT. It is still not a perfect solution. Recently I have used it for two problems: my Losmandy G811G mount has some slop in the declination axis; and my mill's X axis motor stopped moving as it should while making a horrible grinding noise. 

For the G811G, it attempted to talk me through a fix, but it clearly did not fully understand the mechanism even with pictures. It also misstated the size of screw that I needed to replace a lost motor mount screw. (It claimed it was 4-40 x 1/2". The actual screw was 6-32 x 1/2".)

For rhe mill SuperGrok was very useful, but as an advisor. It watched the video of the problem and correctly identified the cause. It mostly gave good directions for disassembly and repair of the X leadscrew assembly. In a few places, I substituted my knowledge about the mechanism and observations that it did not think about which to ask.

As an aide, it was very helpful and allowed me to fix the problem without sending it to Sherline for repair. If given control of hand tools, it would have ruined a repairable part.

AI is a useful tool, but no substitute for human intelligence. 

Low Competence Spearphishing

From plumbingpermts@delair.com

S0ClAL SECURITY ADMlN

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Dear User, Please download your Social Security eStatement at your earliest convenience. We are currently conducting a verification process for all individuals under the SSA to ensure proper program administration. You are required to carefully follow all provided instructions in conjunction with Super Ops. Important Notice: Statements and documents are only compatible with PC/Windows systems and must be accessed in accordance with Super Ops instructions. Download Statement   Note: Document File saved as: ZZX5EX9ST24G_19SI0B7FBSUF4_windows_x64.msi

Insanity Defense

 4/15/26 KETV. Police responded to a kidnapping:

Investigators said officers arrived at the location and immediately found 31-year-old Noemi Guzman near the southern parking lot entry, standing by a shopping cart with the child inside.

Omaha police said Guzman was making multiple threats with the knife, and officers gave multiple verbal commands for her to drop the knife. She refused to drop it and cut the boy, officials said.

Two officers shot the woman, Noemi Guzman, after she cut the boy and refused to drop a knife she had stolen from the store, the police department said in a news release....

Omaha police said Guzman is the same woman accused of stabbing her father and breaking into the rectory of an Omaha church.

In 2024, investigators said Guzman doused her father with a flammable liquid and cut him with a knife.

That previous crime ended up:

Guzman pleaded not guilty to charges of assault, arson, burglary, and criminal mischief. She was later found not responsible by reason of insanity. The case is still open. KETV Investigates is continuing to examine the court documents.

I understand that there may have been good reason to find her not guilty by reason of insanity. (This incident seems to confirm it.) But why would you put someone out on the street with a history of insane violence? She could not lawfully buy or possess a gun, but as she demonstrated, getting hold of deadly weapons is not hard. In addition to risk to others, it is hard to imagine that she would be safe on her own. She certainly was not in this situation.