Why is 4.5" Now 4.75"?

Our sprinkler system has a filter to remove gunk from the canal water.  The coupler for the filter housing is 4.5" diameter.  (Yes, I measured circumference with a tape measure.)  We have been using a oil filter style wrench which is very clumsy.  There are wrenches designed to fit the housing securely.  When I went to Grover's Plumbing Supply,  the plumbing expert informed me that the 4.5" wrenches were arriving bigger than that, requiring you to offset from horizontal to get it to turn the coupler.  I am glad she knew enough not to just drop it in my hand.

Amazon had a 4.5" filter housing wrench.  It arrived.  The bag clearly said 4 5".  It was more like 6" so useless. 

Home Depot's website listed a 4.5" wrench.  I measured it: 4.75".  Why does 4 5" suddenly become a nominal diameter?

UPDATE: The filter inside the housing is 4.5" diameter, not the housing.

In Case You Have Been Asleep for Several Years

The Ukraine War has demonstrated that the future of warfare is drone-based.  You have all seen aerial drones dropping grenades into trenches and tanks stupid enough to leave hatches open. The maritime drones have also demonstrated their ability to sink Russian ships.  This video shows ground drones often salvaged from car parts but with very little visibility.  Some are carrying mines.  Some have machine guns.  Some 20mm cannon.  All have been very effective. 

Why this matters.  Ukraine like Russia is facing a demographic crisis.  WW2 and its echoes means they must avoid getting too many soldiers killed in combat.   Drones save lives.  

These drones are pretty cheap.  I hope the U.S. Navy, which is beginning to build maritime drones, is paying attention to this cost issue.  If you can build maritime drones that cost a few thousand dollars, you can swarm Chinese ships in such numbers that they cannot get all of them.  I also want our captains to have a nearly unlimited supply of these available to launch.  Make them cheap enough and manufacturing scales nicely.

I Think HFCS Fear is Unfounded

I do not have any problem with encouraging Coca-Cola to change to sugar.  I sometimes get Mexican Coke which uses cane sugar and it tastes the same to me.  Like the companies removing dyes voluntarily, this is how to make things better: persuasion, not threats.

Save Me From Being Mispronouned

7/16/25 Globe & Mail:

"A Federal Court justice has halted the deportation of a non-binary American in a ruling that criticized Ottawa’s Immigration Department for not properly considering the situation of LGBTQ Americans since U.S. President Donald Trump took office.

"Angel Jenkel, a 24-year-old multimedia artist from Minnesota who is engaged to a Canadian, can now remain in Canada while their case is judicially reviewed, in a judgment that their lawyers hailed as precedent-setting."

Yes.  Minnesota is the only state more pro-trans than California.   If Angel goes home, they are going to use "he" and "him" on xir until xir has a concussion or is bleeding out.

Refugee status for brutal use of pronouns!

The Ultimate Centrally Planned Economy

China's Rotting Mansion Cities. This makes the 2008 housing crisis look like intelligence. Enough vacant homes to house entire European nations.  Tens of millions of people making mortgage payments on unbuilt condos.

At some point, this has to collapse  

Obscure Bash Question

 It has been almost 20 years since I made heavy use of Unix, but I vaguely recall a construct in some shell where you could 

ls {circle*|mkcircle*} 

and have it match every file of those two wildcard matches.  I cannot find that in any reference work.  Was that just an imagined capacity because I wanted it?

The Epstein List

 7/15/25 The Hill reports on what Epstein's lawyer says about the "clients' list."

Jeffrey Epstein’s former lawyer Alan Dershowitz said two judges in New York are suppressing information about the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender’s case, not the Trump administration....

Dershowitz, who helped get a plea deal for Epstein in 2008, said that there’s no Epstein “client list,” just a redacted FBI affidavit from accusers. 

“There are several of them from accusers that accuse Jeffrey — that accuse various people of having improper sex, and that has been redacted, the names of the people accused have been blacked out. Now, of course, because I was lawyer and I did all the investigations, I know who all these people are,” Dershowitz said Monday in an appearance on NewsNation’s “Cuomo.” 

The former lawyer argued none of the people in the affidavit are figures currently holding a public office. 

“Some of them were previously in office. Some of them are dead. But there is no client list,” he told host Chris Cuomo. “And the redactions could be undone if you go to court.”

“So, many of the things that are being suppressed are being suppressed by two judges in Manhattan, and they’re doing it largely to protect the alleged accusers who are, in the view of the judges, victims, even though we don’t know what their actual status is,” he added.

Dershowitz reiterated he cannot disclose more information due to judge’s orders, but said Attorney General Pam Bondi and Trump were “not responsible” for missing information.

“I don’t know of any information that they could disclose that they haven’t disclosed. Now maybe there is some, but I’m simply not aware of it,” he said. “And so, I think it’s important to place the blame where the blame deserves to be placed.”

That list, unredacted, might be very interesting, but victims' recollections depend on being to accurately identify who these people were at the time of the offense.  For a famous person, this is unlikely to be difficult, but for anyone else, this might be hearsay, in which case judges regarding those in the affadavit as victims could actually be true if they were not whom the victims thought they were.

This just keeps getting weirder.  7/14/25 Petapixel reports thst Wired turned over the "raw footage" from Epstein’s cell to experts who report that it was edited by Adobe Premiere Pro from two different sources videos in May.  It is hard to imagine that anyone would go to this much trouble but not know about Metadata.  

I am reminded of Obama's birth certificate that was grossly and obviously constructed in PhotoShop, probably to provoke more conspiracy theories.

7/15/25 Wired now says almost three minutes of video are missing.  What can happen in three minutes?