"A Madness of Marmots" is What SuperGrok Ssys is the Collective Noun

From the effect they have on our dogs at the window, I was going to call it an insanity of marmots, but it lacks cobsonance. (I am sufficiently uselessly educated to know alliteration involves vowels.)

Silly Question

 Let's say you want to cut a piece of aluminum angle in 1.5" segments on a chop saw with a 100 tooth blade. It is rough on blades but cuts well.) I would prefer 1.5" wide -0", +.05". Can anyone suggest a method of doing this? Yes, I should use a band saw but I do not have one right now.

Solution: dig through my scrap pile to find a 1.522" wide piece that I milled. Put it against the blade. Press a piece Delrin against and clamp it in place as a stop against the back fence. Remove 1.522" piece. Push workpiece against stop.

The first two slices after running over the belt sander were 1 517" and 1.509". Taking them down to 1.50" on the mill will be easy  

End of _End of a Berlin Diary_

I finished reading Shirer's book. A few observations:

There are places where his comments especially in the Postscript reflect the immediate postwar liberal consensus: Germany is a fundamentally warlike and brutal nation which can never be trusted with industry again. The U.S. should focus on propaganda to defeat the Soviet Union, not military aid to the nations that were fighting Communist insurrectionists. Free enterprise was an outmoded concept; democratic socialism was the only way forward. The Great Depression was still widely blamed on capitalism and it seemed like a plausible suspect at the time. The failure of the New Deal was not sufficiently obvious at that time.

There are many pieces of information that he lists that were new to me: I did not know that General Beck actually had the wheels turning for a military coup d'etat against Hitler that was derailed by Chamberlain's betrayal of Czechoslovakia.

There are facts that I have often seen asserted without any specific documentary evidence. Shirer points to specific documents that demonstrate that the German General Staff recognized that preoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 if resisted by France would have led to a humiliating defeat for Hitler. Similarly, the General Staff believed that if Britain, France and the Czechs had put up any military resistance to Sudetenland land invasion, Germany would have lost 

Not a Full Blockade

From reading Centcom's description this is not a blockade of Hormuz but of ships leaving Iranian ports. Much more sensible:

TAMPA, Fla. — U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces will begin implementing a blockade of all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports on April 13 at 10 a.m. ET, in accordance with the President’s proclamation.

And 4/12/26 The Hill  reports our Navy is clearing mines to open passage for other nations.

I wish Trump would be clearer when he makes statements on Truth Social.

Canadian Politician Proposes $500K Exit Visa For College Graduates

4/11/26 Canadian Natuonal Post:

Ironically, the special guest who made this suggestion during the Building a Stronger, More Competitive Canadian Economy panel which also featured federal ministers Mélanie Joly, Rechie Valdez, and Lena Metlege Diab, is a Canadian who left Canada for better opportunities himself.

Patrick Pichette was born and educated in Montreal and left Canada for work in the U.S. accepting a role as senior vice president and CFO of Google in California in 2008. He now lives in London, U.K., holds a Canadian passport and is a partner at Inovia Capital.

Inovai Capital says Pichette paid Canadian taxes continuously from 1989 to 2008 and paid an exit tax on all his assets at the time. Pichette currently pays both Canadian and U.K. taxes.

Pichette thinks today’s young Canadians should stay put, or cough up $500,000 if they want to leave..

Think about that, a Canadian who by his own admission went from college to Microsoft at $300K a year and lives in Britain wants to charge educated Canadians $590K to move to the U.S.? I think we are going to see a Berlin Wsll at thr 49th parallel.  Alberta needs to leave now while they can.

One of Those Reminders That Capitslism is Often a Gamble and Sometimes a Dumb One

Why Nobody Wants to Live in NYC's Thinnest Skyscraper. The problems included an absurd set of engineering problems. Even solved, the building sways and groans in high winds. At $10 million and up, spectacular views and a wonderful location on Central Park failed to sell all the apartments. The $2 billion (yes, with a b) invested led to foreclosure; the investors lost everything.

If I had $2 billion sitting around looking for a place to park, I would run like my mad from a hogh-risk project like this. My IRA has grown 41% this last year. I could take out $200 million annually with almost no risk. That $200 million could be invested in essentially zero risk tax-free municipal bonds with an annual return of $8 million. Some people are clearly too stupid to stay rich.

Blockadong Hormuz Looks Like a Mistske

Iran doing so is a violation of international law. The U.S. doing so is as well. Removing the mines was and is the right strategy. I understand the need to end ziran's nuclear ambitions but this seems a poorly thought out plan.