Our Elites Are Self-Admitted Criminals

3/11/26 National Review article discusses how one of the New Yorker's niche publications about architecture is horrified to discover that some chains, like Whole Foods, have "jails," rooms where they hold shoplifters until police arrive. Worse they are holding members of the elite:

"DeLigter’s sample of thieves is hardly representative of the broader public. Her subjects include a “designer,” a “photographer,” a “sculptor,” and a “food stylist,” all of whom executed their heists in one of the highest-end grocers in America, each of which is located in some of the wealthiest zip codes in the United States."

If this was poor people stealing a loaf of bread because of hunger, the progressive sympathy for the poor might make sense, but this is just a sign of the moral degeneracy of the left.

Handles Everywhere

I was so pleased with how handy the Televue-85 is now that it has a handle that I bought a 3.5" center-to-center furniture handle and did they same to the 3" f/4.5 reflector. This is neither as clumsy nor as expensive as the Televue-85 but still makes it easier to put on a mount.

There Is No Substitute for Sharp Tools

That includes drill bits, saw blades, end mills, and today's subject, boring bars. I am boring an aluminum cylinder and cutting was going poorly. I looked carefully at the carbide tip and the problem was obvious. Fortunately, this is a rotatable carbide tip. To do that you need a teeny tiny Tor-X (T7) which is Alford slightly larger than this letter o on a 13" screen. (Do you remember 13" computer monitors?)

It bores so much better now.

If You Are Going to Spam Me, At Least Make Me Laugh

Today's marvel:

"Greetings, from The illuminati world elite empire. Bringing the poor, the needy and the talented to limelight of fame, riches, powers and security, get recognized in your business, political race, rise to the top in whatever you do, be protected spiritually and physically! All these you will achieve in a twinkle of an eye when you get initiated to the great Illuminati empire. Once you are initiated to the illuminati empire you will get numerous benefits and reward.

Note: that this message was created solely for the purpose of our recruitment scheme which will end next month and this offer is for unique ones only, if you are not serious on joining the illuminati empire, then you are advise not to contact us at all. This is because disloyalty is highly not tolerated here in our organization.

Do you agree to be a member of the illuminati new world order? If YES! then kindly reply us back on our direct recruitment email only at: contact@eliterecruitment.org 

Please note, Kindly make sure all your respond/reply are send directly to the email stated above only at:> contact@eliterecruitment.org 

For more instructions on our membership process.

The Illuminati.'

That iEXOS 100 Mount

The mount arrived Thursday.  Why did I buy something made in the PRC? I needed a mount light enough for a grab-and-go telescope. What were my choices.

The Losmandy GM8 is made in California (sort of America). I have two of these already and they are excellent but not light enough to pick up or use for public astronomy. 

The Vixen AP-SM is light enough with goto feature (you say where you want to point the telescope and after a few seconds of whirring motors, there you are! I was quite prepared to pay the premium price (about $1800 with the carbon fiber hybrid tripod). But Vixen lost its North American distributor. Vixen mounts are roughly twice the cost of PRC-made mounts that at first were clones of Vixen's mounts. I looked at buying from a Japanese retailer. With the current weak yen, the shipped price was $200 or so cheaper than the the last U.S. price. But there would be no warranty. I would not expect any real problems with a Vixen, but $1800 for a paperwork is not okay.

And those are your non-PRC choices other than incredibly expensive, long wsiting list, and truly top of the line Astro-Physics mount made in Illinois 

The iEXOS 100 is light enough to pick up and carry without the telescope. The Televue-85 is a very expensive 10 pound telescope so I am not going to carry everything out in one operation. The telescope attaches to the mount using a Vixen-style dovetail, so attaching it quickly is easy.

Explore Scientific appears to have done most (all?) of the design work, not just imported an existing product 

It is a very attractive piece of gear.

The white patches in various places are glow-in-the-dark to make sure no one stumbles into or over your mount in the dark.

It comes with two 1 kg counterweights:

Notice the beautiful finish unlike the crackle finish on the cheapest PRC-made mounts.

Two of these is not quite enough to counterbalance that scope so I have ordered several more from B&H Photo who had them in stock. There was a slight delay because I placed an order on the Jewish Shabbat but they are now en route.

The only design flaw that I can find is that thumbscrews that hold them in place are not centered on the weight so if you put them immediately adjacent of the shaft those knobs cannot be lined up. 

This is purely an esthetic concern.

Even though the counterweights should do not balance the telescope, with the telescope on the mount, the goto motors have enough power to move it to alignment position. I used two star alignment where it picks a bright star and asks you to confirm it is centered. Once you confirm that it picks another star. Once those are picked, you can pick any object in its extensive database at which to point the telescope. The motors are surprisingly quiet. I am having trouble uploading video in the Blogger app so trust me.

It has a polar bore through which you look to get the polar axis aligned with North Celestial Pole, which is roughly Polaris for the next few thousand years.

The bore is so small that I cannot imagine a polar alignment scope that would go into it and provide useful light gathering (Polaris is not very bright)  

The sky is now clearing so it is time to go outside. 

No, it fooled me. We have had several clear nights.  New mount summons cloud cover as sure as drawing pentagram summons Satan.

UPDATE: I only needed one new counterweight to balance it. The very nice metal lens cap adds so much weight at the end that it requires tightening the clutches until I remove it.

My Lenovo WiFi Problem

I have had an intermittent problem with my Lenovo 11e failing to remain connected. After connecting, it would stay connected for about four minutes. Then it dropped the connection and forgot the password preventing auto reconnect. (And annoying me by requiring me to type the password again.)

Lenovo, to their credit, tried really hard to fix this, replacing the WiFi transceiver twice at my home and a few days at their North Carolina facility. After each repair, I would travel and it worked great.

Yesterday and today, I have been using this 11e to control the iEXOS 100 mount.  The mount has a server, so if you connect to it, you disconnect from the house WiFi. It seemed to work fine with the mount.

I asked SuperGrok to help me. It suggested that the problem was in my home's router. This would explain why the problem never appears when traveling. So I went to the Cadillac and connected to its router. No problem. 

SuperGrok suggested that a several year old WiFi transceiver might not handle the WPA2/WPA3 transition causing loss of connection and password. SuperGrok had me call Sparklight to change my settings. 

It was already set to WPA2 but the tech turned on something called Compatibility Mode. My 11e no longer drops connection.

Remember When Bigots Said Women Were Too Emotional to Vote?

 Click here too see an International Women's Day protest in New York City. The bigots were wrong but leftists screaming at the sky does nothing to refute it.