What a Great Healthcare System!

2/26/26 Globe and Mail (Canadian big newspaper):

1 in 4 Canadians in long-term care were given anti-psychotic drugs without diagnosis, report finds 

Self-Darwinizing

 2/25/26 Shooting News Weekly:

Darwin loves it when feloniously stupid thugs do feloniously stupid things…like trying to rob people who are walking out of a gun range. With guns on them. That’s right up there with juggling chainsaws or hand grenades with the pins pulled, but that’s what happened in Texas.

A trio of rocket surgeons apparently wanted to audition as the Three Stooges of Crime, watching for a guy to leave a gun store and live-fire range in Houston. They actually laid in wait outside a gun range looking for someone to rob. In Texas. Where “howdy” might as well as mean, “I’m packing, you packing too?”

What could possibly go wrong?

Dreamers

 2/25/26 CBS News:

ICE arrested 261 DACA recipients over 10 months last year, document shows

Deeper in, for those who read beyond the headline:

The statistics indicate the vast majority of DACA recipients taken into federal immigration custody during that period had criminal records. 

Low Power Wide Angle Finderscope

Rings

I ordered some rings to hold it in a Vixen finder base. Finding rings large enough for a 68mm OD tube was nearly impossible but these seem like they should do:

It turns out the tube, being a PVC pipe fitting is not exactly round; it has some odd bumps I think to get traction with a wrench. The solution was to buy some 58mm 3mm wall aluminum tube and machine this, thus making the finder be completely free of the PVC. 

Those rings are made in the PRC and like most stuff that I am seeing made there, it is beautifully and accurately made. (I bought and returned a camera telescope adapter that looked like it was designed from a photograph: beautiful but inverted in a hard to explain way). 

I have made a similar ring set in the past of white acetal. They made the same correct choices. The base, which uses a 75 degree dovetail for Vixen finder shoe compatibility, has slots across it that the rings fit into very precisely so they will never be not perpendicular to the base. It uses 1/4-20 screws through the base into the bottom of the rings. That means that a variety of ring sizes can use that same part. It also makes machining this into three separate parts, each of which is a simple part to machine.

I really wish there were Americans willing to make products like these. Antares builds smaller rings in Canada; I buy their stuff even though a bit more expensive. These rings cost $30. I am sure that these could be made profitably here and sold for $60 and there would be buyers at that price. If I had the time, I would organize this. I have the capital, the interest, but not the time.

Eyepiece

I bought a SVBONY 25mm Plossl for the finderscope. It gives 6x and 8.33 degrees of field which is fine. It is not a crosshairs reticle. It is a beautiful eyepiece. So I went looking for instructions on adding an illuminated reticle to an existing eyepiece and I found some for an Orion 25mm Plossl, which doubtless came from the same factory.

Okay, maybe it does not need an illuminated reticle. The skyglow here is so much that black crosshairs show just fine. But what if I get a really dark sky in Tennessee? More interestingly, I found this video touting SVBONY's 20mm illuminated reticle eyepiece.

20mm focal length means 7.6x. The 70 degree apparent field of view means 9.2 degree field.

Since I know at least some of you are here to learn about telescopes (no, really!), let me explain Apparent Field of View (AFOV). This is a measure of how much field of view is potentially available. You divide AFOV by magnification (70/7.6 in this case) to get the field of view your eye will see.

This is a big win. Another big win is that as magnification drops, the telescopes exit pupil falls. A dark-adapted young eye can expand to 7mm. If you supply a 10mm exit pupil, only (7/10)^2 of the light will be useable. This is why 7x50mm, 8x50mm, and 6x42mm binoculars are most common; optimizing the available light for young eyes. 

Us old guys are lucky to get 5mm. The 25mm eyepiece gave a 8.2mm exit pupil, so about 62% of the available light is useless. Instead of seeing 100x fainter stars (5 magnitudes), I would get about two magnitudes. At 7.6x, that is a 6.6mm exit pupil about 42% of the light is useless. This should be three to four magnitudes.

I Have Long Suspected Progressives Hate Black People

 2/23/26 The Hill:

Rapper Nicki Minaj and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) on Monday knocked California Gov. Gavin Newsom over his SAT remarks at an event in Atlanta previewing the release of his memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry.”

“I’m not trying to impress you. I’m just trying to impress upon you I’m like you. I’m no better than you. I’m a 960 SAT guy,” Newsom told Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens (D).

“I’m not trying to offend anyone — trying to act all there if you got 940,” he added.

The recorded clip quickly sparked backlash from the MAGA base from Minaj and Scott alike.

“His way of bonding with black ppl is to tell them how stupid he is & that he can’t read. This means my first read on him was correct. He’s been handed so many things & put in high positions he never earned or deserved,” Minaj wrote in a post on the social platform X.

Newsom is about my age so I suspect that he means his SAT Verbal and Math scores totaled 960. If so, it explains why he is the most likely Democratic candidate for President. I was not one of the smarter people in my social circles but I still managed 1390. Some of my friends achieved 1480.

Yes, tell black people that they are just as intellectually challenged as you are. That's a way to make friends!

You Can't Stop the Signal

 A press release from Colorado legislature Democrats:

The bill would also prohibit the possession of instructions and the sale or distribution of instructions on how to use a three-dimensional printer to create a firearm or a firearm component. HB26-1144 would not apply to federally licensed firearms manufacturers.

Why not prohibit having the knowledge of how to machine he parts on a conventional mill? Prepare to mail STL files for M16 lowers to members of the legislature after this passes.

My Email Problem Seems to That Thunderbird No Longer Works

 Outlook sends but I cannot get it to read from my IMAP server. There are days that I feel so stupid.

Outlook is now sending and reading. I hate Outlook.

Thunderbird on two different PCs is refusing to send and sometimes refusing to read.

It appears that Thunderbird is unable to open SMTP connections. CoPilot has taken me down multiple rabbit holes without success. 

This is beginning to look like Thunderbird has just stopped working.

I may need to just use webmail or my Android.

Thunderbird is sending the emails because they appear in my Sent folder at webmail.  They just get deleted before inbox.

It appears that my IP has been blacklisted.  Here. And here. And here. I think someone on my ISP was doing bad things and all of us were blacklisted.