Things AI Is Good At It

I asked it to compare my 800 pages of text summarizing mass murder incidents with my Access database for items missing in one or the other. It gave me a pretty complete list which is letting me go through and fix these. (I am not trusting it to revise either for me. SuperGrok does not seem prone to hallucinations but you do not want to find out when asks about the incident on the Moon.)

I Remembered Reading This But Could Not Find it Again; SuperGrok Found It!

 I remember reading about this in an early history of Pennsylvania prison reform but I could never find it again. SuperGrok thought long and hard and found it.

[ Section XIII.] Be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That upon the application of any of the said malefactors or any other in their behalf it shall and may be lawful for the court in which they were convicted at and before the expiration of their servitude to make inquiry as well of the sheriff, gaoler or keeper of the work-house or house of correction as of the keeper and keepers and others concerning the conduct and behaviour of such applicant during his or her servitude, and, if it shall appear thereupon to them that such person hath labored faithfully without attempting an escape and evidenced by a patient submission to the justice of their punishment a sincere reformation, then and in such case the said court shall grant to every such person a certificate thereof which shall also be recorded without fee in the proceedings of such court, and shall thereupon operate as a discharge from all claims and demands of the party injured and also as a pardon of the guilt and infamy of the offence, and give him or her a new capacity and credit.[12 Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania  ch. 241 at 288 (1786)] 

Clearly, the idea of lifelong disability is not as as straightforward as some imagine.

Fall Color Arriving

New Decision

 Williams v. Attorney-General of the U.S. (3rd Cir. 2026) decided that a second offense DUI conviction (which had a potential sentence of five years) is not a valid basis for disarmament:

The Second Amendment is a primary protection against tyranny, a strong bulwark securing American liberty, and an indispensable means of defending the public good. So courts testing restrictions on these “most sacred” and “necessary” rights must consider the history and tradition of firearm regulations with care and rigor.1 Edward Williams had two convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol in the early 2000s, the second of which (unbeknownst to him) triggered 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which purports to make it “unlawful” for persons convicted of “a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” to possess firearms. Seeking to restore his rights, Williams filed for a declaratory judgment to confirm that § 922(g)(1), as applied to him, runs afoul of the Second Amendment. The District Court agreed with Williams, and we will affirm that judgment. 

This is a very detailed examination of the constitutional basis for disarmament.  It examines how even the definition of felony is full of ambiguity:

But the Justice Department’s apparent attempt to broaden discrete crimes justly punished by death to include all felonies, much less all crimes punishable by more than one year imprisonment, misses the point. The word “felony” has roots in mortal sin. But as time passed, felony’s substance was lost, as it came not to be defined by the character of the wrongdoer, but by the potential punishment. By Blackstone’s age, it was a crime punishable by death, encompassing “no less than a hundred and sixty [offenses].” 4 Blackstone *18. More recently, commentators have given up trying to apply any independent, substantive meaning to “felony,” admitting that it means whatever the legislature says it means. “[F]elony . . . has derived so many meanings from so many parts of the common law, and so many statutes in England, and has got to be used in such a vast number of different senses, that it is now impossible to know precisely in what sense we are to understand this word.” 6 Nathan Dane, General Abridgment and Digest of American Law 715 (1823).  

These sources reveal that the modern regulatory label of felony—a crime punishable by more than one year of imprisonment—is not even close to the proper “level of generality at which to define [the] historical practice.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 724 n.4 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). It captures conduct that would have commonly justified exclusion, and a host of less significant acts. So simply pointing to Williams’s felony because it is labeled “felony” does not do. We must move to a more granular comparison, assessing Williams’s conduct against the Justice Department’s proffered analogy.  

It points to habitual drunkard laws and how irrelevant they are to this case:

Nor does the Justice Department explain “how” the habitual drunkard laws ameliorated the threat of firearm misuse in a way relevant to the operation of § 922(g)(1). As Bruen clarifies, “if earlier generations addressed the societal problem, but did so through materially different means, that . . . could be evidence that a modern regulation is unconstitutional.” 597 U.S. at 26–27. That is the case here, and why the analogy to the permanent bar in § 922(g)(1) breaks down. Most statutes capped the commitment of habitual drunkards to the state inebriate asylum, prison, or hard labor to a few months or years. Others provided for an indefinite period of incarceration, but had no indication that upon release individuals continued to forfeit their arms. Rather, once someone was “safe” to “go at large,” Act of Mar. 27, 1876, ch. 208, § 7, 1876 Va. Acts 249, they were restored to the status of a full rights-bearing citizen. See Range, 124 F.4th at 231 (“[I]n the Founding era, a felon could acquire arms after completing his sentence and reintegrating into society.”). 

I am not keen on DUI convicts possessing guns. The risk that someone so irresponsible as to drive drunk has access to guns, cars, or sharp objects, seems high. I also read that Williams' last conviction was in 2005. It appears that he has learned his lesson and reintegrated into society.

Electric Power

I used to think Idaho Power was disappointingly unreliable.  Appalachian Power is no better, even in pretty good weather.  Third power outage since we arrived.  There is a reason our neighbor has a generator. 

I considered solar to backup a battery.  If we had outages that lasted for days on end, this might make sense. I am looking into just battery backup: systems that use a big battery to provide power for essential circuits (A/C, refrigerator, microwave oven). Electric range has huge surge demands. Other essentials such as BiPAP can use a smaller backup for that particular device. There is little need for the PCs: much of what they do requires Internet and without power, the whole Internet is down unless I switch to Starlink.

UPDATE: emailed bills went somewhere mysterious; automatic checking withdrawal takes 2-3 months to start so this was power turned off for non-payment.  Literally within seconds of entering the last digit of my Discover card number,  power came on.

This Sounds So Much More Sophisticated Than "A Night of Heavy Drinking"

New York, N.Y. (1927)

04/18/1927: A quarrel between three acquaintances “after a night of cabereting” led to an exchange of gunfire. One of the dead was holding a revolver with one shot fired, suggesting he attempted self-defense. Police found a partly loaded revolver near his body.

Category: residential

Suicide: no

Cause: quarrel

Weapon: pistol[1]

---

[1] "Three People Murdered In NY Apartment," Bismarck Tribune, Apr. 8, 1927, 3.

Pool Boy 3

No, not part of a series of short subject films about handsome young men who take care of the lady of the house's needs.  We needed a solar pool cover, partly to keep it warmer and partly to keep leaves out.

Solar pool covers are a nuisance if they are not motorized.  The really elegant ones have tracks on the edge of the pool for dragging the cover. That makes more for a new pool. This uses a motor to roll up the cover. You pull on the cover as it unrolls to keep it smoothly moving across the water.