All Tragedies; Some Just More Complex Than Others

 Many of these tragedies turn into one page summaries: fourv dead bodies in an alley shot to death. No clues. Others are surprisingly interesting.

Santa Clara, Cal. (1969)

Before 09/31/1969: The career of the father, 48, as a credit manager collapsed as his financial problems led to “misappropriation of funds” from the credit bureau. Then his attempt at embezzling funds from his senile mother-in-law failed. Neighbors said the family “seemed to just disappear in the middle of the night.” The house changed hands several times before the crime came to light. He ended up in Cedar City, Utah, where he explained that his previous wife and family had died, which was technically true. Then he vanished after embezzling more than $50,000, taking his son from second marriage with him. He was eventually caught in Biloxi, Mississippi, where he married a third time.

In 1974, a termite inspector went into the crawlspace of the family home preparing the house for sale. He found a woman and her two teenaged daughters buried there. He later admitted that he beat to death his wife and one daughter with a hammer and strangled the other daughter.

He was convicted of three murders and sentenced to life.

Category: family

Suicide: no

Cause: financial?

Weapon: blunt[1]

---

[1] “Termite Inspector Finds Victims of Triple Murder,” [Burley, Ida ] South Idaho Press, Mar. 22, 1974, 1 .“House With a Secret,” [Scranton, Penn.] Times-Tribune, Oct. 06, 1974, 63, 70; “Former Biloxian Gets Life Term for Murders of Wife, Daughters,” [Biloxi, Miss] Sun, Jan. 27, 1979, 8.

I can find no record of his death. By this point, I think it unlikely he is still alive. It might be worth checking voter registration records.

This Seems Like a Dirty Trick

A text message:

Hello Fellow Democratic Socialist!

We the People of Idaho, who hold socialist values, are proud to endorse Senator Jim Risch for re-election to the United States Senate. With no Democrat on the ballot this year, the choice before us matters more than ever. Matt Loesby is simply too extreme for our values, and Todd Achilles betrayed us when he served in the State House and abandoned our party. Senator Risch offers something different: while we may not agree with him on every issue, he has shown a willingness to work with us to advance a national socialist agenda. After nearly two decades in the Senate, few people understand the power of the federal government quite like Jim Risch. Together, we can make sure our voice is heard and build a brighter socialist future for all of us in Idaho. On November 3rd, join us in voting for Senator Jim Risch!

STOP=END

The Independent Candidate Surge: Do Not Be Fooled

 I recalled just as we left Idaho, supposedly independent candidates with positions intermediate between Democrat and Republican appearing. When we arrived, one of the candidates for governor was a convicted felon. From the 9/15/26 Tennessee Lookout:

Hatley running as conservative outsider

Hatley has never run for political office in Tennessee and has spent most of his adult life as a businessman. 

After a felony bank fraud conviction, Hatley said he turned his life around. He became the successful owner of Whisper Outdoor, which started by manufacturing hot tubs and has since expanded to producing golf carts, boats and off-road vehicles.

While running as an independent, Hatley described himself as “a very conservative guy.”

“I’ve always been pro-life and pro-guns,” Hatley said. “I want to be independent because I don’t want to have party pressure.”

A tenet of Hatley’s argument to voters is that he is pushing for the state to have an elected auditor to “figure out where the money is going,” because he doesn’t feel like the state is managing its budget correctly.

He is also touting his willingness to spend at least $7 million of his own money and doesn’t plan to do any fundraising.

“I don’t want anyone in my ear,” Hatley said. “It’s very important that I go in on day one with a clean slate, only thinking about things that make sense for Tennessee.”

Hatley was 21. We all do stupid things when young. Maybe not that stupid.

I do believe that once a felon has completed their sentence, continuing their disability from full citizenship is not a great idea. If you are that dangerous, perhaps you should still be inside. I do not think this particularly recommends you for public office, however. 

Grok confirmed my intuition: 

Yes, more pure independents (candidates not nominated by a political party) are running for Congress in the 2026 midterms than in typical recent cycles.

A July 2026 Newsweek analysis of candidate lists found 217 independent entries across U.S. House and Senate races (170 House, 47 Senate), covering 153 distinct contests. Later reporting (NPR and others) put the House figure around 170–173.

A more precise Ballot Access News tally (September 2026 print edition) counted 141 independent candidates for U.S. House seats. That is roughly double the recent norms and matches or exceeds the recent high-water mark:

• 2024: 57 independents for House (lowest since 2004)
• 2022: 78
• 2018: 84
• 2016: 72
• 2014: 82
• 2012: 104
• 2010: 140
• 2006–2008: ~63–65

Political scientist Bernard Tamas noted that a clear increase would reverse a decline in independent/third-party House candidacies lasting more than 25 years (the broader third-party + independent peak was 559 in 2000). Multiple outlets (The Nation, Independent Voter News, NPR) described 2026 as one of the largest surges of independent candidates in recent memory, coinciding with a record ~45% of Americans identifying as independents in Gallup data.

Notable high-profile pure independents include Senate candidates Dan Osborn (Nebraska), Brian Bengs (South Dakota), Todd Achilles (Idaho), and Seth Bodnar (Montana), several of whom benefited from Democrats stepping aside in red states, plus House candidates such as Bill Hill (Alaska).

Caveats: Early lists can include candidates who later dropped, failed ballot access, or ran as write-ins. “Independent” here means unaffiliated (not a nominee of the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, or other parties). Structural barriers (petition requirements, fundraising, spoiler concerns) remain high, and success rates for independents have historically been very low. Overall congressional candidate volume was also elevated in 2026, partly due to high open-seat numbers.

In short, the data support more independent candidacies than the recent average, especially versus the lower counts of the 2010s–early 2020s.

Why? It would be tempting to see this as a rejection of doctrinaire politics. This would be a good thing.

A cynical view is that these are Democrats in mufti, attempting to split likely Republican voters away to give Democrats seats that would otherwise be out of their reach. I asked Grok about this as well. While independent candidates are not concentrated Republican districts:

Where the serious/viable ones stand out

The independent candidates receiving the most attention—and those where Democrats have cleared the field or formally/informally backed them—are concentrated in Republican-leaning states for statewide races:

• Nebraska (Dan Osborn for Senate)
• South Dakota (Brian Bengs for Senate)
• Idaho (Todd Achilles for Senate; also House candidates like Sarah Zabel in a deep-red district)
• Montana (Seth Bodnar for Senate)
• Alaska (Bill Hill for House)

This reflects a pattern in which Democrats, facing weak brands in solidly red states, have stepped aside in hopes an independent can be more competitive against a Republican incumbent. Similar dynamics appear in some deep-red House districts (e.g., examples cited in Florida and Idaho).

At the same time, independents are also running in blue-leaning or competitive areas (New York, Illinois, California, Washington, Virginia, swing districts like Iowa’s 1st). One sitting House member, Kevin Kiley (California), switched from Republican to independent and is running as such in a redrawn district that leans Democratic.

This actually makes sense. Democrats know that socialism and child mutilation are so now heavily identified with their party that backing candidates without that "Democrat" label is likely to defeat Republicans. These IINOs (Independents In Name Only) could redeclare themselves after the election or simply caucus with the Democrats like Socialist Bernie Sanders does.

Wealth

10/17/26 Fortune:

The Federal Reserve’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances revealed a striking split: Median net worth rose roughly 38% for households headed by someone 75 or older between 2022 and 2025, while falling 23% for those headed by someone under 35. Both figures account for inflation, according to an analysis by Nick Maggiulli, chief data officer at Ritholtz Wealth Management and author of The Wealth Ladder.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the age split in a short post on what it called “the gold standard for measuring household wealth,” which the central bank releases every three years. Americans 55 and over now hold roughly $140 trillion, about three-quarters of the nation’s net worth, Fortune reported this month, citing a Bank of America Institute analysis of the Fed data.

The oldest households finished the period with a median net worth of $504,600, up from $366,288 in 2022, measured in 2025 dollars. For the youngest households, it fell from $42,725 to $32,820. The oldest group now has roughly 15x the wealth of the youngest, compared with about 9x three years earlier.

Across all families, inflation-adjusted median net worth rose just 2% between 2022 and 2025, reaching $215,900. That modest national gain concealed sharply different experiences at opposite ends of the age spectrum.

The findings also echo an argument Yale law and history professor Samuel Moyn made in an interview with Fortune this summer about his book, Gerontocracy in America: The concentration of wealth among older Americans is not merely a matter of who has had longer to save. In his account, it also shapes whose interests the economy and political system serve.

Moyn describes an “oldigarchy,” in which older, disproportionately wealthy Americans hold outsize influence. His book argues that “aging Americans control the biggest bank accounts and stock portfolios,” and that “the old rich have pulled away from everyone else.”

Yes. We had the good sense to not take out enormous student loans for degrees that did not lead to jobs of any value. Some of this was not really good sense. Almost any degree except maybe art or sociology would likely get you an adequate job in 1970. Education was also so absurdly expensive that you needed the 1970s equivalent of a $100,000 student loan to start out adult life.

We had some other advantages. Lots of good jobs did not require a college degree back then. Creeping credentialism and the contempt for technical jobs had not closed other avenues from serious consideration.

The harsh reality, however, is that generally getting older makes you richer. We bought a Sears refrigerator in 1976. It was still working into the 2000s. Some of the dishes that we received as wedding presents in 1980 are still in use, although not many.

Still, time heals most financial mistakes if you stay invested and do not waste on trying to look like The Illustrated Man.

I suspect as us Boomers go bust and our assets enrich our kids, this will even out a bit. Unless the young whiners decide we need to go full Communist.

If You See Something, Say Something

10/15/26 Chicago Tribune:

A jammed gun and workers at an Arlington Heights Taco Bell restaurant prevented a potentially devastating mass shooting Sunday at a Hindu temple in Aurora.

Those were among the details to emerge Thursday as authorities released additional information about the arrest of a 19-year-old Palatine man accused of plotting a terrorist attack on the Sri Venkateswara Swami Balaji Temple.

Cook County prosecutors said Alexandros Paporakis told a Taco Bell co-worker he had gone to the temple Sunday and attempted to shoot someone from his car, but his rifle jammed.

He indicated he intended to return later Sunday to try again, but a co-worker called 911 and stopped the potential massacre, authorities said.

The story gets more interesting. A "Heritage American"? Apparently not. 10/16/26 Chicago Tribune:

Paporakis, an enrolled student at Harper College, was allegedly living with his mother at the time of the planned attack and had been for about a year, Palatine police Chief William Nord said Wednesday. But a guardianship petition filed in Cook County last month alleges that his mother was unable to provide a stable home and that his father had abused and abandoned him. Those circumstances, the petition states, left the teenager unable to return to his home country.

The Tribune could not independently verify which country the petition referred to as Paporakis’ home country. The teenager’s own writings, according to court documents, suggest a hatred rooted less in national origin than in race and religion.

“The shooter hated Indians, but his hate did not discriminate,” U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi said at a news conference Friday, as he appeared to hold back tears. “According to court documents, the manifesto that he wrote described Indians, Jews, Black people and other minorities as ‘subhuman’”.

That seems like a Greek name to me. Perhaps, the entire spectrum of antisocial media found a new host to infect. In the 1990s, I recall a mass murder at a college in Western Massachusetts carried out by a neo-Nazi Korean. 

A Conscious Decision to Make an Oregon School a Mass Murderer Safe Space

 As usual Dr. Lott is on top of this. His discussion of this tragedy links to a 5/31/2022 Oregon Public Radio article:

Oregon lawmakers last year gave every public school district in Oregon the option to ban guns from their premises.

So far, most districts have declined to take them up on the offer.

Since a change to Oregon law in September, just 13% of the state’s public school districts have opted to close an exemption that allows holders of a concealed handgun license, or CHL, to carry weapons onto public property where possessing a gun would otherwise be a felony.

According to an OPB analysis, that list includes some districts in the Portland metro area — though not yet Portland Public Schools — along with far more rural school systems. Among the 25 that have banned guns are districts in Klamath Falls, Myrtle Point, Tillamook, Pendleton, Tigard-Tualatin, Lake Oswego and Woodburn.

The vast majority of the state’s 197 public school districts have, to date, taken no such action...

Backers of policies banning guns in schools acknowledge it’s a small step. Board members in three districts OPB spoke with said they could not point to an incident where a CHL holder or their weapon had caused an issue on school grounds.

“It just allowed us to complete the commitment that we already had in place of having gun-free schools,” said Melissa Barnes Dholakia, chair of the Bend-La Pine school board. The board passed a ban in December, receiving just two comments on the policy, both of them supportive.

So why would districts disarm their teachers and staff?

For some students, the possibility that lawful guns could cause trouble on campus was a primary driver of their support for a ban.

When the Hillsboro school board enacted the policy in January, a high school student named Ceph Tronco was among those voicing support.

“What I’ve been thinking about as I’ve been hearing about this policy isn’t, ‘Is someone going to be in place to stop an attempted school shooting?’” Tronco said. “It is: ‘Is someone going to have brought a gun into a school grounds that accidentally discharges? Or is somebody going to have the potential to get into a charged argument that escalates because of the presence of a firearm?’”

The bottom line, Tronco said: “We do not want people to be bringing firearms onto our campuses.”

And that worked out so well in Bend. Adults should be making policy not kids, whose knowledge of the world is necessarily incomplete.

The Dumbest X Post Ever!

Black Canadian explains how she and her posse are coming to America to do door-to-door gun confiscation.

I Have Read Some Horrifying Incidents. Some Are So Horrible That They Cannot Be What They First Appear

 Arcadia, Fla. (1967)

Before 11/01/1967: Police charged the parents of seven children with poisoning them with parathion, an insecticide.  The father was 32. The sheriff was preparing to investigate the previous suspicious death of five other children of the father.  He had taken out life insurance policies on the children. The father was sentenced to death. Subsequently, evidence established that a babysitter admitted doing the poisoning and evidence clearing him was suppressed at trial.  He was released in 1989.

Category: family

Suicide: no

Cause: unknown

Weapon: poison[1]

---

[1] "Poison In Food, Parents Facing Death Charges," [Fremont, O.] News-Messenger, Nov. 01, 1967, 1; “Delayed justice for an innocent man,” Florida Times-Union, May 16, 2019, https://www.jacksonville.com/story/opinion/2019/05/15/tuesday-editorial-delayed-justice-for-innocent-man/5145739007.

.

The Next Time Some Gun Banner Says We Scrapped Public Safety for the Second Amendment...

 U.S. v. Bost (3rd Cir. 2026):

The right to keep and bear arms has limits, and this is one: Those who pose a risk of physical violence from misusing guns can be disarmed before that risk becomes a reality. Not every convict poses such a risk—but James Bost does. He pleaded guilty to terroristic threats and other crimes. Years later, police caught him with a pistol not once, but twice. So he was charged with having a gun despite his convictions, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which makes it illegal for felons to have guns. He moved to dismiss the charge, arguing that this law is unconstitutional both facially and as applied to him.  But Bost’s violent conviction is prima facie enough to disarm him. We hold that some predicate crimes (like Bost’s conviction for terroristic threats) demonstrate a prima facie risk of physical violence from misusing guns and that those convicted of such crimes may presumptively be disarmed based on those convictions alone. Because the Second Amendment does not protect Bost’s access to guns, we will AFFIRM. ...

Years after carjacking, Bost is caught with a gun In 2002, Bost carjacked someone, threatening to kill the driver unless she gave him money. To get that money, he drove to her mother’s home, where she escaped from the car, screaming for help. Bost was then arrested and pleaded guilty to terroristic threats and criminal conspiracy (as well as false imprisonment and simple assault). Those first two Pennsylvania crimes are first-degree misdemeanors punishable by up to five years in prison. 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. §§ 2706, 905(a), 1104(1). One element of the terroristic-threats crime required “a threat to commit any crime of violence with intent to terrorize another.” Id. § 2706(a)(1) (cleaned up). Bost was sentenced to four years’ probation.  Later, while on bail for another arrest, Bost failed to appear in court. U.S. Marshals tracked him down. They found him in his girlfriend’s home, next to a couch with a stolen .38 caliber pistol on it. Bost was indicted federally for possessing a stolen gun and possessing a gun despite his convictions (based on the terroristic-threats and conspiracy convictions). 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) (the so-called felon-in-possession law), (j) (possession of a stolen gun). He moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that § 922(g)(1) is unconstitutional as applied to him and that it is facially unconstitutional....

Individualized judgment was the norm. For centuries, disarmament was tied to a judge’s finding that someone posed a risk of physical violence from misusing guns. Sometimes, that meant punishing risky behavior. Going-armed laws punished and disarmed those who used their weapons to menace others. See Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 693, 697–98 (citing Sir John Knight’s Case, 87 Eng. Rep. 75, 76 (K.B. 1686) & 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries *149). Rooted in the old bans on affrays, they targeted conduct that spread fear and threatened the peace: going armed “to the Terror of the People.” Id. at 697 (internal quotation marks omitted). These laws were often enacted with bans on fighting, together targeting conduct likely to lead to violence. Id.  

In 1791, this guy would likely have been unable to exercise his right to bear arms because his right to breathe would already have been ended. 

Shop is Sufficiently Together to Make Stuff

Somehow, one of the four steel doughnuts that were bolted to the rolling platform on which Big Bertha rides got lost in the move. I am not sure why I made these of steel unless I had that available. No need for that tough or stiff.

I had a piece of 2.5" diameter acetal so I cut off a slice, trimmed it to .501" thick, then bored a 1.5" hole through the center with a Forstner bit on the lathe. (That oversimplified it. Cutting that much acetal in one pass is clumsy and ugly so I drilled through the center with a 1/4" drill bit first, then a 1/2" Forstner bit, then the 1 1/2" bit.) Then to get 3 1/4" holes at 120 degrees each, I put the ring on the rotating table and entered commands to drop the bit to 0" then down to -.65", back to 1", rotate 120 degrees and repeat. (If I had been making more than one, a program would have been neat to watch running.)

Now with the Crossbow Equatorial Platform on top.

Now I just to work up the energy to get Big Bertha out of his box, clean the mirror, which is a big task with such a big mirror and then reassembly. 

Indian Food

We had dinner with our daughter and family at Sahib Fine Indian Dining in Johnson City. I have never had more flavorful Indian food and we had an enormous range of choices in the Bay Area and Boise. The lamb vindaloo exceeded my expectations.  Even some of the vegetarian dishes my granddaughter ordered were impressive to my carnivorous tastes. Along with traditional nans such as garlic, there was a coconut naan which was new to me.

Another Tragedy That Could Have Been Worse

10/26/26 CBS News reports on a Bend, Oregon school shooting which caused the deaths of three children and a teacher and the wounding of two others. The shooter was 16 and used a pump shotgun.

The incident came to an end when a bystander (by some reports, a parent) pursued the shooter into the school and shot the murderer to death.

I would discount pretty much everything we hear about the shooter for several days. Initial reporting about his identity and motives tend to be rumors or carefully spun. Remember that Everytown gave Oregon an A- gun control grade.

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.

IEXOS100 Mount Goes To!

Once I managed to get the polar axis pretty well aligned on True North, it worked as promised. I did a 2 star alignment on Vega and Altair. Then i did a goto for the Double-Double, the two binary stars called Epsilon Lyrae. There they were. I still needed to use the pad to move them to exact center then tell the mount to sync. Each time you sync an object, the accuracy of the next goto improves 

Epsilon Lyrae is one of those systems that would be pretty cool to live near. Two of the four stars are A class: hot, bright and about two solar masses rotating around a common center of gravity about 900 years. The other pair are another another hot A and an F class (so cooler and redder but still hotter than Sol) in another 1200 year pas de deus. Both pairs are rotating around a common center of gravity on a 250,000 period. I do not think either would have habitable planets for man but if they did, it would be quite a show. 

At 15x, the Televue-85 splits them into two pair with both pairs showing some split. At 43x; the splits are more obvious.

It was so dark. After 20 minutes of dark adaptation as the rhodopsin regenerates, I could almost see stuff without my red headlamp. 

Rain

 Not at the animals 2 x 2 level but I think I hear a keel being cut.

Gleaning and SNAP

 I was reading Ruth for a Bible Study and ran into both the word and concept of gleaning. Leviticus 19:9-10 directs farmers:

9“ ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.

Why? Even the poorest could put a small amount of labor into gathering food without anyone else needing to do so. This provided for them but also meant that a poor person would need to invest some effort into getting himself fed. At the same time, he was not going (to mix a Victorian metaphor profoundly time machine blended) cap in hand asking for help. His dignity was undamaged. If you were too proud to invest a few minutes of your time locating unharvested food, you were probably too proud. From the Torah.com:

The concept of “charity” (tzedakah) in a form recognizable to us today – as giving one’s money or other asset to the poor without an expectation of compensation from the recipient – is a post-biblical development, beginning in the Hellenistic era and brought to fuller fruition in the earliest rabbinic texts (second-third centuries C.E.).[1] In the Hebrew Bible, support for the poor is provided in a variety of different ways.

Exodus 23:11 instructs landowners to leave their land fallow every seventh year for the poor to collect what grows. Deuteronomy (14:28–9 and 26:12–15) requires the tithe in the third and sixth years of the Sabbatical cycle, to be given to the needy, and advocates lending to the poor in the years leading up to the cancellation of debts every seventh year (15:7–11).

A number of prophetic texts also express special empathy for the poor, instructing the reader not to take advantage of the needy (Isa 3:14–15, 10:1–2; Jer 5:28; Amos 8:4–6) while the book of Esther (9:22) instructs one to give “gifts to the poor” on the festival of Purim.

Above all, the preeminent way to support the poor in the Hebrew Bible is through allocations to the poor at the time of the harvest, which is the focus of this piece.

Gleraning seems to have been a right recognized in English law at times:

GLEANING, LEASING,OR LESING, FromFr. glainer, quasi graner ; colligere grana. Teuton. Ahrlesen, ex ahr, spica, & lesen, colligere. Minshew in v. Glean] It hath beensaid, that by the commonlaw and custom ofEngland, the poor are allowed toenter and gleanuponanother'sground, after the harvest,withoutbeing guilty of trespass; which humane provision seems borrowed from the Mosaical law. 3 Comm. 212, 213. Trials per pais, c. 15. p. 438. 534. [Giles Jacob, comp. 3 The Law-Dictionary 185 ( 1811).]

Right of poor to glean-Most municipal laws had some rules relating to poor and famishing people before poor laws were adopted. Moses prohibited the owners of fields from reaping the corners of their crops, or from gathering the scattered ears, or fruits of the trees after being shaken, these being reserved as an indirect fund of support to the gleaners.¹ And a traveller could pluck the ears of corn growing near the wayside and eat, though not carry them away; and he was even justified in entering his neighbour's vineyard and eating enough of grapes to satisfy his appetite.2 And Mahomet also recognised gleaning as a sacred right of the poor. Moreover a Brahmin in his travels when hungry was exempted from fine, if he took only two sugar-canes, or two esculent roots from another's field. 4 By the ancient laws of Wales a poor man, who had traversed a certain breadth of country without obtaining either alms or entertainment, was not punishable though caught with stolen eatables in his possession. [James Paterson, 2 COMMENTARIES ON THE LIBERTY OF THE SUBJECT AND The Laws of England RELATING TO The Security of the Person, 24 (1877)]

If the right to glean was ever recognized in American law, I have not seen it. Yet the parallel to SNAP (or "Food Stamps" as the program was known in my youth) is very strong. When Food Stamps were created, the goal was to soak up the surplus that American agriculture had created by its high efficiency in the postwar era. This is why the Food Stamp Act of 1964 excluded imported foods:

(b) The term “food” means any food or food product for human consumption except alcoholic beverages, tobacco, those foods which are identified on the package as being imported, and meat and meat products which are imported.

In a weird analogy, SNAP was doing the gleaning on behalf of the poor. Farmers were producing food so efficiently that there was not enough demand to buy it all, so our government was doing a sort of post-harvest gleaning. Similarly, if you are of my generation, you remember US Government surplus cheese in the 1980s.

Most cities have laws prohibiting the poor from taking the garbage behind restaurants. There are certainly some health risks associated with this; I can also see why this likely leads to unsightly messes. I think laws allowing restaurants to leave in clearly marked locations food that has not gone bad that could be safely put in a timed container: eat until 10:00 PM. This could certainly alleviate hunger among the homeless. Is this an ideal way of doing it? No. But better than letting people fall through the crevasses of pride or bureaucracy.

I can see why farmers might not be keen on legal recognition of gleaning. It would certainly be commercially misused. Not everyone gleaning a harvest is likely to be responsible about access to the fields.

Whenever I Cringe About Capital Punishment...

I run into cases like this.

 Victor, Cal. (1973)

11/07/1973: Seven adults were bound and gagged in a semicircle, then shot to death. Two children were found shot to death in a bedroom. Police eventually arrested two persons for whom arrest warrants were already outstanding for a similar crime in Phoenix One of the dead owned a nearby market. An undetermined amount of cash was missing from its floor safe which had not been forced. Police believed this mass murder was to cover up the robbery. Police across Northern California were stacking up charges against these two for murder and rape. Arizona executed one of them in 1978; the other died of cirrhosis of the liver on death row in 1986.

Category: family non-residential

Suicide: no

Cause: robbery

Weapon: firearm[1]

---

[1] "Nine Murdered In Professional Style," [Lancaster, O.] Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, Nov. 08, 1973, 1; “Two Funerals for Murdered Families,” Sacramento Union, Nov. 13, 1973, 1, 8; Dan Walters, “Evidence Mounts in Massacre,” Sacramento Union, Nov. 13, 1973, 8; "List of People Executed in Arizona,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_in_Arizona#cite_ref-7.

Whatever caused these two men to take this path, they do not deserve food or shelter paid for by anyone.

Weird ATM Experience

My wife went to an ATM to get some cash. She walks up to the ATM and saw an account balance.  Odd, almost like the previous customer walked away with exiting a menu. She put in her card and took out $20. The new balance in checking was essentially what it showed before she put her card in the machine.

Her first thought and mine was that someone put a scanner on the front of the ATM. The cleek in the store spoke little English. Our online account showed the transaction she had just completed. 

I called the credit union.  After hours goes to somewhere with cheap labor but at least English sufficiently free of accent that he could well have been an American. 

He agreed it was odd, but he said some ATMs actually interrogate your card as you get close. Think of this as an aggressive tap card interrogation.  He had me turn on alerts for all accounts just in case.

Do any of you have aggressive ATMs? 

First Hurricane

Admittedly, we are only on the edge of a rapidly weakening category 1 hurricane. Still, pretty heavy rain and winds.

Rain stopped and Sun came out. Then rain started. Did the eye pass over. I think it is too far east of us for that.

Myocarditis and COVID Vaccine Risk

 Vinay Prasad analyzes a 2021 published paper about COVID vaccines and myocarditis. Even my relatives who discounted the vaccines as a health hazard have noticed on an anecdotal level, acquaintances with sometimes fatal results from heart problems. Prasad is not some antivaxxer of questionable scientific credentials:

Vinay Prasad MD MPH is a hematologist-oncologist and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco. He was the Chief Medical and Scientific Officer and Director of CBER at the US FDA. He runs the VKPrasad lab at UCSF, which studies cancer drugs, health policy, clinical trials and better decision making. He is author of over 500 academic articles, and the books Ending Medical Reversal, and Malignant. He hosts the oncology podcast Plenary Session, the general medicine podcast the VPZD show is active on Substack and runs a YouTube Channel VinayPrasadMDMPH. He runs The Drug Development Letter, a must read for industry insights. He tweets @VPrasadMDMPH.

He observes:

This was the key figure in a Nature Medicine paper published on Dec 14, 2021. It showed clearly that myocarditis after vaccination (in this case, Moderna dose 2) was higher! than myocarditis after sars-cov-2 infection for people <40. 

There were a few remaining issues. While the denominator for vaccines is known with precision, the true number of infections is unknown. Many people don’t seek testing or medical care. So the red bar above will be shorter if you used a sero-prevalence (aka the correct) denominator. The authors needed to fix this.

The other problem is that this analysis lumps together men & women, while men have the greatest risk. Well, the authors are back with a new pre-print to fix this point, and here is what they find.

1. It is now clear for men <40, dose 2 and dose 3 of Pfizer have more myocarditis than sars-cov-2 infection, and this is true for dose 1 and dose 2 of Moderna.

2. Pfizer boosters (Dose 3) have more myocarditis for men <40 than infection.

3. Myocarditis post infection is more common as you get older, in contrast with myocarditis post vaccination, which is more common as you are younger (reverse gradients).

 

A Really Bad Idea: Livestreaming Maj. Hasan's Execution

1. I do not see this as deterring any jihadists. Islam worships death, not life.

2. It seems rather prurient in the modern world. 

3. It will just reinforce the European view of as savages (unlike those civilized October 7th murderers).

4. I suppose if it were pay-per-view to raise money for next-of-kin there might be an economic benefit but that is not going to happen. 

5. It will inflame a population already on the edge of radicalization. 

UPDATE: I am wondering if Trump is trolling the left.  Once he drops the livestream, they will have nothing to say.

UPDATE 2: People wearing "Free Luigi" T-shirts and images of Kirk dying lack any moral standing.

Shop Beginning to Get There

Health Insurance Here is Really Cheap

 Medicare in Idaho cost both the several hundred dollar Medicare premium deducted from my Social Security check, but also an additional $89 owed directly to Blue Cross of Idaho to cover what my Medicare Advantage added beyond Medicare: dental, vision, and some4 additional prescription coverage. In Tennessee, Blue Cross covers everything for the premium from my Social Security check alone. We signed up for the Diamond plan: $0 copayments for PCP; $20 copayment for specialists.

Finally Took a Look At My Sky

I have been so busy unpacking telescopes and shop that I have not taken a serious look at my night sky.

I have the mount for the Televue-85 on the back porch which is so dark that I absolutely will need my little red LED headlamp to avoid injuries.  It is dark there at a level at which the last two houses could only hint.  To my pleasure, not only are the third magnitude stars of Lyra visible, they do not require averted vision to see them. While not at the level of my house in the hills north of Boise, the Milky Way is visible above me. The area by the shop of which where the telescopes will roll once I have a pad poured is likely even darker.

I am too tired right now but tomorrow night I will start setting up about 8:30. Being closer to the equator, the Sun sets much faster and the sky gets dark much more dramatically. 

Nice to See Fact Checkers Actually, You Know, Checking Facts

10/7/26 FactCheck.org:

President Donald Trump’s remarks about the possibility that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego have sparked a firestorm of criticism, with Democrats claiming the president was either calling for a foreign adversary to attack the U.S. or portraying the destruction of two major cities as acceptable collateral damage. 

But given the full context — as well as Trump’s numerous past comments on this issue and the White House’s later clarification — that’s not our reading of the president’s comments. While his wording is confusing, a more plausible interpretation is that he meant the war would prevent Iran from posing a threat to U.S. cities, and higher gas prices are a small sacrifice to make. He’s made versions of those points before, using similar language.

Trump’s remarks came during an Oct. 5 rally in Nebraska. 

“Remember, with the war, it’s just artificial. It’s a little bit high,” he said, apparently referencing gas prices. “It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They could take out a city. Let them take — let it — let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. 

“That’s — this is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon,” he continued. “It’s essentially almost over with.”

If You Think 23AndMe is Just for Personal Curiosity

 Dear Clayton,

Thank you for helping us make discoveries together.

Working with researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, we found that people carrying a rare inherited genetic variant called EGFR T790M had roughly 25 times higher odds of developing lung cancer. That is equal to or higher than well-established inherited cancer risk variants such as those in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes for breast and ovarian cancer.

These findings were recently published in the journal Science, in a peer-reviewed study titled 'Germline EGFR T790M mutation and lung cancer risk.' You can read the paper here.

Many people believe exposure to tobacco smoke is the only risk factor for lung cancer, but tens of thousands of Americans without this risk factor are diagnosed each year. For many people the question of why has had no good answer. This study is a step toward one.

What we discovered together:

•  Researchers identified EGFR T790M as the largest known single genetic risk factor for lung cancer. This could have important implications for genetic testing and future lung cancer screening strategies for people who carry the variant.

•  More common than anyone knew. Among more than 10 million research participants, 641 carried the variant. It remains rare, but that is about ten times more common than public genetic databases had reported.

•  Specific to lung cancer. Often genetic variants that dramatically increase the risk of one cancer also increase the risk of other cancers, but for people with the EGFR T790M variant there were no significant associations with other frequent cancers, such as breast, prostate or colorectal cancer. This finding could help people with this variant know the specific, targeted screening they may need.

•  A window into American history. By combining genetics with ancestry and geography, our researchers traced the variant to British and Irish settlers who migrated to the Southeastern United States. Regional expansion and demographic isolation led to a founder effect, where a small group is genetically separated from a larger population, in the Southern Appalachian region, making the variant far more common among their descendants. Participants with Southern U.S. ancestry were about six times more likely to carry this variant. This is a striking example of how our ancestors' origins can remain relevant to our health generations later.

Data analyzed in the study includes participants in the Lung Cancer Genetics Study, which is funded by the Susan Wojcicki Foundation and powered by the 23andMe Research Institute in collaboration with 22 lung cancer advocacy organizations. To learn more about the study, our collaborators, and eligibility criteria, visit the study landing page.

This kind of research is only possible at scale. By answering our research surveys, you help make discoveries like this possible. On behalf of the 23andMe Research Institute, thank you for being part of this journey.