Boomer Greed

 6/7/26 Fortune article title:

‘The golden years are not golden’: Boomers are hoarding most of America’s wealth and power because they’re terrified of outliving their money

The arrogance of that title really steams me even the article quotes a number of Boomers refuting that title in part.

1. "Hoarding": like we are never going to spend it. For the most part, Boomers are not overwhelmingly rich. There are homeless Boomers and many barely making their rent or mortgage payments.  I am not one of them, but I know such. 

2. Power: does he mean we elected Trump? Or that we reliably show up to vote? Zoomers can fix this easily enough.

3 Where is our "hoarded wealth" going after we die? We are not taking it with us. We are going to leave it to our GenX children who Zoomers will again claim are hoarding. Much of my wealth is already spent on meals out and services overwhelmingly provided by younger people. 

4. Houses? Yes we bought houses for $106,000 in the 1980s on wages commensurate with those prices ($45,000 was my salary at the time). We paid interest rates that seem horrifying today. I refinanced a mortgage at 10.5% in 1989. We had a 18.5% car loan. (We had pretty good credit at the time.) Life was not easy back then.

5. We had limited capabilities because of technology. A few years ago, my son asked, "Hiw did you buy houses before the Internet." Slowly and carefully  .

BZoomers need to stop whining or Boomers might buy billion dollar yachts and sink them at sea to deny that wealth to the Zoomers.

More Weirdness From the Combined Minds of My Wife and Me

Canis Ex Machina

It had been 40,000 years since the Great Collapse when our expedition reached HD56689 B. We knew that before the GC our ancestors had seeded B with our distant cousins. Would they still be recognizably human in culture. Other planets we had explored were still physically human with slight variations in size and color (two-meter adults on Rigel F with coal-black skin, one meter adults with interesting and sometimes beautiful primary color skin spotting on HD44449 C). These were startling, but we grew to see them as just interesting variants on the basic human pattern.

What we found too disheartening was civilizational drift. Some had gone cannibal; the sociologists recorded what they found. After losing a few sociologists to the pot, we decided this was a civilization best studied from drones and moved on. Others completely lost technological knowledge; they had reverted to hunter-gatherer societies with no apparent forward progress in 40,000 years to the state from which they had regressed.

HD56689 B was unique. We could see evidence of an advanced civilization: large cities; some strangely narrow, unpaved roads; what seemed to be something like very large bird roosts made of concrete. The population was clearly shrinking. We contacted the small remaining leadership. After a bit of struggle getting the AI Translators working with what seemed (t us) a very primitive language, we pieced together what happened.

Their ancestors separated from the mainstream of human technology by the GC had started insanely breeding the Earth-origin mammals to do the important jobs of machines. The swifferhound had a large fine haired tail. It was very small, about 500 grams. It would climb shelves and use its tail for dusting.

They bred the vacuum shepherd to inhale dirt and dust into outsized lungs, then exhale the contents outside. They had fairly short lifespans because of high lung cancer rates.

They bred a transport elephant with a very broad flat back on which enormous loads could be strapped to the mid-abdominal tusks. (Our biologists suspected some now lost to them gene editing played a part in that one.)

They bred bats to 40 meters long with commensurate wingspans that carried humans on transcontinental journeys from batplane roost to batplane roost. They consumed vast quantities of insects and birds on the way. This limited them to travel on the only settled continent and outlying islands.

Tractordogs operated the only agricultural machinery they had still produced. Combines were operated by their canine pilots through the fields.

It was both unsettling and impressive to see our mighty species operating almost without technology. So why was the civilization dying. Some centuries before, at what they now called Peak Animal Helper, an interspecies virus spread rapidly through all the mammals killing most of them in one generation. While survivors carried a gene for immunity, the generations of careful breeding made the survivors weak and less effective at their functions. As an example, chauffeur dogs sometimes intentionally crashed ground vehicles so that they could devour the occupants.

We tried to explain the concept of machines as less vulnerable helpers and dogs as companions, but I fear the concepts would not stick and future explorers would find empty cities here.

This whole concept was dreamed up by my wife as ww were returning from a star party in Payette. There has to be a better title for this. Maske suggestions! 

Support for Gay Marriage Falling. Why?

Andrew Sullivan, a prominent gay journalist has an answer that makes a lot of sense. 6/5/26 Daily Dish:

The New York State legislature recently tackled the vital, pressing issue of whether the terms “mother” and “father” are cruel and oppressive. They concluded that these terms are indeed transphobic and need to be replaced in law by “gestating parent” and “non-gestating parent.” “Paternity” is also bigoted and axed. Among the Democrats, the vote was, natch, a few shy of unanimous. And let’s not kid ourselves: Hochul’s signature is inevitable. On all questions gay and trans, the Dems are now entirely controlled by trans and “queer” extremists....

I suspect the queers are so insulated they don’t even realize that this is what they have been effectively saying to Joe Public for a decade now. Remember when they told you that gay and lesbian people were just like everyone else, and just wanted to be left alone? Scrap that. We’re actually queers who believe marriage is a “fundamentally violent institution” and that the sex binary is a white supremacist fiction. Now we’ve gotten marriage, we will indoctrinate your kids in queer and gender theory, fire you if you don’t repeat our pronouns, force girls to shower next to boys in locker rooms, give irreversible sex changes to minors, and insist that “a penis is not a male body part. It’s just an unusual body part for a woman.”

Yes. When LGBs pleaded for rhe right to be left alone, there was little argument.  Active and aggressive prosecution of LGB activities in private was out of fashion. Police had more important problems to pursue. When "the love whose name we dare not speak" refused to shut up, it was hard to ignore. 

The genital mutilation of children made a lot of people upset. That LGBs who wanted to be left alone were now automatically assumed to be tied to the T and Q did not help. LGB sex seems positively tame compared to cutting off genitals and breasts.

Star Party in Payette

I hate doing star parties in summer. If it's really not dark until about 10:00. People with much better eyesight could see Venus well enough to aim at it 20-30 minutes before me. Venus is at the gibbous phase right now. Not very interesting. 

Jupiter was more interesting.  Even my Televue-85 was showing multiple cloud bands at 108x. As much as I am frustrated by the inability to control the mount for goto and even somple centering, it tracked very reliably.  Jupiter stayed center of eyepiece even at 108x as long as 30 minutes.  By comparison, Dobsonian owners and one gal with an alt-az mounted Newtonian were busy moving and adjusting every couple minutes.

.

The Televue-85 is a very small aperture refractor of exceptional quality. It does not have the resolution of the 8" telescopes but it is dramatically inferior, either. When it was showing two bands, an 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain was also showing two bands. The light disadvantage, which is the square of aperture, is not as severe as you might expect because your eye does a pretty good job of compensating for brightness difference. 

The Televue-85 is not the best choice for planetary observing although it id gorgeous on the Moon. It is better suited to deep sky astronomy because its short focal length allows a very wide field of view, well suited to the Pleiades or globular clusters such as M13. My 50mn eyepiece provides a 3 5 degree field.

The great advantage is portability.  It weighs about ten pounds and on the mount it weighs about 20 pounds.  At one point I realized that I might be able get the Sun so I could pick it up and carry it to a better location. 

We had a decent crowd of people out there.

Things That Drive Me Crazy

I ordered a roof rack system from Amazon thst clamps onto the Hyundai's roof bars intended for that purpose.  The left and right attachment mechanisms of course have locks to prevent theft.  The key fits three of the four locks. It will not even insert into the fourth. The logical step would be replace one appropriately keyed, or even all four. No. All Amazon can do is send me a new unit.  Keep the bad one. I may try and figure out to repair that bad lock.

It is hard to believe this is cost effective.

Explore Scientific iEXOS 100-2 Mount

This afternoon, I took it out and looked at the Sun. I must have gotten pretty well polar aligned because it was trqcking very well. Obviously, two star alignment was impossible, but i was able to use LURD (left, up, right, down) buttons to center the Sun in the eyepiece. 

This evening, LURD was completely useless. It is random how ExploreStars app works.

The Declining Importance of the Strsight of Hormuz

No, not a MAGA talking point. 6/4/26 New York Times:

But with every passing day, the world is learning to live without the Gulf’s seaborne exports.

1Just as the Covid-19 pandemic and President Trump’s tariffs forced a significant rewiring of global supply chains, the Strait’s closure has prompted a similar adjustment. You might be part of it. When gas prices rise rapidly, people start to limit their driving. Walmart just reported that customers are now buying less than 10 gallons of gas at a time on average at its filling stations.

The United States, Brazil, Canada, Kazakhstan and Venezuela are already increasing their oil production. Large releases of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve are also helping to cover shortfalls. Like a stream that finds its way around a fallen log, markets locate new supplies when the old ones are suddenly cut off.

At some point, the Iranian crazies will get poor enough for their religious objections to evaporate. By then, Iran will be a less important source of oil. And on the bright side, reduced consumption of oil will make the world a better place for Greenies.

Goodbye to Mercury

Rhe element, not the planet. As part of thinning stuff we do not need in preparation for our move, a few items have turned out to be harder to dispose of then I expected.

Back in the 1960s, mercury was something with which most kids had some chance to play. It is incredibly dense (13x water; lead will float in it), very standoffish from almost everything, and with a weird negative meniscus.  Unlike water which will slightly rise on the inside of a container, mercury will do the opposite. 

It was not generally considered a particularly risky material to have on your hands. We always washed thoroughly after handling it and we all knew it did not belong in our bodies.

Somewhere in the 1970s or 1980s, the worryworts turned mercury into thr great hazard. My recollection from chemistry classes turns out to be what EPA says: mercuric organic compounds are terrible neurotoxins and represent a serious hazard in your body including through cuts in the skin and seafood. Mercury vapor is a serious hazard and letting it heat is a bad idea. But elemental mercury is not terribly dangerous to handle.

From the procedures required to dispose of it, you would think that it requires a haz-mat suit and air cover. We are having a hard time finding somewhere that will take it. 

The uranium seems to be even harder to properly discard. This is radiation meter test sample, bought on Amazon, and delivered in normal mail, not a leadlined van. It is not uranium metal but a thumbnail sized piece of uranium ore.

It is an alpha particle emitter. Alpha particles are low energy and are stopped by a sheet of paper, your skin, or the metal can in which thus uranium sits. Like mercury, you do not want in your body, where even the short range of alpha particles can be a carcinogen.

Heck, small amounts of uranium show up in ground water in the Boise area. Yet that word radioactive causes worrywort paranoia, even at the very low levels and intensities of alpha particles.

Anyway, I do not need either the mercury or the uranium sample. I just need to get someone to accept them. The difficulty in finding a place to properly dispose of them suggests that for all the worrywortism, the powers that be want this stuff in a landfill.

A Sense of Loss

One of you is scheduled to come take this 1983 Encyclopedia Britannica away Thursday or Friday. They are, in any rational sense, an obsolete marker of a 20th century literate middle class American family. You wanted a comprehensive overview of human knowledge not just for your own curiosity, but as a starting point for your kids when they started school. While encyclopedia are never a particularly good source for a research paper, like Wikipedia or Grokopedia, they were a starting point for enough knowledge to know what to ask next. 

These were a uniformly bound and in the case of the Britannica beautiful above and beyond their content. They represented an attempt at presenting a consensus of educated academics at a time when that phrase still meant something positive. 

Articles were usually anonymous but you would sometimes get surprised at identified authors for some entries. An article in the 1963 Americana (with which I grew up and which were a companion on many boring weekends when I was 10 or 11) about American English was by H.L. Mencken, about as expert a user of 20th century American English as you could pick. He is remembered today  for the acerbic "Puritanism.—The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." This is not a fair statement of Puritan concerns but it captures well Mencken's wit, and style with a pen.

Another was an article about vigilantism by Glenn S. Dumke, for many years chancellor of the California State University system,  back when that was a sign of education not Marxism or other forms of woke. His article observed what I have since discovered in my deeper reading: In Gold Rush California, vigilantism were an expression of popular justice often no worse than the legally constituted courts.

As the title of this posting implies, there is a sense of loss as these leave. They are the loss of an aspect of 20th century American middle class idealisn that for all its flaws aimed high and achieved much. They also carry a sense of wistful personal loss.  My wife and I bought these around the time our daughter was born in 1983. They were expensive (about $1100, if I recall correctly) but something of a statement that we were going to bring our daughter up in a home that put knowledge and education at the core of her life. We already had a 1963 Americana, but the Britannica was always first in class so why not the best?

Goodbye, dear friend.

Again, Demand for Traditional Racism Exceeds the Supply

 6/3/26 New York Post:

WASHINGTON — The Southern Poverty Law Center paid reluctant white nationalists and Ku Klux Klan members thousands of dollars in donor money to remain in the notorious hate groups — even making them whole for money spent on cross-burnings, the Justice Department alleged in a shocking superseding indictment filed Tuesday.

Of course progressive racism, against whites and Jews (who are after all white) and Asians remains in high demand as well.

California in Disarray

 The primary election for governor has British-born Trump-endoraed Republican Steve Hilton in the lead. 6/3/26 BBC:

The California governor's race remains up in the air a day after the primary vote, with British-American former TV host Steve Hilton and onetime Biden cabinet secretary Xavier Becerra at the top of a crowded field.

The contest could take several days to decide due to the volume of postal ballots cast on Tuesday to pick the top two candidates for November's general election.

Becerra, a Democrat, has vowed to oppose President Donald Trump. Hilton is a Republican endorsed by Trump.

6/3/26 CNN headline of course misleads:

Spencer Pratt has spent months waging a guerilla campaign against incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, riding the buzz generated by AI-generated videos, viral moments and some big-name supporters as he seeks to capitalize on dissatisfaction with the way the city is being run.

He may now have five more months to make his case.

Bass secured a spot on the November ballot and Pratt was running in second place as of early Wednesday morning, ahead of progressive city councilwoman Nithya Raman and 11 lesser-known candidates as more ballots were being counted. No candidate appears likely to exceed the 50% threshold to win outright, which means the top two will meet head-to-head in the November election.

Not just ahead but likely beyond margin of fraud ahead of DSA #3.

Light Pollution Map for Target Area

 

Purple is bad: Bortle class 6. Surrounding zones are class 5, then class 4.

What is Bortle?

If you have never been to a Bortle class 1-3 sky, you have missed so much.

The Explore Scientific iEXOS 100-2 Mount I Bought

I bought this because I wanted a small easy to transport mount for public astronomy with my Televue-85. That it was a goto mount just made the.$300 price all the better.  It is very well made so I was very disappointed when it started behaving erratically a few days after it arrived  

The factory said it was fine. When it came back, i suspected the problem was that it needed more than 12V to operate; goto mounts demand a lot while slowing across the sky 

It now appears that the intermittent problems that I am seeing hs because the bundled ExploreStars app is, in the words of SuperGrok, "abandonware": software free but largely forgotten by its authors and supported like they no longer remember their child. It works but unreliable enough that few people use it.

What most owners of the mount use are ASCOM (a standard free Windows driver package) or INDI (the Linux equivalent). Planetarium programs such as Carte du Ciel and Stellarium can control the mount through the ASCOM drivers telling it where to go (ditto for KStars in Linux). So using a laptop, not a tablet or cellphone. This takes away much of the simplicity of a small tablet.

Kstars under Linux is pretty clumsy to control the mount. Setting these up under either Linux or Windows is clumsy because you are either on the Internet reading instructions or connected to the mounts server, not both. Lots of disconnecting and reconnecting. I ordered a USB WiFi adapter so that I can have both open at the same time. I have done this before in the 1980s where I set up a PC with two Ethernet cards to create a LAN analyzer, so i know it can be done.

In any case, if it turns out to be too clumsy to use for goto, it is still a nice compact mount for public astronomy. 

UPDATE: I spent some time with the manual for Explore Stars (which does not match the app), some time with SuperGrok, and some analyzing what it seems to want to do. I think i have ExploreStars app figured out. I will try this tonight.

UPDATE 2: Up too late gathering documents for the HELOC.

UPDATE 3: Low amperage.  The battery had been used to operate the Losmandy and the iExOS without recharging. 

HELOC

I have been looking at a way to get a bridge mortgage as a backup in case closing of current house is delayed past closing date of new house.  My credit union loan officer made a/pretty brilliant proposal: take a Home Equity Line of Credit on the old house. If we need to pay cash when closing date arrives, we pay for it with the HELOC, then when the old house closes, it pays off the HELOC.

If there are no surprises between offer on old house and closing, we do not need to use any of it. If there are, we have a few months of hefty payments on the HELOC before sale of old house.

AI

 5/30/26 Axios:

AI tools might be hallucinating less, but they're still spitting out inaccurate answers cloaked in polished, hyper-confident language....

Driving the news: New research suggests AI note-taking tools (often called AI scribes) can help in medical settings, but only in tandem with professional reviewers.

• A Yale School of Medicine study this month found that first-year medical students who revised their own clinical notes with AI-generated drafts generally maintained note quality.
• But the AI notes themselves often omitted important details, including symptom duration.
• Two-thirds of students said the notes were "helpful as a first draft," but 21% said the note taker "may reduce my ability to learn how to write a good note."

Looking at the papers submitted by my students this last semester, I saw a lot of this: very polished prose, drawing confidential conclusions with weak or no supporting evidence. And of course, hallucinate sources.

I use SuperGrok for some tasks in the shop or for astronomy, but I have learned mostly to use it as a really good search engine. It makes enough mistakes that I never completely trust it 

Sorting Mementos and Junk for the Move

Do any of you have a cassette to digital capacity. Let me really stretch: 1600 dpi 9 track magtape?

Do They Have Frigidity Problems?

 From an open source science journal:

Glaciers are rapidly retreating worldwide duto anthropogenic climate change, with severe implications not only for ecosystems and water security but also for cultural memory, emotional wellbeing, and environmental justice. In the Andes, glaciers are more than reservoirs of ice—they are living beings within Indigenous cosmologies, ancestral knowledge systems, and everyday life. This essay explores the cultural, emotional, and symbolic dimensions of glacial loss, focusing on Andean communities who view glaciers as sacred entities..

Glaciers as more-than-human beings

Is it that hard for an editor to say, "Yes, I understand that indigenous cultures have strong mythological beliefs about glacierz but that does mean we mistake that for science. Find whatever journal Carlos Castaneda editing now for this article."

You're Having a Bad Day? Ask These Candles How Their Days Have Gone!

I used to by mistake use these to make the bearings on my Dobsonian move more smoothly. (That does not work. Clean them thoroughly instead, especially of any candle wax.) I kept them in the telescope in the last house. Think of the punishment "hot house' in Cool Hand Luke or the marvelous parody in Take the Money and Run, where the protagonist is locked in a hot house for two days with a life insurance salesman.

At Least He is a FORMER CIA Official

 5/27/26 New York Post:

A former high-ranking CIA official who allegedly lied about his credentials to secure $77,000 in bogus military leave was busted after FBI agents found a mind-blowing fortune, including $40 million worth of gold bars, hidden inside his Virginia home.

The feds conducted a raid at the residence of David Rush last week, uncovering a staggering 303 gold bars, $2 million in cash and nearly three dozen luxury Rolex watches, according to court documents.

Rush, until recently a “senior executive service-level employee” at the CIA, reportedly requested the massive haul of gold and foreign currency for “work-related expenses” between November and March.

If all the Medicaid/Medicare fraudsters and crooks who did not have a a good reason to take $2 million of gold bars home were routed out, would we still be running a deficit every year?

The article explains that he was caught when he defrauded the government of $77,000. This led to the discovery that his bachelor's and master's degrees did not exist nor his military pilot's license. 

If the CIA is this careless about background checks, how careful are the other departments?

The profound greed, too. $40 million is a lot of money. You can live very, very comfortably on that forever.  He could have stolen $2 million, created a new identity (he did work for CIA) and never been caught.

Do You Recognize This?

 I am organizing my entropic collection of telescope parts preparing for my cross-country move. Stuff I do not need (how many 2" to 1.25" adapters did I buy and when?) I will sell. Some parts make me scratch my head and say, "What is this?" It is beautifully machined and polished. Might I have upgraded some part of a Losmandy mount in the long tunnel of time?

I Would Not Want These Released Either

 Especially if I was senile and dishonest.  5/27/26 NPR:

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden sued the Justice Department on Tuesday in an effort to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts of the former president's interview with a ghostwriter that were obtained by the special counsel who investigated his handling of classified documents.

Biden's lawyers said in a lawsuit filed in Washington's federal court that the Justice Department plans to release the files to Congress and a conservative group, the Heritage Foundation, after the department had previously argued that they were exempt from disclosure under the public records law.

Biden's lawyers argued that the disclosure would "constitute an unwarranted invasion of President Biden's privacy."

"Every American, including a sitting or former Vice President, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home," his attorneys wrote. "And when the U.S. Department of Justice obtains that private information through a criminal investigation, the Department bears a particular responsibility to protect it from disclosure."

Trump was prosecuted (and his wife's lingerie drawer was searched) as part of an investigation into failure to properly handle classified documents. I would think Biden deserves the same attention.

I Have Seen a Lot of Evidence That the Standards for Federal Judges Are High Enough

 Willingness to accept expert declarations that fail the Bellesiles Test (do the cited aources actually exist? Do they say what the expert claims?) What are clearly ends-driven decisions.

Among the most disappointing was a district judge in Fresno who refused to hear expert testimony about the history of domestic violence disqualification in the colonial period, insisting that at Duke University Law she learned that women and children were chattel property and so such a question was irrelevant.  Of course, the only women and children who were chattels were slaves. Free women and children had defined rights.  Of course chattel alone defined mobile (non-real estate property). All chattels were property. "Chattel property" is redundant.  

Oh yes. Another case that came before her in the courtroom was a guy who spoke no English and was seeking a more lenient sentence on a case involving possession of 50 pounds of meth. She gave him a more lenient sentence.

She may have learned this at Duke Law (an institution that leaves me increasingly unimpressed), but humility is an important trait in a judge.  5/27/26 CNBC:

A federal judge has been disciplined for having sex in their chambers with a high-ranking law enforcement officer within earshot of staff, attending a partisan political event and for lying to superior judges who investigated the claims, a disciplinary committee revealed.

Still Amazed at Her Cluelessness

Mayor Bass talks about how nice Los Angeles was when she grew up: affordable housing; no homeless people on the streets; jobs. She wants another four years to fix what she failed to do in her first four years. Oh, and she forgot to mention that in the 1970s they need let reservoirs go dry and let thousands of homes burn. If voters relect her, they have no one to blame but themselves. 

Ancient History

At least into the 1950s, it was fashionable to bronze each baby's first shoes. My mother kept all of her childrens' bronzed baby shoes on the mantle. I am not sure if these were dipped or more likely eelectrocuted.

Eventually, I received one of mine. 

Telescope Winch

The new house will need a telescope winch for lifting Big Bertha off the base and the 8" reflector off the Losmandy mount 

I have been thinking about all night.  I will four pulleys secured to studs in the garage ceiling. Ropes through pulleys. One end of each rope will need a hook that can grab a loop without scratching.  The far end of each rope will be tied to weight plates.  For lifting Big Bertha, two 25 pound weights on each will counterbalance most of the weight.  About 10 pounds of force pulling down to lift the telescope off its base. Then push the base out of the way and slowly lower the telescope to the ground.

For moving the 8" reflector, loosen the clamps holding it on the mount, and obe 15 pound weight on each rope to lift it off. This requires a stand under each rope end where the weights will sit when not actively lifting telescopes. 

I have done this before for moving a anowplow from my wife's Blazer.  I was younger and strong enough to put the pulleys and rope up myself. 

In case you are curious, this is part of how multitasking stones ended up at the top of cathedrals. Counterweights means you only need a few dozen peasants pulling on the rope 

Latitude Change

My 17.5" Dobsonian sits on an equatorial platforms. This is a clever, somewhat magical (to me) method of making an alt-azimuth mount track stars across the sky.

Unfortunately, equatorial platforms are latitude-specific. They are simulating having the telescope move across the sky as though they were turning in a circle around Polaris.  As I said, somewhat magical 

Besides the latitude-specific nature of the equatorial platforms, they have several other deficiencies. They typically only track for about an hour, at which point you unlock one clamp and rotate it back along its magical pseudo-polar axis. This is not a big deal for visual use, especially for public astronomy.

For astrophotography, there are two problems. That reset will make your 4 hour exposure of M51 completely useless. 

The obvious solution to latitude is to raise the south end of the platform by seven degrees to compensate.  In this case, 21.5" (distance between front and rear of the platform times sin (7 degrees). This gives a 2.62" lift. This does not sound so bad. It scares me thst it might be unstable to move the center of gravity that far to the side.

Alternative strategies:

1. Sell the existing platform (a lovely all-aluminum platform made by the late Gregg Blandin) to someone in my latitude and buy the more sophisticated platform made by Tom O.

2. Remove the OTA from its cradle, and attach it to a dovetail plate that goes on a high payload equatorial mount. This is very expensive, mostly because high-payload mounts are very expensive.  This is also slightly more uncertain as to how to make it work.

3. Rebuild the telescope in a carbon fiber tube which should get it below 50 pounds. High expense carbon fiber tubes 20" ID are not cheap), a lot of work, and uncertain results. 

Simpler, less obvious solution.  Shim the south end of platform 2.62". Bolt ground board to platform. Bolt platform to the board with casters. Even if center of gravity is a little off, it should not make it a leaning Tower of Pisa.

Did The Left Learn Anything in the Last Few Years?

Apparently not. 5/24/26 Axios reports that Sen. Fauxahontas is being wooded by Democrats for 2028 Presidential run.

Islamic Center of San Diego Shooter Walked Away From Mental Heslth Facility Day Before Shooting

More Evidence Antisocial Media Needs to Die

 5/23/26 New York Post:

A 14-year-old boy is dead and an 18-year-old is fighting for his life after a subway surfing stunt turned tragic on the Williamsburg Bridge Friday evening.

However much you love antisocial media: if v you feed the beast, kids will still do stupithings for attention.  Starve the beast; restore civilization.

Capitalist Meets Astronomer Need

Results: magnificent.  How Telescope Rancher Became the Hot New Job in Texas.

Red Flag Law Failure

5/21/26 New York Times:

More than a year before Caleb Vazquez and a friend attacked a mosque in San Diego and killed three people, the police were so alarmed by Mr. Vazquez’s behavior that they secured a court order to confiscate his father’s guns.

“Child was involved in suspicious behavior idolizing nazis and mass shooters,” a police officer wrote in a January 2025 protective order.

Mr. Vazquez, who was found dead on Monday shortly after the police say he and a friend attacked the Islamic Center of San Diego, had at some point been placed in an involuntary psychiatric hold, according to documents filed at San Diego Superior Court.

He must have been pretty dangerous to get an involuntary psychiatric hold. Before red flag laws, people that were thought to be dangerous to self or others would be subject to psychiatric observation. Taking away guns was not the goal. It was making them nit dangerous with all weapons: guns, gasoline, cars, knives, baseball bats. But red flag laws are gun-specific because they are not about public safety but gun confiscation.

5/21/26 New York Post:

One of the deranged teens behind the San Diego mosque shooting walked away from a mental health facility the day before carrying out Monday’s deadly attack, sources said.

Caleb Vazquez, 18, left the Park Mental Health Treatment Center the morning before killing three people at an Islamic center with 17-year-old Cain Clark, law enforcement sources told The Post.

What does "walked away" mean? He was apparently on a temporary psychiatric hold which could mean Welfare & Institutions section 5150 (72 hours for observation)  or 5250 ("not more than 14 days of intensive treatment related to the mental health disorder or impairment by chronic alcoholism"). Neither of those something from which you "walk away." Both are part of the deeper problem of deinstitutionalization. As the psychiatrist who treated my brother during his first 5250 stay put it: "Anyone who still appears dangerous to a judge after 14 days of Thorazine, is pretty scary."

Looking for Dark Sky Rental in Southwest Idaho or Northeast Oregon

 I would love to rent a place for a night or two with a dark sky: somewhere where you can see the Milky Way, ideally that accepts dogs. Asking AirBnb hosts how dark their skies are is akin to asking if they are fluent in APL. Vale, Oregon is pretty dark, but there are no lodgings there. Bruneau Dunes has cabins but they have no toilets in the cabins. I would prefer not driving to Sun Valley.

Screwing Around

I am sorting hundreds of screws and nuts. Twenty years ago, I paid my son to sort all the fasteners that ScopeRoller used, with each drawer labeled by thread, length, and drive type (socket head; Philips, standard). 

Over time, entropy happened because I was often too busy filling orders to return fasteners to the right drawer.

You may be wondering, "Isn't your time worth enough to throw them all away, and buy what you need, when you need them?" 

Right now, I live a short drive from a Tacoma Screw retail store, Ace Hardware, and True Value. I am hoping for a Milky Way sky in the new house. I will have few nearby hardware stores.  At least some of the current hodge-podge was because I could not find screws (especially thumbscrews) that were present in one of dozens of drawers, so i bought another bag retail or from Amazon. 

The sorting process is easier than I expected. The 6-32 and 8-32 screws are easily distinguished visually. Ditto for 8-32 from 10-24 and larger. In some cases, looking in a container of nuts and bolts, you can immediately see that these ten nuts are the same size. Length and finish are also useful. The aluminum 1/4"-20 hex head screws (that I bought to see if I could make ScopeRoller less marring to tripod legs) stood out from finish alone. 

I was thinking last night that a fastener equivalent to CoinStar would be useful. You drop bags of fasteners in the top and it sorts them by diameter and length, rhen attempts to gentlely turn them into threaded holes until it finds a match.  I would have paid $30 to have used such a machine to produce bags of M3x0.6, M4x1.0, 4-40, 6-32 etc. If it could sort them by other criteria (head type, fully threaded, finish), all the better.

Banning Cellphone Use in Schools

5/14/26 New York Post:

"NYC teachers say phone ban in classrooms has caused ‘jaw dropping’ change in students’ attention"

DoorDash As a Human Right is Coming

Wonderful X thread where trendy leftist Taylor Lorenz explains that poor people cannot get by because reliance on DoorDash and eating out leaves them very little money for other things. Presumably, like pots, pans, utensils, and cookbooks.

I hear a lot of GenZ whining about Boomers consuming "infinite resources." I think some of these people need to learn to cook.

I Have Not Been Paid That Poorly Since the 1980s

5/21/26 PJMedia reports that the SpaceX IPO paperwork reports that Musk's salary is $54,000 a year. Admittedly, when you are that rich, you do not a huge weekly paycheck . 

They Saved Hitler's Brain

Remember that horrible 1950s? 1960s? Horror film. So i saw this 5/20/26 Science article:

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT—Just a day ago, the brain was in a living person. Now, hours after its owner died, it sits on a cart draped in tubes that quiver as they pump liters of blood substitute and other fluids through the organ, supplying oxygen and removing waste. With most of its key functions intact but its electrical activity quenched by anesthesia, the brain hovers between life and death. As it metabolizes experimental drugs, sensors record its reactions, capturing hundreds of data points on its cells, proteins, and physiology. Then, after 24 hours in this state, it will be sliced into hundreds of pieces for more detailed study.

 

Explore Scientific: Do Not Buy

 I mentioned this very nice small goto equatorial mount. It stopped working shortly after it arrived. Customer Support had me send it in for repair in late March. No communication; no mount back to me. I will never buy from them again.

I whined loud. Mount is headed back to me.

More Insane Packaging

I ordered roof rack crossbars for my wife's Hundai Tucson..

Dog Bone Taillights

 

What was Hyundai thinking?

Where Madness Leads

Multiple news reports indicate that the mass murderers at Islamic Center of San Diego hated Jews so they attacked a mosque. 5/19/26 Times of San Diego:

The two teenage suspects of Monday’s shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego San Diego met and were radicalized online and left a manifesto revealing “hatred for a broad range of folks,” law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

Over at X, Amy Reichert, who seems more left than right, reproduced pages from the manifesto showing that they hated Jews, LGBTWTF, Boomers, and Trump:

It gets worse: white supremacist calling themselves leftists who seek a violent overthrow of the current system:

The hatred of Boomers is troubling. This myth that Boomers are causing Gen Zers problems is crap.

Democratic Party off the Deep End

 One of the San Antonio papers is reporting on  one of the Democrats running for Congress on a platform that just overwhelms my sense of, "How stupid do you have to be?" Even if she believes this crap, does she really think this will get her elected? Maybe by Democrats.  5/18/26 SACurent:

“She’ll turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking,” Galindo wrote in an Instagram post over the weekend, referring to herself in the third person. “It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists.”...

Over the past week, Galindo has accused her runoff opponent — former Bexar County Public Information Officer Johnny Garcia — of participating in a human trafficking conspiracy orchestrated by billionaire zionist Jews. She also pledged during a Texas Public Radio interview to put Garcia on trial for treason.

Beyond her attacks on Garcia, Galindo has continued to promote the narrative that a cabal of Jewish zionists controls Hollywood, the media and even local politicians. 

ICYMI: We Drove a Stake Through the Vampire Rule's Heart

Christian v. James (2d Cir. 2026). 

If "vampire rule" leaves you mystified, it is time to re-read one of the masterpieces of late Victorian literature: Bram Stoker's Dracula. In Stoker's novel, vampires could never enter a house uninvited. He used his hypnotic powers on Lucy Harkness (if my memory serves me correctly) to get her to invite him in. As Stoker's novel hints, Dracula's hypnotic powers were akin to spiking a young lady's drink.

Anyway, what is the connection? The fiercely anti-self defense states had to go shall issue on concealed carry licenses, but they were going to make licenses nearly useless by requiring licensees to get explicit invitation to carry in businesses open to the public, either by a sign in the window, or an expression permission from the owner. Imagine if you needed a sign "Black people are allowed" in a business window  

This decision struck down New York's rule on this while leaving intact its prohibition on licensees carrying in parks.

Are Three Strikes Laws a Bad Idea?

Progressive objections to three strikes laws included that sending criminals away for life wastes resources because "justice-involved persons" stop being a hazard as they age.

So imagine why surprise at reading this 5/18/26 CBS Boise article:

BOISE, Idaho (CBS2) — District Judge James Cawthon sentenced 65-year-old Robert Johns on Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a jury found him guilty of Lewd and Lascivious Conduct and Sexual Abuse of a Minor Under 16....

Johns has a criminal history spanning over four decades, including prior felony convictions for grand theft, burglary, robbery and Murder in the First Degree, for which he received an indeterminate life sentence.

Maybe he is exceptional. I can remember some others, however. The old guy who raped a 14-year-old ib California and cut off her arms with a hatchet was released after just a few years. (Not a very serious crime by progressive California standards. ) He moved to Florida and was then convicted of murdering a woman. Florida not being progressive sentenced him to life.

World War I Antique

 We are going through or collection of stuff seeing what does not need to come with us. I found this World War I antique U.S.N. GAS ALARM.

The USN Gas Alarm Antique is an original period item from World War II, specifically designed by the United States Navy. This collectible piece falls under the theme of militaria, reflecting the historical significance of the era. With a vintage design and origin from the United States, this gas alarm antique serves as a tangible reminder of the sacrifices and precautions taken during the turbulent time of World War II. Condition is pretty good for a device made of wood more than a century old. Three of the clacking parts have minor cracks. There is one nail not fully seated (see pictures). It does not affect functionality. It is still capable of making quite a racket!

As you can see, the U.S.N. Gas Alarm marking is clearly visible. This seems to be branded into the wood, not painted.

Help me not move it. Available on eBay.

Boomers As Leeches

I am seeing an increasing flood of complaints that Boomers take "an infinity of resources" from later generations. They are looking at Social Security and Medicare. 

Many of us resented those mandatory taxes for SS and Medicare.  We could have invested that money in mutual funds and come out way ahead. Even then, for every high wage earner like me with $3000/month SS checks, there are far more with $1200/month SS checks struggling to pay rent or mortgage payments and Medicare premiums and deductible.

And younger people upset about health insurance premiums. They were not absurd when Boomers were young because we were not battling the damage Obamacare did by requiring no age discrimination on insurance costs. To cover the costs of coverage for older insurers, young people were saddled with higher premiums. To make sure they did not make a perhaps rational decision to skip insurance, Obamacare punished them for failure to buy. The deductibles are huge. 

My wife had students who insisted that Obamacare would mean they would get an insurance card in the mail, free of charge. My, were they disappointed. Elect politicians who make absurd promises, get screwed. 

We also worked our butts off instead of whining. The SS returns compared to equity funds is awful.

Cargo Carriers That Can Use Padlocks?

 I am looking for a cargo carrier that has edge holes for padlocks. I am told the Thules all use the same key, so they are not secure. Why you would do that eludes me. There is nowhere to look at them, and the Amazon pages are useless for this. JEGS says none of theirs will accept padlocks.

Astronomy

I have been struggling for several years now, intermittently, to get my Losmandy G811G goto mount to work. I am quite sure it us pilot error. Supergrok has been walking me through the process. Every night I get a bit closer. Tonight's discovery was that the watch battery that keeps static knowledge of date and time needs replacing.

Semester is Over

Grades submitted. For the first time in many semesters, no one failed. A number of students withdrew who were clearly either not ready or too busy for this class.

I was pleased that A students were largely the ones who most clearly relied on HI not AI. This may be my last semester teaching. College of Western Idaho only employs Idaho residents.  This makes sense: Idaho taxpayers are paying the salaries; we are no longer short of well-educated people here. I am not sure what my chances are of getting an adjunct position in eastern Tennessee.

Such a Beautiful House and View

If only we could pick it up and move it to East Tennessee. 

Busy Day

We had a moving garage sale with our daughter and son-in-law.  Leas stuff to pack, load, and ship and a small amount of cash in return. 

More Fraud Convictions

5/14/26 CBS News:

A woman who earned a West Michigan Woman of the Year award will serve over five years in federal prison for a $1.4 million fraud scheme that misdirected money meant for preschool services, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Michigan said.

Nkechy Ezeh, 61, of Kent County, was sentenced on Wednesday in U.S. District Court to 70 months on fraud and a concurrent 60 months for evading income taxes, the district attorney's office said. She was ordered to start serving the prison time immediately.

Ezeh was also ordered to pay a total of $1.4 million in restitution to the victims of the scheme, along with $390,174 to the Internal Revenue Service.

Her nonprofit organization, Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative, shuttered in 2023, with 35 people laid off as a result, the district attorney's office said.

A million here, a billion there, to paraphrase Sen. Dirksen, after a while, it adds up to real money. If all this welfare state funding was making poor people better off, you might excuse the good intentions.

Someone Did Not Read the Last Page of the Book

Marc Elias, Democrat attorney, is so upset that the Virginia Suoreme Court told them their gerrymandering was unconstitutional that he is quoting the Virginia Constitution's right to revolution clause. Is he proposing the people of Virginia abolish the state government which is entirely controlled by Democrats.  Sedition! Very J6, if you ask me. 

Democrats are fast losing the plot. As the meme says: Democrats have not been this upset at Republicans since they took away their slaves, prosecuted the KKK, and integrated public schools. 

Maybe the Blue Wave Will Not Happen

The Court ruled last week that the Voting Rights Act violated the Constitution.  Remember: "The only way to stop discrimination is to stop discriminating " 

5/11/26 SCOTUSBlog: Alabama adopted new non-racially discriminatory district lines in 2013, which of course infuriated the party which caused Congress to pass the Voting Rights Acts in 1965. which The courts blocked the new maps because Democrats are dependent on racist districts.

.

The Court just applied last week's decision to Alabama.  Thry are now allowed to use the 2013 map.

Too Horrifying to Quote

5/12/26 Daily Mail describes the report of what was done to the October 7th victims. Useful for your friends who insist that the Israelis a

Dow 50K

The Dow Industrials are above 50K  i remember when Abby Cohen Goldman was hyping that it was going to break 20K just before the dot-com bust in 2000. I am not seeing the same sort of absurd overconfidence.  I am seeing a lot of doom and gloom sorts claiming the market is bubbillicous. Some have saying thus for many months. 

I wonder how much of this seeing the Democrats getting ready to fail to retake the House, and how much is an endorsement of Trump’s policies  

Not a Small Fraud Problem

 Over on X, I have been seeing TDS sufferers complaining that allegations of Medicare fraud are overblown and are just a small number of bad actors. The scale of bad actors matters.

5/14/26 CBS News:

The owner of a healthcare software company was convicted of massive Medicare fraud on Thursday, the Department of Justice said, ending what Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called "one of the most egregious fraud schemes in Florida history." ...

Blackman and his co-conspirators billed Medicare and other federal healthcare benefit programs over $1 billion throughout the course of the scheme, the Department of Justice said. Medicare and the other programs paid out more than $450 million.

How in the Heck Did This Happen?

My wife wanted to reduce the mass of ammo to move, so we pulled it out and stacked it up.

And there are several thousand rounds of .223 below the table. If you are local and need .223,  308, 9mm, .380, .45; or  22LR, let me know. I need to pull some aside. If I can sell most of this at current prices, I can replace it in Tennessee. A few hundred rounds can move with us by car. But several thousand rounds takes up a lot of space and may make it harder to camouflage its nature in the car.

Another reason not to move it is that there is a small possibility that we might sell our house and need to move without a new house bought there so shipping it would be hard.

If You Grew Up Watching the Roadrunner Cartoons

You will look forward to this movie: Coyote v. Acme in which Wile E. Coyote hires an ambulance chaser to sue Acme for all the  injuries.