Ultimate Manliness

An Altima went off a 300 foot cliff into the Snake River.  It did not quite reach the water.  A fisherman called 911.  They used Jaws of Life to get the driver out.  Now offroad recovery specialists are going to bring the two halves up and out.

Something Not a Vaccine

 Well-known right-wing conspiracy buff Harvard School of Public Health:

When children are exposed to acetaminophen—also known by the brand name Tylenol or as paracetamol—during pregnancy, they may be more likely to develop neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) including autism and ADHD, according to a new study.

The study was published August 14 in BMC Environmental Health. Andrea Baccarelli, dean of the faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and professor of environmental health, was senior author. The study was led by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and also included co-authors from other institutions.

The researchers analyzed results from 46 previous studies worldwide that investigated the potential link between prenatal acetaminophen use and subsequent NDDs in children. The researchers used the Navigation Guide Systematic Review methodology—a gold-standard framework for synthesizing and evaluating environmental health data—which enabled them to conduct a rigorous, comprehensive analysis that supported evidence of an association between acetaminophen exposure during pregnancy and increased incidence of NDDs.

The dramatic rise in ADHD and autism suddenly has an explanation.

Sometimes You Wonder What is in the Water

 9/19/25 WILX:

Savitra Mcclurkin said her son is being punished after disarming and disassembling a classmate’s gun at Dwight Rich School of the Arts. He took the gun apart and threw away the bullets, but didn’t tell an adult until later.

Mcclurkin said she’s been trying to get in contact with the Lansing School District for quite some time, but isn’t getting any response.

In search for answers, she made an appearance at Thursday night’s Lansing School Board meeting.

“He’s 11 years old. Seventh grade. Never been in trouble before,” said Mcclurkin.

Mcclurkin said he was able to disarm and disassemble the gun because of his hunting background. She said in the moment, her son was scared, and thought he was helping the other students around him.

Apparently he is trouble for not informing an adult immediately and identifying from whom he confiscated the gun.  So they expelled him.  Let's focus on the positive, school district. 

Someone Turned Personal Tragedy into Something Good

9/22/25 KGO reports that one of the Sandy Hook parents set up a hotline for reporting suspected school shooters.  It worked.  A student saw clear evidence of intent on a fellow student's social media. Arrest, seizure of guns.

I suspect that there is nothing else on which would agree but she put her grief to a good purpose.

UPDATE: Like all things from Everytown For Dead People, this turned out to be false.  9/23/25 Almanac:

After local schools issued a secure campus order due to a potential threat, officials made it clear that there was no imminent risk of violence. Then the nonprofit that originally informed officials of the threat released a press release heralding the incident as the 19th school shooting they thwarted, a claim officials refute. 

On Sept. 10, several local schools were placed on secure campus orders after an anonymous report through Menlo-Atherton High School’s “See Something, Say Something” tip line. The hotline is operated by Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit dedicated to ending gun violence at schools, and flagged a former Menlo-Atherton student who posted “concerning content” about the school on social media.

Atherton police located the individual the same day and the secure campus orders were lifted. School instruction continued while the individual was located. The former Menlo-Atherton student, who is currently a student at another local school, was later placed in a medical facility for psychiatric treatment. 

But on Sept. 22, Sandy Hook Promise published a press release claiming the Sept. 10 incident was the 19th planned school shooting the organization has stopped through its tipline.

A California community prevented a school shooting after a student reported a threat via Sandy Hook Promise’s Say Something Anonymous Reporting System recently. The student recognized the warning signs among a peer’s Instagram posts, took them seriously, and acted immediately to report the threats,” the organization’s press release started. “This set off a swift chain of events that ultimately saved lives.”

The organization said the former Menlo-Atherton student posted “images of firearms, ammunition, and a mapped-out plan for attacking the school.” Sandy Hook Promise also claimed police recovered a firearm.

However, the Atherton Police Department claims there was no firearm in the Instagram post nor did it recover one. Additionally, the Sequoia Union High School District said in a message to parents that there was no detailed plan for any violence. 

“The individual making the threat included a map of M-A, but the threat did not express any sense of immediacy or an impending timeline,” Superintendent Crystal Leach said in her message to parents."

Finally Back in the Shop

 I spent a couple weeks writing rebuttals to 16 expert declarations for May v. Bonta.  A little background: California had no choice after Bruen but to go shall-issue on concealed weapon permits.  So, like other states in this conundrum, they declared a big part of the state "sensitive places," where CCWs would not be valid.  You have to pass a background check, a psychological test, and a firing test, but you cannot be trusted to not go crazy.

Bruen created this "sensitive places" test based on historic restrictions: courthouses, legislatures, and polling places.  What places did California claim fit this?  Places that serve alcohol, mass transit, schools (K-12 and universities), zoos, museums, parks, sporting events, and banks.  Mass transit like light rail, BART, city buses, Greyhound, where there are never crazy people with knives.

A common theme of these declarations is that "children might be present."  Yes, and so might mass murderers.  Children present means we put a big sign at the entrance: Vulnerable people here.

What makes this interesting is that the federal district court judge who first heard this case issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement.  This usually means she thinks it is likely to succeed on its merits at trial.  California, of course, appealed that.  The 9th Circuit Court of appeals upheld that injunction and sent it back for trial.  

That first stage is MPI (Motion for Preliminary Injunction).  They filed 14 expert declarations for that stage and in about two weeks I scrambled to write 14 rebuttals.  This was not as bad as it sounds because many cited not a single law to meet Bruen's requirement: for laws from before 1791 or at least before 1868 that regulated the activity that States want to regulate today.  These seem to have been quick money for professors who wanted to imagine that they were doing something for the cause of disarming deporables.

The State filed very slightly revised declarations by the same experts plus two more (one charging $1000/hour).  Slightly revised almost always meaning changes to their list of qualifications and accomplishments (which were often impressive, especially when scompared to their declarations).  Partly, this was because many were experts in fields far removed from weapons regulation and they seemed unfamiliar with the standards imposed by Bruen.  

Writing rebuttals to these was more laborious than challenging because most were identical except for paragraph numbers.  One exception: Patrick J. Charles had quoted a 1400  law banning any man carrying arms into churches.  My MPI rebuttal pointed out that law's title said, "No Welshman shall bear arms."  (Wales was in rebellion at the time.)  This time he left out that law.  There were still many other errors in his declaration to rebut.

H1B Visas

 9/21/25 NBC News:

The surprise order from the Trump administration imposing a new $100,000 fee on some visas set off a day of frantic travel as workers, companies and foreign governments scrambled to respond to Washington's latest immigration crackdown.

By the time the White House clarified that existing holders of the H-1B visas for skilled workers were not affected, the chaos had already been sewn: U.S. allies expressed concern and their nationals abandoned holidays, business trips and plans to see their families as they raced back to America before the new rules took effect Sunday.

President Donald Trump on Friday signed the proclamation requiring companies to pay the fee to obtain the visas, which major tech companies rely on to fill high-skilled jobs.

I have strong feelings on this.  Theoretically the H1B visa is for workers with skills not available from U.S. citizens and permanent residents.  Back in the 1980s,  I was attempting to hire software engineers.  The qualifications were not that high but after advertising in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles we received a small number of applicants, almost all of whom were unqualified or not citizens or residents.  The guy on the top of the "If we get desperate" stack was a South African with both EE and CS degrees.  We wanted to hire him.  The H1B process was slow and clumsy.  Proving that there was no qualified person already here required a lot of advertising.  Only one applicant was even close and he did not want to move to Silicon Valley.  

Silicon Valley was a lovely place to live.  Not yet expensive and with my friends when we went to Subway for lunch next to Computer Literacy bookstore and Fry's Electronics, we were in Nerd Valhalla.

Oh yes, that South African.  We did eventually hire him.  He was very skilled and became a good friend.

I later worked for a tech company that laid off hundreds of us while advertising for H1Bs with very ordinary job requirements.  When I pointed this out, I was informed the ad ran in error.  The hassle of H1B approval is greatly eased by high powered law firms who know how to work the system.

What's wrong with H1Bs?  Many are probably useful additions to our workforce.  They are generally working cheaper than Americans.  I recall in the 1990s seeing articles about Russian software engineers working for Google in  Silicon Valley for $1200/month, and living in cramped quarters like high-end illegal aliens.  More workers means lower wages for all.

If you are here on an H1B visa, you cannot just change jobs.  You are bound to that employer.  Theoretically, you can get changed over to another employer but it is not easy.  If your current employer lets you go, you need to exit almost immediately.  This makes H1B employees easy to exploit.

A friend from Northern Ireland went to work for Micron as an H1B. During the little collapse of 2008, Micron laid him off.  He had 10? or was it 90? days to leave America.  He had bought a house here, so he had to sell it when the housing market had collapsed.  He called this his "$100,000 American vacation."  Some of suggested he learn Spanish and insist his name was Jose.

I Am Pretty Sure This Should Be Evidence of Non Compos Mentis

 9/22/25 AP:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A man suspected of firing a gun into the ABC affiliate's office in California's capital had written notes in his car that were critical of Donald Trump's administration and a calendar reminder on his fridge to “do the next scary thing," prosecutors said Monday.

Nobody was hurt in the shooting Friday into the lobby of the studios of ABC10 near downtown Sacramento. Local authorities arrested Anibal Hernandez Santana, 64, on Friday on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and shooting into an occupied building. He was released hours later on $200,000 bail.

My mistake.  "Orange Man Bad made me do it!"