Good News! Pakistani Rape Gangs Do Not Discriminate

2/6/26 Sun has a sickening account of a Pakistani raoe gang where the victim was daughter, granddaughter, and sister of the rapists starting at 6. (All were just sentenced.) Mom got quite upset when she blew the whistle at school.  I am not going to quote anything.  It is too disgusting. 

Removing CFC Dust From the Air

My wife is not happy at the CFC dust that milling and turning CFC puts into the air. (I wear a respirator.)  This stuff goes everywhere, leaving a fine coat on everything.  She wants me to stop machining it for that reason.  If I had a completely separate shop instead of the garage, this would less of an issue.  (Next house will either have a separate building or i will have one built.)

I suspect that someone sort of ionic air filter would pull this stuff out of the air and either leave on an anode or drop it in a neat little pile.  Shops that work will this stuff must have a fix.

UPDATE: I asked Grok. It suggested the Jostart KL306 which uses carbon fiber tips to produce ions to clump carbon fiber dust together immediately around the tool. These came in a 3 pack. I will try one at the mill to see if it works well.  If it does, one for the lathe, drill press, and sander.

UPDATE: My wife read the hazard description for CFC and it is now permanently banned.  I will sell the remaining pieces on eBay.

I Have Not Rolled the 5" Refractor Out in Some Time

It has the advantage that you do not a ladder to get to the eyepiece and it is a spectacular apochromat. But once I was outside, I discovered the focuser would not move.  Not even a little.

Cold weather froze grease? Cold tightened a close tolerance too much? Were the screws that hold the rear plate to the focuser axle too tight?

No, simpler than that but only after I brought in back inside, removed it from the mount and started disassembly. Thus is a rock and pinion focuser and the rack along the tube had gone beyond the pinion.  I needed to gently pull the focuser tube out far enough for rack and pinion to mate.  I think i will epoxy a piece of plastic at the last slot in the rack that will prevent him from going too far in again.

Turning Workpieces That Are Too Short for Chuck

I am about to make handles for turning the slow motion handles. I made a couple of these a while back but they were not attractive being sort of a Greek cross made from 1/2" CFC.

My plan was to cut two 1" circles with a .25" hole in the center where the D-shaft. While clearing around the mill, I found a 1" (actually. 951") diameter CFC piece that fell out when cutting a 1.25" hole. Perhaps, I could reuse this piece? 

So I mounted it in the lathe and drilled a .25" hole through the center. 

But there was some crud on one end that needed turning off.  But the jaws were not deep enough to hold a 1/2" thick workpiece with the end exposed.  So I dug through my screws and scraps and made this up.

The white acetal locks in the jaws.  A 1/4-20 screw passed through it, locked by a nut, and then the workpiece, locked in place by another nut. Now the workpiece was entirely outside the jaws where I could turn the exterior.

Bog Iron: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Skill?

 I actually think existing scrap steel supplies will be adequate but it is always good to know how to make your own iron.

"Trump Must Have Known About Epstein"

This has become the preferred narrative for people who can't find evidence that Trump was involved. And private citizen Donald Trump was supposed to do what? Go make a citizen's arrest? 2/9/26 Miami Herald:

President Donald Trump has repeatedly maintained that he had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes. But in July 2006, just as Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal sex charge became public, Trump called then-Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter to tell him that Epstein’s activities with teenaged girls were well known in both New York and Palm Beach.

“Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” Trump told Reiter, according to a 2019 FBI interview with Reiter contained in the Justice Department’s Epstein case files. The interview, conducted in October 2019 and not previously reported, has shed new light on Trump’s involvement in the early stages of the 2006 Jeffrey Epstein investigation in Palm Beach, Florida. It also raises questions about how much Trump knew about Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes. Reiter told FBI agents that Trump revealed that Epstein’s associate, Maxwell, was Epstein’s “operative,” and that Trump said “she is evil and to focus on her,” according to the report. Trump told Reiter that “he was around Epstein once when teenagers were present and Trump ‘got the hell out of there,’” the report said. Trump also told Reiter that he threw Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club.

If This Was Not Reported by Local TV News With Video Showing This Stupidity, I Would Assume a Racist Used AI to Make This

 2/9/26 WDRB:

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Jefferson County judge has sentenced a convicted felon to 30 years in prison, declining to follow a jury’s recommendation of 65 years in a case involving robbery, kidnapping, sodomy and sexual abuse.

Christopher Thompson, 24, was sentenced on Feb. 2 after a December conviction tied to a 2023 attack in which prosecutors said he abducted a woman, robbed her and sodomized her twice.

Court documents say Thompson kidnapped the woman in her own vehicle and forced her to perform oral sex on him in a school parking lot. Then, he drove her to an ATM, robbed the woman, drove back to the school lot and sodomized her at gunpoint again.

Thompson's sentencing hearing was marked by repeated disruptions, profanity and direct insults toward Judge Tracy Davis.

“Before we even get appearances, Mr. Thompson, I’m going to need you to be respectful,” Davis said.

“I ain’t doing nothing. Eat my d**k,” Thompson responded.

Moments later, the exchange escalated.

“It’s fine. Okay? It’s fine,” Davis said.

“If I could spit on you, I would,” Thompson replied.

“At the end of the day, I’m the one with the pen,” Davis said.

“I don’t care,” Thompson said.

Despite the continued outbursts, the court proceeded with sentencing. Prosecutors urged Davis to impose the jury’s recommended 65-year sentence.

“I don’t have sympathy for nobody. I don’t have sympathy for you, the victim, the victim’s family, I don’t care. Boo hoo,” Thompson said during the hearing.

Davis ultimately imposed a 30-year sentence, citing Thompson’s age and the possibility of rehabilitation — even as Thompson continued interrupting.

“I don’t care. I don’t care,” Thompson said.

“Unfortunately he fell through the cracks and ended up in this court as an 18 or 19-year-old,” Davis said. “This court does not believe Mr. Thompson, if given the resources that he can get while incarcerated, is beyond being rehabilitated.”

One of the longstanding hopes of having women on juries and the bench was treating rape as a serious crime. The judge's comments make it clear that she sees Thompson as a victim because he is black. Say no to racism.