AI in 2025 - What is it really Bad At?

Last time I went on a bit on the subject of what AI was reasonably good at.  Images.  Some body parts being done so very much better than others.  It won't, at least in the free version I was using, pass for real art, but its skill exceeds mine.  Yours too I should think.

But what is it still really bad at?

Creative writing.  Even with, or especially with, detailed prompts.

For example, here's what I wrote last time on what AI is good at:

At my advanced age I am allowed some element of curmudgeonism with regard to modern technology.  I've seen a lot of it come and go in nearly 70 years.  Much of it is simply reinventing the wheel.  And the real breakthroughs are often pulled into the For Profit realm rather quickly.  Still, I'm not such a tortoise that I am still using a rotary dial phone and a slide rule.

So, what is the much vaunted AI "good" at in 2025.

My initial answer is: Images.  Lacking any artistic talent to speak of I am able to come up with amusing pictures but I can't create them.   Here's an example.  I prompted Gemini - this is the maligned but free Google product - to create an image of a deer sitting at a computer studying trail cam images of hunters.  This is a remote possibility for my slow hunting season (up to gun opener), but you never know.  Here's the first draft:

I posed that same question for AI to answer.  In the style of Detritus of Empire!  You be the judge:

"Ah, 2025. The year when the digital dust motes have finally settled enough for us to squint at the landscape and ask: "So, what's this bloody AI actually for now?" Forget the utopian pipedreams or the Skynet anxieties, comrades. The truth, as ever, is far more pedestrian and far more insidious."

"AI in 2025 is a glorified clerk, a relentless, unblinking auditor. It's magnificent at sifting through the dross of human existence – the endless data, the digital flotsam and jetsam we produce with every click, purchase, and mumbled voice command. It finds patterns in our spending habits, predicts our next impulse buy with unsettling accuracy, and flags the 'anomalies' in our medical records before we even feel a twinge."

"It's superb at generating content, a veritable factory farm of text and images, flooding the internet with bespoke banality, finely tuned to whatever niche market can be carved out. Need a thousand variations of a product description? AI's your man. A news article indistinguishable from human-written pap? Done. It’s not about brilliance; it's about boundless, tireless mediocrity, optimized for engagement metrics."

"And let’s not forget surveillance. Oh, the glorious, all-seeing eye. AI excels at monitoring, categorizing, and cross-referencing. From traffic flow to social sentiment, it’s the ultimate panopticon, meticulously cataloging the minute details of our lives, all under the guise of 'efficiency' or 'security'. So, in 2025, AI is good at making money, controlling narratives, and watching us. The empire, in its digital guise, has found its most efficient bureaucratic tool yet."

It's crap.  Nothing about it resembles my writing style, and with almost 3,000 posts of Detritus of Empire to sift though it had plenty of grist to grind.  Either its being lazy, and I am mooching off a free version, or it pays no attention to the actual request parameters and just pours slop from the bucket.  So which is it?

I think it must have done a quick surface scan of my writings.  The descriptive term "bloody" would not be there without some hint that I travel in and write about England rather often.  And to pick up on medical matters....some note of my career as a family and later ER physician.  But it does not mimic my writing style in any way other than an excess of commas!  So I wonder how it "sees" me? Just for fun I asked it to generate an image of my alter ego Badger Trowelsworthy.  After it made a cute critter image I pointed out that BT was actually a human.  So.....

Much better than its writing!  I can in fact flag a half dozen or so photos that probably were used to generate it. And it even got the hand right.  At least the one you can see.....

AI in 2025 - What it is actually (somewhat) Good At.

At my advanced age I am allowed some element of curmudgeonism with regard to modern technology.  I've seen a lot of it come and go in nearly 70 years.  Much of it is simply reinventing the wheel.  And the real breakthroughs are often pulled into the For Profit realm rather quickly.  But hey, I'm not such a tortoise that I am still using a rotary dial phone and a slide rule.

So, what is the much vaunted AI "good" at in 2025.

My initial answer is: Images.  Lacking any artistic talent to speak of I am able to come up with ideas for amusing pictures but I can't create them.   Here's an example.  I prompted Gemini - this is the maligned but free Google product - to create an image of a deer sitting at a computer studying trail cam images of hunters.  This is a remote possibility for my slow hunting season (up to gun opener), but you never know.  Here's the first draft:

Now that's not too bad.  But a closer inspection shows a problem.  The hunters are all wearing camo.  And they are all holding fire arms.

Some of the weapons they are hefting look like big sticks, others like generic sub machine guns.  One guy - and admittedly these are blurry images - appears to be holding a stuffed animal!

But for gun hunting season they should be wearing blaze orange.  When I pointed this out and asked AI for an update it said: 

Okay, let's get those hunters in proper safety orange! Here's the updated image:

And here's what it came up with:

Better.  It just changed the one detail and did so competently.  It's a fun image....if you don't look too closely at it.  Behold:

Our friend Mr. Buck has two full cups of coffee.  He's never going to manage the one on the right, not with that clumsy hoof.  But the other side.......  Yikes!  A hideous freak of nature "hand" with a thumb and dark, Goth fingernails.   

This sort of thing has been a problem for AI generation since the get go.  It does some body parts very well indeed.  Others....frightening mutations.  Here's another example.  The basic prompt was to show me a waitress at a German Beer Garden bringing me a stein of beer.

At first glance all is well.  AI does faces nicely.  The back drop is passable.  And, well, as this is a serious study of the matter, AI does breasts with great accuracy.  One minor quibble, that stein looks a bit outsized, unless the waitress is elfin, and it would never do to bring a customer something that is 35% foam!  But do we still have mutant fingers???

Subtle, but yes.  Count the fingertips.  Slightly crooked thumb, 1,2,3....

There seems to be a little parasitic finger grafted onto the back of the ring finger.  

This is a common feature of AI images.  Indeed, weird extremities - hands in particular - are one way photo sleuths debunk controversial AI "fakes".  So how and why is this so?

Here's my theory.

Picture a conference room.  Full of computer nerds.  It's an AI startup and the manager has this to say:

"OK, its crunch time.  Eric, Cheng, Bill, Rashid, Cooper,  get your entire departments working on Boobs.  Divide yourselves up into Left and Right working groups.  Feel free to hire up to 500 freelancers.  Try not to spend more than your usual amount of company time looking at naughty stuff on the internet."

"Oh...I suppose we need to do hands as well.  Where's the new intern?  Melvin?"

"Um, right here.  And its Milton, sir."

"Melvin, our AI informs me that (reads from his phone) the human hand is incredibly complex, and is a main reason why we invented tools and as a species took over the world.  See if you can knock something together this afternoon.  But you still have to sweep up, and don't forget the usual donut runs!"

"Yes sir, I'll do my best."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

So how would AI depict that scene?

About as expected.  I'll make this a big as possible so you can see the Horrible Hands on several figures including Milton!  Maybe he trained the AI to model reality on himself!

Giving Thanks - 2025

Still on this side of the now snow covered landscape.  Everyone growing.  The young generation upward, the older generations perhaps a bit outward.  We also generally grow wiser, each generation starting to see things as their parents did.

A good day.

Not so good to be a turkey of course, or in the case of our celebration, quail.

Rifle Season Review - Deer vs Modern-ish Tech

Crossbows go back to ancient times.  Normal bows, to the stone age.  So deer have had time to adapt.  Humans, those shaggy bad smelling critters, were just one more predator.  At a time when there were all manner of other toothy, hungry things out there we probably did not rank high on their list.

Of course things have changed.  Oh, I still see the occasional bear, wolf or coyote "up north".  But the main things deer need to worry about are cars - just in the last century or so - and the handiwork of Paul Mauser.

People have been hunting Wisconsin deer with firearms for a while now.  The Ojibway were very motivated to trade beaver pelts for muskets going back to the 1600's.  But the availability was low, and the range not much more than a skilled archer.  

Paul Mauser was one of many talented guys who put their effort into making dangerous things in the 1800s.  His innovations were built into the standard rifles and ammunition for the Kaiser's army, and are still the basis for most non fancy deer hunting guns today.  Here's what I use.  Sorry if Google/Facebook etc get unhappy with any sort of fire arm photo! *

This is actually a rather long prolog to a rather short story.

 

Sunrise on opening day of rifle season found me in a box stand on our hunting land.  Basically tree houses built on 15 foot stilts they were constructed by the previous owner.  Who, from the geometry of the window arrangement, must have been about six foot 8 and preferred to stand up the entire time!  Even with a yard sale bar stool to sit on there are areas you just can't see.  There was a beautiful sunrise.

The orange flag is for the edification of the next door neighbor who was hunting some distance off in that direction.  Anyway, after sitting there craning my neck in various ways for 90 minutes I needed a bit of a stretch.  Standing up I saw a buck had approached to within ten paces of the stand right on the trail shown.  A most incurious chap he was still there after I quietly stepped back, took off the safety, lined up a shot......

Expired deer pictures all look the same.  Suffice to say it was a serious task dragging him from the dense underbrush he ran off into.  I had to actually get one of my sons who was hunting elsewhere on the property to come help me.  Even with two of us it was necessary to take breaks getting Bucky back to home base.

And so that's hunting 2025, unless other branches of the family need logistical help or my unfilled doe tag.

Addendum.  A friend hunting on the same spots I've spent so much time on got a nice buck the second day of rifle season.  As a herd management strategy this is ideal, if accidental.  With the mild weather there are  a lot more bucks up and wandering than in most gun seasons.  But they've presumably already taken care of "next year's crop of fawns" business.  So they are less important than the now pregnant does.  And if a year from now there is a mis match?  More does than bucks?  Well, they are not big on either monogamy or faithfulness that lasts more than a half hour or so!

-------------------

* Weirdly the United States had to pay the Mauser company a substantial amount of money post WWI for the patent on the "spitzer" ammunition Paul Mauser had invented.  True, it was a complicated legal case and settled out of court, but rather remarkable...paying your defeated enemy for the ammo used to defeat him!

 

Crossbow Hunting - In Review....

How smart are deer?

Exactly as smart as they think they need to be in a given situation.  They have eyes, ears and noses so much more sensitive to ours that if they stayed on full sensory alert all the time we'd never see one.  Of course that's not realistic.  But they can and do dial the filters up and down.

Bow hunting requires you to be fairly close to your target.  I actually will only take a shot that I'm sure will be a good one, as the idea of a wounded deer limping off to die somewhere far away distresses me.  Even though coyotes gotta eat too....

With a cross bow that range is.....  Well at the start of the season I would have said 30 yards.  But one consequence of spending a lot of time out trying to fool a deer is that in the "in between" times that divide up morning and evening "sits" I've been practicing.  I am pretty confident now at 40 yards.  I'd do 45 if the deer was standing still and a big enough target.

North American deer have had a long time to get used to bow hunting.  People have been launching arrows at them for something like 16,000 years, although its likely the Wisconsin deer were left alone until about 10,000 years ago.  

There are plenty of deer in the woods in the fall of 2025.  I see some most days.  That's good.  Also, that's bad.  Often I've been carefully watching one deer while another sneaks up from an unexpected direction, does that curious head bobbing up and down to get a better view, then calls for the general retreat with white tails flipping me off as they disappear into the woods.

I've tried various things.  Being quiet for instance.  Now I am admittedly older, creakier and wheezier than I used to be, but I still do my best.  Deer also have a phenomenal sense of smell.  So I wash all my hunting garb with scent blocker, store it all in a Rubber Maid tub partly full of leaves, spritz on a product that supposedly takes care of any lingering human odors.  Why, I even skip my morning coffee, as I've heard that is a red flag for them.  Nothing.  Incidentally, there is a wide array of scent stealth concoctions.  I hope in a coffee deficient state I never accidently spray on the cinnamon stuff that attracts Wild Hogs! 

I've decided that the two biggest factors in my to date non success are: 1) The deer are not where I can conveniently hide.  And 2) They are really good at seeing anything that was not there yesterday!

Regards the first point, the land we got as a deer hunting preserve is work in progress.  We saw lots of critters there in the spring and summer.  But in the fall they seem to have wandered over to the next door property where everything was logged off a few years ago.  Mmmmm, nice tender buds and shoots.  So the very stealthy box stands that came with the place are mostly looking out over quiet woods and paths.

Of course it is possible to set up elsewhere.  My son uses a climber stand that can shuffle you right up any tree trunk.  This is especially handy in an area we like that is National Park Service and does not allow any overnight stands.  My son seems skeptical that his near 70 year old father should be using such a thing, and I suppose he's got a point.

Other than that it is various forms of ground blinds.  And I think the deer are onto that trick.

Well, its been an enjoyable fall out in the woods, and I have learned quite a bit about deer generally, and about our new hunting land specifically.  In the off season we'll be doing things to improve the deer habitat.  And isn't that why people have cabins, land and so forth?  To go out there and do lots of jobs?

Next up is rifle season.  If the local herbivores have had 10,000 years to figure out humans with bows they've only had about 200 to start figuring out fire arms.  Lets see how they fare with an effective range of 100 yards plus!

Regimental Steins Part Three - Corporal Dolland of the 167th

Another regimental stein that my father acquired in post WW II Germany and brought home.  They are among the many things we found when cleaning up my parent's junk filled house.....

As you can see, this one does not have the cannon on its top, but it is also from an artillery unit.  That unfortunate absence aside, there is a lot going on with this specimen.

It has a name across the bottom.  Or rather a rank and a last name.  

Gef. Dolland.  At least I think that's a D.

Gef. stands for Gefreiter, or Corporal.  Near as I can tell this is a more esteemed rank in the German army than in other armies of the time period.

The dates of initial service are 1905 to 1907.  Given his higher rank and the fact that the Great War broke out only seven years after he did his mandatory two years of service, its likely this fellow ended up back in uniform in 1914.  When the initial rush of August stalled every man with any experience or leadership potential was called up.....

You can see the larger print motto that runs across the top of the stein.  It translates to:  "He who has served faithfully deserves a full glass dedicated to him".

This one has lots details.  Across the lower part of the pewter lid run three mottos in capital letters.

SIEG ODER TODT - VICTORY OR DEATH 

GOTT MIT UNS - GOD IS WITH US

DONNER HEGEL MORD & BLITZ - THUNDER HAIL DEATH AND LIGHTNING.

There are a series of scenes on this stein.  The paint is raised, so I think they are hand painted.  I won't show them all, but here's an example:

A guy with his sweetie sitting on a sofa.  The legend reads, approximately: 

"And so was the (military) service most beautiful."

You can just see the next scene below, or rather I suppose the one that preceded this.  It's a soldier returning to his home after his two years are up.  This one says:

"Open up mother, your son is home and wants a drink"

I feel like I should add an exclamation mark there, but one does not appear on the original.

The unit designation is a little easier to figure out on this one.  Helpfully it has the Regimental number - 167 - displayed.  The scribbly lines near the bottom of the stein give more detail.  

"As a reminder of your service with the (?) company Oberle Regt 167 Kassel.  The word Oberle is cryptic, it probably alludes to where the regiment was recruited, which was in the upper (ober in German) region of Alsace.  Students of history will no doubt recall that this part of the world got traded back and forth between Germany and France.  If we assume this soldier was 18 years old in 1905, then he'd have been born circa 1888.  Alsace had only been a part of Germany for 17 years at that point.  As far as I can tell his regiment served with distinction, but troops from this area were somewhat suspect with respect to desertion over to the French side of the trenches!

As a time capsule this item is impressive.  You get a sense of what life as a recruit was like.  Or at least you get an idealized version of it.  Here, take a look at one final image....

Remarkably these steins had a list of names, the guys you served with.  The list varies in length, anywhere from a handful or as many as a hundred.  This panel feels smooth, so perhaps a stencil was used.  I would not envy anyone who had to hand paint this!

It was apparently a list of the guys from your area that you served with.  Everyone went in as a conscript at the same time.  They came out at the same time.  They went back to their homes and got on with their lives.

Seven years later most of these men would have been called back into service.  How many survived?  I have seen stats that say roughly 15% of German servicemen were killed during the war.  I'd assume that being a somewhat older guy called up near the start of things would make your odds a bit worse.  And of course you had the very many who whose lives were changed by wounds or just the trauma of combat. 

A bit less fun than the jokey stuff shown on this stein, where mom is ready to pour you a drink, where a sobbing young lady is told "Girl stop crying, the recruits are coming", and where a group of nattily clad soldiers clink their beverages and say:

"The Reservists are living High"

The 167th Regiment was part of the 22nd Division.  They actually spent most of the war on the Eastern front.

After 1918 Alsace reverted to French rule...other than the years 1940 - 1944. 

Corporal Dolland, if he survived the First World War, was in for some changes.  I wonder if mementos of German service were something you had to keep on the back shelf....

Regimental Steins Part Two - Reservist Christman

Photographing a one liter beer stein is not easy!  I've rather shortchanged the cool top on this.

Of the two regimental steins my father brought back from Germany circa 1951, this is the one with all the "stuff".  There's a lot to look at, but as we'll see it is a bit more pedestrian than the next one we'll visit.

Presumably that's Reservist Christman depicted in the central image.  It is almost certainly not "him" in an artistic sense, just a generic young artillery man.  These were created with a combination of stencils and paint.  One way to sort it out is by touch.  The base image of the soldier is smooth, so probably stencil.  But the buttons on his uniform and the gilded stuff on his hat is raised, so added by hand!

There is never a first name on these things but the markings indicate he did his active service time as a recruit/conscript between 1898 and 1900.  The spidery, hand applied script indicates he was in the 3rd Company of "foot artillery"* of an artillery regiment based in Mainz.  Unhelpfully I can't be sure of the regiment, but it is probably the 117th, aka The 3rd Grand Ducal Hessian, aka the Grand Duchess regiment.  I am at least sure of Mainz, which narrows it down to three options, and there is a 3 among all the scribbles and abbreviations.

On one side we have this serious image and saying.  It translates to, more or less:

"It is the Artilleryman's job to make a powerful argument"

Around the top is another serious saying:

"Canonen donner ist unser Grufs"**

Cannon thunder is our Greeting.

But this stein is not all cannon thunder and bluster.  It does not photograph well but when you hold the empty stein up to a bright enough light you can see that there is the image of a man and a woman sitting in a tavern stamped into the base in what is known as a Lithophane.  One of the many ways to tell a real from a repro regimental stein is the content of the lithophane.  This one is typical.  Nudes are all fakes.

On the other side is something along the lines of: "Today the last shot was fired because I must go home".  Certainly the kind of sentiment that one would expect at the end of military service.  Being launched homeward by the cannon and waved off by your kamerades seems to fit.

So, what ever happened to Reservist Christman?  Absent a first name we shall never know.  But if he did his main military service on the dates listed here 1898-1900 he would have gone out of the most active reserve status by 1905.  He would have then spent 10 or 11 years in a second line sort of organization called the Landwehr.  So by 1914 he'd have been getting a bit old for soldiering.  Maybe mid 30s.  He'd still be a member of the lowest level of reserve, called the Landsturm, but by the time they got down to calling up those fellows he'd be pushing 40.  Let's hope he was not marched off to the last years of The Great War at that age.  Of course specialized skills were always in higher demand, and he was after all, an artilleryman....

* Foot artillery would be attached to an infantry division.  The guns would in general still be moved by horses.  Horse artillery was much less common, but cavalry divisions did have a few light field pieces they'd haul around with them.

** Among the oddities here is that the "f" depicted is a double s.  So, Gruss, or Greeting.

Regimental Steins - Part One

My dad picked up some antique beer steins when he served in Germany right after the war.  They even appear in the detailed inventory of things he shipped back home.  I find them fascinating.  There's really not an equivalent in our culture.

In Germany during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, almost all men did a period of required military service, then went into the Reserves.  After that they still got together for drills on a regular basis.  It would be other guys from your community, and there were definite social aspects to the experience.  Evidently, near every major training base, there were special military shops where you could order a custom beer stein to commemorate all this.  Specific to branch of service, regiment, even the names of the guys in your company.  They vary a bit in level of seriousness.  As we'll see, they will have the dates of the man's active service as a roughly 18 year old Recruit.  So these were a sort of keep sake of your "Army Days" and something you'd get out when the other guys from your company got together for drinks.  Presumably Old Stories were told over these.

I have two examples.  Each is worth close study and will get its own post.  Here's a couple of teaser pics.....

Although fascinating artifacts these things do not have particularly high value on the antiques market.  They made a lot of these.  And there are many more repros attempting to fool buyers.  For these two the provenance is rock solid, some staff sergeant did a complete inventory of all Lt. Wolter's stuff that was being shipped home in 1948.  These are listed.

Robot School Wraps it Up.

Open house for the fall 2025 version of Robot School.  

Ten minutes before guests arrive, the robot broke.  Robots hate mankind.

Of course the combined efforts of students and instructors got it all happy again, just in time.

Nice turn out of family and other guests.  Big robots driven.  Mini robot obstacle course navigated.  A table full of swell robot parts given away.  All the students had to do was tell one of the adults manning this station what they'd done in Robot School!  Of course I was way too busy to get pictures of any of that stuff.  But the project robot - Mayo - came through in the end....

I wish I had video of the high school robot extending its elevator to block a shot!

I get to rest now.  Robot School is a lot of work.  But all 14 of the students are expected on the high school team in the future.  Some soon, others in a bit.

An Indifferent Student

I seem to recall myself as being a rather clever student.  I learned to read early and was a voracious consumer of, well, anything.  Big stacks of books from the branch library at Jordan Junior High.  But....was I as smart as I remember myself being?  A case study, based on artifacts dredged from the basement of my parent's house.

Looks promising.  It contains among other things my report card from 3rd grade.

Now, back in that era you got either an S for satisfactory or an N for needs work.  That's it.  No Excellent or anything like that.  Opening it up I find that I got Needs Work for:

First half of the year, Works Well with other Children, Follows Directions, Works Well Independently, Begins and Finishes Work on Time, Uses Time Wisely, Listens Attentively, and Reads Independently for information and Pleasure.  OUCH.

The only thing I got an "N" for both halves of the year was for Writes Legibly.  Hey, I was destined to write prescriptions, gimme a break!

A bit of a come down.  I did get recommended to move up to Grade 4, and to my credit only was absent 1/2 a day, while turning up to be a mediocre student a full 176.5 days.

The Report Card was signed by my teacher, Mrs. Schwaub, and by both my parents.  My M.D. father's signature was very poor penmanship indeed.  The card was also marked with a stamp from Arthur T. Nelson, the Principal.  I remember him being chased down the hallway by a kid with a knife, who actually lived on our block.  Ah, the idylic 1960's.

I'm not sure what to make of this one.  In faint red ink up at the top it says "Please use your pencil".  Was this an instruction from the get go that I impudently ignored?  

I gotta say, in black Crayola crayon my penmanship, or shall we say penchildship, was pretty darn good.  You can see through the paper to some black crayon math that young "Timmy" as I then styled myself, absolutely crushed.

More stuff from "Timmy" age 6 1/2.  Now that I have a grand daughter about that age I can say, hey, that's outfit's a bit much, don't ya think?

 

Geeze, I hope this was from high school.  Geometry was the only math I every actually liked.  I got 18/20 on this page.  The preceding page was more word problems.  For example: Consider two simple closed curves which intersect at points A and B.  Consider a point C which is in the interior of one of the curves.  Various options were given, to each of which I had to respond True or False.  

21/30.  Guess I never really got to the Truth of Mathematics.  And for what it's worth I got out my pen and paper and tried to puzzle this thing out.  I think the teacher marked me off a couple of points incorrectly.

Subsequent finds of report cards from other years of grade school and Junior High did not, alas, show any sudden flourishing of academic genius.  And high school?  Lets not talk about high school.

Deer Hunting 2025 - Symphony of the Seventies....

Perhaps you thought my last hunting related post was a bit hard on the "gals".  Does are really quite excellent creatures.  Highly devoted to their children and generally sensible.  It's just during that one week of hormonal insanity that they are, well, floozies.  But what about the bucks? Am I letting them off too easy?

Nah.  They are plenty foolish in their own ways.

In general you want to sit and wait in total silence for deer to mosey past.  But for bucks, you can try to fool 'em.  You can for instance clack together some antlers.  This suggests to them that other bucks are duking it out somewhere in the area they plan to claim for their own little harem.  They sometimes come over to take issue with this.  Allow me to demonstrate:

Alas, this is a bit hit and miss.  Early in the mating season they are very territorial.  My son lured his large, albeit distracted, buck in this way.  Shortly after my virtuoso performance seen above a buck did appear in front of me.  For about ten seconds, running fast, and at the upper limits of my accurate range with a crossbow.  I clacked and clacked but he never reappeared.

You can also make sounds allegedly similar to bucks grunting.  Same general theory.  My grandkids gave me this device.  I think its legit.  But the little stinkers may have simply handed me the equivalent of a Whoopie Cushion to make flatulent noises.  I'd not put it past 'em, and if so, well played.....

I don't think this device - for the grandkids I dubbed it the "Buck Tooter" did anything.  Oh, and there's also a little noisemaker said to mimic a doe saying something like "Hey there, sailor!"

As I've mentioned before, bow hunting this year has been frustrating, but also a learning experience.  I've put in lots of time.  I've seen deer.  I'm learning quite a lot about the acreage that we bought specifically to develop as hunting land.  But despite those exciting moments when a deer is oh, so close to stepping into the right spot, there's a lot of time just sitting.  My brain goes to odd places when idle.  I started wondering if the three musical instruments above could be used to compose, well not a song, but a little melody.  Something inspired by the rather racy stuff that was on the radio back in the 1970's.  Thinking Marvin Gaye and "Let's Get it On", although that particular song lacks any clacky parts.....

Here's my final word on "Bucky" the insolent 6 pointer who keeps turning up near my cabin base.  You may notice a bit of white stuff in some of the above images.  Yes, snow.  So when Hank and I were out for walkies he was very excited and distracted.  So much so that he did not notice Bucky standing in the driveway of our next door neighbor's cabin.  Sigh.  Apart from the inconvenience of three or four laws I could have just stayed in bed until 9, rolled over, pointed a rifle out the bedroom window and bagged him - a la Groucho Marx - in my pajamas.

Hank remained oblivious.  This was perhaps my last outing with medieval weaponry.  I've been in rifle range of about a dozen deer over the last few months, so eventually they shall Pay for their Insolence.  I think.....

 

Party Week for the Deer

Deer live mostly boring lives.  They munch on stuff.  They drop little piles.  For the ones who are not dumb enough to jump in front of cars there are few major predators left.  They really only have complicated lives for two weeks out of 52.  Rifle hunting season, of course, and approximately the first week of November.

Bucks and Does don't interact much the rest of the year.  Our trail cams over the spring and summer show sweet little families of moms and fawns.  And loosely organized gangs of bucks.  The latter just seem to hang out together.  Critter Bros.

But one week out of the year the deer go hormonally insane.  They run around, chasing each other, heedless of danger or consequences.  For instance:

Yesterday coming up to hunt I saw a six point buck loitering around the four way stop near our cabin.  Broad daylight.  Today I saw him again, same spot, 10 am.  Hah, I figured, I'll just set up there.  Sitting around for a fair bit of time...nuthin.  Gave up, walked out and started putting stuff in my car.  And saw a doe run across the road with Bucky in hot pursuit.  Heading right where I had been.  Here's what he was seein'

This by the way is the first AI generated image I've ever used.  The parameters are: show me a cartoon deer with lots of cheap makeup.  I specifically said not to use anything under copyright by a gigantic media and theme park corporation.  I don't wanna cross the Doom Mouse and his lawyers.  Even if the mother of a certain beloved character was a round hoofed floozy.

Well its been a bit frustrating but I remind myself that this is just the second year I've bow hunted, and my success last year may have been a fluke.  The learning goes on.
 

Hank Shall Not Pass

Hank the Dog is rather single minded in his efforts to protect us from The Squirrel Evil.  His passion is commendable, but he's torn up some shrubbery rather badly.

So I was tasked with creating a fence.  Criteria:  Zero budget, can't look too bad, has to keep him from charging right through it.

Take One:

Plastic mesh fence.  Decorative metal posts.  A stern lawn gnome.  He seemed to be deterred.

But I was then advised that the gnomes need to be put in the shed for the winter.  Well, I am trying to get rid of junk I've hauled back from my parent's house.  How 'bout a ceramic bank I made in high school art class?

That's got him thinking.  Accomplishing that is no easy task!

The Lactose Maniac

So much stuff coming up from the basement of my parent's house.  This is archaeology plain and simple.  You dig through different layers trying to divine the importance of strange artifacts.  For instance, there was a considerable assortment of mint condition pamphlets from various public health agencies.  No surprise really, doctor's offices still have them.  But these were often from before my dad was actually in practice.  From the 1920's, 30's and 40's.  Did he save them as historical curios?  And how to explain the Lactose Maniac?

This dude....

Looks to me like he's enjoying himself a little more than you'd expect from a bottle of milk.  Even allowing for the fact that it was all whole milk then, none of this wimpy Skim or 2%.

There seemed to be quite the enthusiasm for milk running clear through these pamphlets.  Pregnant women for instance were supposed to slam down a quart and a half every day.  The pamphlet on Diet of the Expectant and Nursing Mother says right on the front:

Drink More Milk, Eat More Butter - For Your Health and Prosperity.

Guess you can see where the Lactose Maniac got his start down this path.   In utero.

We'll meet up with him again in a bit.  But first...

I'm putting a discrete thumb on this image.  It had, shall we say, Coppertone Ad qualities.  

But in this age of heightened awareness and of AI scraping every word and image off the internet, I'm not taking chances.

This tome is from 1935, and was printed by the Department of Labor.  (This was a 1943 reprint).  Hmmm, maybe the Good Ol' Days of child labor were not quite over?

The actual advice was pretty simplistic.  Wear good shoes - unlike this tyke on the nude beach - stand up straight, don't get rickets or scurvy.

Various exercises and play strategies are endorsed.  Some of them involving climbing on ladders and unsafe things!

Oh, and here's the Lactose Fiend a bit older.  Maybe middle school now, but he's still a two fisted milk drinker.  He's finished his glass while little Bitsy sitting next to him hasn't touched hers.

The motto on this one says: We strike at one of the roots of physical unfitness when we teach good food selection to all children whether they appear to be malnourished or not."

It comes out very strongly for school lunch programs.  In fact, it makes vague reference to a study being done where white rats were fed on the lunches kids brought to school.  One assumes the kids were as a replacement, given more nutritious fare, washed down with plenty of milk.  Oh, and the rats?  "Many of the rats failed to grow and some died as a result."  

By now you've started to detect a theme, no?  On the back of one of the pamphlets (The Public Health Nurse works with you to Protect your Family) is this revealing logo...........

Happy Halloween

A fun holiday.  For kids, certainly.  For adults, increasingly.  For dogs...not so much.

 Hank goes berserk every time the door bell rings.  He's not sure if it is People to Love, Burglars, or Giant Squirrels.  His response as such is a mixture of alarm, adoration and Red Alert.  It gets old fast.

So it has been suggested that this might be a good time for me to take him on a long walk.  But, he can't go out without a costume!  I won't make dogs wear things they hate.  Hats for instance.  I think LED lights would be a bit much.  But he has an insulated dog jacket.  One that is in an orange hue for protection during hunting season.  Perhaps with just a little modification.....

Orange Dog Good.

The Ghost of "Father" John Fostler

The year was 1895.  An early settler of Chippewa Falls passed away.  The local paper described it in this fashion:

They used his correct name, which was unusual. In general he was referred to on the rare occasions where his doings were noted under the name John Fostler.  Here's his story.

John Klinck came to Chippewa Falls in 1855.  This was about the same time as Catherine aka "Mother" Fostler and her husband Andrew came to the fledgling community.  Klinch worked in the mill.

Mother Fostler ran a saloon, one of the first on the Chippewa Falls side of the river.  As I've discussed previously there were several over in the suburb of Frenchtown, but only one confirmed tavern that preceded her.

I'm not sure whether she started this effort earlier, but circa 1857 the Fostlers had to move after a fire, and started a drinking establishment down at the far end of River Street.

Andrew Fostler joined the Union Army at the start of hostilities.  Mrs. Fostler kept running the hotel/tavern.  Now, maybe she needed more help. And maybe she got lonely.  Even in that era the ratio of men to women in town was pretty lopsided, so she probably got plenty of attention.

Andrew Fostler came back from the war.*  Actually he was only away for about a year.  But he did not come back to Catherine.

John Klinch just stepped into the role, and was generally referred to as John Fostler.  He was a sort of local character, doing various outrageous things in the bars, living in the tumbledown ruins of the former Fostler House.  

But he seems to have been at peace that morning in 1895.  I'm assuming he was enjoying the morning sun, which would probably put him on this location at the intersection.  Now it is City Hall, but then he'd have been sitting on the doorstep of a friendly tavern, one of many on that street.

Obituaries for those on the fringes of society are often more honest than for the titans and magnates.  John Fostler/Klinch's concludes by saying:

"John acquired some money and property, but also the habits that scatter both, and of late years, in a little shack just back of the ruins of the old hotel, he has lived supported by charity."

I don't know if spirits linger on after death.  But if they do they'd likely persist where they were the happiest in life.  Perhaps this spot, where John Fostler/Klinch spent so many happy nights and his last cheerful moments, would be where you'd find him.

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* Mother Fostler's obituary a few years later says that Mr. Fostler #1, Andrew, died in the service.  I suspect this was a polite fib.  

Oh, Deer!

A good three generation hunt.  My son actually got this nice buck, but there was a fair bit of tracking in the dark and hauling out of the woods to do.  My grandson is the best tracker in the family, while I take pride in having a durable back well suiting to dragging deer, including this really big one, out of the dense underbrush.

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I had of course planned a "below the fold" addendum called "Oh Deer Me!", but the critters have thus far outsmarted me.   Grumble, grumble.....

Robot School Third Update

Robot School rolls along.  The kids have the main project bot moving now, but there's still a lot of work to do to optimize ball pick up, transfer and launch.  Among other things they are learning the concept of "kludge" when designs behave a little differently in the real world than in CAD!

I do like the target that the build team has constructed.  It's adjustable, so we can modify it a bit depending on what sort of trajectory the final full power shooter can manage.

So far it would not come anywhere close, alas.

Other things are also happening.  We had an epic nuts and bolts sorting competition.  This was a good opportunity for them to show team work and cooperation.  It also helps us get thing sorted for the upcoming high school team season.  We basically try to use only two sizes of bolts.  Everything that is "close but not quite right" needs to be identified and taken off the hardware cart.  Sure, you need the occasional weird metric bolt, but we have a special quarantine for them!

We've also had the kids doing a bit of CAD work.  Designing signs seems like a good first project.  In fact, we had a couple of them work up a sign that has all their names on it.

The new router enclosure they built contains the sawdust very nicely, so clean up was easy.  Here's a few shots of the sign in process.  Mostly shot through the clear vinyl curtain.

Deer Hunting Third Report - Avoiding Boredom

The deer are not cooperating.  Various theories are in circulation.  The venerable Moon Deer Theory that posits a full moon changes their activity.  The Acorn Cycle Theory, which notes a multi year cycle whereby that tasty treat has a bumper year in 2025.  So they could be camped under Oak Trees, lolling about.  The upshot - no pun intended - is that we trying multiple sites trying to figure them out.

I set up a ground blind back at the spot where I got my first deer back in 2020.  Golf Course Corner has converging trails where they go on and off the abandoned course.  Basically a big green deer feeder that covers many acres.

For a ground blind you need to be wily.  This is where my Grandpa skills, specifically Hide and Seek and Blanket Fort building pay off.

Behold, the Blanket Fort of Doom.

Camo fabric wrapped around some trees and posts.  Then festooned with the dead ferns that grow everywhere in this section.  Not bad I'd say, the point is to break up your outline.  Deer's eyes are like using your photo editor with the Contrast function dialed way, way up.  Of course I'll be sitting in there and my head and shoulders will be visible.  So.....

Sometimes I think this is all just goofing around, avoiding boredom.  Forts, dress up costumes, all sorts of Grandpa activities.

On this particular night I decided to leave the crossbow at home.  Deer have a degree of memory from one day to the next.  So I figured it would take a while for them to not be interested in this new patch of brush.  By the way, every trip there I'll add a few more handfuls of dried ferns.  Maybe I'll put some on the hat too!

So you'd assume that a gigantic buck would have stopped 20 yards off and viewed me with disdain.  Well, nope.  But for the first time sitting out I actually did see some deer in the distance, far out of bow or even rifle range.  Dancing about safely on private property.  Alas.

More boredom relief.  For ground blind hunting you should have a bow rest to stabilize your shooting.  I have an entire basement workshop full of robotics surplus.

Here's my fancy robotics bow rest.  It's one leg of a damaged camera tripod bolted to a section of 80/20 aluminum extrusion that we use for prototyping.  With a spike attached to the bottom to plant it in the dirt.

Should work until said dirt is frozen solid.  Chilly days are coming, but probably have a few weeks yet before that.