Coyote Blog

Not sure that anyone cares about these updates, but posting them helps me stay on a path of steady progress.  As a reminder, I am refurbishing an early-1980s vintage Eight Ball Deluxe pinball game including the installation of a new playfield.

Progress has been faster than I had feared, mainly because of a deep well of internet resources for working on pinball games in general, and this machine in particular.  Also because of a pretty good supply base of parts for these vintage machines.

I began by removing all the electromechanical parts from the old machine -- like the flipper mechanisms, thumper bumpers, and the drop target arrays -- and totally disassembling them and cleaning them.  Some folks who do this kind of thing employ tumblers and polishers to get all the metal parts gleaming but I have mostly eschewed that -- a vinegar bath to remove rust combined with some ultrasonic cleaning and a bit of steel wool is enough for me.  I will say that I can't believe it took me to age 62 to discover impact drivers, though really this is the first time I have really worked much with metal (rather than wood) assemblies.  I had frozen screws in some of these assemblies I soaked in Liquid Wrench and the equivalents for days with no luck, but got turning in 5 seconds with a few hammer blows on the back of the impact driver.

I did not have to move any of the many many many bulb sockets because I was going with LED for most lights (using Yoppsickle boards) and even when I wanted bulbs I was changing the socket to accommodate bayonet-style bulbs rather than the insane wedge style things that were standard.

As you can see below most of the mechanical assemblies and switches, with the exception of a few rollover switches still to be done, are in place.  All lights and sockets are in place as well as the power busses for the lights.

The one missing assembly is this bad boy, an enormous and very heavy combination of 7 drop targets and 6 standup targets behind them.  I am a little intimidated by this and, like the other parts, am going to film its disassembly so I have some hope of it going back together correctly.

As for the wiring, the entire wiring harness has been de-soldered from their connections and tagged.  Something in the ballpark of 200 connections excluding the power bus.  All the wiring is one big wiring harness and is now free and will be lifted and dropped onto the new board as soon as a few last things are installed.

Next up, a sh*tload of soldering. Hopefully it will all work again some day.  The one thing that has me a bit paranoid is orientation of the diodes on the switches.  Pinball machines of this era use a polling scheme where switches are in sort of a matrix, with the machine polling a column of the matrix at a time.  If the diodes are wrong on each switch, chaos ensues.

I have and will mostly stay out of all the trans/gender wars but there is one argument that seems so absurd to me I usually have to refute it when I am presented with it:  That boys/men (or people with xy chromosomes if you prefer) have no inherent advantage over girls/women in sports.

One obvious rejoinder is to have someone check a list of track/field/swimming men's and women's world records and point out that the men's records are always faster/higher/farther than the women's.  But I find this more compelling:

When I have been met by this argument face to face I tell people to do the following:  Take any track and field event  (just because I know all the records are easily obtainable and comparable, but it could be swimming or something else).  Anyway, I tell them to take that event and then, for any state, look up the boys high school record in that event for that state.  And then compare that state boy's record to the women's world record for the same event.  I am sure someone can find an exception but I have never had someone pull a boys high school record that did not beat the world women's record.  So even when comparing the best performances of boys 18 and under in a single US state vs women of any age throughout the world, the males have an inherent advantage.  Try it for Wyoming, the least populace state, and its boys vs. the world's women.  The great Florence Griffith Joyner still holds the women's world record in the 100m at 10.49 seconds but the not-so-famous Gavin Stafford of Big Horn, Wyoming ran the same distance in 10.31 seconds.  (I remember sitting on my phone once and discovering that Flo Jo had beaten a few high school boys record holders but I can't remember the states).

This is why Title 9 sought gender fairness not by mandating that boys teams let girls try out, but by requiring women to have their own parallel athletic program.

Postscript:  Having attempted to justify parallel and separate men's and women's athletic leagues, I leave it to the reader to justify why there should be parallel men's and women's chess rankings, because I can't.

Postscript #2:  My favorite addition to the last Olympics was the relay races of mixed teams of 2 men and 2 women.  I thought that was hugely enjoyable and came as a surprise to me -- there did not seem to be much build-up to it.  It was a great way to see men and women in the same competition but in a fair way.

I could easily make reported crime in this country skyrocket tomorrow with one simple change:  Imagine Congress passed a law, roughly equivalent to how things like school lunches are funded, that federal law enforcement dollars would flow to cities in proportion to the number of crimes they experience.  Suddenly, at the next reporting period, it would appear that crime has skyrocketed -- without any real change on the ground -- as cities scramble to harvest as much money as possible to report as much crime as possible.  The cities that choose not to submit data into the various FBI data bases today would suddenly be sending in full disclosures.  With time, cities might even get creative by tweaking the definition of crime -- maybe assaults would be expanded to killing someone's pet or to forcing someone to watch the View.

An observer in 2045 without much detailed knowledge of this dataset would write that there was an explosion in crime in 2025.  As they often do, those who are politically active would ascribe the cause to whatever they are already against -- perhaps they might blame it on Trump, or immigrants, or "defund the police", or racism or whatever.  They would argue and argue about the causes of what in truth was a just a change in how the data was collected and defined.

I have reported this phenomenon before.

• Critics of the US healthcare system often point out that our infant mortality is much higher than in Europe, but it turns out that the US and Europe use totally different data definitions so the numbers really are not comparable (TL;DR:  US counts all born alive babies as a birth while countries like Norway don't count very low birth weight babies as a real birth, and most of the mortality is in this category they do not count).
• Some years ago I called BS on a climate report that showed a huge rise in weather-related grid outages as a proxy for increasing severe weather.  I hypothesized it was a change in data definition and data gathering rather than an enormous change (in less than 2 years) in the weather.  Contact with the data owner proved me right
• Speaking of climate, one of the best examples of this is the rise in reported US tornado numbers since 1950, which was initially blamed on climate change (of course) but turns out to be almost entirely an artifact of better tornado detection equipment (eg doppler radars and storm chasers).
• This is a frequent problem in the cancer world, where better detection often is hard to untangle from changes in the underlying cancer rates

The latest example involves RFK Jr and the MAHA/vaccine set.  Via Flowing Data, which quotes the NY Times

Many large studies have come to the same conclusion: Vaccines don’t cause autism. The role, if any, of environmental toxins is still to be determined, but there is no known environmental factor that can explain the sudden jump in diagnoses. The changes we made to the diagnosis in the D.S.M.-IV can.

Why did autism-related diagnoses explode so far beyond what our task force had predicted? Two reasons. First, many school systems provide much more intensive services to children with the diagnosis of autism. While these services are extremely important for many children, whenever having a diagnosis carries a benefit, it will be overused. Second, overdiagnosis can happen whenever there’s a blurry line between normal behavior and disorder, or when symptoms overlap with other conditions. Classic severe autism had so tight a definition it was hard to confuse it with anything else; Asperger’s was easily confused with other mental disorders or with normal social avoidance and eccentricity. (We also, regrettably, named the condition after Hans Asperger, one of the first people to describe it, not realizing until later that he had collaborated with the Nazis.)

I am taking a shot at refurbishing my pinball machine.  It is called Eight Ball Deluxe (EBD), made by Bally's in the early 1980's.  It is the machine I played the most in college, along with defender (probably a future purchase).  The 1980's is kind of a lost generation in pinball, as manufacturers got cheap for a while and quality suffered.  1980's machines also lacked the charm of the earlier electro-mechanical machines with the mechanical scoring, but also lacked the complication and sophistication of later machines.  As a result only a handful of machines from the 1980's are on this top 100 list, and EBD is the highest rated of these.  I personally like the older machines and don't really care for all the flyovers and whirling doodads.

Anyway, I have steadily repaired this machine so that it works reliably but the playfield is old and worn.  At first I sort of liked the antique look of it but have decided to do a complete overhaul including a new playfield.  On the left is the old playfield (I have stripped all the bumpers and such from the top) and on the right is the new one.  In the following two pictures you can really see the wear on the old playing field.

In the following two pictures you can really see the wear on the old playing field.

Below are the two playfields flipped upside down (the new one is in a pair of bicycle repair stands that let me rotate it freely to work on both sides).  The trick of course is to move everything from the old surface to the new one.  In the process, everything mechanical will be cleaned and rebuilt and most of the lighting will be replaced with LED. And about a zillion electrical connections have to be made correctly.  This does not show it but since these were taken I have most of the lighting in place now and have rebuilt the flippers and one of the drop target banks.  Some folks go all-in and tumble and polish all of the parts, but simply ultrasonically cleaning them and replacing key elements like the actuator coils is enough for me.

The Internet even after all these years constantly amazes me.  The depth of the online pinball community is incredible.  Every part you see (including the new playfield of course) can be bought online, often from multiple vendors.  There are whole chat rooms dedicated just to this one particular machine, of which only about 8000 were ever made and which has not been manufactured in 40 years.  I can ask an arcane question like what is the screw thread on the flipper coil brackets and will get 4 answers in a couple of hours.

I am beyond disappointed in folks on the Right who spout what they must know -- or at least knew 6 months ago -- to be economic drivel.  It has been a rough ten years as a libertarian -- first abandoned by our natural allies on the Left on issues like Free Speech and now abandoned by our natural allies on the Right on free markets.

Conservatives are saying that criticism of Trump's tariffs causing inflation are overblown because there was not much inflation in April and May.  But the reality is that the vast majority of companies have not modified prices to take into account tariffs on their inputs.  One reason is that the on-again-off-again nature of these Trump tariff proposals have caused companies to hold their prices for now, eating any cost increases in their profitability but hoping the tariffs will go away (update:  PPI Shows Companies Eating Tariff Costs, Bloomberg Finds).  No one wants to lose market share by being the first to raise prices (think of Apple vs Samsung on phones, for example).  If it becomes clear that tariffs are here to stay in some sector, then you will start to see price increases because companies may eat the costs for one quarter but cannot do so indefinitely.

Here are my two predictions if the tariff uncertainty continues

1. You are going to see some shortages of product this Christmas.  My son works for a major retailer that imports a lot of product and they are struggling with Christmas ordering, which basically has to happen now but is being bought at forward prices that, given tariffs, no one can guess at.  I think the net will be reduced buying, lower retail sales, and higher prices this Christmas
2. Manufacturing investment is going to start falling.  It has already flattened somewhat and I would expect 2Q and especially 3Q to be down.  Like many economic indicators, there is a lot of lag -- spending this quarter was likely approved and planned long before Trump every got into office.  But the crazy shifting tariff situation makes it impossible to plan one's supply chain and manufacturing strategy.  My guess is that everyone is going to hold off spending until things are clearer.  As to Trump's arguments that the whole point of tariffs is to spur manufacturing investment, most US manufacturers can't get the labor they need already.  It's not clear many companies have realistic re-shoring options.

Why so few posts?  Because the current political environment is exhausting.  On many issues the major players are half right and half wrong, but no one wants to hear that.  The crowds are either all-in on Trump or all-in on the opposition and trying to point out nuance is both unwelcome and more time-consuming than the news cycle allows.  A few examples:

• On immigration, I think the sane majority would like to see bad actors and gang-bangers sent back to their home countries, but have little stomach for uprooting the 10-year resident construction laborer and his family in the middle of the night and sending them away.  Trump wants to send them all away, even the peaceful and productive.  Sanctuary cities like LA want to protect everyone, even the violent gang-bangers.
• With universities like Harvard, it is long past time to enforce some discipline on spending and stop knuckling under the the "its all science, go away peons" elitism.  But institutions like Harvard still contribute a lot to this country and Trump's actions often smack of vendetta rather than thoughtful policy.
• Everyone with a uniform opinion that court injunctions of the Trump administration are universally correct or universally wrong are all misguided.  It is a total mixed bag.  Trump, as with tariffs, has grossly overstepped his statutory authority and IMO it was correct to stop him.  In other areas, like laying off administration employees, it is astounding to me that the judiciary can be of the opinion he can't fire anyone.

A few other thoughts before I likely join the ostrich party and stick my head in the sand and ignore this all:

• I have written for years that I do not understand why well-meaning folks on the Left do not devote more time to government efficiency and spending issues.  For a couple of reasons.  First, every bit of waste is money that could have been spent towards policy goals.  Second, waste undermines public support for the type of programs (eg SNAP) that they support. For years the grandfather of DOGE was William Proxmire, a Democrat from the Wisconsin progressive tradition.  But there seems to be zero interest on the Left in spending accountability, as demonstrated by the huge opposition to DOGE.
• Both parties are violating coyote's law, establishing precedents the WILL NOT LIKE when the other party uses them.  R's played the find-a-judge game a bit in the Biden administration but you can be sure they will be all-in on the game next D administration.  And of course Trump is establishing Presidential power precedents that the next D president will LOVE to use.
• National injunctions are generally ridiculous and need to be reformed.  I say this having benefitted from several in my business life.  I am out of my business but for years under Obama and Biden the Administrations kept imposing minimum wages on recreation concessionaires that ended up being enjoined for years and years, only to be allowed when they finally had their day in court (and overturned a few months later by a Trump EO).
• In my mind there is no nuance -- Trump is all wrong on tariffs.  They are bad even if other countries have high tariffs on us.