Sunspots 852

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to others*:

Christianity "Resurrecting Orthodoxy" explains what the Bible says about demons. It's complicated.

(and Computing) Relevant reports that the most-viewed Christian Facebook feeds, so-called, are almost all run by troll farms in Eastern Europe. (For what it's worth, I'd never seen or heard of any of them, except the Guideposts feed, which is apparently not run by such a troll farm.)

Relevant also has an article examining the idea of modesty. It's complicated, and many of us have been operating as if it's simple.

Environment: Gizmodo reports that a bee swarm killed over 60 endangered penguins in South Africa.

Gizmodo also reports that summer 2021 wildfires, mostly in the US and Siberia, emitted more carbon dioxide than the country of India did.:

Politics: An audit of Arizona's fall Presidential election ballots, by a firm picked by the GOP legislators, found that, is anything, President Biden got more votes than were reported in November, according to Fox News and other outlets.

FiveThirtyEight on why bipartisanship in the Senate is so rare.

Science: Gizmodo tells us about tiny parasitic, nearly transparent fish found in the Amazon.

NPR reports that Mars may have been too small to hold its water from gradually escaping Martian gravity.

Gizmodo reports on the creation of new languages -- there have been some such, recently.

The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, it is free to use like this.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 813

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

The Arts: (or humor) School buses performing from the Nutcracker. Really.

Computing: Gizmodo reports on a study that shows that Google searches are biased toward large news outlets, and against smaller local outlets.

Gizmodo also reports on the most read Wikipedia pages of 2020.

Education: Grammarphobia tells us more than we may have wanted to know about the ampersand (&).

Environment: Gizmodo reports on the deaths of large numbers of birds, at least partly because of climate change.

Humor: (or something) Relevant on how some familiar Christmas songs are really strange.

Politics: NPR tells us about some real bipartisanship in Congress!

Science: Gizmodo reports that a previously unknown population of blue whales was found because of their unique songs.

NPR reports that smoke may carry disease germs into the air, where we can inhale them.

(or maybe Humor) NPR reports that octopuses sometimes punch fish.

 The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, it is free to use like this.

Thanks for looking! 

Sunspots 637

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: Relevant has an article that says that many of us read the Bible wrongly.

Relevant reports that World Wrestling Entertainment has registered 3:16 as a trademark, and not because WWE is a Christian organization. (It isn't.)


Ethics: (or something) Here's an article about robot sex. Can a robot be raped?

Health: For some reason, men's sperm counts are dropping drastically.

History: (or something) Listverse tells us 10 things about Guatemala.

Humor: (or something) Wired explains, with videos, how they make those plastic air pillows for packing around merchandise that gets delivered to you.

Politics: US Senator John McCain's speech, calling for a return to civility and bipartisanship in the Senate. A classic.

FiveThirtyEight has an essay on what gives a President political power, and indicates that Mr. Trump doesn't have very much of that, and why he doesn't.

Science: Scientific American on how higher temperatures are killing, and will kill people.

Scientific American on the recent story about gene editing in human embryos, which story, says SA, is wildly overblown.



Image source (public domain)