Sunspots 783

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

Christianity: Christianity Today was not pleased by President Trump's photo-op with a Bible in front of a church in the Washington D. C. area.

Computing: Gizmodo describes a system that allows you to send large files without signing in being required by the sender or recipient.

Gizmo's Freeware has published an extensive guide to keyboard shortcuts for Windows 10 and various apps.


Environment: Gizmodo reports on a study, which shows that the size of the earth's forests is declining, and, also, the size, and age, of trees in those forests are also getting less. These changes have serious environmental effects.

Gizmodo reports on a study that indicates that 500 species of land vertebrates are close to extinction.


Health: FiveThirtyEight considers why COVID-19, a respiratory disease, affects hearts and brains.


Politics: FiveThirtyEight discusses President Trump's complaints about voting by mail.

Gizmodo reports that a lawsuit, claiming that major social media companies have conspired to suppress conservative views, was dismissed by a court. (President Trump was not part of this legal dispute.)

Twitter has reacted to a tweet by President Trump (and an identical one from the White House) saying that, if there is looting, the National Guard, or other military or police, should shoot them.

FiveThirtyEight reports that killings by police, in our largest cities, have become somewhat less common, although the total number of killings by police has not gone down recently.

FiveThirtyEight also reports that escalation of force by police, in protest situations, causes the situation to get worse.

Science: Gizmodo discusses cicadas (a large brood has recently emerged from 17 years underground.)


Science reports on how carnivorous plants probably evolved their meat-eating tendencies.


Sports: FiveThirtyEight says that Cynthia Cooper, now known as Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, is the best women's pro basketball player of all time. I recall watching her play on TV, and have no disagreement with that assessment. See here for more.


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


Thanks for looking!

Sunspots 703

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

The Arts: Christianity: He Lives considers the image of God, and humanity's relationship to non-human creatures.


Health: Relevant reports on a study that shows we are having less sex than in the recent past.

Humor: The President of Finland says that he has never talked to President Trump about raking the forests of Finland. But the Finns (and others) are hilariously demonstrating how raking Finnish forests might look.


Politics: Two Senators, one from each party, are pushing legislation that would seriously slow down robocalling, according to Gizmodo.

Science: Earther points out that air conditioners contribute significantly to global warming.

Gizmodo has another report on what is probably the world's largest organism, a fungus in Michigan that weighs 440 tons. Scientific American has another candidate for the world's largest organism, which is a grove of connected aspen trees in Utah.

Gizmodo also reports on the effects of rain in Chile's Atacama Desert, which, until recently, hadn't had a rain in 500 years. Microbes adapted to such dry conditions were devastated.

Gizmodo also reports on the discovery of millions of termite mounds, approximately 4,000 years old, in Brazil. They are large enough that they can be seen from space.

Scientific American reports that city buildings can make hurricanes striking cities more serious.

Scientific American also tells us why we don't forget how to ride a bicycle.

FiveThirtyEight explains the abundance of fires in California.


The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, I believe, it is public domain.

Thanks for looking!