May 29, 2020 Night

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Good evening! Cloudy, damp and 72 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ There is a south breeze at 7 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 66 degrees. Kind of a muggy summer night. The skies will clear tomorrow around 9 am.

It Sasa hot and sometimes rainy and often steamy day. 💦 Some big rain drops from the storms. I did get my wash done but it was hot working in the truck. The fan and the reflective board made working in the truck quite bareable. There was a few projects that didn’t get done while I was at the library but I got a lot done that I had planned to do while I was down there.

With the humidity and general stickiness this evening I decided to get out my trimmer, set the blade to half inch and pretend to be a barber 💈 trimming my hair down. Is it straight? Is it perfect? Probably not but what do I care in the era of social distancing. It’s going to grow back but for now shorter if not a bit more uneven hair is fine and a heck of a lot more comfortable in the heat. If it’s not perfect we’ll, who cares, Zoom meetings are low resolution at any rate. After my hair cut 💇 I took a shower 🚿 because I was itchy from all the pieces of hair everywhere. Now I feel a lot cooler and my hats should fit well with less hair. I might touch it up further in the morning.

As I mentioned earlier, today was a busy one. 👚 I did get down to the laundromat but not to the store 🏬. I’ll have to do that tomorrow. Maybe Aldi in Rensselaer, I like their products and quick in and out which is good during the pandemic. I can always order most other things like personal care products from Walmart online. 🍏 Maybe I can combine that with hiking and bird watching at Schodack Island if I can figure out what to do for lunch. Or maybe kayaking in Schodack Creek and the Hudson River? 🚣 Intriguing possibility.

Tonight will have a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 64 degrees at 6am. 12 degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 66 at 11pm. South wind around 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms. In 2019, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 59 degrees. The record low of 33 occurred back in 1967.

Tonight will have a First Quarter 🌓 Moon with 51% illuminated. At 11 PM, the moon was in the west-southwest (255°) at an altitude of 34° from the horizon, some 228,075 miles away from where you are looking up from the earth. 🚀 At the state speed limit of 55 mph, you’ll make it there by November 18th. Buckle up for safety! 💺 The Strawberry 🍓 Moon is on Friday, June 5. The darkest hour is at 12:54 am, followed by dawn at 4:49 am, and sun starting to rise at 5:23 am in the east-northeast (59°) and last for 3 minutes and 22 seconds. Sunrise is 34 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 6:05 am with sun in the east-northeast (66°). Tonight will have 8 hours and 56 minutes of darkness, a decrease of one minute and 22 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will have a slight chance of showers before 10am. Partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 77 degrees at 4pm. Four degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around June 10th. Maximum dew point of 59 at 6am. Northwest wind 8 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 72 degrees. The record high of 92 was set in 1987.

Definitely sounds like a nice day tomorrow once the rain pushes off and not as hot 🔥. I’m thinking a fairly quiet day tomorrow but my pantry is so bare I need to get shopping soon 🔜. Been kind of a busy week with camping in the Adirondacks and work picking up lately. Do I’m ready for a break.

I got in the mail the propane tree for the lantern 🏮 like we had at Boy Scouts allowing me to mount the lantern right on the tank without having to run a rope to hang the lantern. The reviews were mixed on these and they can be unstable when the tanks are empty but I needed one if I wanted to use the lantern in the screen house 🎪 or campsites where no trees are nearby for hanging a rope. I got the type with a metal male connector to the tank so hopefully it won’t crack and break off. While I have electric at camp the lantern uses very little propane and works even if I trip on a wire or there is an under voltage condition.

In four weeks on June 26 the sun will be setting in the west-northwest (303°) at 8:37 pm,🌄 which is 12 minutes and 55 seconds later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had hot, humid, mostly sunny, thunderstorm and temperatures between 87 and 61 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 81 and 59 degrees. The record high of 99 degrees was set back in 1952.

Looking ahead, 8:30 PM Sunset ️⛱️ is in 1 week.

Waterfall on the Long Path

Off shore wind

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That article I shared earlier in the day about Lake Erie off shore wind is just another reminder of the importance of balancing environmental priorities and having strong environmental reviews. There is no free lunch and we have to be careful about protecting birds while also reducing climate emissions.

Great Lakes offshore wind approval a ‘poison pill’ – The Allegheny Front

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Great Lakes offshore wind approval a ‘poison pill’ – The Allegheny Front

When Ohio recently approved construction of a wind farm in Lake Erie, the first ever freshwater offshore wind project in North America, the developers were shocked.

The approval by the Ohio Power Siting Board included conditions that the developer, Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation (LEEDCo), says will essentially kill the project. The turbines must be shut down at night for eight months of the year, from March to October, to protect birds and bats.

The Black Swamp Bird Observatory, in northern Ohio, and the Washington, D.C.-based American Bird Conservancy (ABC), filed a federal lawsuit in December against the Department of Energy and other agencies. They want a more thorough environmental assessment, and are challenging the government funding for Icebreaker Wind, which has been more than $50 million.

ABC is pleased that Ohio regulators put nighttime limitations on the turbines in their decision. “We thought that was appropriate,” said Steve Holmer, the group’s vice president of policy. “There still has not been adequate monitoring or proven mitigation and so it makes sense to take a cautionary approach here.”

“This has been already identified as a globally significant bird area,” he continued. “The issue is whether we’re going to fully, adequately consider wildlife when we make these decisions and in our view, they simply haven’t. We think that this is just not an appropriate location for wind development.”

Is the COVID-19 Pandemic a Supply or a Demand Shock? | St. Louis Fed

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Is the COVID-19 Pandemic a Supply or a Demand Shock? | St. Louis Fed

For this reason, most economists would agree that the pandemic combines aspects of both supply and demand shocks. A supply shock is anything that reduces the economy's capacity to produce goods and services, at given prices. Lockdown measures preventing workers from doing their jobs can be seen as a supply shock. A demand shock, on the other hand, reduces consumers' ability or willingness to purchase goods and services, at given prices. People avoiding restaurants for fear of contagion is an example of a demand shock. Additionally, as service sector workers lose their jobs and income, they stop purchasing all kinds of goods, such as cars and appliances, which can also be thought of as a sectoral demand shock.

Conventional monetary and fiscal policy can offset some types of aggregate demand shocks, but other policies may be more appropriate to counter supply shocks. Understanding whether supply or demand causes a particular shock is therefore very important for policy design. The government doesn't want to stimulate activity in certain service sectors because of concerns about further spreading COVID-19. The government could, however, stimulate sectors that are not part of the lockdown but are subject to aggregate shocks. This means that it is important to understand whether supply or demand shocks or both affect each sector.

Shots – Health News : NPR

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IRS Rule Change Permits Employers To Give Workers Midyear Insurance Choices : Shots – Health News : NPR

This month, the IRS announced that it would let employees add, drop or alter some of their benefits for the remainder of 2020. But there's a catch: Your employer has to allow the changes.

The new guidance applies to both employers that buy health insurance to cover their workers and those that pay claims on their own, called self-insuring. It's unclear how many employers will take advantage of the new flexibility to offer what amounts to a midyear open-enrollment period. If you're wondering what your company will do, ask.

Trump shares tweet that says masks represent ‘slavery and social death’ – Business Insider

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Trump shares tweet that says masks represent ‘slavery and social death’ – Business Insider

President Donald Trump shared a tweet on Thursday that argued the mandated use of face masks to control the spread of the coronavirus represents a "culture of silence, slavery, and social death."

The argument against masks was made by a right-wing columnist in The Federalist, a conservative online publication, and claimed that mandating the safety measure was "anti-American" and signaled "indefinite government expansion."

Yeah, wearing that bandana over my face in this hot weather today isn't much fun. So I just avoid stores, but then again, I am an anti-social individual.