May 21, 2019 Night

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Good evening! Mostly clear and 60 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a northwest breeze at 10 mph. πŸƒ.

A fairly pleasant evening, I went down to the park for a while and read πŸ“– some more about Tammany Hall and then came home and are laying in bed. I have to teach a nine o’clock class tomorrow so I need to get to bed early. I went to Brewer’s Association night for a bit but headed home early as I wanted to go to the park on this nice evening and knew that I had to up bright and early tomorrow 🍻.

Tonight will be clear πŸŒƒ, with a low of 45 degrees at 5am. Four degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around May 10th. Northwest wind 6 to 10 mph. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became light rain by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 55 degrees. The record low of 33 occurred back in 2002.

Tonight will have a Waning Gibbous Moon πŸŒ– with 81% illuminated with the moon rising at 11:11 pm. The moon will set at 8:31 am. The Last Quarter Moon is on Saturday night with a partly cloudy then slight chance of showers and mostly cloudy skies. The Strawberry Moon 🌝 is on Sunday, June 16th. I love those little Juneberries you find in the fields. Wild strawberry πŸ“ we used to call them. The sun will rise at 5:26 am with the first light at 4:53 am, which is 50 seconds earlier than yesterday. πŸŒ„ Tonight will have 9 hours and 9 minutes of darkness, a decrease of one minute and 47 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 72 degrees at 4pm. One degree above normal, which is similar to a typical day around May 23rd. North wind 6 to 8 mph. Another nice spring day. Maybe I’ll be able to get outside for a while tomorrow at lunch. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 63 degrees. Chilly! The record high of 97 was set in 1911.

Tomorrow night I should start packing up for the long weekend and I might do some shopping πŸ‘ as Thursday night I have a Save the Pine Bush event that I am going to attend after work and I want to leave for camp after work on Friday – wherever I end up going. Looks like a nice weekend.

A picture perfect weekend on tap. 😎 Saturday, a chance of showers after 2pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 74. Chance of precipitation is 50%. Maximum dew point of 60 at 6pm. Sunday, a chance of showers before 8am. Mostly sunny, with a high near 77. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Maximum dew point of 59 at 7am. Typical average high for the weekend is 72 degrees.

I’m still on the fence about Vermont versus the Adirondacks. I like the quiet of Branch Pond Road and I’ve enjoyed it the past two years going up there. β›Ί But I kind of want to do something new this year. If I camp on the East Branch there will be a ton of noisy traffic but I am toying with the idea of hiking back to Simease Pond past Eleventh Mountain or maybe exploring the Oregon Trail or driving up to Thirteenth Lake and hiking back to Hour Pond. I’m not sure where I would hike if I went to Vermont. I don’t want to hike Stratton Mountain or Bourne/Stratton Pond again necessarily. I want to do something new.

That said, I’m thinking of heading to Spectator after Jessup River Road opend come early to mid June so I can camp at the campsite πŸ’­ I stayed at Labor Day Weekend where I have good cell service for work and lots of sun for solar power and a great place to hang my hammock at the campsite with good views to boot – the Hartwick Hill campsite I believe it’s called. Might be scary place to be though during a severe thunderstorm but there ain’t too many widow makers at least up there.

In four weeks on June 18 the sun will be setting at 8:36 pm,πŸŒ„ which is 18 minutes and 58 seconds later then tonight. In 2018 on that day, we had hot, humid, mostly sunny and temperatures between 97 and 71 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 79 and 57 degrees. The record high of 97 degrees was set back in 2018.

Looking ahead, Primary Day πŸ—³οΈ is in 5 weeks, Last Sunset After 8:30 PM πŸŒ† is in 8 weeks, State Fair Opens 🎑 is in 3 months, Constitution Day πŸ“œ is in 17 weeks, Average High 70 πŸŽ‘ is in 4 months, October πŸ›₯ is in 19 weeks and Election Day 2020 πŸ—³οΈ is in 76 weeks.

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why the world’s new definition of mass is such a big achievement – Vox

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Kilogram, redefined: why the world’s new definition of mass is such a big achievement – Vox

For more than a century, the kilogram had a very simple definition: It was the mass of a hunk of platinum-iridium alloy that’s been housed at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in SοΏ½vres, France since 1889.

It’s called the International Prototype Kilogram (a.k.a. Big K, or Le Grand K), and it has many copies around the world — including several at NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland — that are used to calibrate scales and make sure the whole world is on one system of measurement.

These copies make sure a kilogram is a kilogram is a kilogram — whether its being measured on the factory floor of an airplane maker, or on the digital scale at your grocer’s checkout counter. And for those thinking the kilogram doesn’t matter in the US, which uses imperial units like pounds, feet, and gallons, our measurements are derived from SI units. Officially, in the US, 1 pound is defined as 0.45359237 kilograms.

The problem is that Big K is a manmade object, and therefore, it is imperfect. If Big K changes, everything else has to adjust. And this has happened. Big K is not constant. It has lost around 50 micrograms (about the mass of an eyelash) since it was created. But, frustratingly, when Big K loses mass, it’s still exactly one kilogram, per the old definition.

How Cars Divide America – CityLab – Pocket

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How Cars Divide America – CityLab – Pocket

Urbanists have long looked at cars as the scourge of great places. Jane Jacobs identified the automobile as the “chief destroyer of American communities.” Cars not only clog our roads and cost billions of dollars in time wasted commuting, they are a terrible killer. They caused more than 40,000 deaths in 2017, including of some 6,000 pedestrians and cyclists.

But in the United States, the car plays a fundamental role in structuring the economy, our daily lives, and the political and social differences that separate us.

School Districts Proposing To Override Tax Cap

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A handful of school districts will need 60 plus percent of the vote today, if they wish to override the tax cap to increase spending above and beyond what is normally allowed under state law. Note, this map is missing data for two Adirondack school districts, and does not include school districts who budgets are not under consideration today, such as New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse.

Data Source: NYSED.gov: New York State Property Tax Report Card. http://www.p12.nysed.gov/mgtserv/propertytax/