June 4, 2019 evening

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Good evening! How was your day? Mine was pretty good, nothing too crazy. Rain showers with the threat of heavy rain to call off my evening walk, around 57 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☔ Calm wind. The dew point is 49 degrees. Going to be cloudy until Thursday around 9 pm.

A month from now is Independence Day and God willing at this point then I’ll be lighting off fireworks 🎇 at Moose Plains. We’ll at least ground fountains. And sparklers. And enjoying a big old fire, kicking back with a beer or two. Maybe hike back to Ice House Pond after dark.

Tonight will have a chance of rain before 3am, then a chance of showers after 3am. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 54 degrees at 11pm. One degree above normal, which is similar to a typical night around June 6th. Maximum dew point of 51 at 6am. Light and variable wind becoming south 5 to 8 mph after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. 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 48 degrees. The record low of 39 occurred back in 1990.

I would have gone for my evening walk 🚶 but I didn’t want a repeat of getting soaked like on Saturday. That just wasn’t much fun for me at all. It looks like there is quite a bit of precipitation to the north. I’m just so tired of all this rain ☔ although the mornings of Monday and Tuesday were great despite having to dress up and go to work. Got home around eight o’clock today which isn’t that bad. I brought dinner to work so that wasn’t too bad.

Tonight will have 8 hours and 49 minutes of darkness, a decrease of one minute and 3 seconds over last night. The sun will rise at 5:18 am with the first light at 4:44 am, which is 22 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄

If not for the rain and clouds look for a Waxing Crescent Moon 🌒 with 9% illuminated. The First Quarter Moon is on Sunday night with showers is likely. The Strawberry Moon 🌝 is on Sunday, June 16th.

The weekend forecast continues to look really nice, maybe a bit warmer. 😎 Saturday, sunny, with a high near 77. Maximum dew point of 51 at 7am. Sunday, sunny, with a high near 80. Maximum dew point of 57 at 5pm. Typical average high for the weekend is 76 degrees.

I’m signed up for the trail work day on Saturday. 👷Might be interesting to do some volunteer work and meet some new people. I certainly go to the Holt Preserve enough, so I should really try to help it out some. And then maybe Sunday go to the Gas Up. 🚜

Looking ahead, Primary Day 🗳️ is in 3 weeks, Independence Day 🇺🇸 is a month away, Last Sunset After 8:30 PM 🌆 is in 6 weeks, Constitution Day 📜 is in 15 weeks, October 🛥 is in 17 weeks and Election Day 2020 🗳️ is in 74 weeks.

Techno Narscist

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Only a techno-narracist would believe we can run big box stores and skyscrapers on renewable energy.

BBC – Capital – The curious origins of the dollar symbol

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BBC – Capital – The curious origins of the dollar symbol

The dollar sign is among the world’s most potent symbols, emblematic of far more than US currency.

It’s shorthand for the American dream and all the consumerism and commodification that comes with it, signifying at once sunny aspiration, splashy greed and rampant capitalism. It’s been co-opted by pop culture (think Ke$ha when she first started out, or any number of fast-fashion t-shirts) and borrowed by artists (Salvador Dali fashioned a moustache from it, Andy Warhol rendered it in acrylic and silkscreen, creating an iconic body of work that itself now sells for $$$).

It’s used widely in computer coding and it provides money-mouth emoji with its dazed eyes and lolling tongue. Yet despite its polyglot ubiquity, the origins of the dollar sign remain far from clear, with competing theories touching on Bohemian coins, the Pillars of Hercules and harried merchants.