Why I’m dimming the lights earlier

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Increasingly on clear nights I’ve been killing the lights earlier after dusk then the past in favor of being able to see the stars better and enjoying the laser lightening bug light show that I have that puts pretty ever shifting green dots on the trees.

Lights

The truth is when I got the laser lightening bug show I was concerned about pointing it up towards the tree branches with all those sensational news stories about the laser Christmas lights blinding pilots. So I did some of my own fact based research on the topic and also tried shining the lights at distant hill tops and I found very little light traveled beyond 500 feet. Maybe problematic next to an airport but not to a plane thousands of feet in the air. I also tend to angle things no more than 30 to 40 degrees.

Artificial fireflies

With the stars up above and the lights elegantly illuminating the tree branches it really is nice. Both the natural beauty above and the artificial beauty looking ahead. It makes for some nice quiet time in the wilderness.

Households That Make Less then $20k in America 💵

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If Puerto Rico was a state, it would be by far the poorest in America. Significant poverty continues to exist in the south, indeed the most impoverished states are Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana, New Mexico and Alabama according to the 2020 American Community Survey 5 year averages.

State Households Making Under 20k
Puerto Rico 48.2
Mississippi 22.6
West Virginia 20.6
Louisiana 20.1
New Mexico 19.6
Alabama 19.3
Arkansas 18.9
Kentucky 18.8
South Carolina 17.0
Tennessee 16.6
Oklahoma 16.2
North Carolina 15.8
Ohio 15.6
Georgia 15.2
Missouri 15.2
District of Columbia 15.2
Montana 15.1
New York 15.0
Maine 15.0
Michigan 14.9
Florida 14.9
Rhode Island 14.6
Indiana 14.6
Pennsylvania 14.2
Texas 13.9
Arizona 13.7
Vermont 13.7
Illinois 13.7
Kansas 13.6
North Dakota 13.5
South Dakota 13.5
Iowa 13.4
Nevada 13.4
Idaho 13.3
Oregon 13.1
Wyoming 13.0
Wisconsin 12.9
Nebraska 12.7
Massachusetts 12.5
California 11.9
Delaware 11.7
Connecticut 11.6
Virginia 11.3
New Jersey 11.0
Minnesota 10.9
Colorado 10.8
Washington 10.6
Hawaii 10.0
Maryland 10.0
New Hampshire 9.9
Alaska 9.9
Utah 9.2

Here is the R code for making these statistics:

library(tidycensus)
income <- get_acs(
  geography = “state”,
  table = ‘B19001’,
  year = 2020,
  output = ‘wide’,
  survey = “acs5”,
  geometry = F);
perincome <- income  %>% select(ends_with(‘E’), -ends_with(‘001E’)) %>%
  rowwise() %>% mutate(total = sum(across(matches(‘dE’)))) %>%
  mutate(across(matches(‘dE’), ~(./total)*100 )) %>% select(-total)
perincome %>% rowwise %>% mutate(under20k = sum(across(c(B19001_002E, B19001_003E, B19001_004E)))) %>% select(NAME, under20k) %>% arrange(-under20k) %>% write_csv(‘/tmp/hhunder20k.csv’)