JoeSchmuckatelli

I was excited to see these - unfortunately they're not showing up

My kid tells me that the cultish followers of a certain politician thought it might. Ah well... There is always next time. The best thing about any End Times belief structure? It's gonna happen SoonTM Just you wait!

Here's a few of my shots. This first is actually my favorite. Had to build an eclipse viewer out of an Amazon box as a show-and-tell to my students (hoping they'd build one). Tested it out just before we hit the road and captured this image of the sun and the trees in my yard. Pin hole camera effect is quite cool! The next few are just progression shots. Using a hand-held cell phone with eclipse glasses floating in front of the camera. Highly technical set up. Professional Jarheads only. Cell did not quite do the totality justice. Can see Jupiter in the shot - but not the solar prominence or really much else other than the weirdly colored sky. Eager to see what youse guis with better settups / more experience produce!

And apparently experience turbulence.

Grumpy Gus - the kid who sometimes drives, sometimes complains tells me that his SnapFriends map page tells him that our backwoods adventures only saved 19 minutes. Clearly I'm stoopid

We are already arguing about alternative routes home. Past experience telling me to be aggressive about the route - Wife 1.0 insisting Google knows best. Google doesn't know what I know - it's only gonna get worse. Take that, AI underlord!

From my vantage there was a tiny point of bright yellow /orange light on the south limn of the moon. Guessing it was a mountain or trench. Corona was cool - although partly hazed out by high clouds. Wifey poo and spawn fully enjoyed the experience! So glad I did this!

Enjoy the diamond ring!

Just started for me. Mostly clear, a little haze. Woot

I found a Brewery in Columbus Indiana - hopefully perfect! Well... Except for the light haze that's moved in... Still-much better than rain! I've got a cool shot from a pinhole eclipse viewer I made - will post it after getting home to the PC (imgur doesn't like my phone. Just a test shot - but cool

Can anyone give me cardinal directions for where to look for the comet? Jarhead style if possible - aka 'to the left and up a bit' kinda thing.

Yeah - we're heading north and west as well. Wife grumbling "we're gonna be stuck on the side of the road somewhere". I'm all, "So what? The show is in the sky; anywhere we can see totality is amazing!" Her, "I care." (Know what that means? I care, now, too.) ... Madly googling "Parks" in small towns along the road. Forecast suggests a path between Columbus and Bloomington Indiana should be between the clouds. Anyone ever heard of "Stoney Lonesome" or "Gnaw Bone" Indiana?

Woke up to glorious blue skies! Super excited Turned on the TV... They said the storm in Texas is headed our way. What the hell, Texas!?!

Never forget. It's bad. ... Why it's not 3 lanes in each direction for its total length is beyond me. Practically needs a dedicated Trucks Only lane.

I strongly suggest that you map out 'overland' bypass routes around major interchanges. Freeway / highway interchanges regularly get clogged on the way home. If you can get a mile or two from the highway on farm roads or local state highway routes you can save a lot of time! (Map App routes are often quite bad at offering good alternatives!)

It's not so much the discovery of Iron as the ability to produce it in quantity sufficient for it to become the basis of the economy / tools & weapons. Why the technology was limited to the Afro-EurAsian continent is quite interesting - especially given how simple it is.

Yep. Most of the world population was some form of hunter-gatherer or semi-nomadic in the year 1000. Or rather - outside the densely populated (Citified & static) Afro-EurAsian belts (Japan, China, India, Persia & Fertile Crescent, Mediterranean) & parts of Meso America - most people moved quite frequently; even agrarian societies like those in SEA and most of the Americas / most of Africa / Northern Europe & Asia would plant something then move around while it grew and come back for it later. The more advanced would intensively farm & hunt an area for about a decade until the land was useless then move several days walk away and start over. Advanced farming with improved plows arrived in Europe around this time, enabling food surpluses which in turn enabled cities and economic diversification. What is interesting to me about looking at Polynesian, Australian, Native American (etc) populations and why they never reached the Iron Age - the likely answer is lack of large domesticated animals. In the Americas, the largest was a Llama - which can carry 90 lbs (so can a human) and so we don't get wheeled carts and draft oxen / horses / mules pulling heavy loads or doing work. Those places stop tech at the 'high stone age' - which just works for them (so long as outside competition doesn't disrupt the show). The cool thing about humans, though, is that we have evidence of trade going back to Gobleki Tepe and Catalhoyuk. Certainly, if the Polynesians met up with other folks from the Americas they'd have traded with them. But to your point about American plants being found in the Pacific - the thesis of the above article is that it was Americans who first settled some of islands closest to SA and later met Polynesians. So it was likely Americans bringing plants into the Pacific rather than Polynesians landing in the Americas and bringing American plants back with them. Still - either would have worked; the smart folks are still arguing about the details!

Even Cylons sit

Coming back from 2017, I spent 2 hours trying to advance 2 exits to the next freeway. 5 hours back from a less than 2 hour drive out. Funz

I'd have to go back almost a year to find my original post - but I linked to the NOAA site showing 50% chance of clouds based on historic data. This was always going to be a coin flip. (for me) The surprise is Texas, etc. They have a much higher % chance of sun this time of year, IIRC.

Yep - there is evidence that the populations met in the Pacific archaeologist Paul Wallin, who provided peer review for the Nature study, traced human settlement across the Pacific and suggested that migration from Colombia went first to the South Marquesas Islands, and afterward arced south and east toward Palliser, Mangareva, and finally Easter Island. “The earliest genetic signal of Native Southern Americans found by the authors in Polynesia was from people of the Southern Marquesas Islands, and the authors argue that Colombians mixed with Polynesians there around 1150 AD,” he wrote. “This date is so early that it could even suggest South Americans reached there before Polynesians arrived.” In other words, it was not the Polynesians who sailed to South America but instead, as postulated by the Kon-Tiki, the South Americans who sailed west. https://www.idtdna.com/pages/community/blog/post/dna-links-prehistoric-polynesians-to-south-america#:~:text=“The earliest genetic signal of,1150 AD%2C” he wrote. There was speculation that around the time Scandinavian explorers were reaching Mayan areas that Pacific Islanders were reaching SA. More recent genetic studies have complicated that narrative. Still, it points to a global population able to expand to the farthest reaches of the world circa 1000AD. The climate studies (Medieval Warm Period, etc) suggest that the 'Anomaly' wasn't limited to just Europe but was a global change in climate warm enough to encourage Human population growth and migration. (this is somewhat controversial) Big thing about looking backwards in time is that warm weather coincides with population growth and technological expansion while cold weather coincides with contraction, disease and famine - both are drivers of migration and warfare - but dramatically different in character.

There is a section in that book I referred to above showing first wave immigration reached Samoa as early as 800 BC. Third Wave (Hawaii, New Zealand Rapa Nui) didn't happen until the 1200s (AD) - quite possibly due to technology innovation like the double canoe or changed climate (think extended El Nino that changes wind patterns) and likely increased population that would support /drive migration. Here's another resource https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1586/polynesian-navigation--settlement-of-the-pacific/

You see that projected gap in the cloud cover in Illinois? I've been watching that like a Hawk for days. Thankfully it's in driving range of my original chosen spot. Frustration for my wife is that she likes plans and I'm okay with being on the side of a farm road. Fingers crossed that there really is a gap. Strong possibility is that the 'gap' is just an area of thin high clouds between storms....

There are some interesting and early reports of the recovery of honey bee populations. The most interesting are pay walled. Why interesting: several years of bee-pocalypse reporting about the challenges of agriculture practices (pesticides, moniculture, etc) climate change, disease, parasites and loss of food sources /habitat. Why it matters: bees are for all intents and purposes a domesticated species critical to our food supply. Farmers and agribusiness responded to the crisis and developed multiple strategies to stabilize and protect bee populations. Washington Post

Them's fightin words, boyo! Vis Star Wars - I liked the first half of Empire but can't help seeing Jedi as an allegory for the Vietnam war.