It is a wet one here. Over an inch of rain last night and this morning. All the new trees and garden like it.

The Earth doesn’t orbit upright with respect to the plane of our orbit around the sun. Instead, our world is tilted on its axis by 23 1/2 degrees. Through the year, this tilt causes Earth’s Northern and Southern Hemispheres to trade places in receiving the sun’s light and warmth most directly.

So it’s Earth’s tilt – not our distance from the sun – that causes winter and summer. In fact, our planet is closest to the sun in January, and farthest from the sun in July, during the Northern Hemisphere summer.
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No world body has designated an official day to start each new season, and different schools of thought or traditions define the seasons in different ways.

In meteorology, for example, summer begins on June 1. And every schoolchild knows that summer starts when the last school bell of the year rings.

Yet June 21 is perhaps the most widely recognized day upon which summer begins in the Northern Hemisphere and upon which winter begins on the southern half of Earth’s globe. There’s nothing official about it, but it’s such a long-held tradition that we all recognize it to be so.
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The 2023 June solstice will happen on June 21 at 14:58 UTC. That’s 9:58 a.m. CDT on June 21 in North America. This solstice – the beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere – marks the sun’s most northerly point in Earth’s sky.

https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-ju...

The breathing Earth...
Here's a view looking at one year of seasonal transformations on Earth. Made possible by the tremendous folks of the NASA Visible Earth team, I downloaded the twelve cloud-free satellite imagery mosaics of Earth ("Blue Marble Next Generation") at each month of the year. I wrapped them into some fun projections then stitched them together into a couple animated gifs...

So happy summer everyone!

Hey! I hope every one is okay and having a good time living life. I really enjoy reading here. The power goes out from 8am to 4pm so PGE can do a "solar installation" for the whole complex. Good luck to the work crew!

The weather has been pretty good, not too hot and very windy. I hit a new phase with this fucking cancer, too much stress from moving and now living with 98 other people and their dogs and cats, omg life is strange. I wouldn't have it any other way Cheers and thank you all! Keep rockin'.

Peace and Love

Generally, on average, these days right about now are the hottest or at least some of the hottest of the year around here. Not so this year; actually a bit chilly this morning. A week and a day gone by now, moving cautiously so as not to trigger anything, but the magic tester doodad says negatory so, in theory I am well, whether I feel like it or not. Warm fookin' weather would help - I hope to pick a shallot today and see if they are ready for harvest yet. Then 8 days of catch up on all the stuff that I put off until we returned, and then until today. Hah!

Thanks for the Hooker et. al. Time to get going I guess, happy solstice

be well and have a good one

red line is crossed!

Mats Nilsson
@mazzenilsson
End game in the Ukraine war approaches?

Today Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made an announcement that has not yet been carried in Western media but which is of the most grave nature.

According to the latest intelligence reports, Russia believes that the Ukrainian armed forces now intend to cover their failed counter-offensive in the Donbas by using US-supplied Himars multiple launch artillery and UK-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles, possibly in the longer range domestic version, to attack the Crimea.

If this happens, says Shoigu, Russia will consider both the United States and Britain to have fully entered the war as co-belligerents. And Russia will immediately respond to any such attack on its territory by destroying “the decision making centers” of the Kiev regime. This is a fairly transparent threat to “neutralize” their government apparatus and personnel, logically including President Zelensky.

The statement by Shoigu leaves little doubt that we are entering the final phase of the Ukraine war as a war limited to the geography of Ukraine, and are possibly heading into a wider war with unforeseeable consequences both for Europeans and (finally) for the Americans.