@sundogplanets Hard for me to compare, given the temporal differences, but I'll list four: Nantucket (2000), where Maria Mitchell was born and did her early astronomical work (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Mitchell), and which can have very clear skies, despite being a small island; Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah (2001), where the night sky view from the rim is spectacular; Death Valley National Park Nevada (2026), a formal dark sky area; and, circa 1980, a rural area south of Chapel Hill, NC, where I lived for a few years when in grad school. One winter evening, I don't recall just when, there was supposed to be a good meteor shower, so several of went out to watch it. The sky was spectacular, and one didn't have to look hard to see *lots* of meteors.
(Aside: when my kids were in elementary school, there was supposed to be a good meteor shower. For assorted reasons, including timing and park operating hours, none of the nearby parks were suitable. I was living in a densely populated area of New Jersey, with lots of light pollution, so the best available spot was the local schoolyard. When we got there, we saw that at least a dozen others had the same idea. A cop stopped by, wondering why there were so many people in lawn chairs in the schoolyard at that hour of the evening. I was far back, so I didn't get to hear the conversation, but I'm sure he drove away muttering about these weird people…)

@sundogplanets Savary Island, BC, a small sandbar island with no electricity. It was Perseid meteor season and I was nightswimming in the ocean with phosphorescence. Shooting stars above, glowing trails from fish below, floating in the ocean, everything very sparkly. I felt extremely small in a good way

I used to be skeptical about harmful starlink was to our night sky, but after spending this summer camping, I have to say that @sundogplanets has a point.

when you do dispersed camping in the middle of nowhere, you can see starlink satellites all over the place moving around with the naked eye.

it is actually kind of distressing. I don't know what to do about it.

A stunningly beautiful quote from Yann Martel, sent to me by a satellite engineer who loves the sky:

"If you’ve never been, the south of Saskatchewan is so flat the horizon is perceptibly round. Above you, during the day, lords an immense dome of sky so empty it feels like a fullness, with clouds the size of mountains, the sun but a small disk, and a depth of colour that is often chalk blue, oh so chalk blue.

...

@sundogplanets Prince Edward Island with three college friends. Lying with heads together watching the Perseids meteor shower. “There’s one, there’s one, ….” And, at one point, all four of us together, “There’s one!”

Taylor Farms removing guacamoles and salsas from grocery shelves over concerns of salmonella contamination, weeks after the produce supplier recalled lettuce implicated in a widespread cyclospora outbreak. https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/taylor-farms-recalls-products-with-jalapenos-implicated-in-salmonella-outbreak-66367667?st=1S4rhE

@sundogplanets On the rocks at the edge of Bonne Bay, Newfoundland (a fjord in Gros Morne National Park). A few village lights, but a night so clear that just turning away was enough. Lying on my back with the ocean lapping a cobble beach a few metres away, and it felt like I was pressed to the very thin skin of a whirling planet with my face almost in the stars. It almost felt like I could slip off.

@sundogplanets Mine was Tonga, circa 2013.

At the time, there was NOTHING in the sky. Minimal development across the nation's ~170 islands. You'd see local light pollution on Tongatapu but on the half dozen other small islands I visited the stars were bright enough to forget about the tiny little refuge you were clinging to, against the miles and miles and miles of water stretching in every direction, and that just a paltry simulacrum of the endless expanse above you.

You'd hold your hand up to the sky and let it drop because it eclipsed so many stars.

And you'd look towards the sea and see that light mirrored endlessly in the crests of ten thousand waves racing every which way. You'd grow accustomed to noise of the water during the day - and then you'd actually *see* the source of that noise at night. And you'd smoke a cigarette, and yell into the night, and then go back inside, defeated.

I love the cold and the thin mountain air, but one of my fondest nature memories was built in the heart of the ocean.

The drought in the Netherlands keeps getting worse. The Rhine has reached levels lower than were thought to be possible. Water management board are struggling, and this is the weather forecast for coming week...

45 years ago
Dance with Me is the first full-length album by the American punk band T.S.O.L. (True Sounds of Liberty), released in August 1981.

#punk #punks #punkrock #dancewithme #tsol #TrueSoundsOfLiberty #history #punkrockhistory

LEAVING META
WITHOUT LEAVING YOUR LIFE 💎

After my posting about Meta over the past two days, one thing became very clear.

A lot of people would LIKE to leave Facebook, Instagram, or both. But parts of their actual lives are all tangled up in them.

So don’t make leaving a purity test. Start somewhere. Remove Facebook from your phone and use it only on your laptop, or better still, only on your desktop when you genuinely need it.

STOP POSTING TO META. STOP FEEDING THE TIMELINE.

Move conversations with real friends to your email, text, Signal, phone calls, Mastodon account, or wherever works for you, away from Meta.

TELL PEOPLE WHERE ELSE THEY CAN EASILY FIND YOU.

If you run a business, start putting your email address and/or website URL everywhere you promote your business so Facebook is not your only front door.

Download anything you actually want to keep. Then, when you’re ready, deactivate or delete what you no longer need.

Maybe you keep Messenger for Aunt Doris. Maybe you keep Instagram because your local café apparently believes websites were abolished in 2014.

Fine.

The point isn’t ideological cleanliness.

THE POINT IS REDUCING YOUR DEPENDENCE.

Every conversation you move elsewhere is one conversation Meta no longer owns the doorway to.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO ESCAPE THE META CAGE IN ONE HEROIC LEAP.

Just start opening the door.

#Meta #Facebook #Instagram #SocialMedia #Fediverse #people #DEPENDENCE #Messenger

49 years ago

ZigZag magazine, August 1977

#punk #punks #punkrock #womenofpunk #theslits #History #punkrockhistory

@sundogplanets At Uluru. Spending the day walking around the rock in quiet contemplation can be a very moving and spiritual experience on its own. Then you watch the sun set with a riot of colour across the sky and the rock. And later that night I took an astronomy tour. An incredibly enthusiastic astronomer took us out and gave a fantastic talk about how the local Aboriginal population understood the night sky, and how it related to their world.
Standing on a small rise just outside Yulara under the hugest sky I'd ever seen was a humbling, rewarding experience.

Here's the new one from Teleporting Onions

#johnpeel #johnpeelbandnames

I am TOTALLY enjoying reading all these stories of awe and wonder as we get to gaze over "infinity's doorstep" with our own eyes.

This is what I am fighting for! This is what I want everyone to be able to do! It often feels like nobody cares about losing the sky, so reading how much it means to lots of people is incredibly energizing. Thank you, keep the stories coming.

44 years ago
Henry Rollins of Black Flag backstage at 688 Club, Atlanta, Georgia, August 1982.

Photos by Bryan Pritchard

#punk #punks #punkrock #hardcorepunk #blackflag #henryrollins #history #punkrockhistory

Oh I should add to my own personal list: the multiple aurora shows over the past couple of years that I've been able to see from my own house! May 2024 and especially November 2025 were completely mind-blowing.

I found myself joyously whooping and yelling at the sky. I kept thinking of the Cree name for a really active aurora show, cı̂payak kâ-nı̂mihitocik, which translates to "the ancestors are dancing". It was truly an emotionally powerful event to bear witness to.

10 August 1918 | A Greek Jew, Avraam Tevet, was born in Thessaloniki.

He was deported to #Auschwitz. He did not survive.

If you've ever wondered why the heck Nazis are so loud on the internet...

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/meta-caught-paying-nazis-to-post-on-facebook