1) Take a Break Thread (just for a few minutes): Perspectives courtesy of Max Ehrmann's brilliant reminder.

One of the oldest rocks in existence, the Murchison Meteorite. It’s 4,600,000,000 years old, and likely existed before the Earth itself had completely formed. Interestingly, it also contains amino acids, the chemical building blocks of DNA. Photo via u/bpoag on reddit.

Heart-warming moment - Giant Condor flies in to thank this man who nursed him back to health

One reason the Dutch suffered no deaths during the European flooding of 2021, while neighboring countries saw hundreds dead and missing, is that the Dutch have spent 800 years developing a parallel government system, with elections, laws, etc. only dealing with water management.

July 27, 1966: The Navy’s top admiral questions the necessity of diverting so many ships and personnel for NASA’s spacecraft recovery operations. “Get your own Navy,” Admiral David McDonald says in a speech, words The Washington Post suggests are meant “only partly in jest.”

August 5, 1969: Addressing the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, Wernher von Braun describes a possible 1981-82, 640 day, 12-person, two-ship expedition to Mars. Each 270 foot-long spacecraft would use nuclear thermal engines and depart from Earth orbit. 1/2

Faggots have been used since the Roman Occupation to trap silt/reinforce banks and guide the flow in rivers/wetlands. Soft engineering like this is better than hard landscaping for flood management.

Which lines from poems do you carry around in your head?

"You who are passing by I beg you do something learn a dance step something to justify your existence something that gives you the right […] because it would be too senseless after all for so many to have died while you live doing nothing with your life." - Charlotte Delbo

Please consider following Auschwitz Memorial where every day we commemorate the victims & educate about the tragic human history of #Auschwitz.

This week's highlightable delights: Water as transcendence, Milan Kundera on storytelling, and how trees and whales illuminate the future of artificial intelligence: mailchi.mp/brainpickings/…

Janet Armstrong and her son watch some bloke launch for the Moon.

NASA unofficially named 3 hills in Gusev Crater on Mars after the crew of Apollo 1. The hills were imaged by Spirit but have yet to be formally approved by IAU.

Prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence. - Henri Nouwen

Rom 8:35  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

In Japan in some neighborhoods you are "paid" for putting out your paper for recycling: one roll of toilet paper per bag of old newspapers.

There's a new #elephant mum in our midst! Last week, an orphan we rescued, raised and returned to the wild gave birth. Even more special, new mum Makena chose to share this joyous occasion with us, bringing her hours-old baby 'home' to meet her human family.

[RT with corrected year.] September 24, 1930: Born on the date, astronaut John Young, the only person to fly on Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle, as well as the ninth person to walk on the Moon.

The outline of the Great Skellig through my binoculars. 'Skellig' is Irish for 'stone splinter', and it was home to a monastic settlement possibly founded in the 6th century. The Skelligs are hugely important nesting sites for such seabirds as puffins, gannets and razorbills.

I just subscribed to Jon Rappoport jonrappoport.substack.com/?utm_medium=we… Jon Rappoport's take on creativity is layered to decades of creativity in my life/work. A gift from Muse. Later, accepting why I always made the 'M' uppercase. Noticing all my clients, have the same gift.