I enjoyed Margaret Mizushima: Hunting Hour 📚:
a girl has gone missing from the junior high … police dog Robo … his highly trained nose leads them right to Candice
Unfortunately reading at night and a dark theme led to disturbed dreams for me, so I finished reading during the day.
This Micro Monday I’d suggest you follow @cheri , author of some excellent cozy mysteries and other books.
I love watching the signers on Government briefings. The signer just now seems particularly expressive in face and body as well as gesture. Unfortunately we have 2 new cases of Covid-19 after 24 consecutive days of none. New arrivals into NZ.
I know, slightly, the author of the NZ Health and Disability System Review, so am not surprised that measures to counteract systemic racism are included. “Create a new Māori Health Authority” is up there.
8 board members … an equal number of Māori and Crown representatives.
Excellent! Aotearoa New Zealand has free health care for all but the system was run down over a long time by conservative governments and was a shambles. Improvement is coming — overhaul of health system
shift focus in all areas from treatment to wellbeing, the report said.
Awww, after 50+ years Diego gets to go home:
Diego the giant Galapagos tortoise whose tireless efforts are credited with almost single-handedly saving his once-threatened species, was put out to pasture Monday on his native island after decades of breeding in captivity
Good read: Seven of Nine Was Always Queer: 📺 🖖 🏳️🌈
So much of what Seven does on Voyager is to break down the binaries that exist in Janeway’s and others’ minds. Seven is not good or bad. She is not Borg or human. She is both and she is neither. She is Borg, she is human, and she is one of the first of her kind: an xB.
The person who bought my old Fuji X-M1 camera body very kindly shared some links and tips about updating firmware on the newer Fuji X-T2 I now have. I never think about updating firmware on my camera, let alone the lenses!
I could see it was cold out (-2C) when I woke at 4.30. Dawn showed the frost that went with the low temps. Note too the very high pressure: 1038 mbar.
This good-looking fellow was resting his head on the fork of the tree beside him … until I took out my phone for a photo. Very handsome though anyway. 🐄
What would it feel like, I wonder, to scan the TV and movie listings in something like TV+ or Netflix, and to see 99% of the offerings showing predominantly women acting with agency, self-sufficiency, courage, … having adventures … dealing with issues … dreaming? 🤷🏽♀️
Ive been watching the TV+ series Dear… Its uplifting and inspiring. Each episode looks at the life of a well-known person, and interweaves extracts from letters from people whose lives have been profoundly changed by that person. So far: Oprah Winfrey, Stevie Wonder et al.
Just rewatched the 14 minute SciShow video There Are More Than Two Human Sexes which so clearly explains why XX and XY are just the extremes on a spectrum. There’s so much more to both sex and gender than we originally thought.
Niue The World’s First ‘Dark Sky Nation’ 🇳🇺
the International Dark-Sky Association … announced an important world-first … the tiny South Pacific nation of Niue is the first country to be formally accredited as an International Dark Sky Place.
This is perfect — I love Niue!
Geraldine farmers go to bat for endangered species
[farmers] planned to cut down a row of willows at their property near Geraldine until they discovered a colony of critically endangered long-tailed bats/pekapeka had made the old trees their home.
NZ’s only native land mammal…
Fungi at the beach — a benefit of driftwood. Sometimes I think Ive learned nothing about taking photos over the last decade. Then I realise in the past I would have taken this boring and useless top-down wide photo. Now I know to get in close and level. Pleased with it. 🍄
A huge downside to committing to learning a bunch of songs / waiata in the Māori language / Te Reo Māori: Ive had several of them in my head on a perpetual loop for at least 24 hours now. Combined with insufficient sleep and intrusive tinnitus I may well spontaneously combust!
Kiwi company Lanaco makes wool face masks, used in bushfires and for Covid-19. They even bred sheep specially, to get the wool just right. Now they’re off into space: 🇳🇿 🚀
the official suppliers for critical air supply filtration on [NASA]’s next mission to the moon and Mars
Warm fronts? Cold fronts? This 5.5 minute video from the UK MetOffice explains well: What are weather fronts?. 🌦
It was linked from a free course I’ve started working through: Come Rain or Shine: Understanding the Weather.
