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2025 Dark Sky photography winners
2025 Dark Sky photography winners. The cool thing about this collection are the technical details in the locations about the photos.
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The logistics of feeding Alaska
Feeding the population of Alaska is a logistical endeavor, only made harder by all of the tariffs.
Getting fresh food to Alaska has been a challenge since the first settlers began scratching in the creek beds for gold. It was just too far from the continent’s more populated areas, separated from the contiguous United States by cold, stormy seas and, on the few precarious overland routes, avalanche-prone mountain passes. During the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s, authorities feared that the hordes of prospectors would starve, and stories from that time — almost legends at this point — depict entrepreneurial types struggling to bring unbroken eggs all the way to the Yukon gold fields or herd reluctant cattle over Alaska’s Coast Range. Thirteen decades later, the challenges remain. Alaska’s food prices are second only to Hawai’i’s. One recent federal study found that prices in Anchorage were 36% higher on average than those in the Lower 48. A 2023 report commissioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) described Alaska’s food supply chain as “unique and vulnerable to disruption.”
I wasn’t the only one surprised by Eby’s apparent willingness to threaten that supply chain — to hit Alaskans in the gut. “It’s going to be a big deal,” Alaska state Sen. Robert Myers, R, who also works as a commercial trucker, told the Alaska Beacon. “Fresh produce — the vast majority of our fresh produce … gets trucked up. If you want to get something up here fast, you put it on a truck, not a barge.”
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The perfect grocery store shopping list app does not exist
Planning a grocery shopping list seems like a thing technology could solve. But the complex the needs of meal ingredients, family budgets, how grocery stores are set up differently everywhere… It’s a recipe for insanity.
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Setlist.FM changing concerts
Setlist.FM has been around quite a while. For music in concert nerds, it’s an awesome way to follow an artist as they tour. And it’s changing how artist put together their setlists.
For musicians who regularly change their set list, it allows them to check what they last played the last time they were in particular city or the night before. For those that stick to the same set for an entire tour, it’s encouraging a little variety and exposing artist don’t change the set list from night to night.
honestly, if you are a big production – like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift, the setlist really can’t change all that much. But if you’re just a band or an artist with instruments and some lights, why can’t you change every night?
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Axolotls are nifty
Axoltls are weird, alien and fascinating creatures that can regrow limbs.
Biologists have long been fascinated by the ability of salamanders to regrow entire limbs. Now Harvard researchers have solved part of the mystery of how they accomplish this feat—by activating stem cells throughout the body, not just at the injury site.
In a paper published in the journal Cell, researchers documented how this body-wide response in axolotl salamanders is triggered by the sympathetic nervous system—the iconic “fight or flight” network. The study raises the possibility that these mechanisms might one day be manipulated to regenerate human limbs and organs.
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Father Pete leads the masses at Notre Dame
Thirty seconds into the video, the camera shows Father Pete — to call him anything else is to barely know him — striding into the Basilica. He’s as identifiable by his buzz cut and black-rimmed glasses as he is by his perpetual smile. Sunlight follows him through the doors.
That’s when the student section loses its collective mind, cheering as if running back Jeremiyah Love just went for another 98-yard touchdown.
Excellent story about a University of Notre Dame priest and the community he supports.
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Teens start banned book club
After books were banned, what better way for teenagers to rebel than to start a banned book club?
“It was really difficult for our first year,” Gooblar-Perovic added. “We couldn’t be like an official club with our school, because it would be, legally, iffy.”
The group persisted. After the part of the law that affects school libraries was temporarily blocked by a federal judge, the Banned Book Club gained official recognition from the school. Now, as enforcement of the book restrictions remains frozen under a second temporary injunction, the club has 15 to 25 regular members and meets weekly to discuss books like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Color Purple, The Handmaid’s Tale and Fahrenheit 451 — some of the same titles that had been previously removed from the Iowa City Community School District’s libraries. According to Iowa City West High’s library catalog, the books have since been reshelved.
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The rise of chatfishing
Soon, Rachel and her match were speaking daily, their conversations running the gamut from the ridiculous (favourite memes, ketchup v mayonnaise) to the sublime (expectations in love, childhood traumas). Often they’d have late-night exchanges that left her staring at her phone long after she should have been asleep. “They were like things that you read in self-help books – really personal conversations about who we are and what we want for our lives,” she says.
Which is why the man who greeted her inside the pub – polite, pleasant but oddly flat – felt like a stranger. Gone was the quickfire wit and playful rhythm she’d come to expect from their exchanges. Over pints he stumbled through small talk, checked his phone a little too often, and seemed to wilt under the pressure of her questions. “I felt like I was sitting opposite someone I’d never even spoken to,” she says. “I tried to have the same sort of conversation as we’d been having online, but it was like, ‘Knock, knock, is anyone home?’ – like he knew basically nothing about me. That’s when I suspected he’d been using AI.”
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Mexico City’s zombie walk
Every year, Mexico City hosts a zombie walk. Quite festive with a lot of different interpretations.
