Magazine Posts

"The fate of the H-1B program – which offers U.S. employers a way to temporarily hire foreign workers in specialty occupations – has divided influential Republicans. Tech leaders like Elon Musk strongly support the program, while other Republicans question its impact on American workers. President Donald Trump imposed restrictions on the program in his first term, but his current policy agenda on H-1Bs remains under discussion" More at Pew Research ➜

Charlie Munger - The nickname of Charles Thomas Munger, (1924 –  2023) American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. From 1978 until his death in 2023 , he was vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett. described Munger as his closest partner and right-hand man, and credited him with being the "architect" of modern Berkshire Hathaway's business philosophy. More 

Source:  All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Why are there so many cyclones around the north pole of Jupiter? The topic is still being researched. NASA's robotic Juno mission orbiting Jupiter took data in 2018 that was used to construct this stunning view of the curious cyclones at Jupiter's north pole. Measuring the thermal emission from Jovian cloud tops, the infrared observations are not restricted to the hemisphere illuminated by sunlight. They reveal eight cyclonic features that surround a cyclone about 4,000 kilometers in diameter, just offset from the giant planet's geographic north pole. Similar data show a cyclone at the Jovian south pole with five circumpolar cyclones. The south pole cyclones are slightly larger than their northern cousins. Oddly, data from the once Saturn-orbiting Cassini mission has shown that Saturn's north and south poles each have only a single cyclonic storm system.

Flower buds in development of an elderberry Sambucus ('serenade'). Focus stack of 13 photos.

Agnes Monkelbaan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The plane of our Milky Way galaxy extends beyond the limb of planet Earth in this space age exposure captured by astronaut Don Pettit. His camera, with low light and long duration settings, was pointed out the window of a Dragon crew spacecraft docked with the International Space Station on January 29. The orbital outpost was at an altitude of about 400 kilometers above the Pacific Ocean at the time. Motion blurs the Earth below, while the gorgeous view from low Earth orbit includes the Milky Way's prominent satellite galaxies, known as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, near the upper left in the frame. Fans of southern skies can also spot the Southern Cross. The four brightest stars of the famous southern constellation Crux are near picture center, just beyond the edge of the bright horizon and shining through Earth's orange tinted atmospheric glow.

Portrait of French author George Sand by photographer Nadar in 1864. One of the most popular writers in Europe in her lifetime, she stood up for women, criticized marriage and fought against the prejudices of a conservative society.

Nadar, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Very faint planetary nebula Abell 7 is about 1,800 light-years distant. It lies just south of Orion in planet Earth's skies toward the constellation Lepus, The Hare. Surrounded by Milky Way stars and near the line-of-sight to distant background galaxies its generally simple spherical shape, about 8 light-years in diameter, is revealed in this deep telescopic image. Within the cosmic cloud are beautiful and complex structures though, enhanced by the use of long exposures and narrowband filters that capture emission from hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms. Otherwise Abell 7 would be much too faint to be appreciated by eye. A planetary nebula represents a very brief final phase in stellar evolution that our own Sun will experience 5 billion years hence, as the nebula's central, once sun-like star shrugs off its outer layers. Abell 7 itself is estimated to be 20,000 years old. But its central star, seen here as a fading white dwarf, is some 10 billion years old.

Photo by Vikas Chander

Meerkat (Suricata suricatta) with three young in Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, South Africa.

Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.