There's an enormous sunspot on the Sun right now. It's about 125k miles from end to end... it's fucking big! It is also blasting out major flares, one of which will hit the planet tomorrow night causing the aurora borealis to be seen, likely, as far south as Alabama.

So I decided to check out the spot, today, using some binocs(made some new solar filters for my ED binocs last month). Out back of my place is a nice garden with a gazebo. Thought that it would be the perfect place(I also wanted to give the 8x42s I recently got a good thorough workout). I get out there and there's a bunch old geezers and geezettes blasting out Fleetwood Mac and smoking weed. Hell, I'm old, but these fuckers were old old... like 70s and 80s old. Just partying their asses off.

I didn't partake(don't smoke that shit), but I did make some new friends.

edit: check this out. Starting at about 2300(7:00pm) Friday night, then at about 11:00pm shit gets real. This has the potential to be a historic event(not end-of-the-world shit, but some disruptions of communications/satellites.

https://www.swpc.noa...wind-prediction

^^^ Yeah, it was. Sierra Leone was a half stride away from winning it. Look at the images, Mystic Dan's nose was up while Sierra Leone's was down in their stride. Also, the way Sierra Leone shot out of the backstretch like a rocket in the Bluegrass a couple of weeks ago, convinced me that was the horse to beat... should've been the favorite. He'll make up for it in Baltimore the Saturday after next. Bet on it!

edit: duh! he shot out at the far turn onto the homestretch.

Google "human jaw fossil found in travertine".

Jelly Roll Morton is a father of Jazz, unlike that pretend-a-bitch pretender now on the scene.

A Song For You:

Ignorant, but lovely:

"A place i'll never go in my life, again".

" a place I'll never go, again"

Also, goddamn, I miss my little brother:

The kids liked this song, and do i. Reminds me of innocence.

 

My daughters liked this, back then, and it's a good song. Really proud of them.

^^^ Not "Boom Boom" which he re-released just prior to his his death, but a hell of a tune, no less.

Here, let's cleanse our palates; John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom".

fuck it:

 

I was at a Pat Travers show many year ago. When he started playing "Boom Boom", my, then, first wife started jumping and prancing about... I had to remind her of the song's origins. She wasn't too bright, but goddamn, she was pretty. Anyway, it's a Little Walter misogynist shitfest he did in the late 40s. Good song, though.

If you like Jazz, you probably already know, but for others:

Also got a nice set of 8x42 binocs. They're kind of small, but phase coasted prisms, ED glass, and nitrogen purged, but birders rail about them.

Celebrating, tonight. Somehow, through all the covid shit, I lost my dissection scope. How the fuck a microscope can disappear, I'll never know, but mine did(also missing a set of Pyrex baking dishes???). Anyhow, got a nice dissection scope, today. Woohoo!

The story still has steam. Smithsonian and the Atlantic picked it up in the last couple of days. The sub usually sees 70k-80k views/day. This post brought in about 15X that number.

*deleted linkks

Bizarre ramblings of the fuckwit that immolated himself outside the Trump trial yesterday. All of his comments have been deleted(his profile is there, though), but here's an /r/conspiracy thread from a few months ago.

https://archive.is/2..._world_why_our/

^^^The post is getting a lot of attention. There have already been several news articles written about it, and there are some reporters in the thread, so I'm going to delete the image. I don't want it to come up in a image search and tracked to me here.

Wow! This one is starting to get international attention. Looks like USA Today is picking up the story, and several researchers have chimed in, including some world renown hominid guys. It appears that it is 1.1 million year old Homo erectus.

It's happened, again. A guy had travertine installed in his house. He noticed this fossil and was asking for an ID/confirmation. Several dentists and forensic anthropologists showed to let him know it is a human mandible. Turn out the travertine is from Turkey, and it's an important fossil... early human. Researchers have reached out to him.

*deleted image

The museum is currently closed for remodeling. Sign said it opens later this month. I think I saw that the crowd was about 50k. Leaving was simple with no wait... even driving out of the parking lot(we were in Main Gate lot) was no wait.

Yeah, it was a great time. Met some cool people, too. I was expecting a nightmare, leaving, but it was a breeze... even leaving the track was easy. I guess they have perfected traffic control since they have so much practice every May. Made it home in four hours. The last time it took 12 or 13.

edit to add: We set-up on the lawn behind the in-field museum. Most of the activities happened down on the start/finish line, but those down there had sit on the tarmac(or in the grandstand), and the crowd was pretty large. On the lawn there was maybe a thousand people, no one was packed in, plenty of room to move about, and the bathrooms were close(and porta-potties even closer). The little gift shop/store, surprisingly, had drinks and snacks at normal price, whereas the vendors down front were charging about 250% above($2.00/bottle water vs $5.00/bottle). I brought a small scope, three pair of binocs, and filters for all of it, plus various other optical accessories and mounts- no mounts in the grandstands, so that made the lawn choice easy, and of course, chairs.

Hopefully, I can make it another 21 years for the one 2045. I kind of doubt it, and even if I do, it will be in August in the South. I'll be a very old man, then... maybe by then someone will invent personal air conditioners.

Thoroughbred strip club in Louisville.