Here are a few stories, posts, and resources I’ve read and enjoyed over the past month.
Hope you enjoy them, too!
What I Found Interesting
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Happy Juneteenth! Celebrated on June 19, the US federal holiday commemorates when federal troops in 1865 freed the last enslaved people in Galveston, Texas.
Two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Learn more about the holiday, why it’s important, and the significance of the Juneteenth flag in Darnell Clayton’s Happy Juneteenth Everyone!
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In preparation for the 15 million people (wow!) expected to attend the 2024 Summer Olympics, Paris has taken steps to reduce car use.
According to city officials, the changes contributed to a 40% decrease in air pollution.
Paris has closed more than 100 streets to motor vehicles, tripled parking fees for SUVs, removed roughly 50,000 parking spots, and constructed more than 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) of bike lanes since Mayor Anne Hidalgo took office in 2014.
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How can we reduce the impact of satellites on dark skies, telescope data, and publicly funded research?
Dr. Samantha Lawler, professor of astronomy at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada, has ideas for regulating satellites and making them less bright.
As a concerned citizen or scientist, you can help.
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Whoa. I knew Stradivarius violins were rare, respected for their outstanding sound, and expensive.
But I had no idea their sounds are considered so precious they have been saved in a digital archive.
To do this, a group of musicians and sound engineers took over a concert hall. There, they recorded every possible note and note transition a Stradivarius violin can make (or at least every possible sound they could think of).
The entire process took 5 weeks.
During that time, the surrounding city of Cremona, Italy had to keep noise to a minimum.
This was so other sounds wouldn’t leak into the recordings.
It was so important that the city’s mayor diverted traffic around the concert hall, some women were asked not to wear stilettos on the cobblestone streets, even kissing teenagers were shooed away from the vicinity.
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Personally, I would love to pedal to generate enough electricity each day to power my phones, laptop computer, router, modem, and wifi connection like Jim Gregory from Iowa.
The creator and seller of bike cargo trailers, Gregory pedals for exercise and saves energy as he works at his desk.
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For folks in Detroit, heck, anyone who is aware of the continuing revitalization in Detroit, the opening night concert at Michigan Central was an event not to be missed.
I watched the livestream concert on our local TV station and was amazed with the performances by Diana Ross and The Clark Sisters!
Free public tours are over, but Michigan Central’s Summer at the Station welcomes the public to the first floor for self-guided tours on Fridays and Saturdays from June 21 through August 31.
