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Saturday/ stranded in space 🌕

Yikes.
From cbsnews.com:
After weeks of debate, NASA has ruled out bringing two astronauts back to Earth aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule because of lingering concerns about multiple helium leaks and degraded thrusters, both critical to a successful re-entry, officials said Saturday.
Launched June 5, Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams originally expected to spend a little more than a week in space in the Starliner’s first piloted test flight. They’ll now spend at least 262 days in orbit — nearly nine months — before returning to Earth around Feb. 22 with  two Crew 9 fliers after they wrap up a normal six-month tour of duty.

‘The full moon captured from space’ posted on X by Curiosity@MAstronomers.
It’s not clear from the post when this picture was taken, though.  This August’s full moon (the supermoon called Blue Moon*) occurred at 2:26 p.m. EDT (1826 GMT) on Monday, Aug. 19, 2024, when the moon was 100% fully illuminated.
*Blue Moon means it’s the third full moon in a season that has four full moons.
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Friday/ rain ☔

Happy Friday.
There was steady rain here in the city today (about 0.5″), and there will be more this weekend.
It was all of 58°F (14°C) as I headed out for a quick walk after dinner.

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Thursday/ Kamala for the people 👩🏽

The convention in Chicago is over.
The Democratic Party’s nominee for president took the stage tonight in Chicago to rapturous applause and accepted the nomination.
I liked all of Harris’s speech: the story of her life, how everyone counts in a democracy, and saying she will be a president that is realistic and practical, and that she will always fight for the American people.

Nandita Bose, Jeff Mason and Doina Chiacu reporting for Reuters:
Harris drew a series of contrasts with Trump, accusing him of not fighting for the middle class, planning to enact a tax hike through his tariff proposals, and having set in motion the end of a constitutional right to abortion with his picks for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Post on X by The Washington Post.
Picture by Win McNamee/ Getty Images.
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Tuesday/ fall-ish weather 🌦

A little bit of rain, a little sun, clouds— that seems to be the weather pattern for the week. A high of 71 °F (22 °C) today.

It’s the last hurrah for my deck furniture before I put it away in the garage and the basement.

These gorgeous dahlias were a gift, fresh out of the garden of my friend Bill.
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Monday/ red, blue and battleground states 🇺🇸

Happy Monday.
The Democratic National Convention is underway.

I received this picture from my friend George (thanks, George!) who is attending the Convention. I believe he is sitting above and outside of the areas on the floor that are designated for state delegates. A nice view of the stage, maybe slightly obstructed by the jumbotron screen cube in the center.
Here is where the state delegates are located on the floor. California has the best seats in the house— deservedly so, I guess, since the Golden State gave the Democratic Party its candidate for president*.
*Fun fact: Richard Nixon is the technically the only US president from the West Coast, ever. Yes, there was Ronald Reagan who was governor of California, before he was elected president in 1980, but he was born in Illinois.
[From the Washington Post]
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Sunday/ the Democrats’ convention 🫏

The Democratic Party’s national convention starts tomorrow in Chicago.
A headline in the New York Times reads ‘Democrats’ Unity Convention Has One Giant Exception: The Gaza War’.

From bbc.com:
President Biden will headline the convention on Monday night. The crowd will also hear from First Lady Jill Biden, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and other Democratic leaders.
On Tuesday, former President Barack Obama is expected to deliver remarks. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Ms Harris’s husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, will also address the convention on Tuesday.
Wednesday’s line-up reportedly features former President Bill Clinton and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, among others.
Ms Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will give the prime-time speech that night after his nomination.
The most important night of the convention is Thursday, when Vice-President Harris will take the stage. She will formally accept the presidential nomination and give her speech on the final night of the convention dedicated “For the Future.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former First Lady Michelle Obama, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will also take the stage at some point during the week.

Shepard Fairey’s new poster, titled “Forward,” features the Democratic nominee in shades of blue, contrasted by red lipstick. Harris is depicted wearing a pearl earring and necklace. Fairey created the iconic HOPE poster for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.
[Poster by Shepard Fairey]
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Saturday/ thunder and lightning 🌩

A large thunderstorm with rain and lightning is passing over the Seattle metro area tonight.

Here is a satellite image of the clouds over Washington State at 9.46 pm PDT just now, augmented with colors by software that tracks where the clouds have been illuminated by lightning strikes.
NOAA’s GOES-18 (launched Mar 1, 2022) is the third satellite in the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) – R Series, the Western Hemisphere’s most sophisticated weather-observing and environmental-monitoring system.
The GOES-R Series provides advanced imagery and atmospheric measurements, real-time mapping of lightning activity, and monitoring of space weather.
[Picture from noaa.gov]
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Friday/ inflation in the US: the latest 📈

The consumer price index, a broad-based measure of prices for goods and services, increased 0.2% for the month, putting the 12-month inflation rate at 2.9%, its lowest since March 2021.
Excluding food and energy, core CPI came in at a 0.2% monthly rise and a 3.2% annual rate, meeting expectations.
A 0.4% increase in shelter costs was responsible for 90% of the all-items inflation increase. Food prices climbed 0.2% while energy was flat.
– Reported by Jeff Cox on CNBC.com

The inflation figures were in line with what most economists were expecting. Even though the CPI at 2.9% is still some way from the Federal Reserve’s stated target of 2%, a federal funds rate cut of 0.25% in September is widely expected.
Then there is this graph. The U.S.— under the Biden-Harris administration —has done far better than other G7 countries to bring post-COVID inflation under control.
[Posted by Bill Prady @billprady on X]
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Thursday/ a freebie 🍊

These little mandarins from Peru are sweet, seedless and plump, and I got them for free at Amazon Fresh. 🤗

As I attempted to scan the barcode and put them into my smart grocery cart, the scanner did not recognize the barcode. There was no 4-digit produce code to type in on the bag, or on the shelf. Searching for ‘mandarin’ on the cart’s lookup menu also yielded no result.

The store clerk in the aisle could offer no other solution either, and just tucked the mandarins into the back of the cart, saying I don’t have to pay for them.

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Wednesday/ a triceratops 🦕

It’s time for another cool British stamp that had arrived on an envelope in my mailbox.

150th Anniversary of Dinosaurs’ Identification by Owen
Issued 1991, Aug. 20
Perf. 14½ x 14 | Phosphorized paper
1577 1010 Triceratops | 37p | grey, greenish yellow, turquoise-blue, dull violet, yellow-brown & black
[Source: 1997 Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue Part 1: British Commonwealth]
Additional notes:
1. Richard Owen worked as a taxonomist for the London Zoo and coined the word dinosaur (originally ‘dinosauria’) in 1841.
2. Triceratops lived in the Late Cretaceous period, about 68 to 66 million years ago, in what is now western North America.
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Tuesday/ not too late for flowers 🌸

It’s getting late in summer, but I still find pretty flowers here in my neighborhood.

I thought this is a daisy, but no— it’s a single-flowered dahlia. The flower has a central disc with a single outer ring of florets (which may overlap) encircling it, and which may be rounded or pointed.
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Monday/ floatplanes 🌅

Here’s a beautiful view from this morning, of the south end of Lake Union.
I took the picture from the seventh floor of a building off Fairview Avenue North.

At about 8.15 am this morning, there was a line of five float planes getting ready to take off (four are in the picture), and one that had just come in. 
Those taking off could be heading the San Juan Islands, or even to Vancouver Island or British Columbia’s Inside Passage.
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Sunday/ au revoir until ’28 👋

I confess that I fast-forwarded through some (okay, most) of a recording of the three hours of the closing ceremony of the 2024 Games.

I liked the Golden Voyager and  the mummies— and was that a spry 62-year old Tom Cruise ‘sky diving’ into the arena to receive the Olympic flag, and take it to  Los Angeles on a motorbike? (Yes, it was).

Arthur Cadre as Golden Voyager performs at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games at the Stade de France in Paris.
[Photo by Sven Hoppe/​Deutsche Presse Agentur]
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Saturday/ frightening 😱

Cartoon by David Horsey, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for The Seattle Times.
Toto, I’ve got a feeling this isn’t Trump’s show anymore, says the heading on the opinion piece that accompanies the cartoon.
.. and then there is Tom Nichols from The Atlantic that says about Trump’s press conference (‘press conference’ is flattering Trump) at Mar-a-Lago this week ‘His obvious emotional instability is frightening, not funny’.
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Friday/ Mr Woodpecker 🪶

Is the woodpecker (it’s a northern flicker) eating ants? I wondered.
Yes, woodpeckers eat ants and are known to eat more ants than most other birds. 
Some woodpeckers, like the pileated woodpecker and northern flicker, can eat hundreds or even thousands of ants at once. 
– Natural Audubon Society

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Thursday/ hazy skies 😟

Here is tonight’s sunset, seen from Capitol Hill’s 14th Avenue at Thomas Street.
That’s a layer of smoke out there, from the wildfires east of the Cascades, and also from those burning in Oregon and California.

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Tuesday/ it’s Harris-Walz 👩🏽👴🏼

I was convinced that VP Kamala Harris would pick Governor Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania as her running mate, but we learned this morning that it is Governor Tim Walz from Minnesota.

Here’s Lisa Lerer writing for the New York Times:
In selecting Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris has picked a partner who is many things she is not: a product of small-town America. A union member known to campaign in a T-shirt and camo hat. A white guy who exudes Midwestern dad energy.

And, perhaps most important, a politician who has had to rely on the support of independent, or even Republican, voters to win elections.

Their pairing is somewhat predictable; a cardinal rule of vice-presidential selection is to construct the ticket with political balance in mind. But it is also a statement about what many Democrats believe is one of Ms. Harris’s key vulnerabilities: that she is perceived as too liberal, putting even the small slice of rural, working-class and moderate voters that she needs across Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan out of her reach.

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Monday/ don’t panic (yet) 📉

It was a rough Monday for stock indexes across the world, but most economists think the US economy is just slowing down somewhat, and that a recession is not yet in sight.
Now it is already Tuesday in Japan, and it seems Japanese shares are clawing back most of their record losses from Monday (the Nikkei 225 traded about 10% higher early on).

The three major indexes are well down from their highs, but still up for the year.
Dow Jones at 3% up (down from 9% up on July 17);
Nasdaq at 8% up (down from 23% up on July 24);
S&P 500 at 9% up (down from 19% up on July 16).