November 2023: The Thankful Edition
Word!
Welcome to my new newsletter home, Buttondown. I previously hosted this on Substack, but transitioned away because they’re horrible people.
What's On My Mind
A couple weeks ago, Texas played host to an annular solar eclipse. Unlike total eclipses, annular eclipses only partially obscure the sun, which leads to spectacular effects like a ring of fire. And where you watch an eclipse matters in terms of coverage — in McKinney (north Texas), the event looked far different than the center that passed over Kerrville (south Texas).
The last time Texas experienced any eclipse was 2017, which was a brief event due to our location. The upcoming April 2024 event will literally be over my house! I won’t need to travel — but if you need a place to watch that total eclipse, my driveway is your driveway!
Leading up to this event, I got a metric shit-ton of help from Reddit that will help me with future viewings, including:
Eclipse simulators, so we could preview what we’d see and model out the start / stop times
Totality length estimates, depending on your distance from the eclipse path center. For example, McKinney will experience ~3 minutes of totality; but if I were to drive 45 miles east, I’d get an extra 90 seconds of totality!
The vibe I should expect depending on location. The closer you are to the eclipse path center, the greater likelihood of out-of-towners swarming your ‘hood!
Advice to prepare for weather contingencies. Although my backyard will afford a great view, it could also be cloudy, so I’ll have a few plans available for traveling southwest / northeast as needed.
Overall, I feel blessed that such a coincidental event was in my backyard. And if you missed it, a total solar eclipse is coming next April (plenty of time to stock up on virgins to sacrifice)!
Some Interesting Links
If you haven't seen The Beatles documentary Get Back, put down this newsletter and get started ASAP. Then once you're saturated with feelings of what-could-have-been, listen to this final Beatles song created with the help of AI.
Last week's Dallas Cowboys victory over the Rams was a first-time Scorigami!
The Zeitpyramide is the building of a pyramid one block at a time, every ten years, until 3183. Can’t wait to see it finished!
Recommended Reading
Lately, I've been binging audiobooks. This is partially because I've been trying to walk more, so there's plenty of time to kill, but I was also staying up late building Halloween costumes.
As I type this, I'm 2 hours away from finishing up the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Liu Cixin. You're probably more-familiar with the title of its first book The Three-Body Problem.
As a past history major, I'm a big fan of any imaginary timelines, and this one is a doozy. I won't spoil the plot, but this epic of intermingling human & alien civilizations was fun to consume. The first book was the most-interesting due to the unfolding mysteries, but also because of how real-world events like the Cultural Revolution directly impacted the fate of our solar system.
Sure, the audiobooks end-to-end total 65 hours! But if you're reading this newsletter, you obviously have free time, so get started — and LMK when your book report is ready.
That's all for today. LMK if you've stumbled upon anything interesting!
Ciao!
MMc...