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Happy Winter Solstice Day [1]

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Date: 2024-12-21  

Happy Winter Solstice day for those in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Solstice occurred at 4:21 a.m. EST this morning.

It marks the official start of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, but the good news is that the days will now get longer each day for the next 6 months.

Here is an image of earth taken by NOAA satellite GOES-16 at 09:21 UTC when the Northern Hemisphere reached its maximum tilt away from the sun. GOES-16 is a weather satellite located in geostationary orbit around Earth's equator at altitude 35,786 km and longitude 75.2° West (NYC is at 74° West).

The scene this morning at Stonehenge, where crowds of pagans, druids, hippies and tourists gathered to continue the tradition of celebrating the celestial event.

Druid leader Arthur Uther Pendragon, center, holds up his staff as he takes part in a Winter Solstice ceremony by the ancient stone circle of Stonehenge, in southern England, Dec. 21, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

An interesting piece of history about the stones at Stonehenge from apnews.com/...

In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University say that the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had some unifying purpose in ancient times. They base that on a recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site. What was surprising was that it came from so far away. It was long known that the other stones come from all over Britain — including the so-called bluestones, the smaller stones at the site that came from Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) away. That varied geology is what makes Stonehenge unique among over 900 stone circles in Britain. “The fact that all of its stones originated from distant regions ... suggests that the stone circle may have had a political as well as a religious purpose,” said lead author Professor Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology. It may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos,” Parker Pearson said.

Here is an interesting time-lapse video from the Antarctic taken on December 16. The Sun circles around above the Horizon, never setting during the 24-hour day. Flat-earthers have a hard time dealing with this.

Here is a graph showing the length of the day and night in NYC over the course of the year as a result of earth’s axial tilt -

In other good news, Democrats stifled the musk-trump assault on Congress this week to remove the debt ceiling that musk and trump demanded so that they can borrow more money and give it to their billionaire friends or else risk a government shutdown. This morning, there is no shutdown, the debt ceiling remains in place, republicans got a few scraps, but the bills for pediatric cancer research and transfer of the RFK stadium to DC government were passed as separate bills by Senate Democrats overnight. More in diary at “Shutdown averted. The people win. musk and trump lose. For now.”

Hope this special day and the holiday season ahead brings joy and strength to you and your loved ones. Lets’ recharge our batteries to fight the new musk-trump regime as it starts its crusade to spread chaos and inflict misery on the people across the country. The planning and messaging for the mid-term elections in 2026 starts now.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/12/21/2293130/-Happy-Winter-Solstice-Day?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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