TWO FULL MOONS IN THE AUTUMN SKY!

Get ready for a beautiful celestial spectacle!

In 2026, the September and October full moons bring two famous seasonal names:

September 26 — Harvest Moon

The Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. Traditionally, its bright evening light helped farmers continue working after sunset during the harvest season.

October 26 — Hunter’s Moon

The following full moon is traditionally known as the Hunter’s Moon. Historically, its bright light was associated with preparing for winter and hunting after the harvest.

Why are they called “Harvest” and “Hunter’s” Moons?

These names come from traditional seasonal naming systems, particularly those associated with Indigenous and European traditions. The names can vary by culture and region.

Fun fact:

A full moon occurs when the Moon is opposite the Sun as seen from Earth, allowing the side facing Earth to appear almost completely illuminated.

Look up!

If skies are clear around these dates, step outside after sunset and look toward the eastern horizon. The Moon can appear especially dramatic when it is low in the sky, surrounded by the colors of dusk.

#science #space #fact #facts

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JUST IN: Meta to build two rapid-deployment membrane data centers in…

Kuna, Idaho (about 15 miles south of Boise).

Meta made headlines last week when it announced the first part of its Project Peregrine AI data center campus was complete.

That campus broke ground in 2022 and was planned for more than 960,000 square feet.

But Meta is quietly moving forward on phase two already.

I was digging through the City of Kuna planning records this week and found case 25-24-DR.

The documents show that Meta added 40 acres directly north of the existing campus at 14375 S. Cole Road. That increased the site scope from 242 acres to 282 acres.

The plans call for two rapid-deployment membrane data center buildings, 135,000 square feet each.

Permits are already approved, too.

HENSEL PHELPS and VECA Electric are tied to electrical permits at the site. Southland Industries has two mechanical permits worth about $32.8 million each.

Those permit sizes line up with the two new buildings.

There’s also an August filing for a buried 10-inch natural gas line running to the same property.

I haven’t seen Meta say anything publicly about these two buildings. But the latest satellite imagery shows site work is already underway.

P.S. Want a list of data center projects like this one that are under construction? Get the spreadsheet here: constructiontrends.co

 

 

A familiar spectre is haunting the nation—that of communism. Or so one might conclude from the Republican Party’s increasingly frantic rhetoric.

Following a string of wins by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in congressional primaries from New York to Colorado to Michigan, even reaching as far as Florida, the GOP is dusting off an old refrain.

“Communism is on the ballot this November,” warned House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) at a press conference. President Donald Trump has gone further still, calling communism “the biggest threat to our nation there is, maybe since our founding.”

At first glance, this reads like little more than election-year theatrics. The candidates provoking such alarm are, on the whole, hardly the revolutionaries their critics imagine.

But, try as they might, no amount of fearmongering, surveillance, or censorship will dampen the working person’s dream for a more dignified life, one where their labor is compensated fairly, their dollar stretches further, and their children inherit a secure future.

Many of the policies promoted by today’s democratic socialists fall comfortably within the lineage of the New Deal: strengthening labor protections, expanding access to healthcare, greater investment in public infrastructure, and so on.

That House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) would liken their ascendance to “a nightmare… a trail to certain death,” ought to strike any person of sound mind as patently absurd.

Yet dismissing such a frenzied reaction as mere campaign-season hyperbole risks overlooking what it actually reveals: staggering insecurity.

If the political establishment had any real confidence in their track record, they wouldn’t need to manufacture so much anxiety around their opposition.

It is precisely because they can feel their grip on the public’s trust slipping that they have resorted to reviving the McCarthyist witch hunts of yesteryear—an effort that extends well beyond incendiary speeches.

Last year, President Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), directing federal agencies to expand policing of social movements linked to “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” among other ideological strains, ostensibly to “identify and prevent potential violent activity.”

NSPM-7 has, in turn, become the legal backbone for an aggressive crackdown on dissent, seen in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issuing “warning notices” to those who have criticized the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whether that be through social media posts or email correspondence.

Recent reporting even uncovered a sweeping probe, dubbed “Operation Puppet Master” by DHS, into a number of left-wing groups in Minnesota after the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by ICE and Border Patrol agents, respectively, earlier this year.

The probe included, among other things, the subpoenaing of financial records from various labor unions and nonprofits, as well as “spying operations conducted by undercover agents who posed as activists and surveilled community activities.”

It is little wonder that such egregious actions have since been compared to COINTELPRO, J Edgar Hoover’s illegal pet project designed to infiltrate, surveil, and discredit civil rights and anti-war activists who caught the ire of the federal government.

This, paired with the White House creating its own blacklist of journalists and influencers on its official “Media Offenders” page, many of whom are cited for such severe transgressions as “Left-Wing Lunacy,” suggests that the hysterical talking points GOP leadership have taken to heart are the vehicle for a broader crusade of political repression.

Such heavy-handed surveillance is undoubtedly born out of a deep-seated panic among those in power. This latest Red Scare is, at its core, a reaction to the working-class rightfully demanding its fair share of the economic pie.

The rise of the DSA, and of the left-wing ideas it propagates, owes much to the fact that its members speak plainly about the financial woes of the everyday person.

Take, for instance, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has striven to take an honest accounting of the financial hardship faced by New Yorkers, and in turn offer tangible remedies like free childcare and a rent freeze.

In contrast, Trump administration officials are desperate to pull the wool over the eyes of the people, with Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, recently claiming that the economy “looks amazing,” despite nearly 80% of voters feeling otherwise.

In fact, public confidence in capitalism broadly has fallen to 54%, according to Gallup polling released last year, the lowest level since the organization began tracking the question. At the same time, socialism commands comparatively steady support, especially among Democratic voters, roughly two-thirds of whom view it favorably.

The generational divide is even more striking. A survey conducted by YouGov and the Cato Institute found that 62% of Americans under 30 hold a favorable view of socialism, while 34% say the same of communism. Of course, each of these labels mean different things to different respondents, but the overarching trend is difficult to ignore.

For many Americans, especially those on the younger side, capitalism is synonymous with constraint, and it’s not hard to see why.

While billionaires’ assets have surged to preposterous heights, the cascading inflationary shocks of war have steadily eroded workers’ purchasing power.

Cornerstones of the American Dream have been priced out of reach for working families, with 62% of Americans now viewing homeownership as unrealistic.

Meanwhile, more than 40% of American households have persistently struggled to cover the cost of basic necessities on their current income.

Yet, rather than confronting the economic frustrations driving millions of Americans to question the status quo, the Trump administration has chosen to paint a target on the backs of those who offer the public a meaningful alternative.

And it is for this reason that yet another Red Scare is an altogether futile, albeit dangerous, distraction meant to blind us to the real struggle of our time: the fight against a rigged economy.

If those in power must conjure ghosts to terrify the people, it is surely because their earthly defenses are failing.

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A.J. Schumann is a former Henry Wallace fellow working on the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

 

Sachs is pointing out that a tiny number of billionaires have enormous political influence. Many of the same ultra-wealthy people control major information platforms, including news outlets and social media, and their narratives and algorithms are shaped to protect the future these billionaires want to create. Political power and information power reinforce each other.

This is why some form of plutocracy or oligarchy has been a reality in the US for many, many decades. It's only now being talked about because many are starting to realize it.

Democracy is not much more than a pacifying illusion at this point in time.

What Sachs points out has been going on for a long time, impacting both parties in the US. When a populace doesn't have access to legitimate media, their vote is not worth much, as they aren't accurately informed about what is going on in their world. Very few well funded media outlets are informing citizens well.

One of the biggest challenges facing media today is it has to be profitable. Once this becomes reality, they now have to maintain a paying audience. This usually traps them into having to push narratives to "hold onto" their audience. They become captured by that audience and can't change or they face losing their subscribers. How can media outlets in that environment truly thrive?

Having been in media for 17 years, trust me, you either have to play the game and mislead people or lose your paying audience over time.

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A new 10-year study from France is challenging one of the biggest assumptions in modern agriculture.

Can farms produce food without pesticides?

According to researchers, the answer can be yes, under the right conditions.

The study, coordinated by France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), followed nine different pesticide-free cropping systems across nine locations in France.

The goal was ambitious: grow crops without using any pesticides, including chemical treatments and seed treatments.

Instead, researchers relied on longer and more diverse crop rotations, plant diversity, healthy soils, prevention techniques and other agroecological methods to reduce weeds, pests and diseases. Synthetic mineral fertilizers were still allowed.

The results showed that going pesticide-free does not automatically mean giving up competitive yields.

Yields were often lower than conventional systems using chemical pesticides, but in some situations they reached similar levels or even exceeded them. Crop damage from pests and diseases also did not significantly increase over the 10-year period.

The economic results were also encouraging.

Across the four conventional arable systems where economic performance could be calculated, estimated income was between one and two times the French minimum wage in 20% of cases, between two and three times in 45%, and more than three times in 35% of the years studied.

But the researchers are not saying every farm can immediately eliminate pesticides.

Weed control remained difficult in some situations, and certain systems required ploughing to manage persistent weeds. The researchers also say that successful pesticide-free agriculture requires diversified crop rotations, suitable markets and ways to give added economic value to the products.

What the study does show is that agriculture does not necessarily have to choose between conventional farming and organic farming.

There may be another path: carefully designed farming systems that produce competitive harvests while eliminating pesticides.

The challenge now is figuring out where, how and at what scale those systems can work in the real world.