On this day, December 27, 2008 hail and snow on my street. Barbara, my wife, took this picture with my 3.1 megapixel Canon camera. I was at work. Kodak was still selling lots of film.


As identified by The Week magazine these were Donald Trump’s significant accomplishments during his presidency.
The judiciary
Trump’s “most lasting impact on the country” is likely the drastic reshaping of America’s courts, Business Insider said. By installing more than 200 federal judges, including 54 who “reshaped the ideological makeup of federal appeals courts” and three who drove a “generational shift in the highest court in the land,” Trump’s impact on the judicial branch of government overall will “continue shaping the American legal and political landscape for decades,” CNN said.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
Trump’s 2017 tax bill — colloquially The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — was arguably his “biggest legislative achievement,” which was intended, per Trump, to “super-charge the economy,” said Politico. It was also the “biggest tax overhaul since the Tax Reform Act of 1986,” the Brookings Institute said, but “skewed toward the rich” and “failed to deliver promised economic benefits,” said the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. One unambiguous takeaway: “U.S. corporations got to keep more of their money, and the U.S. government got less,” said Bloomberg.
Space Force
It was the stuff of jokes and mockery when Trump announced in 2018 that he planned to back a long dormant plan to create a sixth, space-focused branch of the U.S. Armed Services — the first new branch since the Air Force was founded in the wake of World War II. But just one year after its official founding in 2019, Space Force had “developed from a theoretical concept to an operational service fully engaged in a broad spectrum of activities,” West Point’s Lieber Institute said. While the Space Force’s annual budget grew over the first four years of its existence, that upward trend “will stop in fiscal 2025, for which the service is requesting $29.4 billion, down $0.6 billion from last year,” Defense One said.
Criminal justice reform
While much of Trump’s experience in the realm of criminal justice has been as a litigant, rather than policy expert, he nevertheless helped champion the historic First Step Act, the “most sweeping set of changes to the federal criminal justice system since the 1990s,” NBC said. The bipartisan-backed law “allows thousands of people to earn an earlier release from prison and could cut many more prison sentences in the future,” said Vox, and represents “modest steps to alter the federal criminal justice system and ease very punitive prison sentences at the federal level.” The law has shown “promising results thus far,” with beneficiaries showing recidivism rates “considerably lower than those who were released from prison without benefit of the law,” The Sentencing Project said.

From Bing
If you encounter a herd of African bush elephants roaming the savanna take heed: The one in charge is likely the family’s matriarch. And it is best to get out of her 7-foot, 3-ton way. Herds, or family units, are made up of the matriarch and related females. When calves are born, they’re raised in a cooperative manner by the mother with the help of other young female elephants called allomothers.
The African bush elephant has the largest body and biggest brain of any land mammal. Scientists think the elephant’s complex brain structure is a good indicator of its intelligence—not just because of the brain’s size, but the fact that elephants in both the wild and captivity have exhibited complex and emotional behaviors, all signs of a highly intelligent species.
Four best photos taken with my new Panasonic DMC-FZ1000 camera. Much higher pixel count photos than those taken with older models that have a smaller sensor. The result is sharper pictures. Click the link.
The dell is a narrow canyon and the trail is less than a mile in length. The small creek helps keep the plant life lush.
https://www.twenty20.com/collections/d561752b-b4c2-4aba-b75c-7b298350b7be
Carefully selected from my thousands of photos. These are all taken by me. Not photos copied from the internet. Keep checking on the link Best Photography at 300 DPI for a growing selection.
Yangshuo County boasts a generous helping of the spiky karst hills and meandering rivers that southern China’s Guangxi region is renowned for. There are large cities and towns in Yangshuo, but also many small, extremely picturesque villages nestled along waterways and tucked below craggy peaks. We’re gazing down here on the village of Cuiping, not far from Yangshuo Town and a magnet for visitors equipped with lots of extra smartphone photo storage. They’re going to need it for all the images they’ll take of this fantastical landscape. And while views from a river raft will doubtless be charming, the real wows come from trekking up the hillsides and getting a birds-eye view of the scene.
I stumbled on this photo and description on the internet.
I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize myself anymore. There is not a damn thing we can do about it. Just smile and think happy thoughts.
In Kruger National Park, South Africa, lions have been photographed sleeping on roads and wild dogs have been filmed playing on golf courses while the country is in lockdown.
Richard Sowry, a park ranger, spotted a group of sleeping lions in the middle of the road during a patrol on Wednesday. The park explained the lions are normally found in Kempiana Contractual Park, which is closed to tourists, but appear to be making the most of the quiet streets, taking a nap near one of the park’s entrance gates, near a camp that can accommodate dozens of visitors.
Source for this is Newsweek magazine.
The tree is probably 60 years old. It was not looking well. The nursery suggested a fertilizer mix to spread every three months. The crop was big last year and this year the branches are almost touching the ground thanks to the heavy load of fruit. The tree is easily 30 feet tall and I can see the fruit near the top. They will be bright orange around January 1. The squirrels are going to have a wonderful time.