My wife's college friend Naoko spent three years in Kansas as an agricultural researcher. She came home with 3,000 photos. Four of them are the Grand Canyon. Two thousand one hundred are handwritten signs. I asked her why. "In Japan, signs tell you what you can't do. No parking. No entry. No food. No talking. In America, people take a piece of cardboard and a marker, and they write something kind to a stranger they will never meet. Then they tape it to a mailbox. I couldn't stop taking pictures." She let me go through them. These are her favorites, with her notes. "FRESH EGGS $3. HONOR SYSTEM. CASH BOX BELOW." (Ohio. No camera. No lock. There was $46 in the box. I counted. I put in $5 and felt watched by God.) "LOST CAT. His name is Moose. He is fat and mean. We love him. Please call." (I did not find Moose. I think about Moose often.) "FREE FIREWOOD. STAY WARM." (Vermont. Two words from a stranger. In Japan, a sign has never once told me to stay warm.) "CH__CH. WHAT'S MISSING? U R." (I read it three times. Then I understood. Then I went in.) "SNOW SHOVELING. FREE FOR SENIORS AND VETERANS. CALL TYLER (AGE 13)." (Tyler is 13. Tyler is in business. Tyler is not making any money. Tyler is a great businessman.) "SLOW DOWN. GRANDKIDS PLAYING. GRANDMA HAS YOUR LICENSE PLATE." (I drove 9 miles per hour. Grandma was on the porch. She waved. I do not think it was a friendly wave.) "WELCOME HOME DADDY. 287 DAYS." (Painted on a bedsheet, hanging from a garage in Kansas. Three different handwritings. One of them very small. I don't know this family. I pulled over and cried for a man I will never meet.) "FREE COFFEE FOR TRUCKERS. YOU KEEP THIS COUNTRY RUNNING." (A rest stop in Iowa. Two old men behind a folding table. One of them told me I was not a trucker. Then he gave me coffee anyway.) "CAN'T AFFORD TO WASH YOUR CLOTHES? ASK FOR LINDA. NO QUESTIONS." (A laundromat in Missouri. I didn't need Linda. I just stood there and loved her for a minute.) And then there's one photo that isn't very good. It's dark. It's blurry. She took it with shaking hands. A paper taped to the door of a closed gas station on a two-lane road in western Kansas. "CLOSED. IF YOU'RE STUCK, CALL EARL. I'M JUST UP THE ROAD." It was 11:40 at night. Naoko had a flat tire. No signal for most of the drive. One bar, right there by the door. She called. Earl was 81. He came in his truck in slippers and a bathrobe. His wife June came too, because, as Earl explained, "She don't let me go out at night alone anymore." Earl changed the tire with a flashlight in his mouth. June sat in the truck with the heater running, poured coffee from a thermos, and handed it through the window. "You're shaking, honey. Drink this." When it was done, Naoko tried to give him money. He wouldn't touch it. She said, "In Japan, I could never repay something like this." Earl said, "Then don't." "Just leave your porch light on for somebody." Naoko has been back in Japan for two years. In front of her house, there is a wooden box. Every week she fills it with tangerines from her garden. On the box is a handwritten sign, in Japanese and English. "FREE. TAKE WHAT YOU NEED." The first week, nobody touched it. The neighbors thought it was a trap. The second week, an old man took two and left a note. "Thank you." The third week, someone she has never met left a bag of persimmons. It has been two years. That box has never once been empty. America, the world watches your news and thinks it knows you. It doesn't. You're not in the headlines. You're on a piece of cardboard. In marker. Taped to a mailbox. Leaning on a fence post in the rain. "Stay warm." "Take what you need." "I'm just up the road." If you've been wondering where your country went, it didn't go anywhere. Go for a drive. It's still taped to the mailboxes.

That’s one big chandelier… The @NASAHubble team captured this sparkling photo of the Chandelier Cluster, a globular star cluster within our Milky Way galaxy. A globular cluster is a dense collection of thousands to millions of stars bound by gravity.

Today is Rosaria's birthday! A perfect reason to remember my old photo shoot 😋 She’s one of my main DPSes! (alongside Нanfei) Also her design is fantastic, and I love her personality ❤️ Do you like Rosaria, too? What’s your build for her? #GenshinImpact# #Rosaria#

According to the latest data from China's National Energy Administration, the country's installed solar photovoltaic (#PV#) capacity reached 1.286 billion kilowatts by the end of July 2026, surpassing coal-fired capacity for the first time and establishing #solar# power as China's largest power source by installed capacity. ☀️Solar power now accounts for 31.5% of China's total installed #power# capacity. From January to July 2026, China's PV power generation exceeded 802.4 billion kilowatt-hours, a year-on-year increase of 15.5%. To put it simply, that's one in every eight kilowatt-hours of #electricity# consumed in China. Globally, eight out of every ten PV modules are "Made in China." China's core technologies remain firmly in the world's top tier, and the R&D of next-generation PV technologies is also accelerating. #ChineseNation#

Russia is ready to allow foreign scientists to use the new "Siberian Circular Photon Source" which has just opened in Novosibirsk It's one of the most powerful particle accelerators on Earth.

My wife's cousin Reiko just retired after 34 years as a flight attendant for a Japanese airline. Most of those years were on flights to and from America. Japanese passengers are the quietest passengers on Earth. They do not talk to strangers. They do not press the call button, because that would be a bother. When the plane lands, they sit in silence and wait to be told they may stand. Reiko kept a small notebook in her apron pocket for 34 years. The title on the first page, in Japanese, is "Americans at 35,000 feet." I got to read it last week. Here are some pages. DALLAS "By the time we serve drinks, row 34 has shown each other pictures of their dogs. By the time we serve dinner, someone in row 34 has been invited to a wedding." CHICAGO "Three different men stood up to give a young soldier their first-class seat. They argued about it in the aisle. He was asleep in economy before they finished." HOUSTON "A baby would not stop crying. On a Japanese flight, everyone politely pretends nothing is happening. Here, a grandmother three rows back stood up, held out her arms, and said, 'Give him here, sugar. Go eat your dinner.' She walked that baby up and down the aisle for an hour. They had never met. When she gave him back, he was asleep and she was showing him pictures of her grandchildren." OHIO "A man pressed the call button at 3 a.m. I ran. He whispered, 'I just wanted to tell you you're doing a great job.' He was asleep again before I stood up. In 34 years, nobody else has ever pressed the call button to give me something." MONTANA "A cowboy lifted my bag into the overhead bin. I am the crew. He did it anyway. He said his mother would know if he didn't." NEW YORK "Every American thanks us at the door. All of them. One man from Texas shook the captain's hand and asked whether he was available for adoption." Then there's one flight that takes up eleven pages. Chicago to Tokyo. Four hours from landing. A Japanese grandfather, 80, in row 41, flying home from visiting his granddaughter, grabbed his chest and slumped into the aisle. Reiko got on the intercom and asked the question every flight attendant dreads. "Is there a doctor on board?" On a full Japanese flight, she says, that question is followed by a long, polite silence. Everyone hopes someone more qualified will stand up. On this flight, seven people stood up at once. An ER doctor from Chicago. A children's doctor from Atlanta. An ICU nurse from Ohio. A paramedic from Arizona. A retired Army medic, 78, who said, "Vietnam. I still remember." A veterinarian from Iowa, who said, "Technically I'm a horse doctor. But I'm here." And a plumber from Michigan. "I'm not anything," he told Reiko. "But I can hold stuff." For four hours, over the Pacific, they worked on him in the galley. The doctors kept him stable. The nurse ran the oxygen. The paramedic and the Army medic took turns. The veterinarian, a large man, held the IV bag over his head for two hours straight and refused to let anybody take a turn. And the plumber knelt on the galley floor beside the old man and held his hand. Not one word of Japanese. The old man had no English. So the plumber pulled up his photos and showed him fish. Walleye. Bass. A pike so big he had to show it twice. The old man, gray in the face, reached for his own phone and showed him his granddaughter. Then the plumber showed his grandkids. They traded pictures for four hours. On page nine, Reiko wrote one line that I keep coming back to: "The doctors kept his heart beating. The plumber kept him wanting it to." When the plane touched down in Tokyo, an ambulance was waiting at the gate. The old man was alive. And then three hundred passengers started clapping. The Americans started it. Reiko has heard Americans clap when a plane lands a thousand times. She always thought it was a little strange. The pilot can't hear it. The plane doesn't care. That night, after 34 years and something like four thousand landings, Reiko clapped too. The old man is 81 now. He's fine. This spring, he caught his first fish. Ever. He mailed a photo of it to Michigan. It's a very small fish. He sent it twice. America, I know half of you are embarrassed about clapping when the plane lands. Please don't stop. Reiko asked me to pass this along: the crew can hear you.

Planning. Patience. Perfect timing. Photographer Matt Ley captured the full moon appearing to shine from inside Highland Light Station at Cape Cod National Seashore. Established in 1797, it's one of more than 700 historic lighthouses still standing across the United States.