VHF (FM radio in the US is in the VHF band) propagation can definitely change at different times of day.
One of my favorite activities in the summer is to go get lost in the Cascades, and when the sun goes down, settle in to a hammock with a little multi-band radio to see what I can pick up. As the evening wears on, I can typically start to receive FM radio stations in Canada several hundred kilometers away. Once the sun has risen again, I can no longer tune those stations no matter how much I fiddle with antenna orientation. NOAA weather bands also become easier to tune clearly at night.
As to why VHF frequencies seem to propagate better at night, I could only speculate, but they do seem to—at least on occasion.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skywave :
> Because the lower-altitude layers (the E-layer in particular) of the ionosphere largely disappear at night, the refractive layer of the ionosphere is much higher above the surface of the Earth at night. This leads to an increase in the "skip" or "hop" distance of the skywave at night.
Persistence and linear regression are very common methods used to extend forecasts out in computationally cheap ways. Most forecast models have really awful validation statistics after about 48-60 hours out—depending on initial conditions, location, and a few other factors—so in some sense the forecast after about 3 days out isn't ever going to be very good so it's perfectly valid to use those methods. I would not be at all surprised if that's what Weather Underground does.
Another method that's occasionally used is to just fill in with TMY (Typical Meteorological Year) data. Lots of those data sets are freely available, or if not, are very inexpensive to calculate if station data is available.
If you're looking for a minimally spammy, information dense forecast and you're in the US, it's pretty hard to beat weather.gov. (And make sure to occasionally read the zone and regional forecast discussion texts, too. They're really interesting and often educational!)
One example that's bitten me is that working with large integers is fraught with peril. If you can't be sure that your integer values can be exactly represented in an IEEE 754 double precision float and you might be exchanging data with a JavaScript implementation, mysterious truncations start to happen. If you've ever seen a JSON API and wondered why some integer values are encoded as strings rather than a native JSON number, that's why.
I love the alpine butterfly. It also helps improve the security and strength of a trucker's hitch compared to the usual slipped overhand knot loop which can be handy occasionally with heavy loads!
The closest thing I've found to what you're asking for is "The Complete Book of Knots" by Geoffrey Budworth which is generally organized into sections related to typical activities such as sailing, general outdoors, and home use. It's not nearly as comprehensive as Ashley's Book of Knots, but in brevity there is power in helping to find the right knot for the right purpose without being overwhelming.
You’d probably need to do this with an AC-DC-AC transformer to also get the circuit converted to the 50hz cycle European power systems use, but it’d just be a waste because of the power losses involved (not to mention the expense of the transformers). Also, a typical 15A circuit in a home will handle ~1.8kw of sustained load, so as long as you can dedicate a circuit to such a rig, you’d be fine.
If you're in the Apple ecosystem, subscribing and unsubscribing to several of these news sources, so long as you read them in Apple's News app, becomes a lot easier, though it can be more expensive than going direct to the publisher. But hey, you get dark mode! And no major hassle when you want to stop a subscription!
As far as quality of news, I'd echo the sentiment others have given that Wall Street Journal's factual reporting is stellar, but their opinion and editorial pieces leave a lot to be desired. I'd say the same about The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.
The Atlantic is decent for thoughtful editorials as can be The New Yorker, but honestly, you're just going to run into some sensationalism and knee-jerk, politically-motivated slant no matter what editorial/opinion sources you choose, so caveat emptor.
It's too bad the Apple news app is so user hostile. If you block a news source they don't remove it from any grids, they just hide images and text and replace it with something saying you've blocked the source. I block a lot of sources so it gets ugly fast.
I blocked a news source and I still see it in the Top Stories area all the time. It made me wonder what the point was.
It also bombarde me with celebrity gossip I don’t care about. I’ve started hitting the button to hide certain topics, but I’m always hesitant. I don’t need to know every time Will Smith posts a tweet, but if he slaps Chris Rock in the middle of an award show, I’d be interested in that. Apple News seems to have trouble surfacing just the big stuff I might care about.
That being said, I do like they it gives me access to the WSJ.
I agree! I have subscribed before to NYT, Economist using Apple’s subscriptions and therefore never had any issues in unsubscribing, or needing to call somebody to unsubscribe.
I'd be a little worried that I might be tempted to unconsciously order the values in some way which would bias the results. But you could build a box with four separate cells and a clear plexiglass top, shake them all up, and always read left-to-right or right-to-left! Sounds like a fun weekend project!
One of my favorite activities in the summer is to go get lost in the Cascades, and when the sun goes down, settle in to a hammock with a little multi-band radio to see what I can pick up. As the evening wears on, I can typically start to receive FM radio stations in Canada several hundred kilometers away. Once the sun has risen again, I can no longer tune those stations no matter how much I fiddle with antenna orientation. NOAA weather bands also become easier to tune clearly at night.
As to why VHF frequencies seem to propagate better at night, I could only speculate, but they do seem to—at least on occasion.