Missouri

Missouri Is Home To One Of The Best Dark Sky Parks In The World

Published

2 years ago

September 30, 2022

Missouri Is Home To One Of The Best Dark Sky Parks In The World

Posted in Missouri
Nature September 30, 2022
by Beth Worth-Williams

Had been you a kind of youngsters who used to lie down on the grass and gaze up on the sky on a starry night time? Perhaps you had been hoping for a capturing star? Or maybe you puzzled if life existed past what we may see? Stargazing has at all times been widespread in Missouri and for good cause. Now we have numerous darkish skies, from Echo Bluff State Park to Thousand Hills State Park, to spend a night watching the celebrities. For those who’ve by no means been to this park in Missouri, you would possibly discover it shortly turns into a favourite.

Broemmelsiek Park in Defiance attracts guests for its many facilities – mountain climbing trails, a canine park, and picnic tables, to call a couple of.

Nevertheless, it is also dwelling to an astronomy viewing space that draws each novice {and professional} astronomers.

The astronomy viewing space is open 24 hours a day, all 12 months round, though you may must get there early if you wish to rating one of many viewing stations.

Every of the concrete viewing stations has electrical energy, an enormous promoting level for these with probably the most trendy astronomy gear.

As a result of it is so distant, the park in Missouri is predominately free of sunshine air pollution, which gives a one-of-a-kind stargazing expertise.

If you would like to get along with different stargazers, be a part of the Friday Night time Open Home, hosted by the Astronomical Society of Jap Missouri.

Each Friday night time, when the climate permits, stargazers collect to view the nighttime sky, utilizing the membership’s telescopes.

Study extra on the St. Charles County, Missouri web site. Or, cease by its Fb web page.

Have you ever been to this park in Missouri for stargazing? What did you assume? Share your expertise within the feedback! For an journey of a distinct sort, go to this little-known nature protect in Missouri.

Handle: Broemmelsiek Park Astronomy Web site, 1593 Schwede Rd, Defiance, MO 63341, USA

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Missouri

Mizzou baseball completes season sweep of Missouri State

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58 mins ago

April 24, 2024

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Missouri

After backlash to March primary, Missouri lawmakers debate reversing 2022 election change

Published

8 hours ago

April 23, 2024

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After backlash to March primary, Missouri lawmakers debate reversing 2022 election change

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KFVS) – After this year’s presidential preference primary in Missouri, many voters are calling for state lawmakers to return the process to state control.

The 2024 election cycle was the first presidential primary to be administered by a party-run primary system after Gov. Mike Parson signed a 2022 law to shift the burden from state and local election officials.

“My sense is that the clerks obviously didn’t like having two elections within 30 days of each other because of some logistical concerns and evidentiary concerns if there are problems or audits,” Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said. “There was also the concern about the cost.”

The cost to state and local governments of running the presidential preference primary was roughly $10 million, according to Ashcroft.

Additionally, the new system also allowed the individual parties to restrict participation to only registered members.

Missouri Republicans moved to a caucus system, where participants convene county-level party meetings to choose the candidate through either secret ballots or a public showing of support.

However, those meetings happen on one day in singular county locations, making participation and access far more challenging.

“The way this has played out [reveals] the caucus system really does disenfranchise voters,” said state Rep. Ben Baker, R-Neosho.

Baker is one of several lawmakers who have filed versions of a bill to reverse the 2022 change and reinstate the state-administered preference primary.

“I’ve probably had more complaints from constituents over this issue than anything that I’ve done – or not done – in the past six years,” Baker told the House Special Committee on Public Policy Tuesday.

The Democratic Party in Missouri organized a state-wide election for its march selection, but House Elections Committee’s ranking member, state Rep. Joe Adams, D-University City, said it was not as well-resourced as an election run by the state government.

“I would like everybody to have the opportunity to have a say in who the presidential candidate will be that they will vote for in November,” Adams said. “I want people to participate.”

With less than a month left in the legislative session, it’s increasingly less likely that this policy change will reach the governor’s desk for passage, but it’s also not a pressing deadline with two more sessions before Missourians would have to vote on another presidential candidate in 2028.

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Missouri

Tech glitch on 4/20 caused Missouri cannabis businesses to lose sales • Missouri Independent

Published

15 hours ago

April 23, 2024

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Tech glitch on 4/20 caused Missouri cannabis businesses to lose sales • Missouri Independent

April 20 is a day recognized globally for celebrating cannabis culture, but it’s also like the cannabis industry’s Black Friday.

Dispensaries offer deals designed to inspire people to flood their stores to stock up.

However on Saturday, dispensaries across the state using an inventory platform called Dutchie were hamstrung for hours by technical challenges, which caused many of their registers to go down or move at snail pace.

It was the second year in a row that a 4/20 sales surge caused the system to crash.

“Imagine running a restaurant where you have one burner working and you normally have 20 stoves operating,” said Nick Rinella, CEO of Hippos Cannabis dispensaries. “We had one burner going.”

Each Hippos location went from selling around 500 items per hour to less than 100 because of the issues the outages were causing, he said.

Dutchie is similar to the platforms major stores, such as Home Depot and Walmart, use to scan items at check out. However, Dutchie also has the special function of communicating with the state’s seed-to-sale tracking system called Metrc.

It keeps the stores compliant with the state’s stringent tracking requirements of marijuana products.

With recreational marijuana now legal, 4/20 looked much different in Missouri

Rinella said all three Hippos dispensaries in Springfield, Chesterfield and Columbia faced delays all day — causing them to lose an estimated $200,000.

Mark Hendren, president of Flora Farms, also said his six stores across the state faced delays up to five hours. He’s not sure what kind of loss Flora Farms experienced, he said, because the company extended their deals through Monday to make it up to their customers.

“It seems to be working,” he said.

John Mueller, CEO of Greenlight cannabis company, said his 15 stores were not impacted, nor were any of the company’s 32 stores across the country. Greenlight stores experienced some outages last year, he said, so they were expecting the same this year.

“We prepared and trained for the outage that never came,” Mueller said. “But I’ve heard from a number of my peers that they had outages and somehow we did not.”

Dispensaries that are on certain servers faced more difficulties, Rinella said, but it’s the luck of the draw which servers companies are put on. Companies can’t pay more to get on the “good server,” he said.

Missouri was not alone. Dispensaries across the country experienced delays on Dutchie.

“This year’s 4/20 was a record setting day for the majority of Dutchie powered dispensaries,” Chris Ostrowski, chief technology officer of Dutchie, said in a statement emailed to The Independent.

Ostowski said the systems powered more than two million transactions, representing $165 Million dollars in retail commerce — which was a 50% increase from last year’s 4/20.

“While Dutchie and our partners prepared extensively for this year’s 4/20, a group of customers local to a specific instance of our POS system experienced serious issues that impacted their ability to transact,” Ostrowski said.

The difficulties impacted less than 20% of Dutchie customers, he said.

Rinella said Dutchie’s statement just made the incident sting even more.

“Hearing that is just painful to me,” Rinella said. “So they had a 50% increase. That means I probably would have had a 50% increase had they not jacked my entire system for the day.”

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It’s unclear if Missouri’s cannabis industry had record-breaking sales this past weekend. April’s sales numbers won’t be available on the state’s website until early May.

However, Rinella said the sales were likely record-breaking, which is why the bandwidth on Dutchie’s server couldn’t handle the volume that was coming through.

Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for the Division of Cannabis Regulation, said the Dutchie malfunctions did not interfere with the division’s tracking operations.

“While licensees are permitted to use these [point of sale] systems, it is their responsibility to ensure each day’s transactions and inventory are recorded accurately in the statewide track and trace system,” Cox said, “no matter what happens with the POS system.”

Rinella said the staff and customers were very understanding, and hopes any new customers that came to the stores on 4/20 aren’t discouraged to come back.

“We kind of want to do more of an apology,” he said. “Obviously, this wasn’t something that we could control, but we do want to be able to make sure that customers get the greatest experience they can possibly get when coming to a dispensary.”

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