"The towers were so tall that for someone on the observation deck, the horizon was forty-five miles away. This distance was far enough along Earth’s curved surface for the Sun to set two minutes later for the person on the observation deck than it did for someone on the ground floor. If you could have run up the stairs at one flight per second, you would literally have stopped the sunset. Alas, you’d eventually have run out of breath or run out of floors. In either case, at that moment you’d lose the Sun for the night, as it set gently below your horizon."

Neil Degrasse Tyson

(via @nicoleslaw)

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Suns (From Sunsets) from Flickr, 2006-ongoing, by Penelope Umbrico

From Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It:

Pessoa was right; there’s no point going to Constantinople to see a sunset; they’re the same the world over. But you do it anyway; you go to Constantinople and Phnom Bakheng and everywhere else, and while you’re there, you catch the sunset. While traveling, in fact, watching the sunset gives the day a purpose and meaning it can otherwise lack. Even so, few things seem more idiotic than waiting on a sunset. Waiting on the sunset becomes an activity, an exercise in abeyance. Idleness, doing nothing, is raised to the level of sharply focused purpose. Expectation becomes a form of sustained exertion. You wait for it to happen even though it’s going to happen anyway. Or not happen.

— Geoff Dyer