The Daily Noggin

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam became the 78th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, joining a growing coalition of like-minded nations committed to the peaceful, transparent, and responsible exploration of space.  

“Vietnam is joining at an important point in the development of its own space program,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson in recorded remarks for the ceremony. “NASA and the Vietnam National Space Center have built momentum in satellite innovation, land-use research, and radar-based Earth observation. Joining the Artemis Accords opens a new chapter in that relationship. We’ve aligned on the principles. The opportunities are in front of us, and now we can build on that foundation together. We are proud to welcome Vietnam to the Artemis Accords community.” 

Vietnam’s Minister of Science and Technology Vũ Hải Quân signed the Artemis Accords on behalf of the country during the Vietnam International Digital Week in Ha Long. The United States Ambassador to Vietnam Jennifer Wicks also participated in the signing event. 

Vietnam’s decision extends the U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership into a new frontier.  Built on more than 30 years of cooperation, the partnership spans defense, economic, law enforcement, war legacy, and technological cooperation, and it advances peace, stability, and prosperity in a free and open Indo-Pacific. 

Earlier this year, NASA partnered with Vietnam’s Vietnamese-German University to support the agency’s Soil Moisture Active Passive mission, which measures surface-soil water worldwide. Vietnam also inaugurated its National Space Center in Hanoi and is developing domestic satellite capabilities through the LOTUSat program, focusing on Earth observation, weather monitoring, and disaster response. 

In 2020, NASA and the State Department joined with seven other founding nations to establish the Artemis Accords, responding to the growing interest in lunar activities by both governments and private companies. They introduced the first set of practical principles aimed at enhancing the safety and coordination between nations as they explore the Moon, Mars, and beyond. 

Signing the Artemis Accords means committing to explore peaceably and transparently, to render aid to those in need, to enable access to scientific data that all of humanity can learn from, to ensure activities do not interfere with those of others, and to preserve historically significant sites and artifacts by developing best practices for space exploration for the benefit of all.  

More countries are expected to sign the Artemis Accords in the months and years ahead, as NASA continues its work to establish a safe, peaceful, and prosperous future in space.  

Learn more about the Artemis Accords at:  

https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords

Many people notice that their sleep changes over the years. They grow sleepy earlier in the evening, wake earlier in the morning and wake more often during the night. These changes are common, and they are partly the work of the body’s internal clock, which tends to shift earlier with age.

What does not change much is how much sleep we need. Sleep experts suggest that most adults over 65 do best with about seven to eight hours a night. Good sleep helps memory, mood, balance and the body’s ability to fight off illness.

The good news is that small, steady habits make a real difference.

Keep a regular schedule. Going to bed and getting up at about the same time every day, weekends included, helps the internal clock stay steady.

Get morning light. Time outdoors early in the day, or sitting by a bright window, tells the body when the day begins and helps make you sleepy at the right time in the evening.

Watch the coffee and tea. Caffeine can stay in the body for many hours. Many people sleep better if they switch to caffeine-free drinks after lunch.

Nap wisely. A short nap of 20 to 30 minutes in the early afternoon can be refreshing. Long or late naps can make it harder to fall asleep at night.

Make the bedroom restful. A cool, dark and quiet room helps. So does keeping the television and the telephone out of bed.

Be careful with a nightcap. Alcohol may make you drowsy, but it tends to break up sleep later in the night.

If you snore loudly, stop breathing for moments during sleep, or lie awake night after night, talk with your doctor. Sleep problems are common and very treatable. One of the most effective treatments for long-lasting sleeplessness is a short course of guided habit changes known as cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, which works without medicine.

On December 28, 2025, I visited Helan village in Yanbian, the homeland of Lee YJ, a Korean-Chinese woman whose story was shared on Global Voices this past October. It had been seven months since we last spoke, but her family warmly welcomed me, and kindly invited me to take part in a ritual that marks the boundaries of a family: the making of tsodibi (초디비), Yanbian-style water tofu, which is called sundubu (순두부), in standard South Korean.

Tsodibi is not tied to a specific season or calendar festival. Choi MJ explains that it is made when relatives gather together, regardless of the time of year. When family members return home, tsodibi becomes the centerpiece of the meal — typically handmade by the women of the extended family, it symbolizes family unity and cooperation.

It takes more than a day to make water tofu. First, you need to soak the soybeans overnight, then grind them into a velvety, thick paste.

Grinding twice is the key step for extracting the rich flavor from the beans. You can see the transformation: the first pass is coarse, but the second yields a creamy, refined texture that retains the full richness of the bean. We added hot water to make it smoother and easier to strain.

The second step is straining. “You’re doing this job too,” Lee invited me to work together on this step.

We put the bean paste into a cloth bag, and I pressed and squeezed the soybase out while Lee held the opening. We then transferred the liquid into a finer-meshed bag for a second straining. It was physically demanding work, especially given that most women in Lee’s family were over seventy. Yet they handled it with strength and patience, which they have cultivated from decades of experience.

Then came the heating. In their traditional kitchen, a large pot sits atop a furnace, which also serves as a floor-heating system.

“We have a modern kitchen, too, but we don’t use it much,” Lee’s youngest sister, Lee YN, commented proudly. “Our traditional way is more efficient and eco-friendly.” (Though I noticed she eventually slipped into the modern kitchen to prepare the extra side dishes!)

Lee’s brother, CS, went down to light the furnace. Tsodibi is traditionally prepared by women in Yanbian, and men’s involvement is usually limited to practical tasks such as tending the fire. 

While the pot slowly warmed, Lee and her sisters started cooking side dishes on the iron plate next to it, mostly fried kimchi made from various wild plants. Outside of Korean culture, many people believe kimchi refers only to spicy fermented cabbage, but in reality, it just means “pickles,” so the vegetables used can vary widely, and the resulting dishes are not necessarily spicy.

Lee’s family took the soybase out before the pot boiled. She quickly skimmed the foam that had risen to the top of the soybase mixture and added bittern (a coagulant). As she gently stirred, the magic happened: liquid began to clump into snowy white curds. She kept stirring, occasionally lifting out the tofu skin that bloomed on the surface like parchment.

To serve, you scoop away the excess water and serve it with a homemade sauce. The sauce was a mix of soy sauce and chopped fragrant vegetables such as onion, garlic, and chilli.

Freshly made Tsodibi has a tender, cloud-like softness, offering a rich, nutty flavor that store-bought tofu simply cannot replicate. “The best way to enjoy tofu is to make it yourself, isn’t it?” said YN.

Lee’s daughter, Choi MJ, explained that Tsodibi is usually served with a light sauce, because its flavour is already rich and nutty on its own. This is different from Chinese-style water tofu, which is more commonly stir-fried or cooked with spices and other ingredients. The Yanbian water tofu can also only be made in a traditional kitchen, using the traditional iron plate. “Modern equipment simply does not produce the same result,” said Choi.

To preserve the tofu, we ladled the curds into a square, cloth-lined box. Then filled another bowl with excess water and pressed the tofu into a solid, meaty block.

The name “water tofu” best depicts the nature of Tsodibi. Like the women who make it, the dish possesses a fluid tenderness underpinned by a quiet, solid strength. As the winter chill settled outside, the warmth of the furnace and the rich, nutty aroma of the soybeans reminded me that the most indulgent meals often aren’t found in luxury restaurants, but in the slow, patient hands of those who remember where they came from.

Santa Fe has called itself “The City Different” for decades, and visitors soon see why. Its buildings are low and earth-colored, with rounded corners and wooden beams poking through the walls. The air is dry and clear, the sky an astonishing blue, and the mountains rise just beyond the edge of town.

Santa Fe was founded by Spanish colonists around 1610, which makes it the oldest state capital city in the United States. At about 7,000 feet above sea level, it is also the highest.

The heart of the city is the Plaza, a shady square that has been a gathering place for four centuries. Along one side stands the Palace of the Governors, built in the early 1600s and considered the oldest public building in the country still in continuous use. Under its long covered porch, Native American artists from the surrounding pueblos lay out silver and turquoise jewelry, pottery and other handmade work for sale, a tradition carried on for generations.

Santa Fe’s distinctive look is no accident. Since the 1950s, the city has required buildings in its historic districts to follow traditional styles, so new homes and shops still have the soft adobe shapes of the old ones.

The city is also one of the country’s great art centers. Canyon Road, a narrow street lined with old adobe houses, holds dozens of galleries and studios within about half a mile. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum shows the work of the painter who fell in love with the landscapes of northern New Mexico and made her home there.

Santa Fe was also the end of the Santa Fe Trail, the wagon route that carried goods across the plains from Missouri from 1821 until the railroad arrived in 1880.

Then there is the food. New Mexican cooking is built around chile, both red and green. New Mexico even has an official state question, “Red or green?”, which is what your server will ask about your chile sauce. If you can’t decide, ask for “Christmas,” and you will get both.

In December the city glows with farolitos, small paper bags weighted with sand and holding a candle, lined along walls and rooftops. Spring and fall are lovely times to visit too, with mild days and cool nights. Visitors from lower elevations should take it easy for the first day or two and drink plenty of water while they adjust to the altitude.

Australia has one of the world’s oldest aquaculture sites, a controlled aquatic farming environment, where eels were farmed by Indigenous people for thousands of years. Scientists estimate one of the five systems is around 6,600 years old, based on carbon-dating findings.

The Budj Bim eel farms’ cultural landscape in western Victoria was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2019. Budj Bim is a dormant volcano with ancient basalt lava flows. It was the first site inscribed on the UNESCO list for its cultural significance alone.

This video was produced by the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation at the time of its nomination:

The Gunditjmara are the traditional Indigenous owners of the land. They resisted white colonization and dispossession in the hard-fought frontier Eumerella Wars from the 1830s to the 1860s. Many lived on a Church of England mission near Lake Condah from the 1890s till the 1950s.

This hand-drawn map of the Lake Condah area and fish trap systems was produced by Alexander Ingram in 1893:

TikTok user, westvicbrolga, recently posted a video of a Budj Bim tour led by Gunditjmara man, Joey Saunders:

Local Winda-Mara Aboriginal Corporation conducts guided tours of the eel traps and stone houses. The Tae Rak Aquaculture center at Lake Condah has many stone holding tanks for eels, and visitors can have an eel tasting in their bush tucker cafe.

The discovery of the traps has helped to correct misconceptions about pre-colonial Indigenous peoples as being only nomadic hunter-gatherers. Ian J. McNiven, Professor of Indigenous Archaeology at Monash University explained the new findings in an article in The Conversation:

Rather than living passively off whatever nature provided, the Gunditjmara actively and deliberately manipulated local water flows and ecologies to engineer a landscape focused on increasing the availability and reliability of eels.

Manipulation of the landscape involved stone structures (such as traps and channels) dating back at least 6,600 years. Eel aquaculture facilities (ponds and dam walls) pre-date contact with Europeans by many hundreds (and possibly thousands) of years.

The remains of approximately 300 stone-walled structures, which may have been houses, have also been found near the eel traps. They could provide evidence of permanent occupation before European contact.

One of the world’s oldest creation stories also stems from Budj Bim, explaining the origins of the iconic volcano:

A little over a century ago, the humpback whales that spend their winters off the coast of Brazil were being hunted at a terrible pace. By the 1950s, scientists believe only about 450 of them were left.

Today there are about 25,000. A study published in 2019 estimated that this population had climbed back to roughly 93 percent of its size before commercial whaling began. Few wildlife stories have such a happy turn.

The turning point was a decision to stop. In 1982, the International Whaling Commission voted for a pause in commercial whaling, which took effect in the mid-1980s. Humpbacks, which give birth to a single calf every two or three years, could finally grow their numbers without being hunted.

The recovery reaches far beyond Brazil. Humpbacks around the world have grown so much in number that the International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed the species as Least Concern since 2008. In 2016, the United States removed most humpback populations from its endangered species list.

Humpbacks are famous for their songs. The males sing long, complicated pieces made of moans, whoops and rumbles, repeated in patterns that can last for hours. All the males in an area sing much the same song, and it changes slowly from year to year, as if it were passed along like a popular tune.

They are also famous for leaping clear of the water, a move called breaching. A grown humpback weighs about as much as a loaded school bus, so a breach makes a splash you can see from miles away.

If you would like to see one for yourself, whale-watching boats leave from many places, including Cape Cod and Monterey Bay in summer and fall, Alaska in summer, and Maui in winter. Many tour boats have seating, railings and guides who will point out where to look.

In 2009, in Hudson, Wisconsin, a man named Todd Bol built a small wooden box shaped like a one-room schoolhouse. He filled it with books, mounted it on a post in his front yard and put out a sign inviting neighbors to take a book or leave one. He built it in memory of his mother, a schoolteacher who loved to read.

Neighbors loved it. Soon friends asked him to build more, and the idea spread from town to town. Bol and a friend, Rick Brooks, turned it into a nonprofit organization called Little Free Library. Today there are well over 150,000 registered Little Free Libraries in more than 100 countries, and countless more that were never registered at all.

The rule is simple: take a book, share a book. Nobody checks out anything, no one keeps track, and nothing is overdue. A library might hold paperback mysteries, children’s picture books, cookbooks or a well-worn copy of a classic. Its contents change every day, which is half the fun of stopping by.

The boxes come in every shape imaginable. Some look like tiny houses, barns or schoolhouses, others like birdhouses, telephone booths or even old refrigerators turned on their side. Many are built by grandparents and grandchildren together.

The idea has inspired other kinds of sharing too. Some neighborhoods now have little free pantries stocked with canned food, and little seed libraries where gardeners trade seeds in the spring.

Todd Bol died in 2018, but his small box keeps growing. Ask anyone who tends one and they will tell you the best part is not the books. It is the neighbors who stop to chat, the child who leaves a drawing as a thank-you, and the feeling of a street that shares.

If you would like to start one, you can buy a ready-made library or build your own. Or simply take a walk, find one nearby and leave a favorite book for someone you will never meet.

Few inventions are used as often, or noticed as little, as the zipper. Yet it took decades of trial and error before anyone could make one that worked well.

The first attempt came from a Chicago inventor named Whitcomb L. Judson, who patented a “clasp locker” in 1893. It was meant to replace the long rows of buttons on high boots. Judson’s device used a series of hooks and eyes closed by a sliding guide. It was clever, but it had a nasty habit of popping open or jamming, and it never caught on.

The man who solved the problem was Gideon Sundback, a Swedish-born engineer who went to work for Judson’s company. Around 1913, he designed a fastener with rows of small, matching metal teeth that interlocked when a slider drew them together. He also designed a machine that could make it cheaply. His “hookless fastener” was patented in 1917, and it is essentially the zipper we still use.

At first, it was used on tobacco pouches and money belts. Then, in 1923, the B.F. Goodrich Company put the fasteners on a line of rubber galoshes and gave the boots a lively name: “Zippers,” after the sound the fastener made. People began calling the fastener itself a zipper, and the name stuck.

Zippers were slow to appear on clothing. Many tailors and customers trusted buttons more. By the 1930s, though, zippers had begun appearing on children’s clothing, sold as a way for youngsters to dress themselves, and then on men’s trousers. After that there was no going back.

Today, billions of zippers are made every year. Look closely at the little pull on your jacket and you may see the letters YKK, the initials of a Japanese company founded in 1934 that grew into the world’s largest zipper maker.

Not bad for an idea that started with a pair of boots.

There is something hopeful about planting bulbs in the fall. You dig a few holes, cover them up, and forget about them through the long winter. Then one spring morning, green shoots appear, followed by a burst of color just when the garden needs it most.

Bulbs such as tulips, daffodils, crocuses and hyacinths need a long spell of cold weather to bloom, which is why they go into the ground in autumn. In most of the country, the best time is from late September to November, about six weeks before the ground freezes.

Choose firm, healthy bulbs, a little like choosing onions at the market. Avoid any that are soft or moldy.

Pick a sunny spot with soil that drains well. Bulbs dislike sitting in soggy ground.

Dig deep enough. A good rule is to plant a bulb about three times as deep as the bulb is tall. For tulips and daffodils, that is usually six to eight inches. Small bulbs such as crocuses need only three or four inches.

Point the tip up. The pointed end is where the shoot comes out. If you cannot tell which end is which, plant the bulb on its side and it will find its own way.

Plant in groups. Bulbs look best in clusters of five, ten or more, rather than in single file.

Water once after planting, then let nature take over.

Squirrels and chipmunks are fond of tulip and crocus bulbs. Daffodils are a good choice where they are a nuisance, because the animals leave them alone.

No garden? Bulbs grow well in large pots on a porch or balcony. Plant them closer together than you would in the ground, keep the pots somewhere cold but sheltered, and wait for spring.