Why would you do this to me.

Corona UV signals observed under a thunderstorm on 27 June 2024. (a) Approximate location of all 859 corona UV signals observed during the ∼1.5-hr observation period on a sweetgum tree. Each corona UV signal is colored by the number of total isotropic UV photons between 255 and 273 nm emitted by the corona discharge, as estimated from the illuminated pixels observed in that frame. The boxes depict the Corona Observing Telescope System (COTS) UV camera field of view, and the colors indicate the observation time for the branch within each box. Panel (b) as in (a), but for all 93 corona UV signals observed during the ∼20-min observation period on a loblolly pine tree. Locations of boxes and corona UV signals are only approximate because the wind blew the branches in and out of the COTS field of view. Note a corona UV signal is defined as a contiguous bundle of several illuminated pixels.

Coronae glow on the tips of spruce needles, induced by charged metal plates in a laboratory. These weak electric discharges subtly singe the tips of leaves and needles, and new observations indicate they may occur ubiquitously across treetops under thunderstorms. Credit: William Brune

During thunderstorms, electric discharges in the air cause trees to glow with an ultraviolet aura. You can't see it with your eyes, but researchers have finally managed to measure it & recreate it in the lab. 🧪🔭

news.agu.org/press-releas...

This feels so relevant right now.

Ron Howard FTW 🎯

By & large, most books are superior to human beings.

Freezing US foreign aid will result in humanitarian disaster The loss of services supported by USAID will affect millions of the world’s most vulnerable people.

The EO on Foreign Aid enforces a 90-day pause on all payments, throwing the system into chaos

We just stopped feeding babies and housing refugees and mediating conflicts all around the world. Children will die because of this

This is us now, America. A cruel bully. This is what you voted for

I don't need to tell you this world is hard, and getting harder. We thought it would be better than this-more sensible, more neatly worked out, more righteous, according to our impeccable analysis of what righteousness should look lik And yet, here we are. No good pretending it isn't both a slog and a crisis, which is to say, wearing on every last nerve. And still, when you least expect it, you find yourself ambushed by Joy, who, tail whipping and ears slicked back to her head, launches herself into your lap, leaving you breathless and covered in kisses.

Morning poem by Lynn Ungar.

Joy.

“I don't need to tell you this world is hard, and getting harder…”

Here is a list of some companies who are standing by DEI:
*Chase Bank
*Costco
*United Airlines
*Delta
*Apple

Some companies who have recently walked away from DEI initiatives:
Target
Walmart
American Airlines
Southwest Airlines
McDonald's
Meta (FB, IG)
Amazon
Ford
Lowe's
Harley-Davidson
John Deere

Most commonly used phrases this year:

"I told you so"

"I tried to warn you"

Remember…

roflmao!

And yes. It has been killing me.

Blood pressure. Stress. Tears and lost sleep - because I saw the “fuck around and find out” train picking up steam.
And no one listened.

So now I’m stuck, and straining with the pressure of not crowing “I warned you. I fucking told you to audit this.” Oh well.

“You are spending your adjudication tokens on constructed horseshit that does not concern you, by adults who should maybe participate in their own lives for the first time.”

…ouch. When people don’t participate in their own rescue, nothing you do can make them.
I’m learning that the hard way.

They almost did it.
antifandom.com/starwars/wik...

Looks like the Gina Carano scuffle got it scuppered.

I'm beginning to think that while "may you live in interesting times" is 100% a curse... all times are interesting if you're paying enough attention.

Tumblr meme of four girls ready to play dodgeball. the one girl with the big red ball is aiming at the other three. The group of three girls is labeled "Peter Sagal Just Trying to be Funny", the girl with the ball is labeled "Apollo", and the ball is labled "The Gift of Prophecy."

Superb.

The only hard to replace part of the techbro empire is Microsoft Excel.

Everything else is either dispensable, quickly replaceable or alternatives already exists.

But Excel runs the entire planet.

All finance systems, all HR systems, all databases.

They all end up as Excel spreadsheets.

Tweet from @jessramosdata Data Analytics isn't SQL. Data Analytics isn't Python. Data Analytics isn't Tableau. Data Analytics isn't Power Bl. Data Analytics isn't R. Data Analytics isn't Statistics. Data Analytics isn't even spreadsheets. Data Analytics is exporting dashboards to Excel for people who make 3 times your salary.

I read this to my wife and got "That really really hurts, but, you know..."

This 2019 story feels relevant today. Did it end with the 737 Max—or was it policy? Cutting costs to near-minimum wage shouldn’t be priority over lives & safety.

📌 Boeing outsourced 737 Max software coding to $9/hour engineers, laying off in-house talent & subcontracting offshore to save money

Typing of the dead video game screen

Zoomers: "Hey why these mf so good at command line interfaces"

Millennials: "You wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me"

We're at the point in the year where I have no idea what day of the week it is and I no longer care. This is freedom, this is the way humans are meant to live

I'm just saying..

This is the make shit up machine, it makes shit up.

We've made it so that it absolutely cannot tell the truth reliably.

We will now integrate it into every part of your daily life.