@extenebris

10 Followers
57 Following
82 Posts
biased opinions on subjects that scarcely matter
extenebrisAug 16
SimoneAug 15

Steve Wozniak interviewed for CBS:

"I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups [...] I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out."

He turned 75 4 days ago.

extenebrisAug 5
Fabio NataliAug 5

It's parentheses double trouble next Tuesday in London! Come and meet us for a drink and a chat at the Barbican's Lakeside Terrace:

- 6PM onwards
- Barbican Centre, Silk St, EC2Y 8DS

Two #Lisp events running in parallel:

#Guix: https://www.meetup.com/guix-social/events/309290507/

#Emacs 'M-x drinks': https://www.meetup.com/london-emacs-hacking/events/310360735/

No talks planned, it'll be an informal get-together to chat about our beloved operating system and editor in front of a drink.

#london #meetup #lisp #scheme

Guix London (in person), Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 6:00 PM | Meetup

While most of our events are fully-remote these days, this meetup will be in person, at the [Barbican Centre](https://www.barbican.org.uk/) (Silk St, London, EC2Y 8DS). Joi

Meetup
extenebrisJul 29
Randy RidenourJul 29

My post for the #EmacsCarnival on writing experience. Mostly on how I use #Emacs as a humanities educator.

https://randyridenour.net/posts/2025-07-28-emacs-writing-experience.html

Emacs Writing Experience

extenebrisJul 29
Dr. Cat HicksJul 29
Gaslight of the century that we made programming totally inaccessible to huge portions of the population and now we're told that the reason is programming can only emerge from the innate genius of the brilliant few
extenebrisJul 26
Álvaro R.Jul 25

I'm joining the carnival! 🎪 🎡 🎢 🤹 🍭

"My decade with Org" is my post for the Emacs Carnival
https://xenodium.com/writing-experience-my-decade-with-org

Thank you @greg for hosting this month

#emacs #carnival #org #orgmode #plaintext #markdown #oss

Writing experience: My decade with Org

While I missed Emacs Carnival's Take two, with this month's prompt being Writing Experience, I figured I may have a thing or two to share about my Org...

extenebrisJul 24
Free Software FoundationJul 24
Have you learned something exciting about #Emacs or used it for something interesting? Share your knowledge at #EmacsConf 2025! Submit your proposal by Friday, September 19, 2025: https://u.fsf.org/486
EmacsConf - 2025 - Call for Participation

extenebrisJul 23

Weird... spent some time debugging my #emacs suddenly errored on `package-refresh-contents`, even with a clean config. Turns out, somehow a slash "/" was inserted into `~/.emacs.d/url/cookies`. This file is evaluated inside `url-retrieve-synchronously`, and the slash tripped the eval.

The only question is, how tf did the slash end up in this file at all? 🤔

extenebrisJul 23
AkaSci 🛰️Jul 22

This is a spectacular image of a Sprite-like Gigantic Jet taken by astronaut Nichole Ayers from the ISS on July 3, who wrote -

"Just. Wow. As we went over Mexico and the U.S. this morning, I caught this sprite.

Sprites are TLEs or Transient Luminous Events, that happen above the clouds and are triggered by intense electrical activity in the thunderstorms below. ... scientists can use these types of pictures to better understand the formation, characteristics, ...."

https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/photo.pl?mission=ISS073&roll=E&frame=281502
1/n

extenebrisJul 21
Kev QuirkJul 21
Yes, I love traditional watches. Guilty as charged. But even if I didn’t, I’d still think smartwatches are one of the dumbest tech trends out there.
https://kevquirk.com/blog/i-don-t-see-the-point-of-smartwatches
I Don't See the Point of Smartwatches | Kev Quirk

Yes, I love traditional watches. Guilty as charged. But even if I didn’t, I’d still think smartwatches are one of the dumbest tech trends out there.

I Don't See the Point of Smartwatches
extenebrisJul 20

#CommonLisp sturdy, industrial

#Scheme elegant, academic

#Emacs lisp the only actually useful lisp

#clojure if it weren't JVM-based... there's always one bad apple

#shitpost

×
AkaSci 🛰️Jul 22

This is a spectacular image of a Sprite-like Gigantic Jet taken by astronaut Nichole Ayers from the ISS on July 3, who wrote -

"Just. Wow. As we went over Mexico and the U.S. this morning, I caught this sprite.

Sprites are TLEs or Transient Luminous Events, that happen above the clouds and are triggered by intense electrical activity in the thunderstorms below. ... scientists can use these types of pictures to better understand the formation, characteristics, ...."

https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/photo.pl?mission=ISS073&roll=E&frame=281502
1/n

Show threadAkaSci 🛰️Jul 22

Sprites occur at ~80 km altitude and are caused by electric fields generated by lightning flashes in underlying thunderstorms. When a sufficiently large positive lightning strike carries charges to the ground, the cloud top is left with a strongly negative net charge. In the low pressure of the upper mesosphere the breakdown voltage is low, allowing for an electron avalanche to occur.

Sprites get their red color from excitation of nitrogen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(lightning)
https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0187-62362012000400005
2/n

Show threadAkaSci 🛰️Jul 22

SPRITE is a backronym for Stratospheric Perturbations Resulting from Intense Thunderstorm Electrification.

Other related phenomena, collectively known as Transient Luminous Events, are named Elves, Blue Jets, Gigantic jets, Trolls, Pixies, Ghosts and Gnomes.

@stim3on points out that the image from the ISS is actually a Gigantic Jet; they look similar to Sprites, but are not associated with CG lightning and propagate up at a slower rate.
🧝‍♀️ 👻 😃
https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/lightning/types/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper-atmospheric_lightning
3/n

Show threadAkaSci 🛰️Jul 22

Sprites and elves are elusive (hence the names), dim and last for a few milliseconds. However, they can be observed from the ground as well with proper equipment and under ideal viewing conditions.

Here is an outstanding image of a Sprite near the southeast Aegean Sea, captured from ground level from the eastern suburbs of Athens, Greece on December 4, 2021 by Thanasis Papathanasiou.

https://www.nasa.gov/general/spritacular-nasas-new-citizen-science-project-to-capture-elusive-upper-atmospheric-electrical-phenomena-on-camera/
4/n

Show threadAkaSci 🛰️Jul 23

This is an outstanding pic of the elusive Elves captured by Valter Binotto in Possagno, Italy, on March 27, 2023.

ELVES is a whimsical acronym for emissions of light and very Low frequency perturbations due to electromagnetic pulse sources.

Elves often appear as a dim, flattened, expanding glow ~400 km wide that lasts for ~1 millisecond. They occur in the ionosphere ~100 km above the ground over thunderstorms.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CqpwfZct3Lg/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper-atmospheric_lightning
Credit: Valter Binotto
5/n

Show threadAkaSci 🛰️Jul 23

Transient luminous events (TLEs) have also been observed in Jupiter's upper atmosphere, high above the altitude of lightning-producing water clouds.

The NASA Juno spacecraft, using its UV spectrograph, has detected 11 TLEs in Jupiter’s atmosphere, between 2016 and 2020. The authors suggest these are elves, sprites or sprite halos.

Duration: ∼1.4 ms
Altitude: 260 km above the 1-bar level which corresponds to ∼300 km above the location of the water cloud.

Paper at https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.13740
6/n

Show threadHugs4friends ♾🇺🇦 🇵🇸😷Jul 23
@AkaSci Wow! That was some capture, then!
Show threadearthlingJul 22

@AkaSci

More red sprites:

@photography
#photography
#astrophotography
#RedSprites

Show threadearthlingJul 23

@AkaSci @photography

More red sprites:

#photography
#astrophotography
#RedSprites

Show threadSimon FlettJul 23
@AkaSci Oi ! Aeriel from The Tempest and Legolas from Lord of the Rings here. Who you calling dim?!
#elves
#sprites
Show threadSuperdave!Jul 24
@AkaSci Greece, the Land of Fairy! LOL!
Show threadSteve Foerster 🌐Jul 23

@AkaSci @stim3on My favorite atmospheric phenomenon, of course, is STEVE:

https://sos.noaa.gov/education/phenomenon-based-learning/this-is-steve/

This is STEVE, He's from Outer Space - Science On a Sphere

The phenomenon known as STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) is similar to Aurora Borealis and Australis, but is caused by a ribbon of hot gases, not electrons and protons.

Science On a Sphere
Show threadMark Wyner Won’t Comply Jul 22
@AkaSci wow. That is absolutely phenomenal.
Show threadSimeon SchmaußJul 22
@AkaSci Hi, small correction, this event was a Gigantic Jet and not a Sprite.
Sprites form above the cloud and are usually not connected to it, Gigantic Jets start as a jet that grows upward from the cloud top like seen here.
Frankie Lucena has an analysis of this event here:
https://spaceweathergallery2.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=224355
Show threadPeggy Heinkel-WolfeJul 23
@AkaSci Was this at the start of those horrible floods in the Texas Hill Country?
Show threadAkaSci 🛰️Jul 23

@phwolfe940

The rains that led to the catastrophic floods in Texas Hill Country, started on the morning of July 4.

This image of the Sprite from the ISS was taken during the morning hours of July 3.

It is possible that there were storm clouds in that area on July 3 as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2025_Central_Texas_floods

July 2025 Central Texas floods - Wikipedia

Show threadPeggy Heinkel-WolfeJul 23

@AkaSci Thank you. It also flooded badly in Tom Green County, overnight July 3 to July 4. A storm over Abilene re-formed over San Angelo and dumped 14 inches (a year's worth on one night) before moving into the Hill Country.

https://www.gosanangelo.com/story/news/2025/07/06/san-angelo-texas-tom-green-county-flood-rainfall-july-fourth-independence-day-flooding-aftermath/84480319007/

Waking up to disaster: How San Angelo is weathering a flood. What happened and what now?

The city of San Angelo and Tom Green County were swamped in more ways then one in a record rainfall on July Fourth. Where do they go from here?

Standard-Times
Show threadDaniel FischerJul 23
@AkaSci This is NOT a sprite but a gigantic jet - Ayers was made aware of her mistake and corrected it a few days later: https://x.com/Astro_Ayers/status/1942330769185382604
Nichole “Vapor” Ayers (@Astro_Ayers) on X

I’ve received a lot of questions and comments about this picture. It’s a testament to the unique view we have from the @Space_Station and what we can learn about the Earth from space. Also, turns out, this is a gigantic jet, another type of TLE. So cool to learn as we go up here.

X (formerly Twitter)