seeing another round of "don't favorite posts on fedi"

folks it is a kind and lovely thing to favorite someone's post and anyone who tells you not to be kind and lovely has told you something about themself

it's true that it doesn't particulary increase the distribution of your post but the idea that we're all here to get things distributed as far as possible is pretty weird

Thunderstorms Make Trees Glow

Scientists have long hypothesized that the high electrical charge of thunderstorms could produce an opposite charge in the ground that would discharge from the forest canopy. But this phenomenon, known as a corona, had never been observed on actual trees. A new study, however, has observed this ghostly ultraviolet (UV) glow from the tips of sweetgum leaves and loblolly pine needles during thunderstorms.

Catching these coronae in action required a new kind of UV detector that was ultra-sensitive to the particular band of UV-light emitted by coronas, hot fires, or mercury lamps. Since the latter two weren’t present during the team’s field observations, they were able to conclude that the light they detected came from coronae.

The group observed that corona discharges were transient, jumping from leaf to leaf and branch to branch across the forest canopy. For any creature capable of detecting that glow by eye, it must be incredible to watch the treetops lit by their own ever-shifting auroras during every thunderstorm. (Image credit: W. Brune; research credit: P. McFarland et al.; via SciAm)

The Onion, gloriously on target as ever.

https://theonion.com/the-onions-exclusive-interview-with-sam-altman/

Friends in England, a message for you.

I have periodically posted this before, but it's been a while since I last did, and I was putting my pills into my pill organiser and thought of it.

If you regularly have prescriptions, you do NOT need to pay for them all. This isn't terribly well advertised, and lots of people go through life never needing a repeat prescription then suddenly finding they need lots (me, I did this, up until I was 42 my only regular medicine was an antihistamine, now I have a full pill organiser).

A pre-pay prescription certificate can be purchased for a year and costs a little less than the price of 12 prescriptions (£114.50 compared to £118.80 if you have one prescription a month for a year). You can buy for this in instalments by direct debit, you don't have to stump it up all in one go.

You can also buy a three-month certificate for £32.50 (slightly more than the cost of three prescriptions).

These prices are fixed. It costs the same whether you're getting one prescription a month or ten. If you have at least one a month then the yearly certificate WILL save you money.

Everyone in England who pays for prescriptions is eligible.

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/help-nhs-prescription-costs/nhs-prescription-prepayment-certificate-ppc

If you're in England, your #NHS medical data is due to be shared with #PeterThiel's military surveillance firm #Palantir.

Fyi, Palantir have already been using their access to US medical records to target people for #ICE, and #ReformUK have published their plans for ICE UK...

In case you — like me — object to this in the strongest of terms, the @goodlawproject have put together this handy tool to check your local NHS Trust's position, and to say no to this.

https://notopalantir.goodlawproject.org/email-to-target/stop-palantir-in-the-nhs/