theresehp

weirdtrek

space-happy

& since I’m apparently not over it, the best moments on Star Trek and the ones people remember the most years on usually aren’t the pew pew battle killing sprees, it’s Kirk pressing his hand against Spock’s through the glass and Janeway gently hugging Tuvok goodbye and Data’s little hologram of Tasha and Spock saying “I stand with my shipmates” and Lal saying “I love you father, thank you for my life”… Like yes, the andrenaline stuff can be fun and often is but that’s not the point and it never was, love and friendship are the point, all that other stuff is just colorful window dressing to stories of simple, human tenderness and devotion…

theresehp

Star Trek is not an action thriller!

wilwheaton

One company bought all the retail outlets for glasses, used that to force sales of all the eyewear companies and jacked up prices by as much as 1000%

mostlysignssomeportents

If you wear glasses, you might have noticed that they’ve been getting steadily more expensive in recent years, no matter which brand you buy and no matter where you shop.

That’s because a giant-but-obscure company called Luxottica bought out Sunglass Hut and Lenscrafters, then used their dominance over the retail side of glasses to force virtually every eyewear brand to sell to them (Luxxotica owns or licenses Armani, Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Chanel, Coach, DKNY, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Kors, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, Persol, Polo Ralph Lauren, Ray-Ban, Tiffany, Valentino, Vogue and Versace); and used that to buy out all the other eyewear retailers of any note (Luxottica owns Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Sunglass Hut and Target Optical) and then also bought out insurers like Eyemed Vision Care and Essilor, the leading prescription lens/contact lens manufacturer.

Controlling the labs, insurers, frame makers, and all the major retail outlets has allowed Luxottica to squeeze suppliers – frames are cheaper than ever to make, thanks to monopsony buying power with Prada-grade designer frames costing $15 to manufacture – while raising prices as much as 1000% relative to pre-acquisition pricing.

It’s even worse for lenses: a pair of prescription lenses that cost $1.50 to make sell for $800 in the USA.

LA Times columnist David Lazarus wrote a column about skyrocketing eyewear prices and was approached by Charles Dahan, who once owned one of the largest frames companies in America, Custom Optical, which supplied 20% of the frames sold at Lenscrafters prior to the Luxottica acquisition. Dahan describes how Luxottica cornered the horizontal and vertical markets for eyewear and pushed out or bought out every other company (Oakley refused to sell or lower prices, so Luxottica boycotted it from its retailers, forcing the company into such a precarious position that it Luxottica was able to buy it for a fraction of its peak book-value just a few years later).

This is a good example of how decades of far-right ideologically driven antitrust malpractice has hurt everyone. After all, glasses aren’t just a fashion item: they’re a necessity for people with poor vision, a prerequisite for driving, walking, cycling, reading, getting an education or doing your job.

Luxottica grew through acquisition, by buying up its competition. This was banned under classic antitrust law, until the Reagan years. This pattern has been repeated in many other domains: beer, whiskey, retail pharmacies, and so on. In every one of those domains, we are getting screwed, as are small businesspeople and the families they serve.

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/12/luxottica.html

brentbillock

The online sellers offer an enormous discount, but for feeble old eyes like mine, it’s useless. They don’t take a vertical measurement - only the PD, or horizontal distance between your pupils. So progressive lenses are a headache-inducing nightmare unless you go into LensCrafters and pay the monopolistic pricing.

theresehp

If you can, buy online. I have a pair of glasses that cost $20 WITH coating and they are just as good as the pair I bought for $185 at my optometrist. In fact, I bought 3 pairs of glasses (including prescription sunglasses) for less than that one pair. And if I lose them it fuck them up, NBD.

wilwheaton

The nine rules of “Freddish”: the positive, inclusive empathic language of Mr Rogers

mostlysignssomeportents

From an excerpt from last year’s The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, the rules of “Freddish” – as Mr Rogers’ crewmembers jokingly referred to the rigorous rules that Rogers used to revise his scripts to make them appropriate and useful for the preschoolers in his audience.

Rogers’ nine rules are a masterclass in figuring out how to clarify a thought, then refine that clarity to remove extraneous elements, then consider the result and use empathy for your audience to be a better communicator and a better person.

It’s how Rogers went from “It is dangerous to play in the street” to “Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them, and listening is an important part of growing.” From a proscriptive, negative statement to a positive statement that admits that there will be uncertainty in the world, that reinforces loving relationships, without making value judgments, and connecting the idea to a toddler-friendly message about personal growth.

Per the pamphlet, there were nine steps for translating into Freddish:

“State the idea you wish to express as clearly as possible, and in terms preschoolers can understand.” Example: It is dangerous to play in the street.
“Rephrase in a positive manner,” as in It is good to play where it is safe.
“Rephrase the idea, bearing in mind that preschoolers cannot yet make subtle distinctions and need to be redirected to authorities they trust.” As in, “Ask your parents where it is safe to play.”
“Rephrase your idea to eliminate all elements that could be considered prescriptive, directive, or instructive.” In the example, that’d mean getting rid of “ask”: Your parents will tell you where it is safe to play.
“Rephrase any element that suggests certainty.” That’d be “will”: Your parents can tell you where it is safe to play.
“Rephrase your idea to eliminate any element that may not apply to all children.” Not all children know their parents, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play.
“Add a simple motivational idea that gives preschoolers a reason to follow your advice.” Perhaps: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is good to listen to them.
“Rephrase your new statement, repeating the first step.” “Good” represents a value judgment, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them.
“Rephrase your idea a ﬁnal time, relating it to some phase of development a preschooler can understand.” Maybe: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them, and listening is an important part of growing.

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/09/lets-talk-freddish.html

montereybayaquarium

Realizing that squid have an ink sac and an internal shell called a pen so we’re living just a few short evolutionary steps away from calamarigraphy and honestly there goes the rest of today

montereybayaquarium

Voilà! Squid pen! The gif above shows the removal of the translucent pen, or internal shell, of a California market squid from our food room. California market squid (Doryteuthis opalescens) is a sustainable seafood that we feed to our sea otters, leopard sharks and other Aquarium residents. You may know it better as calamari!

montereybayaquarium

In the land of silly-jokes-turned-learning-opportunities, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention that the word “calamari” comes from Greek and Latin terms for “ink pot” and “pen case” because of these specific bits of squid anatomy!

theresehp

Dissecting a squid and using its pen to poke through it’s own ink sac and write with it in high school traumatized me so much that I still cannot eat calamari. Almost 20 years later.

weirdtrek

prokopetz

Boring, realistic explanation: Male characters in Star Trek: The Original Series are wearing visible eyeshadow in some shots because 1966 was right in the middle of the transition from black-and-white to colour television in America, and TV makeup artists were still adjusting to the fact that stage makeup is easier to see in colour broadcasts.

The truth we know in our hearts: Male characters in Star Trek: The Original Series sometimes wear eyeshadow because the future is fabulous.

theresehp

They wore mini skirts, too, because Gene Roddenberry believed the future was all about equality. Who says that’s the “realistic” explanation?

wilwheaton

Americans, stop calling human beings “illegals”

wilwheaton

Unless your ancestors were brought here against their will, or are Native American, you’re here – I’m here – because someone in your ancestry decided to seek a better life here. We are all the sons and daughters of immigrants, and it’s so important that we remember that.

People who cross our border illegally aren’t “illegals” in the way that right wingers want us to think of them. They are our fellow human beings who are so desperate to get away from violence and corruption, and seek out a better life for themselves and their families, they are willing to risk everything, even entering the country without documentation, to do that.

We should never blame the person who is immigrating for the exploitative actions of the rich and powerful who abuse them. The rich people who are exploiting them and using the immigrants’ fear of deportation to keep wages low and working conditions unsafe, are the villains in this story, and they really want us to dehumanize their source of cheap, easily-exploited labor by thinking of them as “illegals” who are a monolithic idea, instead of mothers, fathers, and children, who know they’re going to be treated badly by racists in America, yet still come here because it’s better than the place they left.

theresehp

Say it louder for people in the back!