> "In essence, EyeMed is merely an instrument to protect the market share of the Luxottica family of companies, and it provides little to no substantive cost amelioration to consumers, what many would regard as the principal purpose of insurance."

Searching with Kagi, the quote comes from a post on forums.studentdoctor.net by ThazinJayne (1), who prefaces the text “Here is an e-mail I received from a friend”.

An industry observer? More like an unnamed friend of an anonymous forum member.

1: https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/luxottica-eyemed-sc...

——

P.S. I like my Oakleys, both sun- and prescription glasses, but cannot deny they are way overpriced for what they are – a little bit of plastic and metal.

"In general, the Apollo waste management system worked satisfactorily from an engineering standpoint. From the point of view of crew acceptance, however, the system must be given poor marks. The principal problem with both the urine and fecal collection systems was the fact that these required more manipulation than crewmen were used to in the Earth environment and were, as a consequence, found to be objectionable. The urine receptacle assembly represented an attempt to preclude crew handling of urine specimens but, because urine spills were frequent, the objective of “sanitizing” the process was thwarted.

The fecal collection system presented an even more distasteful set of problems. The collection process required a great deal of skill to preclude escape of feces from the collection bag and consequent soiling of the crew, their clothing, or cabin surfaces. The fecal collection process was, moreover, extremely time consuming because of the level of difficulty involved with use of the system. An Apollo 7 astronaut estimated the time required to correctly accomplish the process at 45 minutes.* Good placement of fecal bags was difficult to attain; this was further complicated by the fact that the flap at the back of the constant wear garment created an opening that was too small for easy placement of the bags.** As was noted earlier, kneading of the bags was required for dispersal of the germicide.

*Entry in the log of Apollo 7 by Astronaut Walter Cunningham.

**The configuration of the constant wear garments on later Apollo missions were modified to correct this problem."

1: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19760005603/downloads/19...

> Turns out macOS's IOHIDManager silently blocks the longer HID++ report format you need to actually write to it. The OS just drops the packets. No error, no explanation, nothing. I found this out after writing a pile of probe code and staring at empty responses for longer than I'd like to admit.

> Victor Cruz Gamez, the leading named plaintiff, has lived in the US for 25 years and has a work permit and protection against deportation. The father of three was nonetheless arrested by ICE in October when agents mixed him up with a different Victor Cruz, and he spent three weeks in detention before he was released. In an interview, he said he wanted to protect others and show that the government was not targeting “criminals and rapists”, as DHS has claimed.

> “They just see us as numbers. They don’t see us as human beings,” he said. (1)

1: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/06/ice-arrest-o... (linked to in OP)

Now I'm down to my Shure IEMs (via an Apple lighting-to-3.5mm dongle) and a borrowed pair of old Galaxy buds - wanted to give wireless buds a try, since it's been so long. I don't like them.

1: emitting an earsplitting screech as they did so - the cable must have gone.

"Вот его, нет, не допустили (сама знаешь, почему)))"

My translation:

"But him - no, they didn't let him in (of course you know why :)"

When I went from texting friends in Russian or Ukrainian back to English, I missed right parentheses as a smiley; one or two - hi), hello)) - to me are like a smile, by ))) and )))) there's some laughing or some other joke going on. Native speakers could weigh in; my native tongue is English.

1: picture: https://nexus.armylane.com/files/kindle-touch-battery-I-used...

2: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832791337189.html

The AUR, along with Arch's minimalism, is one of my favorite things about it. Instead of cloning the source repo, reading the build instructions, building, and then installing, I download a script, read it to make sure it looks okay (e.g. the source points to what I expect), and then `makepkg -si`.

> The way I see it installing software from the AUR is about as safe as installing software from the pirate bay.

No, if I trust the source - and I often follow the source link to GitHub to check out the project - then it's like one of my distro's packages, except I'm the one saying it's safe for me to install. I'm not claiming it's risk free, but it's been a great boon to me. (2)

1: https://aur.archlinux.org/

2: I used the AUR to compile and install Goldendict-ng, a fork of the dictionary software Goldendict that's being maintained. It accepts my Stardict converted-from-Apple dictionaries and supports Wayland!

Why tolerate a network full of junk? Worse, it's junk that's calculated to draw me in whether I want it or no. Social media's biggest appeal, judging by Nathan's post, is to my lizard brain. My antidote to an internet gone mad is reading good, maybe old, books that reward the intellectual effort I put in to understand them.

"I often think back to that conversation with my upperclassman friend. She wasn’t proud of gaming the system and she wasn’t ashamed either. She was simply rational. The university had created a set of incentives and she had simply responded to them.

That’s what strikes me most about the accommodation explosion at Stanford and similar schools. The students aren’t exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them? Stanford has made gaming the system the logical choice. When accommodations mean the difference between a cramped triple and your own room, when extra test time can boost your grade point average, opting out feels like self-sabotage. Who would make their lives harder when the easiest option is just a 30-minute Zoom call away?"

1: https://archive.ph/RPegw#selection-1853.0-1857.496

"And perhaps there is no subject on which a man should speak so gravely as that industry, whatever it may be, which is the occupation or delight of his life; which is his tool to earn or serve with; and which, if it be unworthy, stamps himself as a mere incubus of dumb and greedy bowels on the shoulders of labouring humanity. On that subject alone even to force the note might lean to virtue’s side. It is to be hoped that a numerous and enterprising generation of writers will follow and surpass the present one; but it would be better if the stream were stayed, and the roll of our old, honest English books were closed, than that esurient book-makers should continue and debase a brave tradition, and lower, in their own eyes, a famous race. Better that our serene temples were deserted than filled with trafficking and juggling priests."

And in the first essay, speaking on matters of style:

"The conjurer juggles with two oranges, and our pleasure in beholding him springs from this, that neither is for an instant overlooked or sacrificed. So with the writer. His pattern, which is to please the supersensual ear, is yet addressed, throughout and first of all, to the demands of logic. Whatever be the obscurities, whatever the intricacies of the argument, the neatness of the fabric must not suffer, or the artist has been proved unequal to his design. And, on the other hand, no form of words must be selected, no knot must be tied among the phrases, unless knot and word be precisely what is wanted to forward and illuminate the argument; for to fail in this is to swindle in the game. The genius of prose rejects the cheville no less emphatically than the laws of verse; and the cheville, I should perhaps explain to some of my readers, is any meaningless or very watered phrase employed to strike a balance in the sound. Pattern and argument live in each other; and it is by the brevity, clearness, charm, or emphasis of the second, that we judge the strength and fitness of the first."

AI doesn't "write" in the sense used above. It has no ear, no wit, no soul. "A reflection of a mind is not a mind", as Phillip Ball writes in "AI Is the Black Mirror" (2).

1: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/492/pg492-images.html#p...

2: https://nautil.us/ai-is-the-black-mirror-1169121/

"There was a formula in Becker's book for a four-wheel drive vehicle with a powered trailer. Well, Don said, "I played with a formula and quickly found that the most sensitive dimension is the length of the rear axle to trailer hitchball. As I reduced it, performance increased. I went to less [negative number] and the performance continued to increase. But how can you have a negative length for this connecting member?

Don realized that a negative connection length just meant moving the pivot beyond the traditional attachment point. Instead of connecting everything to the frame, he made the four-wheel set a bogie in and of itself and attached it to another member with the other set of wheels. Another way to think about it is that the whole thing is a bogie with a rocker at one end, which is how Donna Shirley christened it when she saw the new design. Hence, the rocker bogie was born. And Don Bickler became known as The "Bogie Man" around JPL."

----------

I also like the email reproduced at 1:37:06 for the picture it gives of Don as a mentor:

"Mark,

In response to Don Bickler’s efforts over the last 2 months or so, I can't help but tell you how much I want to hang out with this guy! He is my hero! Every time we talk, I feel I walk away with some extra piece of knowledge that I didn’t have before. I told Don, it is so unfortunate that engineers these days are nothing like they were when he came out of school. He has so much common sense and has such a great ability to simplify the situation and come up with a solution that will not only work, but be simple and easy to build, while at the same time wanting nothing more than to solve the problem at hand, he thrives [at] it and that is something I really enjoy observing!

I'm sure this does not come as a surprise to you as every one I talk to, when I tell them that Don Bickler is helping us resolve this spring issue, tells me the guy is a legend and to soak up everything you can from him! Simply put, Don has been an asset to this issue we have had, he has quickly come up with a resolution so we can move forward with the spring design we have.

The issue is not yet resolved because we still have to design and build the spacers that Don recommends, but based on some preliminary testing, it looks like Don's resolution will be the remedy we are looking for. If possible, I would like to be locked in a room with Don through any type of project. Please let me know when and where.

I am currently working in Madrid right now until the 28" but if you'd like more info, please feel free to contact me on my cell phone.

Thanks in advance,

Jason Carlton

Jet Propulsion Laboratory" [line breaks added to ease reading]