A family-member bought eclipse glasses for the extended family on Amazon. She bought it from this 100% legit listing: https://www.amazon.com/Soluna-.... When we started seeing the news stories about fake eclipse glasses, we went back to the site and checked the listing, which said they were CE and ISO certified for eclipse viewing. The glasses had the ISO certification printed on them as well.

So we went and viewed the eclipse. I probably only looked at the sun through the glasses 30-60 seconds total, but my kids may have spend longer looking. The next day, I noticed that my vision was blurrier. Since there are several things that historically can impact my vision, I decided to see if it improved in a few days. When it didn't, I double-checked the glasses. That's when I saw the reviews and Q&A on the listing talking about the fakes, and sure enough, the ones we received were fakes from China. We did not receive any email from Amazon

Comparing them to a real certified pair, the fakes let through more light, though not enough to cause me to squint. The fakes don't have that metallic sheen the real ones do, and I wonder if that's the infrared/UV shielding. I went to the eye doctor and they found no signs of solar retinopathy, though admitting that the signs can take a few weeks to show up. I think my kids are too little to accurately report slight vision changes, but the other 2 people who used the fakes didn't seem to have any issues.

What is interesting here in terms of the lawsuit is that on Amazon, even if you are reading details about a legitimate product and looking at a picture of the real product, there's no telling if what you're going to get in the mail is actually that product. In fact, unless you're looking for it, you rarely even know what seller is being automatically chosen when you add something to your cart.

I'd like to see this poll redone with these options:

* Yes, and I read the full memo
* Yes, but I didn't read the memo
* No, and I read the full memo
* No, but I didn't read the memo

This sounds great to me as a buyer. But consider:

1) Company A buys tons of products from a competitor
2) Company A returns them all at competitor's expense
3) Bye-bye competitor

In the study the people read for four hours before sleeping. I love reading as much as anybody, but is this a realistic scenario? I'd be more interested to see the sleep disruption from 30 minutes to an hour of reading on light-emitting screens before sleeping.

Who wants jobs?

Seriously, who wants to commute 5 days a week and work 8+ hours a day doing something they'd rather not?

Let AI take all the jobs it can. As it does so, shorten the work week, provide more benefits to the people, and before long we're living in a utopia where more time is ours to work on our hobbies and spend time with our families and friends. Of course, we'd have to prevent private industry from owning all the robots and AI, less they become the de facto new government.

My thoughts on this is that an arrangement could be made where private industry has to pay a monthly fee to the government - what amounts to a small salary - which goes towards benefits/income to the masses. Private industry gets work done through AI and robots at less than what it would cost to employ someone, and that money goes to the benefit of the people.

Of course, it's more complicated than that, and that's just one possible scenario that could work. But the point is - the goal isn't more jobs, but a better life.

From a life of nerdiness and people-watching, I have learned this:

Every superiority complex has an inferiority complex beneath it.

Arrogance is the expression of a superiority complex. It's a coping mechanism, to preserve your self-worth when you feel less than others in some way. Generally, with nerds, this inferiority complex is social. It's more difficult for most of us, and growing up you see evidence of that failing every day in school, while we huddle together with other socially-awkward nerds. But feeling inferior sucks, so we take what we're naturally good at - coding, reasoning, some technical specialty, and judge others against that, and it doesn't hurt so much. We reject them before they can reject us.

At their base, the two complexes are more alike than not. Feeling superior and inferior both separate us from others, and it's that social connection that we miss. Nerds want to be liked and accepted just like anyone else. We're social creatures.

I won't be happy until TVs look as awesomely designed as tennis shoes and toothbrushes.

The finding that people in the US and Canada prefer jokes which have a strong sense of superiority very aptly illustrates the cultural problems in our countries. I can't speak for Canada, but in the US there is a huge amount of political division. Jokes which show someone else to be stupid reinforces this feeling. But why would this qualify as and get a reaction of mirth?

My thoughts are that there is no superiority complex without an inferiority complex beneath it. I myself experienced this in my teens. Superiority compensates for the feeling of inferiority. They are both divisive in the same way - separating a person from others. When a joke shows a stupid person, you can feel "humor" because it reveals the gap in the hidden assumption that you are inferior. This is a sad kind of humor because it reinforces the divisiveness of your beliefs. It's the same kind of hollow humor that a bully feels when putting someone down. (insert Nelson's "HA-hah")

In the "funniest joke", there is a clash of perspectives in which the hunter is shown to be a dunderhead. It's universally funny because it's unexpected, and additionally funny to Americans because of the superiority aspect of it.

The European preference for off-beat, surreal humor shows an appreciation of creativity, and is a much more self-assured sense of humor. Like two friends making up an increasingly bizarrely hilarious situation, each adding humorous elements to it - it's a humor that brings people together.

As to the Crazy Wide White Lines, I don't see the white running out of its boundaries - rather I see sand blowing over it. I think it might be sheets of reflective metal rather than powder, being slowly covered up by blowing sand.

I agree - that's going to be the vehicle that revolutionizes transportation. I would trade my Accord in an instant for a $5,000-or-less electric commuter car with room for 1-2 people. 99% of my travel is going to work and back and the occasional errand. My wife and I have a full-sized car for other reasons - vacations, moving things, traveling with the baby.. but we don't need two cars like this. I bet few people would.

My commute and everyday errands don't even require highway travel, so a max speed of 45 MPH would be sufficient.

I think that's it exactly. There's a well-known inverse relationship between education level and number of offspring.

I've thought a lot about this. Consider a future with androids and computers doing all of the menial work we currently do. Is this a paradise or a hell? In one scenario, all of this automation is owned by private industry and concentrates more and more money into fewer hands. It would eclipse today's wealth inequality, and people would be under the control of the few, but have lots of free time. That would probably mean rebellion if the few couldn't keep them happy and busy.

It seems that the solution to this would be communal ownership of the androids and machinery of industry. The profits from such automation would go to fund government programs and perhaps at some point could eliminate taxes. Or the goods could be priced at cost, meaning cheap living expenses. People would be free to pursue arts, music, science, research, any sort of thing they're interested in. That's the ideal, at least. We're notoriously good at screwing things up.

I prefer the term "Naughties", which I heard from Adam Savage on Mythbusters.

Clearly we can't avoid mercury exposure entirely, and smaller amounts are not going to have a noticeable affect. I'm not a hysterical lunatic like most of these responses would like to portray me as. I don't think anyone's going to instantly die from small amounts of environmental exposure.

That it's a potent neurotoxin is well known. That's why the UN is considering a ban. For the sake of argument let's say an arbitrary small amount of mercury exposure does damage to .0001% of your neurons. Will you notice? Probably not. But where do you draw the line? What amount is okay? Damage to .01% of your neurons? No doubt if some neurological conditions develop once you're 40, 50, 60 years old, you'd just attribute it to age. But maybe that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't stood around inhaling mercury vapors when the fluorescent lights broke in your garage, or if you hadn't lived near that landfill where these small amounts collect to have a bigger effect.

We know it's dangerous, and we're clever enough to find ways around using it in mass-produced consumer goods, so why not do it?

There is no safe amount of mercury exposure. It is a potent neurotoxin. This is a great treaty and I hope it succeeds. We're smart enough to find other ways of accomplishing what we need. Under pressure from autism-related claims, it was replaced by something safer in vaccines. Digital thermometers take temperature without using mercury. Fluorescent lights will soon be replaced with LEDs.

There's a lot of crazy people in the world. Every little thing we can do to remove neurotoxins from the environment is a good step.

Next: do the same thing with lead. I'm sick of seeing it in all my christmas light plastics.