My eyesight went to shit from sitting at a desk and staring at a monitor all day. I wonder if my eyesight would’ve remained perfect well into adulthood without computers.
It wouldn’t have, apparently. An optometrist friend says that sort of thing only makes slightly worse the things that were already going to happen to your eyes. Like, if you are nearsighted and didn’t exercise your eyes looking at far away stuff enough, your eyesight will be slightly more myopic. But you were going to be nearsighted anyway. Like, people were awfully nearsighted way before the invention of the television and sedentary indoor lifestyles. We just hadn’t invented optometry yet to note it.
Yes. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Hittites, and Phoenicians all had significantly more rights for women than the Hebrews, just to go from notable cultures in the area. Three of those being fellow Semitics, btw, and their tribal ancestors or cousins.
Equal isn’t right either of course, but the turning point into the standard of what we think of a “woman’s place” in ancient (Mediterranean) societies is largely based on Abrahamic and Roman/Greek traditions, not the other Semitic or Eastern Mediterranean contemporaries.
Of course, it’s also incorrect to treat it as a static situation. Rights waxed and waned, as most things tend to over the centuries.
For example, what we think of the “Hebrews” are theorized to have been, effectively, rural tribes that conquered their more egalitarian (but not actually egalitarian by any stretch, mind) Canaanite cousins who otherwise shared their descent, language, and general religion.
Like Al Qaeda conquering the cities of Afghanistan.
I’m assuming that’s a side effect. Looking it up it seems to have started because the people of the time believed it reduced transmission of STDs and that it lessens the urge to masturbate.
I’ve always found it curious that a religion that hated women so much would make a ritual out of a genital mutilation that makes men last longer. enjoy sex less.
you know whats even weirder? Some dude somewhere realized that lenses were a thing, and realized that your eyes were also just a glorified lense. And that theoretically you could just put a lense over a lense to fix the bad lensing of the lense. And it fucking worked.
The “traditional” story (the one that “seems most likely” because we don’t really know) is that some kids were playing with discarded warped glass at a glassmaker’s shop and ended up with a magnifying glass or rudimentary telescope. Enter the simultaneous invention of the telescope in multiple places (very likely it wasn’t any one person in particular), Galileo starts using it for scientific stuff, now they’re making lenses on purpose. Old nearsighted lensemaker looks through it, maybe some charts or a book on the table, all of a sudden they can see well. Attach to frame. Glasses.
I remember maybe a decade or more ago some enterprising gent made a glasses design with some kind of resin in the lens, so the wearer could adjust the lens thickness to fit their needs. Nobody would back his invention so he created a non-profit to fund these glasses for the developing world. I’d love to know what happened to it because its still something I care about supporting.
20 years ago I was injured in one eye. Without an operation it would have left me going slowly blind. The operation was invented maybe 20 years earlier.
Both my eyes had a cataract at a quite early age. Artificial lenses where invented AFAIK 50 years ago. The new lenses even correct my shortsightedness and astigmatism!
So if I had lived only 50 years earlier I would be blind on one eye and quite possibly without a lense or at least seeing really foggy on the other. Now I am sitting here with - 0.5/-1 and otherwise great eye sight.
There are no words how grateful I am for the wonders of modern eye medicine.
Similar thing happened to my dad. He was slowly going blind from cataracts, like he couldn’t even make out the dinner table in front of him. He just wasn’t mentioning it until it became untenable.
Then we found out there’s a free surgery to fix it, and now suddenly he’s got clear 20/20 vision at almost 80! He’s got better vision than I do lol
Natural selection hasn’t really applied to humans for thousands of years. We beat nature when we created civilizations. Which is partly why some of these less than ideal genetic traits go unchecked now in the population.
And even those self-imposed selective forces are ever-changing and vary quite wildly from context to context across the globe and across the socioeconomic spectrum. Modern human evolution is really fascinating.
That’s only true if people that work in offices reproduce at a higher rate than the general population, and I’m not entirely sure that’s the case. If anything, societal trends have shown that in more developed countries where office work would be more common people are having fewer kids and populations are starting to decline.
I know how you mean it, but I would still consider civilisation part of nature. Like an anthill is part of nature even if it was “invented” by ants, etc
It doesn’t have to do with civilisation, but with group compassion. In fact, civilizations tend to care less if somebody starves to death on the streets because their eyes are not performing well enough to earn money…
That’s really not true at all though. Look up “Food Pantries in my area” and see how many places offer food in your area. The blind man would qualify for lifetime disability checks. Food stamps are a thing, charities and churches do this kind of work as well. My city has an emergency rent program and there are, of course, homeless shelters and soup kitchens as well. It’s really that society’s mechanism for meeting the needs of the hungry are part voluntary (charity) and part automatic with entitlements (not a bad word!) and sometimes people fall through the cracks.
This is why getting people connected to resources is such a big deal.
Being seriously evaluated for Sjogren’s Syndrome currently. Went to a rheumatologist for joint pain and found out that my chronic eye pain and dry eyes is a big indicator of a problem. I thought it is because my eyesight is shit and I look at screens constantly
Not yet. But my eyes are definitely getting worse in regards to the dryness and pain. I thought it was just eye strain, but the doctor was like, “no. There’s definitely something wrong with you.”
I have loads of symptoms that indicate auto-immune disease. My thyroid is also larger than it should be, which has the doctor concerned. She could physically feel how big it is.
Every time I have a migraine (or when I take my daily preventative. or whenever I notice the anti-migraine coating on my glasses) I consider how long it’ll take someone to put me out of my misery once the apocalypse shows up. Can’t say I’ll be super useful whenever I’m forced to be in a dark/quiet room for a day or so before I can function again.
Funnily enough, taking my glasses off in a dream and still being able to see is how I've realized I was I a dream a couple times. Unfortunately I immediately get way too excited at the prospect and immediately wake up every time haha
Sleepwalking is correlated with stress levels. I’ve sleepwalked a few times in my life; some I half-remember, but most not at all, I only know if I find out from someone else like family/friends/partners.
When I was a teenager, I had a wall scroll that hung above the head of my bed. One morning, I found it piled on the floor next to my bed. It could have been one of my family, but they all denied it and there’s no motivation anyway. I had to conclude that I did it in my sleep, but it’s stuck with me because I’ve always found it extremely disturbing that I’m up and about while I’m completely (or nearly completely) unconscious. I’ve lived in a few skyscrapers with windows and balcony doors that opened more than enough for me to jump, and the idea that I’ll wake up halfway down scares the everfucking bejeezus out of me.
Yeah I’m in my 40s now and could barely see aged 5. I had glasses that were so thick even getting them in high index the lens sticks out of a chunky frame.
We have discovered nearsightedness is caused by a lack of sunshine during childhood. The amount of bright light you’re exposed to determines when your eyeballs stop growing/adjusting and if you don’t get enough you end up near-sighted.
Some species members care for each other. Humans obviously (some anyways), even lions I think have been known to provide food when another has broken teeth or something.
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