@variablepulserate Chores are definitely not good. Very overrated. Especially bureaucracy. Says the person who is doing voluntary work in an office dealing with diocesan bureaucracy. š
@matigo I think prices are high across the EU - cheapest in South America. I found a site that said Switzerland is most expensive, then Denmark, then the UK.
I probably donāt use it often enough to justify the cost, but itās the annoyance factor of the ads that makes me do it. I can live with them on Netflix/Sky etc but for some reason they bug the hell out of me on YouTube.
// @sumudu
@ayumi Guys can be very weird. Keep your eye on him - though Poppy says a well-placed paw can result in treatsā¦
@variablepulserate You could be right - our brains compensate for a lot of eye shortcomings anyway and there is an argument that wearing corrective glasses stops the eyes from working as hard and the brain from interpreting the āwrongā information and making it correct. Letās face it, the eyes see upside down anyway, which the brain corrects for. Iām sure thereās a point beyond which things arenāt possible, though. My brother was so shortsighted he simply couldnāt see a ball until it was right in front of his eyes. No brain can really correct for something it simply canāt see at all. I donāt think you can compensate for presbyopia, either. Strong light helps a bit, as I found. Even with reading lenses I still need stronger light to read small print nowadays. That's why I use a Kindle so much - variable front illumination and adjustable text size. Some paperbacks I need a torch for, in addition to my specs - but that tends to happen to everyone in time.
@variablepulserate Well thatās good. Hope it works out. Eyesight is a very precious thing.
Iāve worn glasses since I was seven. Yeah, pink nhs frames on a kid with bright auburn hair. I donāt think Iāve recovered from the trauma. I was so relieved when they brought out tortoiseshell ones. I started off long-sighted, then short, then I got given a prescription for astigmatism when I was about 15. They warned me my brain would take a while to adapt - they werenāt wrong. For several days it looked like the ground was at 45Ā°. Horrid feeling. Itās a damn nuisance when it changes, because it makes previous specs unwearable unless I want to feel queasy. I still donāt know why it should change, but it does. Iām hoping that if my lenses harden as I get older, it will stop that, but who knows.
Luckily I donāt have the extra holes in my eyes. I just know what to do if I ever have an acute attack, (basically get to an eye emergency dept), plus I have to wear photochromic lenses to lessen the impact of going from light to dark places - something to do with the iris having pigment cells rubbed more if the pupil changes quickly. Not that my pupils contract properly anyway. I dunno, never really fully understood the issue. Itās never caused a major problem; it isnāt glaucoma, but too much pigment liberation could cause a blockage and an acute glaucoma attack. Yay.
@variablepulserate Well that's good to know. š I guess you could always close one eye.
They can fix all sorts of things with lasers, but I canāt say I fancy the thought of having laser surgery on my eyes. The medics threatened to laser an additional drainage hole into my eyes because of the pigment dispersion. I wasnāt keen, but agreed. Luckily the day I went for it, I saw the consultant who was happy to agree that it wasnāt really needed, as the condition had never caused any damage to my retina. Phew!
If I ever get cataracts then assuming they insert a correctly shaped lens the astigmatism should go away. Then I could buy cheap reading glasses maybe.
My eyesight isnāt really that bad: +1 and +0.75, with a reading addition of +2.5 & +2.75. I think the worst I ever was, was -1.25. The astigmatism angle just means that horizontal/vertical is the least in focus, so I get eye strain easily. And of course since the age of 40 Iāve needed a reading addition. But Iām typing this on my 6ā iPhone without my glasses on, no problem at all.
My brother, however, has always been very short-sighted, though maybe less so now heās in his 50s. š¤·āā
@matigo Agreed. It was instilled into a lot of my generation through Scouts, Brownies & Guides. Not sure how popular they are nowadays.
Itās a scarily isolating world at times, though Iām lucky to live in a fairly small community - but conversely I donāt have the usual network of Mums whose children have gone through school together, or local work colleagues.
We now have a cohort of youngsters who missed out on valuable socialising thanks to Covid. Some kids fared worse than others, but most people I know say their children/grandchildren were affected to some degree. My younger nephew found it quite hard at times, I think. I do wonder quite what we have done to the next generation - nothing much thatās good!
@variablepulserate Trust you to be weird! I'm slightly unusual in that my astigmatism is because of mis-shapen lenses in both eyes: most often it's the shape of the eyeball, or the layer of fluid in front of the eye.