Monthly Archives: February 2018
Voltron was one of my favorite cartoons as a kid. I remember that we used to play it on the playground. We were all boys, so we did this thing where we pretended that the original blue lion was actually a guy. At least, I thought we were making that up so that we could get someone to be the blue lion, but it actually appears to be true. Another thing I remember from back in the day was that I thought they switched from Lion Voltron to Car Voltron so that they could sell new toys (and not because, it turns out, they were using existing footage). In both of these cases I was in elementary school and had cynical ideas way ahead of my time. I didn’t have any taste, though, because it turns out that the show is just really bad.
The Netflix one is actually good! It is, in fact, as good a version of Voltron as I can possibly imagine existing.
And yet… I have no interest in watching anymore. It was gorgeous. They made the mythology make as much sense as possible. They gave the characters life. They did everything I could ask of them. Yet, instead of making the story more compelling, the relative realism elsewhere just drew attention to the fact that it’s the story of five robotic lions creating a giant mecha warrior. There’s just no getting around that.
I am not sure why it is that I can accept superheroes but have a problem with this. It’s not conditioning because I was exposed to Voltron as early as I was exposed to anything. It could be a technical plausibility thing. Superheroes are inherently mythical. Robots are machines are real, even if they are sentient like the lions. Not I find myself wishing that, instead of a story about robotic lions, all of that imagination had been dedicated to something else.
Of course, if it had, I probably wouldn’t have watched it.
I wore my sunglasses last night
Because I'm really not very bright
I got in a plane and flew very far
And left my regular glasses in my car.— Will Truman (@trumwill) February 1, 2018
So last week we went to Disney World. And, as indicated in the above tweet, I did not bring any glasses. This was doubly frustrating because the possibility of leaving the sunglasses in my car is something I’d thought about. And it wouldn’t have been difficult to throw a spare pair of glasses into the suitcase just in case. But I didn’t. And when I got past security I realized that my transition lenses hadn’t transitioned. Because they weren’t transition lenses.
Fate did throw me a bone, however, because I had some contacts in my toiletry bag. The only problem is that I didn’t have any sunglasses. My eyes are sensitive enough that if I have to choose between wearing sunglasses indoors or contacts with no eye protection outdoors, I’ll take the former. I should have just purchased some sunglasses at Disney World, but I was irrationally thrifty.
The end result is that on the big first day, I was wearing sunglasses. When I say “the big first day” it was the day that we went in the morning and Lain and I didn’t leave until dark (or, in my case, really really really dark). Also, because of the way things shook out, I missed a couple of dimly lit indoor rides where I could barely see what was going on.
Despite being out of practice, the contacts went into my eyes seemlessly and I wore them the rest of the trip (with sunglasses).
Now I’m back and I know once I switch back to glasses, I’m probably not going to use these contacts again.
It’s a weirdly different experience wearing contacts after all this time. I haven’t worn any in at least two years. Once I got prescription sunglasses, I rarely felt the need. I see better with glasses. Except I can’t entirely. The world looks wonderful through my contacts. No fingerprint smudges. No dust. But I can barely read. Because of my astigmatism, I lose some of the detail front and center.
It reminds me of a Batman Animated Series episode where Bruce Wayne is stuck in a dream. Everything is vivid and life-like, but because it’s a dream he can’t read anything. (Which I think is a myth, actually, but I’ll roll with it.Photo by n4i.es 
New York is looking at forcing Tide (and other such companies) to stop making their product look like candy:
Teenagers and some young adults have started an Internet trend called the “Tide Pod challenge,” in which they post videos online of themselves with Tide Pods in their mouth. Although the source of the problem is clearly the fact that reckless stupidity can get you internet fame, New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman and Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas — both New York City Democrats — believe that the problem is that people somehow do not understand the danger associated with swallowing commercial cleaning products, or perhaps that Tide Pods actually look appetizing to some people because of their colorful design.
According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, there have been over 80 cases of intentional misuse of Tide Pods reported so far in 2018, up from only 53 cases in all of 2017.
I thought the consumer rights people were exaggerating, but then I saw one and was gobsmacked. Yes, they really do look like candy. On the other hand, they don’t feel like candy once you pick them up. Tide has apparently made some movement towards fixing this by changing the colors up. I saw some the other day and instead of a white base they were green. Except for sour apple, there isn’t a whole lot of green candy out there. It did not look appetizing. So it seems like the problem self-corrected. For what really isn’t a huge problem, given the lack of actual incidents.
That said, I am not especially bothered by this government interference. The laundry pods we were using – which were not Tide – were black. So I know it’s possible, and it’s a pretty small revision for them to make.
I should note that the vaping community was on to this scourge well before the media. Back when there was concern about kids drinking ejuice, a lot of vaping advocates looked up the CDC statistics and found everyday things that were proving to be more of a problem. And so laundry pods would get mentioned:
Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, a nonprofit group dedicated to education about e-cigarettes and vapor products, said the concern about e-cigarettes is overblown.
The child who died, he said, consumed a homemade nicotine liquid concoction that’s much stronger than retail versions that are easily available in the United States. And, he added, laundry detergent pods and prescription medications are bigger poisoning risks to kids.
Which is my main concern about cracking down on laundry pod manufacturers: The fact that we regulate them will be later used to justify regulating other things where (unlike here) the proposed regulation is a burden. The regulation for ejuice packaging turned out okay, for whatever that’s worth. Basically, suppliers sidestepped them by shipping them in the child-proof containers but including an alternative top you could replace it with. And I suppose if they did start actually putting ejuice out in attractive colors I would be a little concerned.