- bobbytables ( @bobbytables@feddit.de ) 50•5 months ago
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.
- grrgyle ( @grrgyle@slrpnk.net ) 2•5 months ago
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
- Alto ( @Alto@kbin.social ) 33•5 months ago
I apparently threw my glasses across the room in my sleep last night. Spent a solid 5 minutes going full on Velma mode looking for them.
- Kalkaline ( @Kalkaline@leminal.space ) 19•5 months ago
Remember, your only job as far as natural selection is concerned is to have offspring and have them survive long enough to repeat the cycle. Old people with bad eyesight just have to be able to keep the kids and grandkids alive.
- knittedmushroom ( @knittedmushroom@beehaw.org ) 16•5 months ago
I like to tell my Republican father we’d both be classified legally blind and on the welfare he hates so much if optometry wasn’t around. Helps put it in perspective for him how some people just “lose” the life lotto and need help to live in the same world as able-bodied folks.
- KillingTimeItself ( @KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English13•5 months ago
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.
Natural selection my ass.
- ULS ( @ULS@lemmy.ml ) 3•5 months ago
Legend has it that it started with an old drunk man that decided to hold beer bottles to his eyes.
- KillingTimeItself ( @KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English3•5 months ago
i dont know about that one to be honest.
Would be pretty funny though.
- ℛ𝒶𝓋ℯ𝓃 ( @name_NULL111653@pawb.social ) 3•5 months ago
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.
- KillingTimeItself ( @KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English2•5 months ago
this seems much more likely, i like this one.
- spoon00 ( @spoon00@midwest.social ) 9•5 months ago
That and a bunch of reasons
- SternburgExport ( @SternburgExport@feddit.de ) 7•5 months ago
but mostly the bunch of reasons
- kingthrillgore ( @KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml ) 8•5 months ago
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.
- cheesymoonshadow ( @cheesymoonshadow@lemmings.world ) 6•5 months ago
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.
- lugal ( @lugal@lemmy.ml ) 6•5 months ago
Not that this would be the only thing I would be selected out for…
- Gerudo ( @Gerudo@lemm.ee ) 4•5 months ago
Yeah, I always get a warning message from zenni when I order glasses. It thinks my script is wrong cause it’s such a weird one.
I know I’m half blind! Don’t make me feel bad about it too!
- ULS ( @ULS@lemmy.ml ) 3•5 months ago
Just make the world think they are blind too. Just like anything else.
- noseatbelt ( @noseatbelt@lemmy.ca ) 2•5 months ago
My eyesight is atrocious. One time I was out in a notable windstorm, I stumbled, and my glasses got ripped off my face. I would have been absolutely fuckered if I’d been alone. They’d gotten blown under a car and I never would have found them by myself.
- HopingForBetter ( @HopingForBetter@lemmy.today ) 2•5 months ago
Okay… Sheesh! Text message, email, voicemail, and now lemmy post!? Fine, I’ll call to schedule my yearly appointment. Happy now, doc?
- FiveMacs ( @Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca ) 2•5 months ago
No…