I don’t know how much longer we can keep going before physics ends advancement.

I remember being told in computer science in the late 90s that we were approaching the limits of what was achievable with known physics / wavelengths and yet here we find ourselves. I'm not sure how they keep improving but they do.

You will not believe this but when I emailed for my prescription earlier I was told I'm well overdue (2021 was my last test) and I said "time flies". She took the time to write "OUT OF DATE" twice on the scan.

Thanks for the timeline.

Just wanted to come back and say thanks. I emailed my optician for my prescription and bought a pair of glasses off this site for €17 delivered (about $19 USD). Do you mind me asking how long yours took to arrive? I'm in one of the "standard delivery" countries.

Ah! I knew there was a place someone had mentioned to me before that they were happy with and couldn't remember the name. It was Zenni. I ended up buying from that site linked above for very cheap and I'm going to do some experimenting with these scratched ones when the new ones get here.

Yeah one of the recommended things I saw was furniture polish or car wax to fill them in. Both would only be temporary. Based on the replies so far I may give this a whirl as I don't see it being damaging.

Hard to tell exactly but maybe Milan over to Verona and down to Bologna?

Ah unfortunately they've taken a bit of abuse over the years. Nothing major so the scratches are really tiny but enough of them have built up from rough and tumble with the kids etc. that they're a constant annoyance now. :(

I do actually do the dishsoap / warm water thing myself and find it great.

These were my backup pair on a 2 for 1 offer so I didn't get any lens coating / thinner lens thing on them.

Thanks. Just had a look and that is incredibly cheap. They also do free standard shipping to my country so I will seriously consider this.

two days, per lens

HOLY MOLY! Fair play to you for the perseverance though.

You know, this is so blindingly obvious I never thought of it. Haha! Great idea.

edit: I actually can't believe I didn't think of this. Chuckling away to myself here.

edit 2: I looked up the opticians I bought from and they have a page about scratches that says they can't unfortunately. :( It recommends new lenses. Not sure if that's profit motive or not though.

Good God. I cannot imagine the mindset of running at a wall of spears and shields with my bits swinging and thinking it was a solid idea.

Ha! I did actually cop that. :)

Ah it was in jest but sure here we find ourselves.

Compress those suckers!

Never thought I'd say this but.....

I am proud to live in a red state.

Edit: On the map you donkeys

I highly recommend Perfect Days. Lovely little movie.

No, that was Liz Truss, the British prime minister and it was a lettuce.

Right.....I'll preface all this by saying I live in an RCV country which used to have a 2 party system way back when. The question was genuine because I'm very happy with our voting system and if there were flaws I'm interested to explore better options.

The hypothetical you're discussing there never happens. I've been voting for 30 years and have never come across (or myself done) the kind of shenanigans you mention. There's just no need for it.

You go in, rank your options in order and the fairest option for you (with some small caveats) comes out on top. Our recent European elections in my district are a good example. There were 4 seats up for grabs and 8 parties and a bunch of independents up. The larger parties will frequently field 2 candidates. In that election, the 5th place candidate overtook 4th on eliminations from the 6th place preferences to take the last seat.

In the case of the nazi's, they get eliminated first round here then 90+% of their votes will pass to some other right wing party with 10% not counting because they are the end of the line for that voter.

One example I'll give is for a centre left voter. They would hypothetically vote some combination of labour, greens and centre left independents. Once those options had run out on the ballot, you're looking at whether they're more likely to go far left or centre right. Where I live, a large number of the votes will actually fall centre right as they're closer idealogically than far left.

For what it's worth, here's how the breakdown of voting was in my district:

https://www.rte.ie/news/elections-2024/results/#/local/fingal-county-county

The counting thing actually adds a bit of spice and voter excitement because you're keen to see how votes transfer in each round. Certainly I was checking in regularly and was keen to see if the pundits were right on the final elimination I mentioned above (they were).

Recounts are rarely necessary but do happen in the event that it's looking close for an actual seat and not who's going to be eliminated next.

I have heard of star voting and must read more on it, but I am very happy with RCV for now and I'm not sure Star would represent any meaningful change in a country that moved from 2 party to many party with a strong independent voice in our parliament.

Edit: One thing I like about RCV is voting for a candidate even though I feel they're likely to get eliminated simply because they match my views closely, knowing that my further down preferences will count and if they are elected well all the better. That is just not really an option with FPTP. It's a horrible system.

I'm curious to hear what those issues are?

I feel well represented under RCV.

Ireland also has this. It's great. I believe that's what's being referred to as "ranked choice voting" in this thread.

I would generally go quite far down the ballot though I do believe some stop at 1 or 2.