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Josh Knox

Just Joshin' #211 (Glasses)

Published 2 months ago • 2 min read

Family Photo:
Glasses

Glasses make us look different.

Calvin grabs Grandpa's reading glasses. It makes me smile. He looks so grown up.

Another time, Cousin Nolan puts on his father's glasses. "Uncle Nolan! Uncle Nolan!" Calvin and Lawrence cry out in their singsong voices. Laughter fills their mouths, rolls off their tongues, and bounces around the room.

No wonder Lois Lane could never recognize Superman in the office. Glasses make us entirely different people. ​
​
Glasses make us look different.

Sunglasses, X-ray glasses, magnifying glasses, rose-colored glasses.

Glasses allow us to see the world in ways we couldn't before. Sometimes they correct our natural deficiencies, sometimes they give us super-abilities. You need the right tool for the job though: a telescope is good for looking at the moon, not great for reading a menu. Sunglasses aren't so useful at night...unless you want to look cool.

I wonder where augmented reality glasses will fall on this spectrum.

--

Lawrence puts on the Uncle Nolan glasses, cries out in disappointment: "It's blurry for me!"

Nolan's dad, glasses-less, replies: "It's blurry for me too!"

Dad Joke(s):
Prescription Glasses

Patient: Doctor, you can't possibly have a cure for myopia AND my pessimism!​
Doctor: Glasses, half-full.

Joke: Me
Image: Dad[AI]Base​

Highlights:
Powerful Glasses

​The seam through the center of things by Cate Hall​

Life is littered with irritants that you don’t notice until they go away. The noise of your city environment, until you spend a night in the country. Blurred vision, until you try on glasses for the first time. My husband talks about meditation, and in the extreme, awakening, this way — as finally noticing something that has always been true but that you were prevented from seeing by some tragic error in perception.
​
Less obvious is the fact that the absence of something can be like this, too, can exert a constant toll on you without you realizing it’s happening. Have you seen those videos of kids trying on colorblindness-correcting glasses, or hearing their mothers’ voices for the first time after getting cochlear implants? There are hungers you don’t feel until they are sated.

​The Backspace Was My Nemesis by Anthony Pica​

Like glasses correcting blurred vision, writing is a way to clarify thoughts.

​Why Does Maths Work? by Tom Hollands​

“A lot of what we see comes from the glasses we put on.” And mathematics are the most powerful lenses we have.

​Education Doesn't Work by Freddie deBoer​

Sometimes I will go looking at Wonk Twitter to see what the white boys there are cooking up in the education space. You know, your Vox crew, your 538ers, your Slateys, your think tankies, your non-profiteers, your Nate Silver reply guys, your TED graph fetishists, your various dweebies. It’s always a remarkable exercise in fixating on the outcome you want without ever once considering your basic apprehension of the system. They look at decade after decade of education research and reform failing to move the needle in education metrics, they see the subsequent failure of the system to produce any more equality or mobility or utility, then they push their glasses up their nose and go “perhaps if we tweak the Earned Income Tax Credit.”

​A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles​

For the times do, in fact, change. They change relentlessly. Inevitably. Inventively. And as they change, they set into bright relief not only outmoded honorifics and hunting horns, but silver summoners and mother-of-pearl opera glasses and all manner of carefully crafted things that have outlived their usefulness.

iamJoshKnox:
Handwriting Practice!

I used some Claude/ChatGPT credits to create and publish a series of handwriting books under the pseudonym Dottie D. Eye. My author copies arrive next week, I'm excited to see how the books turn out.

Available on Amazon Where Books are Sold:​
​Handwriting Practice for Kids Who Love... Dinosaurs! ​

Want to Be Interviewed?

I want to improve my interviewing skills:
​Please REPLY if you'd like to do a 30-minute interview with me for a Podcast that doesn't yet exist.

Or book some time on my calendar if there's anything else you'd like to chat about:
​https://calendly.com/iamjoshknox​

Until next week,
​iamJoshKnox​​

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Josh Knox

Hi! I am Josh Knox. Read more of me here: 👇

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