Work

AOC’s Day Job

Portrait of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg

Yeah, you know, the day to day of my day job is frustrating. So is everyone else's. You know, I ate shit when I was a waitress and a bartender, and I eat shit as a member of Congress. It's called a job. You know? And yes, I deal with the wheeling and dealing, and . . . I advance some amendments that some people would criticize as too little and too small, and . . . I also advance big things that people say is unrealistic and naive. . . [T]hat is like always the great fear when it comes to work or pursuing anything. You want to write something, and in your head it's this big, beautiful, like Nobel-prize-winning concept, and then you are humbled by the words that you actually put on paper. And that is the work of movement, that is the work of organizing, that is the work of elections, that is the work of legislation . . . that is what it means to be in the arena.

-- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez interviewed by David Remnick on The New Yorker Radio Hour Podcast, February 14, 2022.

Close the Eye-Lid and Save the Eye

Repeated experience has shown that the eye closes so quickly that where the lens is broken and pieces of glass fly from it, the eye-lid is almost invariably shut; if any cut is received it is on the outside of the lid, and superficial in character. The goggles "give" somewhat under the impact of a blow, and the fraction of a second's time thus saved is sufficient to close the eye-lid and save the eye. Where the force of a flying chip is so great as to break a heavy lens of this kind, it is obvious that the eye-ball would be shattered, even though the eye-lid were closed, if no goggle were used.

Welder

At a recent safety exposition one of the goggle manufacturers gave a graphic demonstration of the resistive power of good lenses. Repeated blows from a plunger actuated by a strong spring often failed to even crack the glass. Many workmen have been reassured in this way, where they were at first afraid to wear goggles lest they should get particles of broken glass in their eyes.

-- David Stewart Beyer, Industrial Accident Prevention (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 373-4.