KPAO by Dave Cortright

Women nearly twice as likely to report experiencing depression as men

Wow. This is self-reported data so grain of salt, but according to 23andMe, nearly twice as many women have reported experiencing depression compared to men.

FakeSpot checks how legit the Amazon and Yelp reviews are for a product or place

I've been buying a lot of items from Amazon based in part on the rating. My go-to baseline search criteria these days for any item is Prime and 4 stars and above. Of course some sellers know this, so they generate fake positive reviews. Amazon hasn't done a lot to prevent them or take them down (or if they are doing something, it's not enough). So that's why I now check FakeSpot before buying.

If I'm feeling particularly motivated too, I ask a question on an Amazon product asking what the FakeSpot rating is for the product. It's an indirect way to let other shoppers know. And it doesn't require me to write a review for a product I have no direct experience with (which I don't feel would be right).

FakeSpot Amazon product review verification service

Some thoughts on the recent women’s marches, #meToo, sexual assault and rape

These are sobering stats: ⅙ of all women will be a victim of rape/attempted rape in her lifetime; nearly ½ (44%) of rapes happen to minors.

I tried to find stats on the profile of the assailant/rapist. ⅔ are family/partner, friend or acquaintance. I couldn't find stats on the number of victims (please comment if you do). But it did remind me—and I just verified—that for pedophiles, the number of lifetime victims is between 50-260 HFS! And sad to say, Larry Nassar sits in the middle of that range at 160+.

The thing that immediately popped into my head was this Elton John lyric (with ‘funny’ replaced by ‘a complete and utter travesty’): “It's funny how one insect can damage so much grain…”

I‘m a huge proponent of Brandeis’ assertion that “Sunlight is… the best of disinfectants”. It needs to not only be OK—but essential—for victims to report. They need to not be afraid of doing so. That's a hard obstacle to overcome, since the percent reported goes down the younger the victim is and the closer the victim is to the assailant.

So much credit goes to Judge Rosemarie Aquilina for allowing any victim to speak her truth in court to be inscribed permanently into the public record for the whole world to hear. I encourage you to read them. This is progress.

At least we’ve now started having these difficult conversations more openly. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

—feeling drained yet hopeful

GoodRx—price comparison to find the cheapest prescription medications (including generic drugs)

I recently left my full-time job to contract. This meant I needed to get my own health care plan. I ended up going with Kaiser since it was very highly rated, and literally ½ the cost of the next cheapest option. Sorry, PAMF. I like you but not that much.

It looks like their prescriptions are a pretty good price. But I think it's always wise to price check. My go-to site for that is GoodRx.com. For the few drugs I checked, there is literally a 3✕ difference between the cheapest and the most expensive. In the case of atorvastatin, it is more than 5✕ (cheapest is $8; most expensive is $43).

I recommend you always check against what you are currently paying. Sometimes the cheapest option for you might not even involve your insurance.

GoodRx—price comparison for medications

Flip the script and practice non-complementary behavior when confronted with anger and hatred

On this MLK day, the one thing I am reflecting on for my own life is non-complementary behavior. There was a fantastic Invisibilia podcast on this about 18 months ago called Flip the Script. I highly recommend listening to it.

This is a cornerstone to the game plan of the great leaders who fought for social justice and won: Gandhi, Mandela and yes even MLK. It requires some serious zen master-level emotional regulation skills to absorb negativity aimed directly at you and respond with empathy, understanding, and—dare I say—even love.

But it works, and as history has shown us it results in some pretty miraculous outcomes. The comedian Sarah Silverman just did this and it surely brought tears to my eyes. What a role model. I aspire to be that awesome.

The key is to be solid in who you are and not let the invective of another suck you into a typical complementary response. One thought that helps me: Quit taking it personally; What someone else says about us reveals more about them and their emotional state than it does about us.

A list of some of the most common erroneous word substitutions

I was talked to my friend Kerah about champing vs. chomping and tack vs. tact, and that got me thinking there must be a canonical list out there of the most common of these. I did find this list, which is very thorough. A little too thorough in my opinion. So I created my own abridged version. Most of these are homophones, or they are so close as to sound the same in colloquial English.

1. accept / except
2. affect / effect
3. aisle / isle
4. alliterate / illiterate
5. allude / elude
6. allusion / illusion
7. altar / alter
8. ascent / assent
9. bazaar / bizarre
10. breach / breech
11. broach / brooch
12. chartered / charted
13. chomping / champing
14. complement / compliment
15. conscious / conscience
16. council /counsel
17. depreciate / deprecate
18. discreet / discrete
19. elicit / illicit
20. elusive / illusive
21. ensure / insure
22. flesh out / flush out
23. niggard / the “N” word
24. peek / pique
25. perspective / prospective
26. pore / pour
27. precede / procede
28. precedence / precedents
29. prescribe / proscribe
30. principal / principle
31. quiet / quite
32. rack / wrack
33. raise / raze
34. rational /rationale
35. recent / resent
36. ringer / wringer
37. risky / risque
38. rogue / rouge
39. sensual / sensuous
40. shear / sheer
41. shudder / shutter
42. silicon / silicone
43. sleight / slight
44. spade / spayed
45. stamp / stomp
46. stationary / stationery
47. tack / tact
48. taught / taut
49. they’re / their / there
50. you’re / your / yore
51. vice / vise
52. waver / waiver
53. weather / whether
54. yoke / yolk

Super rapid prototyping: automatically generating working HTML code from design wireframes

This sounds super cool for rapid design prototyping.

Life hack: Use a knife to smooth down the seams on plastic juice and milk containers

I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this one out. I regularly buy freshly-squeezed orange juice (or tangerine when it’s available; Yum!). It comes in HDPE (high-density polyethylene) plastic containers, which have a seam where the two halves of the injection mold came together. The seam is always along the middle of the handle, so it digs into your fingers when you pick it up.

To fix this, just take a sharp knife—I use a paring knife—and scrape it along the seam to shave it down. I rotate the blade at the corners to dig out the seam there as well. Makes it a much nicer experience when pouring the juice.

I also did this for my RubberMaid MixerMate 3 quart pitchers. 

The difference between an excuse and an explanation

Excuses deny responsibility. Explanations allow for responsibility to be acknowledged, and also for the situation to be explored and understood.

From Psych Central.

Jins eyewear for prescription glasses online; better than Warby Parker

I was always a big fan or Warby Parker's concept: cheap, stylish glasses from a company that had good values. The only problem was I never really found a style from them I like. I did end up getting one pair, but I actually went back to my previous pair just because I liked that style better.

I discovered Jins through my job at Wildlife Conservation Network. They supported the org with donations, so I decided to give them a try.

They have lot more styles to choose from than WP, and I found a bunch that suit me. They are relatively inexpensive. There are 3 tiers of pricing: $80, $100, and $120. They also have a specialty frame called Frontswitch (which I just bought) that has a removable sunglasses overlay for $150. Free shipping on orders too. And as will all glasses, there is no sales tax (since it's a health-related expense). Sign up for their newsletter. They run weekly $40 specials on a few frames.

Jins Eyewear