Disney CEO Bob Iger’s Total Pay Jumps 30% To $41.1 Million

That's just insane. 

How many rank and file workers saw a 30% increase in pay? (hint: none)

And if we make a bold assumption that the average Disney employee makes around $40k per year, that means he's making about 1,000 times their salary. 

Ain't nobody. NOBODY. Who is that much more valuable than anyone else, regardless of what they will tell you.

https://deadline.com/2025/01/disney-ceo-bob-iger-2024-pay-jumps-41-million-1236265804/

Smart glasses

Gotta love the idea of glasses that can track your eye movement and then present information based on where you look. And to be able to do it non invasively with a small device is pretty cool. 

Now if they could adapt that so those of us with myopia could automatically adjust the lens so we didn't need to have a new prescription for changing eyes, I'd be all for it. 😉

https://www.hackster.io/news/looking-to-the-future-of-smart-glasses-941d9a0fcaf8

Better solar panels

Here's an intriguing article about how black silicone can be used to create a more textured surface than traditional silicone used in solar panel development. 

And that surface can then absorb more radiant energy and be more efficient in a panel, and at a lower cost. 

This could possibly change the market for solar, though we'll see how it goes  

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/black-silicon-is-the-end-solar-panels/10308/

Disney Hit With Copyright Lawsuit For Moana 2

Here's a story about how an animator believes that Disney stole his work for the Moana movie. 

It's not the first time Disney has been accused of stealing someone else's work; they were sued over most of the animations that came out in the 90s. Those were settled out of court or Disney won, so they didn't get a lot of press. 

"Buck Woodall claims that the Moana movies infringe on the copyrighted screenplay for his movie Bucky, which was given in 2003 - along with a concept trailer and other materials - to Jenny Marchick, Mandeville Films' Director of Development, who had a first look deal with Disney."

Still, it's worth following this story. 

https://screenrant.com/moana-2-copyright-lawsuit-disney-buck-woodall-report/

Seeing maps differently

Here's a fun collection of people showing us how maps can be deceptive. 

This is due at least in part to an inability to adequately reconstruct a 3D sphere on a 2D flat surface.  

We wind up centering things, and enlarging the scale (North America I'm looking at you!) on maps, and it makes everything more confusing to visualize correctly.  

https://pleated-jeans.com/2025/01/19/funny-interesting-maps/

It's no wonder some people get confused about geography in a spatial sense. And since I'm on that topic, here are some thoughts about what we often get wrong. 

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/why-your-mental-map-world-probably-wrong/

And just because I have a pet peeve about it,  the earth is a globe. Anyone who suggests that it's flat is …. well … stupid. 

Automated “intelligence” or just plain stupidity?

Our dryer broke. I repaired it. It broke again, and that was it.  We decided to replace it, and since the washer was acting up, we decided to replace it too

My wife called LG and placed an order - directly - with whatever discounts they offered her. We got confirmation and heard from the company delivering it.  A few weeks passed, and we didn't get any updates.

We called. And? 

The order was cancelled, apparently because the price was deemed to be too low and their automation decided it was fraudulent. And the person in customer service was unable to help.  

They gave so many excuses.  The best was that we needed to check with our bank to see why the amount was declined. Because that makes so much sense. 

It's kind of funny in a way. But more than that it's sad that it's this hard.

Anyway, my wife kept calling and asking for assistance, and then they offered her 10% off full price retail - even though the discount we had before was a larger percentage off of a sales price.  

More calls.  She finally got someone who could help.  He offered her the same price on the washer and dryer - but the washer was out of stock, and the deal was only good for a couple of days (longer than it will take to get a washer in stock).  They had it in stock in another color, but they couldn't honor the price for that model (even though it was less expensive in that color).

So the agent told her she was welcome to buy it elsewhere - at full retail price.

Its kind of unbelievable just how bad customer has become.  They offered us the price, then they cancelled it, and no one has the ability to honor what they offered us. Nor does anyone really care. They literally were trying to wear us down until we gave up. All over some appliances that will likely last 5 years because quality isn't a thing anymore, either. 

And for us, it means we'll be without a dryer for longer while we keep looking for another set. 

The backstory of made up words

I always find etymology interesting. But here's a case where words in written text were used for typesetting originally. More recently, they have been used to fill in a page, so you can see the page layout (which is a form of modern day typesetting I suppose). 

"Lorem Ipsum" doesn't actually mean anything. So where did it come from?

https://wordsmarts.com/lorem-ipsum/