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Comment by onionisafruit | Hacker News Reader

What does that mean? I read it as people who have already lost an eye shouldn’t risk their only remaining eye, but I think I’m missing something.

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It's tongue-in-cheek, implying that many people working with the stuff already lost an eye to it.

It's part joke and part telling people "hey, this stuff is really dangerous, take it seriously or you'll lose an eye, or both". I don't think I've seen a single lab with high-powered lasers that didn't have a variant of this sign.

A similar popular sign for chemical labs is "Carol Never Wore Her Safety Goggles. Now She Doesn't Need Them", depicting a blind woman with sunglasses and a white cane. (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/carols-safety-goggles)

I think part of the joke is that damage is instantaneous so if you’re not prepared you can’t take evasive action.

On top of this, we can't see 800 nm light. That's well into the Infrared band so "invisible lightsaber for your eyes" is an exaggeration, but helps visualize what you could be dealing with.

I think that sometimes when humor is added, in this way, it is to make you pause first.

At least in my mind when I encounter something oddly said/written my mind starts suggesting contexts and I can clearly "see" myself going blind by doing me like things.

It emphasizes that you will only notice there's something dangerous around after you are already blind.

It's a very well worded warning, that spread because it's effective. The official warning saying that you must take precautions even if you don't see anything wrong just doesn't work well.

Yeah it's provocatively funny

Thanks. I must be awake too early because it didn’t occur to me the sign is a joke.

The joke being is that's not a joke.

It's a quantum joke

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