१८ जानेवारी, २०२०

Books are boring.

According to "A (Former) Night Owl’s Guide to Becoming a Morning Person" in the NYT:
To get to bed earlier, you also have to slow down in the evenings. Excitement makes it harder to sleep. “Smartphones and laptops are just too exciting,” [said Dr. Alex Dimitriu, founder of the Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine clinic]. “So many people find it easier to go to sleep after reading a book than after trawling the internet. Do more quiet, relaxing activities in the hour or two before you plan to sleep.” Books, audiobooks, just listening to music or even meditating are all perfect — though make sure you don’t mess around with your phone too much....

Personally, I find it much easier to get to bed earlier if I let myself get a little bit bored in the evenings. Sleep is preferable to great literature, at least after 10 p.m.
There's also some discussion of the "blue light" of screens. That might have something to do with why reading on screens is (supposedly) detrimental to getting a good night's sleep. But put that to the side and consider the idea that reading on a screen is significantly more exciting than reading a book. Books should be the very best of reading, but I know I lock into reading screens for hours, and I rarely just sit and read a book. Even when the book is much better material, it can't compete with the action of being on line, clicking here and there, exploring and discovering along the infinite pathways.

The truth is, when I want to read a book, I get the audiobook and go for long walks, and I get through many books that way. I don't — like the author of the NYT article — feel bored when I'm reading books I've chosen, but I do feel endlessly tempted to go somewhere in my reading, that is, to click through to various places and to have my choices create my reading pathways. Maybe the audiobook walks work for me because the walk itself is my choosing where to go, moment to moment, and the book is the stationary thing that corresponds to the chair when I'm reading on line.

When you fall asleep, you have the ultimate personally chosen pathway — a dream. In my dreams, I'm always walking around looking for things, trying to figure things out.

And of course, when I write a blog post, I get to wander around wherever I want. It's a compelling combination of language, curiosity, personal choice, random discovery, and freedom of movement — perfectly intrinsically rewarding.

४८ टिप्पण्या:

David Begley म्हणाले...

“ In my dreams, I'm always walking around looking for things, trying to figure things out.”

In Madison?

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

"In Madison?"

Nearly all my dreams could be titled "Lost in the City." The city is rarely if ever Madison. I don't think it's any particular place other than my own mind.

Eleanor म्हणाले...

I can't listen to books without a lot of frustration. My mind wanders away from the voice, and sometimes minutes go by before I realize I'm not listening. I spend more time "rewinding" than moving forward. I can sit for hours and read a book, though, so it's not an attention span thing. I think I may have learned to read as young as I did because I didn't particularly enjoy being read to, but I liked the idea of books. If I start reading a book before bed, I often stay up until the wee hours of the morning to finish it. While I don't need anything to relax me at night, I can just put my head on a pillow and fall asleep, music is the least distracting. I've spent a lot of professional time analyzing teaching styles, and teachers who believe lecturing is the best to way to get information to their students are often surprised how many of their students aren't auditory learners. It's only about 30% who retain enough of what they hear for it to be an efficient way to teach them.

gilbar म्हणाले...

I don't think it's any particular place other than my own mind.

i have a 'dreamscape' that i often dream in; it's mostly fishing places (no duh!);
sometimes, i'll wake from a dream and have a recollect of having been there Many times before. When i think "where was that place?" I'd think something like:
"oh, that was two miles from the broken down bridge"
or
"Oh! that's the trout stream in front of my high school... on Algonquin road (Illinois route 62) "

It's Then that i realize that THOSE trout streams don't exist ANY where, but in my mind...
'cause Illinois don't have trout streams, and MY highschool was on Higgins Road (route 62).

I'm pretty sure that the broken down bridge is from ames ('cept, in waking life; it's not broken down); and my highschool is Harper Community College...
BUT, in my dreams; they're in walking distance, on the same trout stream

I dream there once or twice a year; and when i wake up: I could draw you a map

gilbar म्हणाले...

Higgins road (route 72)

Marcus Bressler म्हणाले...

Agree completely. Almost all the books I have gotten in the past few years, I have listened to on my Audible app while walking (and, to a lesser extent, driving). I've been blaming it on my ADHD, in that I feel, after several pages, a need to move on to something else. Oh, well.

THEOLDMAN

Right now in the first third of Robert Caro's GREAT biography of Robert Moses. Amazed at the details of the connection to the antagonist character (based on Moses) in "Motherless Brooklyn"

Shouting Thomas म्हणाले...

Exercise is the key to a good night's sleep. In retirement, I work hard on my health, exercising an hour or more each day... bicycling, yoga and weight lifting, along with the occasional old man basketball or softball game. Do my exercise, and I sleep like a baby.

Internet battling and surfing began to bore me about a year and a half ago. Not very much original or interesting material out there, although there is an avalanche of crap. Screeching and cussing at people and having people screech and cuss at me wore me out. I won't engage often nowadays.

The only books I read are sheet music and biographies of composers. Those, I read on my 12.9" iPad. At the gym, when I'm on the stationary bike, I plug in my earphones and listen to classical organ and piano pieces that I'm working on.

tim maguire म्हणाले...

I can read a good book for far longer stretches than I can surf the internet. And I have no love of audiobooks.

Prof., do you find you remember as much from listening as from reading? I doubt I would, but I’ve never attempted a comparison..

Anne in Rockwall, TX म्हणाले...

I have to be at my desk at 4:00am every day. The cramping pains of crohn's diarrhea wake me up just before that every single day, even on weekends.

I think as I have moved through my teens and into jobs, I have trained my disease to do its thing earlier and earlier. Seems to me a lot of people are able to train their bodies. When to feel hungry, sleepy, alert, napping and the like.

Seems sleep time could be easily trained, but consistency is the key. So late nights and sleeping in on weekends would mess the training up.

Althouse, do you still practice the two sleeps method? Seems your early morning runs preclude that. Did you stop? Why?

P.S. I enjoy how much you write about sleep.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

I listen to Wittgenstein in morse code every day, on bike commutes. It's now up to 50wpm. I typed in Philosophical Investigations as text in the 1980s, and now there's a convert text to morse code application to make an audio book of it.

https://fkurz.net/ham/ebook2cw.html

last conversion "ebook2cw-mp3.exe -w 50 -o wit50wpm -f 700 wit.txt"

Temujin म्हणाले...

I prefer a book. And at home, at night, a book will get me to the point of wanting to sleep. Often too quickly. It's true what he says. If I wait until later at night to open the book, I'm falling asleep too quickly to get any reading done. The laptop, on the other hand keeps me going, even when my body is screaming sleep. I can find myself up hours past when I should have been sleeping, looking all over the web for interesting, or bullshit things to learn about. I have to force myself to Put That Laptop Down!

I use a Kindle on an airplane. I find I can read it for hours on a plane. And it doesn't put me to sleep. In fact, my most productive reading time is on a plane. Not sure what I'll do when I retire. I won't be flying as much and I'll have to learn how to read at home.

Don't really get into audio books. My mind wanders and it's not the same for me. I love to view the writers style, the composition. If I see a great sentence, or paragraph, I may go back and read it again. In an audiobook that is completely missed by me.

Really- there were good points all above me here. Exercise in the day helps me conk out at night. So does Zolpidem. But that's another story for another blog.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

The advantage of Wittgenstein is that that particular book is written as short self-standing paragraphs somewhat related to nearby ones, so it makes sense and remains interesting not matter where you start and for how long you listen.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

"I can't listen to books without a lot of frustration. My mind wanders away from the voice, and sometimes minutes go by before I realize I'm not listening. I spend more time "rewinding" than moving forward."

This is a problem, but what I recommend — what I do — is wear headphones that have a pause button (or use Airpods and just say "Hey Siri pause") and stop the audio whenever I want to think. It does require some awareness of your desire to think independently of the text. Rewinding can be a lot of trouble, but I think I can get Siri to rewind. Just need to work on the right command. I enjoy rehearing parts I've already heard, so sometimes I'll just go back and redo a whole chapter, and that's a good idea if I think I wasn't absorbing it very well. Then sometimes I'm delightfully surprised to see that every word of it seems familiar.

Another thing I do is, after walking and listening, sit down and read or skim the text. I do buy the Kindle version as well as the text, because if you buy Kindle first, you save when you add the audiobook version, and I need the text if I want to cut and paste for the blog.

"I've spent a lot of professional time analyzing teaching styles, and teachers who believe lecturing is the best to way to get information to their students are often surprised how many of their students aren't auditory learners. It's only about 30% who retain enough of what they hear for it to be an efficient way to teach them."

I wonder how many of the 70% attempt to go to law school. I think I once had a student who told me he/she had a limitation like that, perhaps even said that language-based learning wasn't what worked. How could you do law without an aptitude for language?

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

"Right now in the first third of Robert Caro's GREAT biography of Robert Moses. Amazed at the details of the connection to the antagonist character (based on Moses) in "Motherless Brooklyn""

I've audiobooked all 4 volumes of Caro's LBJ books (and each of the 4 volumes is very long).

I do intend to get to the Robert Moses book.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

Caro is the only person I've ever been motivated to say "my hero" about.

Temujin म्हणाले...

Books are so calming, for generations there were entire stores made up of books that people would be magically called to. We would just like walking around those aisles of shelves of books. Like walking through all the knowledge of humanity. It was always such a quiet, church-like experience walking through a great bookstore. That's how calming books are.

We've lost that.

Horizon Books closing

I'm hopeful that in 10 years some young techie will partner up with a VC firm in Palo Alto with an idea for, get this- a store where there are books you can pick up, read, and buy to take home. Real books! And while there you can maybe sip coffee and read your book- right there on the premises. And maybe meet other people and talk about...books! And no computers allowed. Just a big clunky card catalogue to find the book you wanted. Heh.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

"I prefer a book. And at home, at night, a book will get me to the point of wanting to sleep. Often too quickly. It's true what he says. If I wait until later at night to open the book, I'm falling asleep too quickly to get any reading done. The laptop, on the other hand keeps me going, even when my body is screaming sleep. I can find myself up hours past when I should have been sleeping, looking all over the web for interesting, or bullshit things to learn about. I have to force myself to Put That Laptop Down!"

I use audiobooks with an under-the-pillow speaker. I turn off the lights to sleep when my eyes stop working right or I'm doing "microsleeps," but the audiobook is there to give me confidence that I don't have to worry about staying awake while "trying" to sleep. It's the not trying to sleep and the feeling of interest in the book that makes it easy to fall asleep, and I almost always fall asleep in less than 5 minutes (while the book plays all night).

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

"Prof., do you find you remember as much from listening as from reading? I doubt I would, but I’ve never attempted a comparison.."

Very hard to know. I used to have a great memory for where things were on the page in a book, a strong visual memory. But I don't exercise that skill much anymore, because when I visually read a book it's usually on Kindle, and I do much more reading on line, jumping about, and when I find something interesting, I write on the blog, so there's the reinforcement of writing.

With audiobooks, I'm afraid I'm forgetting, but when I relisten, everything sounds familiar... so it had to be in my head, right? Or maybe that's an illusion. I often go back to the beginning of an audiobook as soon as I'm done because I feel I need a second pass to really understand it, or, to be more precise, I feel that I know so much about it that the second pass will bring out riches that were not visible the first time through. (I feel the same way about watching a movie a second time the day after watching it the first time).

I'm not learning for a test or even for some professional use, so what is my use for remembering everything in a book? Forgetting is an important mental function too, you know. Anyway, it's my style to live in the present. I'm naturally a very in the moment person. Fortunately, I am retired and I have this blog and I have a lovely companion who likes to talk about whatever's interesting at the moment.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

"Don't really get into audio books. My mind wanders and it's not the same for me. I love to view the writers style, the composition. If I see a great sentence, or paragraph, I may go back and read it again. In an audiobook that is completely missed by me. "

Yes, I agree about that. The written word — if the writer is good enough — is something best seen. I love things that are great in every sentence (see my "Gatsby" project). I love to just see and read and admire a sentence... the way you'd look at a painting.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

Maybe Apple could make the iPhone work to project a sentence out in front of me as a walk. Siri, show me that last sentence. Then I could hang around with it for a while.

One thing I do while walking with an audiobook is remember a key word from a passage that I want to study visually. Then, when I get home, I search the Kindle version and get right there. That's how I blog things from the audiobook too.

I can also dictate notes to myself as I walk. Siri is good at that. Passersby just think I'm talking on the phone.

Shouting Thomas म्हणाले...

I do read the lyrics to hymns. Learned over 130 in the past year as I mastered a new denomination's hymnal.

To be able to sing with the congregation as I accompany them, I must really pound the lyrics into my head. Not necessarily memorize. That's too demanding. But, I must have the piano or organ parts and the lyrics deeply embedded, even if I do constantly refer to the sheet music.

So, my primary reading of texts is ritual and repetitive. It is, in fact, prayer.

I think I'm almost exhausted with human controversy, self-promotion and general hubbub. I'm preparing myself for death. And, I don't mean for that to sound pessimistic or depressed. I'm neither. I'm quite serene.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

"Althouse, do you still practice the two sleeps method? Seems your early morning runs preclude that. Did you stop? Why?"

I prefer to sleep through the night, and that has been working for me. "Two sleeps" wasn't so much something that I was practicing on purpose as it was a way to take a positive view of what seemed like a form of insomnia.

Lately, I've been sleeping from about 9 to 4 — 7 hours. Maybe 10 to 5 would be better. And 8 to 3, which I do sometimes, seems really off. That might be a winter thing, a reaction to the early sunset.

Eleanor म्हणाले...

Not being an auditory learner doesn't mean you aren't language-based. It just means you absorb language visually instead of by listening. A good reader could handle law school, but wouldn't get the most out of a class where most of the material is presented through lecture. The library would be their biggest asset. That being said, I would guess the number of students in law school who are auditory learners is higher than average, and the percentage of students who are kinesthetic learners is higher in engineering school. My professional experience with this is through researching and testing the best way to educate through online and other forms of distance learning. Particularly at the college and university level, teachers worry about getting their lectures online. That's the easy part, and online lectures are actually better for students. They can watch and replay the lecture as often as they need to. It is the interactive part that's harder for the teacher to imagine online. As for me, I don't have much interest in listening to a book while I walk. When I'm outside, I'm in the moment. A book would be a distraction from the beautiful place I am and would be rude to my companion. Watching my four-legged friend interact with her surroundings is a large part of why I'm there.

gilbar म्हणाले...

Kind of like Professor Althouse and her walks; i like audio books while driving Long Distances. You can listen well, while riding through the Sand Hills of Nebraska.

Also, since i'm listening through the car bluetooth; i can pause (or rewind) with a touch on the dashboard. If i'm in traffic, or thinking about something, i pause the book (or switch to the radio), until i can get back to the book... it IS easy to lose your place in an audio book if your not paying attention.

It's 12 hours from my house, to the North Platte by Casper; so i'll listen a complete book by the time i'm back

अनामित म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
अनामित म्हणाले...

How could you do law without an aptitude for language?

As she clarifies above, Eleanor is talking about an individual's best medium for retention of material, not "aptitude for language". By all report I have a high "language aptitude", but I retain material much better from reading than from listening.

Don't know if there's a general neurological basis for that (as with the alleged superiority of handwriting to typing for retention), or if it's just a matter of training or individual preference. At any rate, while I listen to audiobooks, I find that for me they're a waste of time for serious reading - philosophy, any but the fluffiest history writing, etc. Something about the physical process of reading text locks more into my brain than listening does.

Fiction can be OK, but I'm extremely sensitive to voices, and most of the time I want to hear the story via the voice in my head, not somebody else's (usually distracting) voice. There are exceptions - e.g., the narration for Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy brought out the high humor in some scenes, that I had missed in reading. Skilled narration made very funny books even funnier.

Michael K म्हणाले...

Kind of like Professor Althouse and her walks; i like audio books while driving Long Distances. You can listen well, while riding through the Sand Hills of Nebraska.

I do this, too. In medical school, however, I found writing notes reenforced memory so I read and wrote rather than just listen.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

"As she clarifies above, Eleanor is talking about an individual's best medium for retention of material, not "aptitude for language". By all report I have a high "language aptitude", but I retain material much better from reading than from listening."

I guess there are law jobs where you can do things almost entirely in reading and writing. I can't remember if the student said the limitation was only about spoken word or if it was more generally to words as opposed to pictures and/or "learning by doing."

I really was puzzled by a student expressing a need for me to teach the class in some way other than by speaking. We were here in class, and reading was the preparation. We're not going to use class time to read and write. There might have been some sort of request for me to draw diagrams on the blackboard.

Rusty म्हणाले...

"There might have been some sort of request for me to draw diagrams on the blackboard."
Althouse at the blackboard," All right. When the ball is snapped I want you, Stevens, to go right down the center. Ginberg. GENBERG! Pay attention! I want you to go down the left side. get ready for the short pass. Got it?"

Otto म्हणाले...

"And of course, when I write a blog post, I get to wander around wherever I want. It's a compelling combination of language, curiosity, personal choice, random discovery, and freedom of movement — perfectly intrinsically rewarding."

The ultimate 60s liberal - I am my own god.

अनामित म्हणाले...

I really was puzzled by a student expressing a need for me to teach the class in some way other than by speaking. We were here in class, and reading was the preparation.

Yeah, I can see how that was weird, for a law class. Explication of material via listening works fine for me. Reading works better for getting the material into my head in the first place.

We're not going to use class time to read and write.

Though I assume that law students do take notes, right? So they're using writing and reading to reinforce the lecture material.

There might have been some sort of request for me to draw diagrams on the blackboard.

Do any of the areas of law you've taught lend themselves to explication via charts/graphs/diagrams? (I wouldn't think so, but I know nothing about this.)

Howard म्हणाले...

It sounds like blocking is a woke dream state for you. Perhaps you are describing samadhi

अनामित म्हणाले...

Otto to Prof: "And of course, when I write a blog post, I get to wander around wherever I want. It's a compelling combination of language, curiosity, personal choice, random discovery, and freedom of movement — perfectly intrinsically rewarding."

The ultimate 60s liberal - I am my own god.


Stop being such a dipshit dumbass, Otto. Plenty of people who are as far as can be from "60s liberal" greatly enjoy doing exactly what she describes, with all sorts of activities.

So there's nothing you enjoy doing - writing, thinking, traveling, improvising music - where it's rewarding to do the above? No? Then you're a fucking stick-up-the-butt Taliban moron, not a champion of rigor or morals or humility or conservatism or whatever the hell it is you're trying to pass yourself off as.

Temujin म्हणाले...

Otto said:
"And of course, when I write a blog post, I get to wander around wherever I want. It's a compelling combination of language, curiosity, personal choice, random discovery, and freedom of movement — perfectly intrinsically rewarding. The ultimate 60s liberal - I am my own god."

She's exactly how everyone should be. She is her own person. That's a hard concept for many of today's collectivists.

wild chicken म्हणाले...

So what if you read books only on screens?

I am strictly Kindle now, even though it's a helluva lot more expensive than library books even with all the public domain stuff.

I can't believe all the books I've read and reread in the last three years! And I can keep a record easily whereas the library can't help me recall what that railroad history book was I read four years ago.

So no more fussing with reading lights and tiny text. Though some of the typos from the gutenburg books are distracting.

rcocean म्हणाले...

Maugham assumed every reader would skip around the parts of his books they felt most interesting. Which I found amazing, because I rarely skip parts of books. What I've been doing is putting down Book X, and Going to read Book Y. And then later, I'll come back to Book X.

And audiobooks have spoiled me for Fiction. Its so much easier to LISTEN to a Novel (assuming you have a decent narrator). I still read Non-fiction - unless its incredibly well written like Gibbon's decline/fall of Roman Empire.

rcocean म्हणाले...

One good thing about reading books online is you don't need your reading glasses. Just hit ZOOM.

wildswan म्हणाले...

There's something I "hear" in words - assonance, alliteration, traditional usage and more - yet I don't "hear" it when I listen but only when I see the words on a page. And not a Kindle page.

rcocean म्हणाले...

"I do this, too. In medical school, however, I found writing notes reenforced memory so I read and wrote rather than just listen."

Interesting. I've found i retain information much better if i read it. Listening, it tends to go in one ear, and out the other. I'm always surprised that other people are just the opposite. I usually found my college classes a waste of time. Some points from the reading got clarified but usually it was just blah blah. The exception were the STEM classes, especially Physics and Calculus, where the classes were essential to understanding the material.

rcocean म्हणाले...

The SCOTUS has oral arguments, but from what I've read, they're completely worthless and have little effect on the actual decisions. Its just theater. which is why Thomas rarely asks questions. All the Justices need to do is read the briefs.

rcocean म्हणाले...

I used to fall asleep listening to an audiobook or the TV. But now I have a wife.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM म्हणाले...

Books are boring, like a good president

---

HGH for good sleep (but may help to cycle it)
Melatonin can be tricky-- for some the hyper-vivid dreams are sleep-disruptive
Valarian root for muscle relaxant

William म्हणाले...

I trotted through the first volume of Manchester's biography of Churchill in about a week. I'm having a lot of trouble getting through the second volume. I can only manage about ten pages a sitting. It covers Churchill's years from 1932-1940. It's very annoying. Everybody is so fucking stupid. It's like one of those horror movies where the characters say "Let's split up and look for the killer. I'll check the basement." There were so many times that Hitler could have been thwarted and could have passed into history as quietly as Chester A. Arthur. WWII was a totally unnecessary event....Well, I'm the result of a WWII liaison, so I guess WWII wasn't all bad, but it's irritating to read about all the stupid people on the world stage back then.....I practice intermittent fasting. My dreams are all about food, and they're so vivid, they wake me up. If it's after six, I will have yogurt and blueberries and go back to sleep.

Bruce Hayden म्हणाले...

"I've spent a lot of professional time analyzing teaching styles, and teachers who believe lecturing is the best to way to get information to their students are often surprised how many of their students aren't auditory learners. It's only about 30% who retain enough of what they hear for it to be an efficient way to teach them."

For me, best is a combination of auditory, visual, and tactile. Listening to the teacher, looking at the board, then taking notes. Turns out that I don’t actually read the notes I took, but rather just taking them was the key. My problem with LS (which really wasn’t that bad) is that there isn’t as much visual input as you find in STEM, or even Business classes.

“I wonder how many of the 70% attempt to go to law school. I think I once had a student who told me he/she had a limitation like that, perhaps even said that language-based learning wasn't what worked. How could you do law without an aptitude for language?”

There may be some self selecting there. One guy I knew in college was a Chem Major, close to the top of his class there. Everyone expected him to go to Med school, where he likely would have excelled. Went to LS instead, and floundered. I think that is very possible to characterize his problem as inaccurately self selecting.

While I did well in STEM, I have always read fast and voluminously (ok - not in 1st grade, but my mother sat and read with me every year during the next summer, and after that have had No problems in this regard). Class time in LS was where the profs put all the reading together for me, but once it was fitted into its slots, I rarely needed to go back to my notes. I would suggest that if you want an easy time in LS, be a really fast reader. My memory was a couple hundred pages a week per class, that you have to analyze as you go along. And, contrary to Med school, you have to understand what you read (my old sleep doctor was a narcoleptic who also had a law degree. He had a much easier time in Med school, where he didn’t have to think and analyze much of what he read, than he had in LS. Actually, sleep issues seem to be a problem with people with two or more disparate doctorates - friend also has a PhD in EE (working on one in physics now) and sleeps 4-5 hours a night).

On another topic here, I have been doing the two sleep sleeping since maybe my late 20s. I did most of my studying in LS mostly inbthe intersleep period between my two sleeps. Now days, I spend that time either reading and commenting on blogs (esp here when something interesting is going on) or reading books, mostly on the Kindle and Nook apps on one of my iPads (I have a daytime and nighttime iPad pros, with one charging, while the other one is in use, and another older WiFi only iPad charged up as a backup).

Oh, and the first thing I do when I get a new IOS device is to turn off Siri. Really off, going through each and every app to make sure that my iPads and iPhones aren’t sending everything I say to Cupertino. Even when I am loading from a backup. Apple makes this very difficult. Ditto with Alexis sending everything to Mountain View. All, of course, supposedly for quality control and to improve voice recognition. Right. Am I paranoid? Maybe, but I am on the communications privacy committee of a major engineering society, and everyone there is probably worse than I am there.

Kirk Parker म्हणाले...

Eleanor,

I thought the whole learning styles thing had been debunked -- an early victim of the replication crisis.

Kirk Parker म्हणाले...

Bruce,

"...going through each and every app to make sure that my iPads and iPhones say they aren’t sending everything I say to Cupertino. "

FIFY.

StephenFearby म्हणाले...

"...There's also some discussion of the "blue light" of screens. That might have something to do with why reading on screens is (supposedly) detrimental to getting a good night's sleep."

A Google search does not yield any previous mention of the free f.lux app on this blog. Since I've found it useful, here's the skinny:

Wikipedia:

f.lux is a cross-platform computer program that adjusts a display's color temperature according to location and time of day, offering functional respite for the eyes. The program is designed to reduce eye strain during night-time use, helping to reduce disruption of sleep patterns.[2][3]

Upon installation, the user can choose a location based on geographic coordinates, a ZIP code or the name of a location. The program then automatically calibrates the device display's color temperature to account for time of day, based on sunrise and sunset at the chosen location. At sunset, it will gradually change the color temperature to a warmer color and restore the original color at sunrise.[2][3]

f.lux offers a variety of color profiles and pre-defined temperature values, modifying program behaviour for specific programs or activities; including a mode for film watching, decreasing red tinge (for 2.5 hours), and a darkroom mode that does not affect night-adapted vision.[2][3] Times can be inverted on f.lux for PC to provide warm lighting during the daytime (for people who work at night).[4] The program can control Philips Hue LED lighting, so that the color temperature of house lights follows f.lux's settings.[5]

Platforms
The program is available for Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux (except for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS). It is also available for iOS devices, although it requires the device to be jailbroken.[6] Apple has not allowed the application in its App Store due to its use of restricted developer tools.[7] The developer briefly hosted an Xcode project on GitHub, allowing iOS 9 users to sideload the application onto their devices, but retracted it at the request of Apple.[8] Following Apple's announcement of a similar function, called Night Shift, in iOS 9.3, the developer called upon Apple to provide developer tools and to allow their application into the App Store.[9] A preview version for Google's Android system is available.[10]

Efficacy
f.lux proponents hypothesise that altering the color temperature of a display to reduce the prominence of white–blue light at night will improve the effectiveness of sleep. Reducing exposure to blue light at night time has been linked to increased melatonin secretion.[11] Although the developer provides a list of relevant research on their website, the program itself has not been scientifically tested to determine its efficacy. In spite of this, f.lux has been widely and positively reviewed by technology journalists, bloggers, and users.[2][3][6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.lux

Having only warm white 2700K high CRI (>= 90) LED bulbs in the bedroom is also very useful.
(I've got GE 2300Ks (which are even better) but don't know if GE makes them anymore.)

Szoszolo म्हणाले...

@wild chicken: I am strictly Kindle now, even though it's a helluva lot more expensive than library books

I am 99% Kindle and I download books all the time from the public library. I no longer live in San Francisco (thank God), but any CA resident can have an SFPL card, and there's a ton of Overdrive and 360Axis ebooks available for downloading through their website.

SFPL also has access to databases such as JSTOR, but unlike almost every other large public library in CA that offers it, SFPL doesn't limit access to users of the in-library computers. I can access it from my home computer.

The city's falling apart but the SFPL is going strong.