I am sure there is some regional variability, but at least in these parts you can still see that habit ingrained in those now around 80 years of age or older. But it seems to quickly taper off in anyone younger. By the time you get to my generation it is effectively unheard of.

It's much worse today, because most of the so-called "archives" are actually stored somewhere "in the cloud", and are one serious economic crisis away from being deleted at the press of a button. (Also an even bigger problem is all the proprietary or unmaintained data formats. We already have issues maintaining this stack of bullshit today, and only a couple decades have passed. Maintaining this for centuries is out of the question.)

I've also tried dropping the aspect ratio on my 42" 4k OLED to 4:3 and not scaling the resolution to limit light output, but the pixel density ultimately seems to be a limiter. Since I can work on my smartphone at its lowest output and with redshift, a smaller, higher-dpi display may be key.

Caveat that doomscrolling specifically maybe isn’t a great example given that we are collecting a ton of data about it, we’re mostly just ignoring it.

(I suspect that the long cultural stability of the Spanish long siesta has a lot to do with the cultural stability of mealtimes -- and meal types/sizes -- that developed around it.)

The other day I felt queasy, suddenly, after lunch at a normal time -- so queasy I had to write off the day. I then proceeded to sleep for the best part of 24 hours, because all the phases seemed to merge. A literal 24 hour period, useless. Other people lived normal lives in that period; for me it just vanished.

I think blood sugar had a lot to do with that, as well as the time of year (winter in Britain) and it has definitely unnerved me.

I cope by just accepting it; trying to do things when awake. But there are things you can't really do in the middle of the night if you live in a close, quiet neighbourhood; hoovering, running laundry, shredding documents, even some printers are noisy.

I do not. And no, it isn't.

My dad, I think, had occasionally polyphasic sleep, and he often took on-call rota slots as a result. He'd be in the kitchen cleaning, or in his study, but since the house was big, it was rarely a problem. Sometimes he'd be napping in his study, and I know he slept easily on the train to and from work (with an efficiency that meant he woke up a minute before his stop on the way home).

When I was a student I just forced my polyphasic sleep periods into normal sleep as best I could, which typically manifests a bit like delayed sleep phase; by the middle of the week I was two hours behind everyone else, and I actually did worse in the courses that had early Friday lectures. But when you're a student, being awake or asleep at odd hours is normal enough not to be remarked upon.

As a programmer, polyphasic sleep is sometimes unnoticeable to others. These days probably more apparent in git commit logs.

Bigger, and well built dwellings help, as do earbuds and soft shoes.

I tried it and it worked, but I have a family and no, it didn't work for them, so I stopped. Couldn't get a schedule right that allowed me to be with the family for normal social interaction times, AND be at work when THEY expected me to be available for the work-team.

So I had to go to a socially acceptable "norm".

Which leaves what I first raised - a thousand years of documented broken sleep by monks in monestaries getting up to pray late at night and again early in the morning.

Some might write that off as hair shirt behaviour by religuous fanatics intent on punishing themselves, others might take it as evidence that people of those times were living with punctuated sleep cycles and those that went to serve their God took to praying when they woke as a matter of course.

There's also the evidence of sleep in Spain and other warmer climes, with additional sleeping during the hottest parts of the day, staying up later, sleeping less during the night and rising earlier before the sun.

It's Ekrich's hobby horse, many niche areas have few champions, but it's not exactly the case that he is drawing on forged entries with no other examples to be found.

Then I found there actually were things I wanted to do on weekdays. These tend to happen later in the evening, like 8-9 PM. Think taking up some sport / dance / other kind of class. Clubs usually meet in the evenings, too.

In my neck of the woods, people usually start work around 9:30 and get off around 6:30 - 7. You basically need one hour to get around town, so you can't reasonably hold an event earlier than 8 and expect any amount of people to show up.

So some tasks you do in that period of time are done with a kind of lower level of objection, easier "starting", and in a contemplative start, and you're not actually tired.

Which is what also gives this "cleaning fairy" sense that nobody in particular did it.

I personally read "sceptically" to imply the idea of seeing whether the study falls victim to significance bias -- e.g. once you see it, you see it a lot, but is it an indicator of a widespread habit, or just a not-particularly-unusual one?

Edit: And indeed if you read on a bit about Ekrich, he suffers from sleep disorders for which he takes medication. That's a potential risk factor for significance/confirmation bias here, I'd have thought. But there's no reason to jump to the conclusion that fabrication is being suggested.