Modern decor may be straining people's brains(studyfinds.com) |
Modern decor may be straining people's brains(studyfinds.com) |
Doesn’t it increase the details in nature due to all the imperfections vs simple patterns made by humans?
The headline picture in that article is pure hell for me.
To see those, you need a digital camera (e.g. your phone)
Geometrical design (especially the ones with grids/vectors everywhere) are not minimalistic but tiring, really tiring.
Our management had the bright idea to put these things in all our meeting rooms on the wall with the TVs we use for remote calls. People started getting sea sick looking at them. Of course removing them would mean the management made a mistake, so they will stay there until the next bright idea hits.
I'm definitely going to do something else instead.
Either way, light is everything, but it is treated like an afterthought.
Waveform or Phillips Ultra.
I dont know if the hypothesis in the paper is correct, but it seems clear that environment can affect mood in some cases. There is a reason why night clubs and libraries are decorated differently. From there it seems very plausible other elements of environments could have an affect (perhaps subtle) on mood.
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You don't have permission to access this resource. From Singapore.
Which is why you can take my adblocker from me when you pry it from my cold dead hands. Much of the modern web is largely straight-up hostile without a proper adblocker these days.
That's my go-to solution on mobile devices almost every single time because on small screens even a good adblocker simply isn't nearly enough to overcome the other issues you mention in your comment here.
The paper itself is open access: https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5150/10/2/34
When I have to go I try to be out there as quickly as possible. I always thought that's weird, shouldn't those shops be designed in a way that makes me want to explore them, look at all the things they have, instead of just hunting down exactly what I need and leave as quickly as possible.
This made a big contribution because vertical short-form video feeds require extreme stimuli to get anyone’s attention - but they add nothing to the actual experience and often detract from it.
This has also led to the absolutely horrific acoustics where even in non-nightclub bars and normal restaurants, you have to yell to understand each other because the decor is made of tile, tables and chairs are at odd angles that increase distance, etc.
Everything now is subordinate to the visual environment because that’s what gets shared on Instagram.
Not saying interior design doesn’t matter, but its point should be to create a great overall experience, not to be visually stimulating at the expense of the rest.
Not sentences. AI slop.
I have the same reaction to it as you.
Sometimes I really want/need something, and I have all the stores close by. But I still decide to buy it online, and accept waiting a few days, because stores/malls are such a bad experience.
Because immediately upon walking in the door, you are immersed in a "shopping environment". Everything you smell, hear, see, touch is geared to making you spend more and purchase more and grab more useless stuff off the shelves.
Even in a Goodwill or similar thrift store you are subjected to these merchandising tricks.
I have found that keeping a very good household inventory on a spreadsheet is critical. If I have this spreadsheet on my phone and I refer to it, before venturing into aisles, then I know exactly what I need to purchase, and where to go to find it. Sticking to the shopping list, I can avoid the needless purchase temptations.
At Costco when I'd go with my parents, it was the custom of the cashiers to ask, "did you find everything alright?" and my father would always joke, that if enough people answered in the affirmative, that was their cue to rearrange the store and shuffle everything around, so that shoppers would get lost, and not being able to find what they want, would discover more useless stuff that they would pull off the shelves on impulse.
It also doesn't hurt to follow the advice of "never shop while hungry"!
But I dislike malls so much, that I only get new clothes for example once it's really necessary. If it was more pleasant to shop there, I would probably buy more stuff.
I guess there are some people who fit into that environment, their tactics work well on them, and the shops/malls just ignore customers like me.
never been diagnosed with adhd but i have this thing where most of life is not stimulating enough to keep me interested. to be clear this is not a screen addiction, i dont feel specific pressure to pull up my phone and i can go a long time without it. scrolling is only a fallback when im not talking with someone (that includes writing like right now), working on something interesting, outside with friends, playing games, working out, you get the idea.
creative things like coding and drawing almost always work. movies and football only if i care about it emotionally. alcohol helps some too. but a lot of activities like reading a book are just not enough. i would describe it as a non specific addiction to something that might be dopamine but that still wouldnt fully explain things.
when i go to the mall or the shopping street or a bar theres so much going on that i finally feel comfortable. on the other hand i almost never feel overwhelmed. my family is not like that (they absolutely hate shopping) but i think some of my friends are, never asked them about it. i dont know if its a type of neurodivergence or a learned behavior or something even stranger.
sounds like a great lead for psychology research.
I could shop at a Wal-Mart or a Target for groceries, and thus be subject to all the same big-box shopping pitfalls.
I could shop at a farmers market style grocery store, and the major one near me has some great products and great foods, but mixed in with 90% ultra-processed foods, sugar bombs, and all sorts of unhealthy stuff, masquerading as organic or natural food. Also this "farmers market" has an extensive section with wine and beer, and personal health/hygiene products that are quite expensive.
At Trader Joe's I usually have no problem shopping for exactly what I need, and again, sticking to my spreadsheet with inventory and shopping needs. I usually pick up some fresh flowers here, because they're a bargain, and the coolest thing about Trader Joe's is that I can trust basically any product they've put on their shelves, and the limited selection, and restriction to food products only, helps narrow my shopping focus.
It is even possible to shop for groceries at the dollar stores nearby, which stock a lot of frozen foods, snack foods, beverages, etc. These bargain prices are generally justified by a lower bar of quality, or rapid expiration dates.
Another "grocery shopping" option is pharmacies or convenience stores. There is a major chain pharmacy nearby that really has a lot of good groceries, and is starting to stock some organic and natural brands as well. Its aisles are impeccable and the shopping experience is first-rate. Of course, as soon as I step in the door, the scent and sounds and feels assault me and begin to work on my consumer brain. Got to adhere firmly to that spreadsheet in my pocket!
The article doesn't touch much on why modern decor emerged as it did. It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice. Companies are either expanding or like to think they'll be expanding soon. People move jobs so often that they have a hard time feeling settled where they are, so they design for that possibility. The modern aesthetic is one of planned impermanence.
Some small dining rooms amplify all the worst noises and make it terrible to be in, drains your mental battery like few other things.
If the thesis was true, we'd expect rich people who will never be compelled to move against their will, or to move into less space, would prefer cluttered homey interiors, and poor people would prefer sparse & modern. In reality, the biggest boosters of modern decor are rich people.
Today, those features are no longer necessary, and we look for other measures of quality in products -- for better or worse.
I grew up in a "midcentury modern" house, and my family lives in one today. I find the modern decor to be comforting because in my case it reminds me of home. My mom claimed that the sparse decor was easier to maintain, for instance: "There are no knick-knacks to dust around." Truth be told, the house also happened to be available during a very frothy market, and my spouse would have chosen something more traditional.
It's also claimed that the simpler decor works in smaller houses.
We were not rich. The MCM houses in my 'hood, including ours, are certainly not clutter free, yet still feel pleasant and comfortable.
Ordinary folks when presented with an object have to perform a mental calculation over the cost/inconvenience of storage vs. disposal and if wanted again, replacement.
The portion of rich people homes they actually use are often quite cluttered. The simple limitation of needing to walk to a room to use it means spreading out across a huge home gets annoying. Semi public spaces for guests on the other hand can look like hotels because that’s effectively what they are.
This being said, the title is accurate to the article but misleading. The subtitle is about "Striped Floors and Flickering LEDs". It isn't modern design, it's specific elements of modern design.
I'd suggest that the striped/patterned floors/LED points transcend styles, and would cause issues even in a more ornate/classical design. Style is individual, and I expect the diversities of brains and thinking patterns means that there is no right answer for what style is best for people.
The most interesting part of the article wasn't really reflective of style, it was visually crowded environments. They used the example of supermarkets, and that seems distinct from a visually rich style like the grandparent comment's home or Neo Gothic cathedrals. Being in a forest is visually crowded, too, but I'd expect it has the opposite effect the study measured. I think the fractal dimension of the detail, if they correlated it with the degree of distress, would be a factor.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS0H4Sp...
Minimalism is more of an (upper) middle class thing - doctors, lawyers, architects, software developers. The abstraction and clean lines are cool, rational, aspirational, and controlled.
Middle class people on the artier end of the spectrum are more likely to be maximalist, with bright colours, busy wallpapers, huge shelves of books, plants, and such.
Poor people need a lot of stuff because they have to hoard things in case they break. Mass market products are usually low quality, mass-produced from cheap materials, and not very well made.
Working class spaces are often chaotic, claustrophobic (because literally small), full of mismatched items and general clutter.
There's a particular kind of upper working class chrome-and-glass look which is its own attempt at minimalism, but doesn't quite get there. It's still chaotic, the spaces are disorganised, but it's very, very clean and shiny. Instead of feeling controlled and expensive it feels sterile.
The startup office look is a mix of minimalism with some maximalist stylings. It's supposed to be informal and "fun", but the big spaces are disorienting and loud, and the bright colours and lines are distracting.
Are you sure? Maybe some of them are, but it's also quite typical of rich people to live in a refurbished 19th century home with ornate mouldings, antique furniture, bookshelves, rugs, paintings, and a large amount of carefully curated "clutter". While working-class people almost universally move towards minimalism when they renovate, with the rich it's much more divided.
I walked past a bank later and it looked almost exactly the same. (I guess that's where the money is!)
You should be. Modernism is an ideological design response: the aesthetics of the machine age and utilitarianism.
OP's opinion is not based on actual design and architecture history and (ironically) appears to be itself an ideological narrative: a posthoc criticism of Modern (yes with cap M) design which itself has its root in conservative reaction against the (asserted, alleged and possibly true) socialist tendencies of the elite social and design circles that gave birth to Modernism. Note, for example, the 'emotional' appeal to long lived in homes, etc.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230103-the-historical-...
The repeating patterns on carpet are an artifact of mass production.
Edit yes I did move around in my twenties, but that stopped at 30.
I helped lead my local little league. It’s different than it used to be - it’s pretty typical to have tball parents in their 40s. A group of parents from 20s to 50s aren’t going to hang out, they don’t relate. I’m a late genx, most of my friends parents were in their 30s when I was a little leaguer.
The demise of old line churches is similar. We did CYO basketball in the same parish my wife did. It’s the last of what was 8-10 catholic parishes in my city. And unlike in my youth where you had good mix multigenerational parishioners… the parish survives based on the beneficence of 5-10 people in their late 60s and 70s, with few people rising to behind them. Mainline Protestant parishes are similar. The only growth in religious communities are independent Baptists, which are great but integrate into the broader community differently, because each church mostly stands alone and isn’t part of a bigger system.
I think of Seattle as "home", and once lived there for twenty-three years straight - but I had nine different addresses during that time. I am probably more of a nomad at heart than the average American, but perhaps Americans have more of a nomadic temperament than the average human.
Getting to know your neighbors can be a mixed bag. Sometimes you make a great new friend: sometimes you're stuck with an obstreperous busybody. It can be nice not having to spend your whole life dealing with the same people and the same conflicts.
Or suppose you meet your spouse when you are 30, after you bought a house.
There’s inherently much less moving-around if you get married at 18 and have kids straight away - the plan is settled from the start.
And then on my side, for the past 15 years I moved to a new place about every 2-3 years. Never really invested in making it feel “homey” because I’m not sure how much space I’d have in the next place I move to.
I grew up in a house full of the clutter that you describe as comforting, but for me it felt smothering. I recently inherited the house I grew up in and now have it set up much less cluttered. I don’t plan to live anywhere else anytime soon, but for me the lack of clutter and clear spaces are much more comforting.
I am definitely not a fan of crazy colors or patterns or bad lighting either though.
You see the same thing with cars. People choose to buy (or more commonly lease!) a car for a few years and before they've even decided to buy it they're planning to sell it. This is why there are so many sad grey cars on the road - pick a colour that's easy to sell! Don't get anything too wild, it might not sell! What if you can't sell it because it's red or blue?!!? Don't go too crazy with that very pale blue tinted grey, they might not be able to sell it for as much and you won't get much from the leasing company!
There's a guy in my town who has a Porsche 992, it's only a few years old. He bought it as his retirement present to himself when he packed in his job at the start of COVID. It has all the options, and it has custom paint.
It is what I can only describe as Budget-Conscious Prosthetic Limb beige.
That kind of pinky-beige colour for NHS hearing aid plastic.
It cost him 1500 quid to even get it mixed, thousands extra to have it sprayed that colour.
"But what if it doesn't sell?" people say to him, "What if people don't like the colour?"
He doesn't care, he's going to drive it for the rest of his life. It'll be someone else's problem to sell once he dies.
I don't normally care about color myself, but I hate thr color my car is enough that I'm wondering if I should spend the several couple thousand dollars to put a decent coat of paint on it.
Even farther on the spectrum is Lamborghini where 100% are all custom made. You can't buy one from a dealership [new] that hasn't been custom ordered.
Someone will buy that 911 if/when he decides to sell it and have no problems getting a good price.
Modern decor is what happens when you just go on Pinterest and outsource taste for a place you don't own and don't expect to live in for long. It feels sterile because it does not represent any specific person, only an algorithmically-designed aesthetic built from off-the-shelf components.
I help immigrants move to Germany, and I think that people only become Berliners when they can put their own art on the walls. It means that they finally get a sense of permanence, and have a space of their own that they want to invest in. It changes your whole perception of the city you live in.
The theory I subscribe to is a few fold:
1) People like to buy "generic" homes that are easier to renovate/personalize 2) But then they don't end up personalizing, because they're afraid to tank it's market value 3) Thus homes stay boring and generic
My dad's lived in the same house for over 15 years and probably expected as much when he moved in. He has a room with old books covering the walls, which he never reads. If he moved house every year, he'd have to throw out or donate the collection.
Victimhood par excellence: "My brain is a 200+ IQ machine desperately waiting for input. However, I cannot feed it! It is the walls, I guess."
It should be legally enforced to place every author's smartphone usage statistics into such articles. No interior design on earth can compensate for 40 hours TikTok usage per week.
And we didn't mention other streaming services as well.
It might be the smartphone usage as well as time spend.
Around me every house now has tall anthracite fully closed fences. It's gloomy as hell, streets went from cute garden with wood fences to lock-down mode in a few years. It's all the same model, all the same vibe..
I found the office in the picture quite pleasant to look at. Not comforting and homey but suitable as a work environment.
Yes, but it's deeper than that. Two broad reasons, though your point here is a good one.
1. We don't, particularly in the west, have the skills, shops/craftsmen, or access to resources to make things like we used to. It's a positive network effect where prices go up, folks don't do the work anymore, and so prices go up, and things get more unaffordable, and so forth until there's only a handful of folks anywhere that can build the furniture, decor, or houses that you allude to. Companies can't make this stuff and as they chase never ending globalized supply chains and increasingly fewer commodities or natural resources they market and sell plainer and plainer things - modernist styles and modernist architecture. With so many people in the world competing for the same products and resources, it's incredibly expensive to build anything "real" or with much detail or thought. So companies just cheap out and create surrogate products which nobody is ever happy with.
2. The changes we see in style can be attributed to changes in politics and civilization. Who we are and what we think of ourselves. It's bad or even politically dangerous to build ornate buildings or purchase expensive or ornate pieces for your home. How could you build a beautiful building when there are people starving?!?! (you see a version of this with rocket companies - how can Jeff Bezos spend his money launching rockets when Social Security is underfunded!!?!?)
Any sufficiently famous building or person who liked nice shit was a "colonizer" and "bad person" in some form or because of some argument and then of course over time folks just hide their wealth (stealth wealth, millionaire next door) and we pride ourselves on appearing poor, acting poor, and naturally, we create poor civilizations without much to aspire to. When was the last time you wore a suit and tie? Better yet, who in your town can even make a suit? Who is going to die for strip malls and parking lots? Who wants to invest in their neighborhood when you know instinctively it's just a house and it's not something you will really pass down to your children (they will just sell that suburban home you have). Americans in particular spend thousands annually to travel to countries in Europe for example, and to visit their gardens and nice buildings, which themselves are vestiges of an age when western civilization aspired to more, and why do they only do that instead of investing in their own gardens and making their own nice places for people to visit? We do this of course to some extent - it's big country after all, but those who understand this and why it's important are fewer and further between.
That said, you overestimate how much "colonizer" discourse informs the average suburban home or modern office environment. That discourse isn't even particularly dominant amongst the left (often clowned as "third-worldist", reductionist or class denialism).
The average leftists apartment or home has more in common with your great-grandfather's house than stark, modern minimalism.
When everything in your house is illuminated from point lights stuck in holes in the ceiling, you only get a visual hierarchy along an axis you mostly cannot use (Y/up/down). When the lights are positioned at vertical midpoints, you get visual hierarchy on the X-Z (horizontal) plane which is generally how we are viewing our environment. The layering of shadow and highlights across a room are a lot less stressful to interpret. You can use a lot less total light and still convey required detail in the scene.
> This paper is a review, meaning it synthesizes and interprets existing research rather than presenting new experimental data. The authors themselves note that current visual tests for susceptibility to discomfort are subjective and poorly standardized. They also acknowledge that the proposed mechanism (that discomfort is the brain’s response to overwork) has not been fully tested, particularly the hypothesis that colored tints reduce discomfort by steering visual stimulation away from overactive brain areas. The relationship between the brain’s excitatory and inhibitory chemical signals and visual discomfort also remains, in their words, “unsettled.” Several key research questions are flagged as unresolved, including how to best quantify the real-world impact of visual stress on people’s lives and how to objectively measure susceptibility.
Flickering lights are about the only thing I saw in here that seem like they'd be a problem in the long term. Everything else your brain just adjusts to over time and stops noticing. Maybe the first few days in an office with bright colors would be slightly distracting, but after that you just stop seeing them. I would guess that a lot of the studies they reviewed probably tested people's reactions to these things when they saw them one time, not the hundredth time.
Wut? It's precisely the opposite. Natural patterns have infinite complexity as you zoom in, and human-made patterns (most often) not.
"Visual complexity" is just wrong: simple black / hot pink stripes are visually exhausting upon immediate perception, whereas the monochromatically brown detail of a tree trunk is only visually exhausting on close inspection.
God, what a useless website. I hate LLMs. The actual paper is here: https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5150/10/2/34
That's precisely what they're wrong about.
Take a look at tree branches. A field of grass. A stone cliff.
Now take a look at human-made decor: drywall, plastic, laminated boards.
Which one has more visual detail?
The default visual circuits in our brains may have evolved to optimally handle fractal patterns and textures. Straight lines, geometrical figures and featureless surfaces may require activation of less optimal circuits. Anecdotally, I find being in environments made of featureless geometrical figures uncomfortable to be in.
There are no pretty pictures in it, just text discussing basic principles.
https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0593139313
The Interior Design Handbook by Frida Ramstedt
For our new house, I used this book along with an experienced interior designer and discussions with a number of interior designers.
Far from being expensive, the designer probably saved us around 10 times her charges, by gently pointing out more practical and durable alternatives to my half baked ideas. And we ended up with a nice cozy, accessible, human friendly house.
For our garden, we used a garden designer ( not a landscape designer, they just stick hard surfaces everywhere ) who specialises in Piet Oudolf's New Perennial style.
More recently, it’s less about the buyers and more about the sellers. Design is optimized for flipping, which means fast market movement, which means generic. Yes there is always cookie-cutter, especially in postwar housing boom. Modern markets have just embraced that more fully. Offices don’t embody the tenants identity, or if they do it’s the same as all the other companies “in the space.” Everyone wants to look like Google, at best, otherwise it’s about commodity layouts, finishes, and styles… platforms for cubicles and bulk furniture purchases that can be amortized over the lease. Housing is similar… design for a family that will scatter once the kids leave home and the parents retire elsewhere. Or the inverse… design for Airbnb until the owners are ready to retire and move in or sell off. In any case the inhabitants are a secondary consideration to returns on investment. Design is a cost center to a financial concern.
Unless you’re rich enough not to care about any of this, in which case there’s finally time and space and money for design, but none of it really matters
Or, if you have ever been to a wedding and wondered why everybody started talking louder and louder and it's hard to understand, a room with too large reverb time is a very probable causes. This is very draining mentally.
The same goes for living spaces, especially since newer homes tend to use lots of smooth surfaces like glass, tiles and concrete, which increase reverb time a lot.
Book shelves, curtains and furniture will increase a room's diffusiveness and reduce reverb time, making rooms feel so much better.
I don't think this is at all a coincidence when it comes to office planning and design. It is purposefully exclusionary
Modern offices are just social/business experiments about what a human will put up with to earn a wage and to optimise for the most desired employees. Most offices I've worked at have a majority of these issues:
- Horrible decor mentioned in the article
- Insufficient peak-time toilet capacity
- Zero accounting for the sun's rays (screen glare, solar gain)
- Poor acoustics
- Horrible overhead lighting
- Broken AC in heat waves, lack of natural air cooling in winter (yay, dried sinuses and gloves in winter!)
- Meeting rooms with insufficient fresh air
- Zero design to reduce spreading of viral diseases
- Constant visual distractions
No, neurodivergent and autistic people are just generally affected or annoyed by pretty much anything.
There is no conspiracy here.
He showed people photos of geometric patterns (plain lines, basic shapes), natural patterns (fractals), and photos of nature itself (trees, animals, etc.) while reading their mental activity. The conclusion was that both fractals and nature photos cause significantly more efficient, diverse, and healthy-looking brain activity. Our brains inherently expect the world to look fractal-like, and in some ways even need it to look that way to form creative thoughts.
Completely lost the link to that article; it was a good read.
In the same vein, contemporary art, like a Veronica, smashes form apart, and instead of concrete imitation of nature, it moves toward abstraction, geometry, and minimalism. But does not that come with a problem? It does not enter the brain directly the way natural forms do; you have to additionally recognize what it actually is. I do not think that is an incorrect observation.
I suspect besides objectively annoying flickering lights, the difference is primarily made in the immediate, subconscious and effortless recognition of ubiquitous patterns of function. Which happens in form and proportion first, and only to a lesser degree in color and contrast.
* this is the floor, this is the ceiling * through there, there is the entrance / exit * this is a reception desk
If it takes effort to filter out the noise, the glare to know such simple things, there is less capacity left in our brains to process other "essentially free" tasks.
For instance actual lighting designers look with contempt at the kind of lighting mentioned in the article as a 1970's trend, that was in turn influenced by the 1930's Bauhaus.
Modern lighting uses layered lighting to create a cozy ambience and human friendly small pools of warm illumination.
See : https://talalighting.com/blogs/journal/how-to-layer-light-in...
This is what I've always felt too, but if you talk to any lighting "expert", they'll say "no that's simply not the case with LED lighting since the year... 2009 or whatever ...". Highly suspect.
I'll sum up by saying modern interiors feel temporary, where old decor seems permanent in comparison. This leads to you feeling like a hotel guest instead of being home. You have to really work at it to make a modern interior feel like home:
- Modern homes have lots of closet space and storage, so there's little need for "storage furniture like bookshelves, curios, hutches, sideboards and cabinets (you can get $5000+ china cabinets on marketplace for $200 here). When we moved in, I got rid of probably 14 pieces of (mostly beautiful) storage furniture because we just didn't need them. So it's hard to pile up the artifacts of life where they are easy to see and even grab.
- Living areas are large and open, and fantastic for having guests over or a family movie night, but not cozy for a lazy night of reading a book by the fireplace. You have to make a space for this and fight the floorplan to do so.
- Electronics have shrunk, a modern TV is the size of a painting on the wall, and needs only no horizontal space. Likewise, outside of my son's gaming rig, all the computers are laptops, so, out with the beautiful wood desks and in with the modern ergonomic stand-up desk.
As far as the new home went, almost a year later, the areas where we've made effort to put "life on display" feel great - A huge photo wall with shelves for chotskys and nicnaks, a loft decorated with posters and props from my kid's theater productions, an office with a wall covered with photos and guitars. Life is kind of messy. I guess making home a little more like life really helps.
On the one hand, "Eyes and brain alike evolved over millennia to process natural scenes, forests, rivers, coastlines, open skies. These environments share a specific mathematical pattern: their visual complexity decreases predictably as you zoom in on finer and finer details" - What, isn't it just the opposite? Coastlines and many plants are famously fractal, and in general, if you zoom into nature you will see a lot of detail, while in artificial objects you will often see a uniform sufrace.
On the other hand, "Repetitive grids, stark contrasts, and uniform surfaces have replaced the organic variation of earlier styles" - Okay, I get that grids are bad, but if the problem is too much detail and visual stimulation, why are uniform sources a problem? Is high complexity good or bad?
The only clear ideas that I take from this is that grids = bad, and flickering LED lightning = bad (and I don't really know how to choose LEDs that don't flicker...).
Look for Waveform or Phillips Ultra.
https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/don-buchla-pass...
I suppose it's worth double checking if the 60 Hz was just leaking into the measurement rig. Or autism, for that matter. But Don was great and I've always loved this interview, so I'm sharing.
In future it will clearly mark the era of (re)construction.
Those things are also just ugly.
I think that they should not need to put all of the lights inside and outside even in the day time; the window should be enough light from the sun light (so, they should ensure to have enough window to do that). (You should turn off the light in the night time too so that it is dark in the night time (especially outside).)
It’s worse than that, most consumers don’t even know what good looks like any more. We are much more restricted and maybe lower variety of experience.
You could serve half the consumers rat meat instead of beef and they wouldn’t know the difference.
> The changes we see in style can be attributed to changes in politics and civilization. Who we are and what we think of ourselves.
There is something to this even if the way this is expressed is clumsy
From the article:
"And when the brain encounters something it can’t process efficiently, it doesn’t simply adapt. Brain imaging studies cited in the review show it generates stronger neural responses in visual areas, consumes more oxygen, and in some people produces pain, distortion, or worse."
> And when the brain encounters something it can’t process efficiently, it doesn’t simply adapt. Brain imaging studies cited in the review show it generates stronger neural responses in visual areas, consumes more oxygen, and in some people produces pain, distortion, or worse.
If the studies are of a person's initial exposure to these sorts of conditions, then that doesn't tell us anything about whether people adapt over time (and to be clear I have not read all the studies, but given the limitations listed I'm comfortable assuming they're not incredibly robust until someone tells me otherwise). I suspect the article's use of the word "adapt" is not the same as mine; from the context when they say the brain doesn't adapt they just mean that it shows a response at the time of the particular exposure they're measuring.
Imagine someone claiming the opposite causes dementia, evidenced by reduced oxygen usage and lowered brain activity…
Any dimension longer than 28' is going to pass the infrasonic threshold (20hz). This tends to be OK as you go further into it. Humans are sensitive to infrasound, but often not at this level of intensity. However, designing rooms with all dimensions larger than this exceeds the limits of most practical residential real estate.
An 8' dimension would give you a 70hz fundamental. This is quite audible, but also in a range of frequencies where treatments like bass traps are very effective.
The room dimension range between 10' and 28' is where the dragons live. These frequencies are audible and significantly more difficult to treat. They will cut right through treatments like rockwool and mass loaded vinyl as if they didn't exist.
One of the best mitigations is to simply not have rectangular rooms. The second best is to have really small ones. Older homes tend to feel cozier because the room fundamentals are not in that weird range.
Though with bars and restaurants being brutally hard to survive and turn a decent profit, I would mostly attribute it to just cutting costs
Also for a fun large-scale argument: we're relatively sheltered from global depressions. All we really have to do is convince Americans to keep spending money and it kinda works out, because the whole economy is structured around that anyways.
That's also why the economy is in the dumper right now (not counting tech companies), and why the consumer confidence index is so important to our various economists.
Way before the Internet I had games running at 50 Hz (PAL). And we fully knew the difference between, say, a 2D game scrolling at full-frame rate and a game running a 25 fps: we could tell immediately. Same for intros and demos.
Yet the number of times I had armchair experts explain me, despite me literally seeing with my own eyes the difference, that "the human eye cannot discern more than 24 fps". Teachers. Friends of my parents. My parents.
Later on I could tell a CRT running Windows @ 60 Hz vs 75 Hz in a split second: I simply could tell.
And still: same armchair experts "you cannot detect that, your eyes cannot physically detect more than 24 fps, because science!".
It's the absolute worst thing: you see something with your own eyes, other people see it with their own eyes. And yet "experts" explain to you "that is impossible".
While you could fucking literally demo it to them: but they're not interested "becuz it's impossssssible".
I hate LED lighting. Or at least I hate having only LED lighting. But there's IMO a simple trick to make the lighting much warmer and reduce the flicker (even if you don't consciously detect it, like 60 fps vs 75 fps: it's simply there) and still keep electricity consumption in check: just have one incandescent light bulb per room. Maybe two in the living room.
This immediately gives the feeling of a much warmer place (and, technically speaking, it is actually... warmer, ah!).
You can still legally, even in the EU, buy "special purpose", incandescent lamps that give a very nice warm yellowish light.
Just don't forget to wait if you plan to touch one after turning it off because they really get very warm.
Now of course you do that and you'll have sore people say: "even one incandescent lamp is too much, you should be 100% LED, not 95% LED, to save the planet!" followed by "we should ask the EU (and others) to ban once and for all ALL incandescent lightbulbs".
Basically: go order on Amazon or whatever a few small "special purpose" incandescent light and some little lamp to put them in. Put one in each room.
You'll thank me later.
Gross. That orange light is nasty. Light that's the color of the noontime sun during a clear day is far superior. People say "Oh, it looks so sterile and clinical!". I say "Jeeze... just give it a week or two. You'll wonder how you ever dealt with having every white thing look like UV-damaged formerly-white plastic.".
I do agree that headache/disorientation-inducing flicker is awful, but disagree that setting up an incandescent bulb would do all that much for it. Better to replace the garbage LED blinkers with something that's not broken.
https://www.thesmarthomehookup.com/25-soft-white-led-light-b...
(from TFA:) > During a rapid eye movement, the flickering light source can paint a streak of ghost images across the retina
So REM could explain it? Maybe it is somehow variable among people?
As I understand it, 24fps was the point at which a convincing illusion of continuous-motion could be achieved with a traditional movie-theater projector.
It is not the maximum perceptible frame rate. In fact, I think that perceptible-frame-rate varies across the eye and is faster in peripheral vision.
<resists looking any of this up>.
Yeah. Making things even worse is the fact that wear and tear from these things aging can make them really terrible to be in the same room with... but this doesn't seem to be something that folks are generally aware of, and is almost certainly something that approximately no one tests for.
I used to have rock-solid dimmable Cree LED bulbs in my fixtures. When I installed them, they were great. I had them installed for something like five years. I blamed the headaches I had been regularly getting over the previous ~six months on poor diet, exercise... the usual things. After noticing that nights spent with the lights off correlated with reduced or absent headaches, I replaced the bulbs with another highly-regarded brand and model. Other than the occasional caffeine-withdrawl headache, I haven't had a headache since.
I don't know if every LED bulb -er- "wears bad" like this, but I'd be surprised to hear that most of them do not. "The thing still makes light, but gives a notable subset of the population godawful headaches." doesn't seem to be the sort of thing that politicians who are "concerned" about the environment will care much about. That fact would really complicate the "They last for ten+ years, which massively reduces waste!" narrative.
If you get into beef with your neighbor for something which is trivial over long time, now you are stuck with an asshole next door for next 30-50 years.
Its not just US, we moved in Switzerland from very cosmopolitan and international Geneva to small village in wineyards and all this applies at least as much.
Why? Just buy a car, and drive it.
I dunno if I agree with their arguments in the paper (there seem to be some pretty big questions unanswered yet, which the authors acknowledge), but there's definitely something to the idea that natural environments aren't as stressful for us, even if they're objectively "busier".
My parents live in southern Italy, in the same small town my mother is from and the small town my father is from is like 5-6 km far.
Every time there is some kind of event (eg: somebody’s parents passing away) it so hearth-warming to see people come together and try and be close to people they’ve known all their life (60+ years).
I moved to a large town nowadays for work and i have a bunch of superficial connections, my peers lament pretty much the same.
I can see why somebody would like to stay 40 years in the same place.
I expect society is best with a mix of both types of people. It usually is.
There's color temperature: warm white (~2800K), neutral white (~4000K), or cool white (~5000K and up). This is a matter of personal taste and what you're used to. Perception/preference may vary depending on lighting level: one may prefer ~4500K in a bright room, but prefer warm(er) white if same room is dimly lit.
Then there's the quality of the spectrum a LED outputs, usually denoted by color rendering index (CRI). 70 or lower is poor (cheap), 80+ is good enough for most uses, 90+ is high quality. Pro photographers may seek out specialty 95CRI LED lighting, or go for halogen lamps.
Parents' problem has nothing to do with the above! Flicker is caused by non-constant current put through the LED(s). Usually caused by cheap/crappy driver electronics integrated in a LED bulb.
There's ways around this. So you can have LED lighting that's nice to look at, flicker-free & efficient. No need to bring in incandescents. But it takes effort to find a fixture with a high-CRI powerLED of your chosen color, and combine that with driver electronics which puts a constant current through the LED (as opposed to varying current whose average is constant).
Search term: "Chip-on-board" (CoB LED).
Interesting! Do you have a source for this?
> and polaks
> In Polish, "Polak" simply means a Polish man (with "Polka" meaning a Polish woman).
> In English, the spelling "Polack" (and its plural "Polacks") is an old borrowing from Polish, but today it is generally considered a derogatory or offensive ethnic slur for Polish people
But your broader point is well taken.
It's unquestionable that ostentatious displays of wealth are met with revulsion and derision, therefore we don't show those displays. The downstream impact is that the masses have nothing to aspire to or look up to in this specific context of craftsmanship. Again, when was the last time "you" wore a suit? Was it tailored? Do you only wear it at weddings? Do you buy your clothing from Costco/Kirkland? Do you find yourself in the fast food line at Chik-fil-a or driving across town to Buc-ee's in your Jeep? These kinds of consumerist behaviors are good and accepted. If you tell someone you only eat at tasting menus or high end restaurants or something instead of those being celebrated as good you'll be met with incredulity or even be made fun of "you're so fancy" "ugh if only I could afford that", and then it devolves into mass-market "experiences" and so forth. (As you read the rest of this post remember that I'm critiquing capitalism here as well).
Because Wimbledon is ongoing and the ladies championship was today, how many complain about the players being required to wear all-white? How many have complained once the champion's dance was re-established? Do you think it's silly or stupid? You're part of the problem! It's considered classism - but without it, you get sterilization. Reduction to the lowest common denominator.
In general, leftist ideologies, so think communism and other sympathies, result in minimalist architecture and decor and art, because grand displays of wealth or even the concept of "rank" with respect to members of society evoke royalty, "white European male", and "let them eat cake". To flaunt your wealth or aspire to be part of a country club or to invent new social organizations and elite activities is to be on the receiving end of the social hammer. You can't have nice stuff because that goes against the doctrine. I'm painting in broad strokes here, but I think this is accurate. It's no accident that all of the best buildings were built under royalist regimes, monarchies, and more.
And because of the disgust and vitriol and crabs pulling other crabs down as they try to escape the bucket, now we are just left with wealthy losers who have forgotten their noblesse oblige.
> That discourse isn't even particularly dominant amongst the left (often clowned as "third-worldist", reductionist or class denialism).
I think this is just flatly false. You've probably just seen it so much and it has become so common to you that you've become less sensitive to it. Leftists in particular are very in-tune with class warfare. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, and I'm paraphrasing, culture wars are a distraction from the real war, class war. I see stuff like this all the time: https://www.amazon.com/American-Magnet-War-Class-Text/dp/B09... .
If anything, suit is boring minimalist choice, every man looks exactly like the man next to him.
The leftist ideology in women leads to colorful hair styles, even more variety of clothing cause they integrate in unusual styles.
It's less about the suit itself - I don't mean to imply everyone should wear the same thing. It's about the perception around it and the moaning one does when it comes to trying to present yourself in society. There's a "I don't need to impress anyone" attitude, which I'm certainly sympathetic to, but I think it is heading in the wrong direction.
It's like when you talk to a pickleball player and you ask them if they play tennis. The typical answer is "no" "that's so hard" "too much running" - it's the undercurrent of not trying and not having high standards that I take issue with. (Nothing against pickleball, truly)
With the exclusion of striped patterns, this just sounds like a typical over lit commercial environments, probably overhead fluorescent lights, maybe lights and screens running at different refresh rates. That has nothing to do with home decor of any era or culture.
Also I'm guessing the acoustics are consistently horrible in these environments too. Air quality probably sucks too.
Probably what makes the house less cluttered is that the elite class can afford to throw things away.
It's one of those things that unfortunately popular culture has become confused about. Free markets, property rights, and free expression (as examples), which are not leftist, are the cultural mechanism which allows and encourages individuality. In societies where those things are not valued, free expression for example in communist societies, women are more oppressed and that's arguably by definition. Even at the economic level, capitalist economies and free market economies permit worker-owned collectives, whereas communism destroys and disallows private ownership of the means of production (and typically property rights in general). Free markets are more permissive and more, well, free. Leftist economic systems aren't because they are unnatural and require forced cooperation.
I really do not associate suits with anything you wrote here - they dont make you impressive, they dont show personalization or care about how you look like, they are just a thing you put on in rare social situation and then you feel hot. An average metal guy with a big hairstyle is putting a lot more effort into looking impressive then someone who just wears the suit.
> It's like when you talk to a pickleball player and you ask them if they play tennis. The typical answer is "no" "that's so hard" "too much running" - it's the undercurrent of not trying and not having high standards that I take issue with. (Nothing against pickleball, truly)
Is that an actual thing pickleball players and fans say or something you projected on them, because they don't play the proper tennis? Why the need to turn casual sport and exercise into a test of will and standards?
I just dont get this example either. Why is it wrong to pick a sport you can play with friends right away, have fun and then stick to it?
You're focusing too much on the suit itself and that's causing you to miss the point.
The suit is just traditional western social attire born from military uniforms. If our traditional attire was the metal guy with big hairstyle, I'd just use that here instead. The point is trying (which of course as a death metal lover I would think the metal guy with the big hairstyle is cool) and that's what so many seem to have given up on. Wearing PJs to Wal-Mart is the decline, not the cool metal haircut.
> Is that an actual thing pickleball players and fans say or something you projected on them, because they don't play the proper tennis? Why the need to turn casual sport and exercise into a test of will and standards?
Yes, it is actual things I hear from pickleball players and my friends who play. Again though you missed the point. I think it's great that folks have fun playing pickleball or any other sport. It's not any worse or better than tennis or any other sport. The problem is the mentality from folks I've talked to. "Tennis is too hard" "Too much running". It's self-limiting, and it's an aversion to doing hard things.
That's a civilizational and social challenge we must root out.
Elite doesn't imply "more money than I know what to do with" it simply means being closer to the upper end the of income and/or wealth distribution, or failing that, being part of some cultural generation that gives you more influence than the average bear, i.e. journalist, university prof etc. The cutoff for being in the 20% of household income in the US is $175K. From what I understand that's one entry level FAANG income.
Cluttered old homes with lots of things all over the place make it a bit less jarring when there's a stack of work left out on a table.
that's wrong: my minimalist (in looks, not in equipment) all white kitchen looks completely fine even after a dinner party, because even then it doesn't look full, dirty or cluttered. The old one (and it wasn't that old, only there were more and darker colors and lines and objects) decidedly didn't. The art of designing modern spaces lies in the ability to make the space visually appealing (in my case minimal) while still able to function correctly. Too often the designers and their clients forget about the practical aspects.
Which is fine to be honest, its nice to see clearly the type of person on the other side of the table, no need to dig through empty speech clutter for clues. But impressive it is not.
Reminds me of the reason that grass yards exist: to show the world that one can afford land for the sake of owning it, rather than for growing crops.
There’s definitely more to the story and there are myriad factors.
I've lived in a few row houses with fully paved outdoor areas. I don't really see the point of that either, but at least it doesn't require regular maintenance so it only has to be occasionally useful to come out ahead.
It then took this association with rich and better and was used in the US to denote affluent and therefore segregated housing developments.
Historically, using land with such properties for grass instead of crops was as sign of wealth, especially for large estates.
These churches chose thier path, and so did their parishioners.
Truly our institutions are post-Christianity. The herd morality has out survived Christianity itself. Nietzsche's nightmare
Its more difficult to maintain this when everyone has a device in their pocket that allows them to access information and people outside their church bubble
Instead the grown psychopathic children all move for instant gratification and rewards in the now, damn the cost of society and civilization long term.
I want to reach Orville / Star Trek, thank you!
On the contrary, most folks in the 20-40 range are tired of “cafeteria Christian” denominations that pick and chose which parts of scripture to stand by and which go ignore based on ever shifting social trends, whether it be so-called woke churches hosting drag performers or Boomer-tier Endtimes preachers that can’t stop talking about their all expense paid Israeli “pilgrimage.”
I grew up in the South and distinctly remember the Southern Baptist preachings against interracial marriage based on selective (mis)readings of the Bible, against homosexuality based on selective readings of the Old Testament (pick and choose indeed; hate gays while eating your BBQ pork). I remember the constant calls for boycott of Disney parks because of “gay days”.
I don’t know what it’s like I’m a Southern Baptist church now, but I seriously doubt it’s changed much.
That being said, every single denomination picks and chooses. Especially more conservative ones. And in fact, you cant take it all literally and quite a lot is not applicable.
OK. Next time you read the parable of the good Samaritan I want you to reframe it as "The Good Drag Queen". That's how you are meant to see it.
Having children forces you, and ~10% of married people don't have kids. In New Zealand, about 50% of kids are born to the unmarried.
As you say, correlation and causation are hard to pick given the selection biases of who chooses to be married, and who your peer group is if you are married.
Generations ago those field would have been allowed to grow over because they could be cleared again on a whim.
These days you need six figured of engineering and permitting to clear acreage and ain't nobody gonna do that without a commercial use that can justify it.
There's plenty of evidence the rear gardens were used for growing food and drying laundry back then
Children would also play there where they could be seen from the kitchen (which was always in the rear), rather than playing in the road (as much)
Rear gardens also served as a space where you would converse with your neighbour. Typically fences between neighbours were low and wire (tall 6ft wooden fences came later)
The other thing is the only toilet in a 4 bedroom property would also be out there, as an outdoor WC, accessible from outside
I doubt much read space was reserved for lawn back then
The neighbourhood of "Cabbagetown" in Toronto is so-named because yards were not used for 'ornamental' plants:
> Cabbagetown's name derives from the Irish immigrants who moved to the neighbourhood beginning in the late 1840s, said to have been so poor that they grew cabbage in their front yards.[2] Canadian writer Hugh Garner's novel, Cabbagetown, depicted life in the neighbourhood during the Great Depression.
Which leads back to my point, there is a hunger for churches that ignore the intentional blend of secular belief systems in any direction.
You are expressing hunger for openly political church. The one that will reject yout political ennemies regardless of faith.
Your opposition to drag is literally identity politics - rejection due to assumed identity. After all men only and women only groups im church go back to over thousand years.
Churches traditionally hosted musical and other performances not strictly related to scripture. Between musoc and groups and socialization and even sports, all of that wqs part of it.
In regards to “miscegenation” we have Galatians which largely renders that point moot, highlighting everyone’s love of cherry-picking scripture.
In regards to homosexuality, you have Leviticus, I assume you’re referencing. Given the widespread practice of man-boy relations as famously highlighted by the Spartans and of course recent special military operations in Afghanistan I have an incredibly hard time believing this piece of scripture is at all misinterpreted.
Regarding BBQ, I assume that’s a presence to kosher law and subsequently an attempt at calling hypocrite on the congregation. In that regard we have quite a few pieces of scripture, e.g. in Mark, effectively redefining and negating much of kosher law thereby making that issue moot.
Overall - your assumption around Southern Baptists largely stands. Our last church, my wife had to constantly deal with snide remarks because of her having previously been married to a man that went and overdosed on fentanyl. Meanwhile half the grandparents in the congregation are raising their own grandchildren for the exact same reason…
Which leads to our currently being “unchurched” as they say, because the worst part of Christianity is the other Christians ;)
I’m struggling with this statement. Are you saying that Leviticus is actually only anti-pedophile and not anti-gay (and so all these conservative Christian preachers are willfully misrepresenting it), or are you continuing the long tradition of falsely linking homosexuality with pedophilia? Is there some other interpretation I’m missing?
> Regarding BBQ, I assume that’s a presence to kosher law and subsequently an attempt at calling hypocrite on the congregation. In that regard we have quite a few pieces of scripture, e.g. in Mark, effectively redefining and negating much of kosher law thereby making that issue moot.
I mean, pork is only one of a million things forbidden in Leviticus that modern Christians ignore. Why is charging interest on loans okay now? Where’s the part where Mark says that’s cool? What about period sex? Seems that rule is gone, too. Where is the passage that says “Pretty much everything in Leviticus is irrelevant except the gay thing”?
It’s your actions and not your culinary habits. If you chose to fornicate you’re sinning. Nothing in the New Testament reneges on that. Intentionally endorsing lifestyles that promote such acts are bad per the scripture.
If you don’t believe that and choose to”good feels” and statism as your God, that’s your choice.
I agree this is a better reading. Of course this makes it even more apt guidance for the Southern Baptists (and others) who preach bigotry.
Nah. I will decline to (re)read several hundred pages to try to find the answer you cannot provide.
You didn’t even answer my straightforward question about what you meant with your seeming homosexuality-pedophilia link.
> If you chose to fornicate you’re sinning.
Then can I assume you support gay marriage?
Old Testament: Lev 18:22, Gen 19:1-7, Judges 19:22-23, Jude 7:7
New Testament: 1 Cor 6:9, Romans 1:26-27
And your accusation about Hypocrisy in eating pork etc:
Laws of Moses superseded: Gal 3:23-25, Romans 10:4, Col 2:14, Col 2:16-17, Romans 6:14-15
by New Testament principles: Acts 15:28,29 and Acts 10:9-16
Luke 6:34–35 - And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.
I hear a lot of anti gay preaching but no preaching against charging interest. Cafeteria Christianity indeed.
It is also super weird to hear Christians say that the Old Testament is superseded but then keep quoting it when it’s convenient.
Is eating no longer an action? Do you not have a choice of what you eat in most circumstances?
The conservative Christian notion that homosexuality is a choice to is honestly super weird to me because I certainly never chose heterosexuality. It’s one of those things that only makes sense while you’re in it and it’s constantly being beat into you, and with some distance you see that it’s ridiculous.
So much of Christian belief is not in the bible no matter what particular sect you are a part of. I remember when those “Left Behind” book’s came out and I found out many of my friends believed in a physical rapture where those “saved” would literally disappear from the Earth. I had no idea this was even a thing because it’s not something my church taught and it’s not in the bible.
Most (all?) other groups have their own rules and beliefs that are not in the bible. I’m not sure it’s possible to be fully faithful to the Bible because it’s not entirely self consistent. Also the books of the bible themselves were chosen from many candidate texts. It’s not as if Jesus left a bibliography.
The law against charging interest was under Moses’ law so it was abolished along with the rest when Jesus died. Useful principles added, covering not interest specifically, but condemning greed (which is foundational to late stage capitalism…); 1 Tim 6:10, Matt 6:24
There are plenty of other examples of modern Christians picking and choosing though. Starting with ignoring the above call to charity (if we read it that way). There are many calls to give freely, yet most modern Christian’s are content with pretty minor giving overall. Or we could talk about how “turn the other cheek” aligns with the distinct non-pacifism that permeates modern Christianity. Or we could talk about taking oaths, divorce, head coverings by women in church, embrace of community property. Etc.
Christian scholars regularly debate how to interpret portions of the Bible. I’m not sure what they are doing if it’s clear and easy to adhere to.