Contramuffin

@Contramuffin@lemmy.world

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Contramuffin,

Desktop, laptop, phone.

Desktop for heavy workloads and work when at home

Laptop for work when at work

Phone is useless for any sort of meaningful work and is used for Slack and/or browsing memes.

It’s not necessarily even that phones are too weak for work, it’s that it’s god-awful to try to get any work done on a phone when the only input method you have is touchscreen.

Contramuffin,

Looks like a tiger beetle. Cool pictures!

Contramuffin,

My understanding is that there is always color variation because they don’t color their sauces with food coloring, and as a result, the sauces made at the beginning of harvest season will have a different color than the sauces made at the end of harvest season.

But also they no longer use the same chili due to greed, so that may not apply anymore

Regarding sleep quality, why did humans evolve to require full darkness?

I know evolution is governed by chance and it is random but does it make sense to “ruin” sleep if there’s light? I mean normally, outside, you never have pure darkness, there are the moon and stars even at night. In certain zones of the Earth we also have long periods of no sunshine and long periods of only sunshine....

Contramuffin,

A question that I’m an expert in!

I study circadian rhythms (the process that is responsible for getting us to sleep in the night). Specifically, how circadian rhythms influence how easily we catch diseases, but that part is less relevant to the question.

So since Earth rotates and has day/night cycles, life on Earth evolved to try to predict when the day and night comes. That’s what circadian rhythms do. This is really important, since day and night aren’t just associated with lightness/darkness. Day and night are associated with a ton of different environmental differences. For instance, it’s colder at night, so animals need a way of keeping warm at night. There’s more UV light at day, so animals need a way of resisting DNA damage in the day. There’s some evidence that the bacteria in the air are different at day vs. at night, so animals will need to have different levels of immune system alertness.

We as humans live in artificial houses with artificial lighting, so we can lose track of why this is really important. But if you’ve ever went camping or tried to stay out at night you’ll probably understand why it’s really important for animals to be able to predict the time.

Circadian rhythms end up getting reinforced on a community level, since if it’s easier to see in the day, an animal is more likely to forage in the day. Then predators will notice that prey is more plentiful in the day, so it will also be more likely for predators to hunt in the day as well.

Anyways, the end result of all of this is that animals have a huge evolutionary pressure to pick either the day or night to be their active period, which is the time where they look for food and in general just be awake. And whatever they don’t pick, that’s their rest period, the time where they sleep and recover.

But how do animals know that their circadian rhythms are predicting the correct time? Imagine a mouse in its burrow - it wouldn’t be able to tell what time it is just by looking at the sky. And even just stepping out for a second to check would be very dangerous if it ended up being the wrong time. Animals need a way of reading what time it is when their out and about and then correcting their circadian rhythms if the rhythm is inaccurate. There’s a lot of different measurements that animals use to read the time, but the key here is that the measurements that they pick must change significantly between day and night. In other words, it must be a very obvious signal, like “oh, I see this signal, so there is no doubt that the time is day.”

Vast majority of the time, the most obvious signal ends up behind light. And it makes sense - if you see bright light, that is the clearest indication that it is day outside. So for many animals, light is the primary measure that animals use to read the time.

So to wrap back around to your question, it’s not necessarily that light ruins sleep because evolution just decided to go “nae nae,” it’s because predicting time is incredibly important for keeping animals and humans alive, and up until very recently, light has simply been the easiest and best proxy for the time

And to answer your bonus question, yes, other animals have their sleep messed up by light too

Contramuffin,

This is untrue - we have explicitly evolved to sleep in the dark. Sleeping in the light is a learned behavior that’s more or less an exploitation of a loophole in the circadian clock

Contramuffin,

Oh trust me, I know way more than you think. It is literally my job to study circadian rhythms. I can very comfortably say that you’re wrong

Contramuffin,

Ah, so this goes more into the nuance of what exactly determines the time of the circadian clock. It is very well documented that animals in the arctic circle still have circadian clocks even if it’s perpetual light or dark. I left out for simplicity that the level of light matters - that is to say, if there’s a time where it’s slightly dimmer and a time that’s slightly brighter, that is enough to adjust the circadian clock to the correct time. The adjustment process will be slower and weaker than usual, but it does happen.

Also, I hinted that animals do take in multiple measurements to determine the correct time, and that plays a role in this case. In general, light tends to be the measurement that animals will default to, but where light variation doesn’t exist, animals can and do utilize other measurements to determine the time. Eating (among other things) turns out to be a relatively strong signal, so circadian rhythms end up being somewhat self-reinforcing. After all, I would expect that you only eat when you’re awake.

But in general, circadian rhythms and the ways that animals adjust their rhythms to the correct time is a huge rabbithole

Contramuffin,

No need to use quotation marks - it is scientifically confirmed that night owls and early birds exist (among a number of other, less-well-known circadian types). We call them chronotypes, and it’s an active field of study. Unfortunately it’s not something that I specialize in, so I can’t comment too much on it.

However, it is very well acknowledged in the field that modern society is built on an early bird schedule and that completely screws over night owls. (To my memory, night owls tend to score lower on tests, pursue higher education less than early birds, tend to be less promoted and generally less successful than early birds. Inversely, night owls tend to do better in evening classes than early birds.)

Contramuffin,

I’m pretty sure that’s the general hypothesis in the field, but as you might imagine, it’ll be very difficult to prove. There was a study done sometime (I don’t fully remember when) where researchers collected data on when people go to sleep and when they wake up, and they found that there was a remarkably normal distribution in the population for when people wake up and sleep.

My personal interpretation is that chronotypes (what you call early birds and night owls) are genetic in some way, but I don’t specialize in this area, so don’t take my word for it

Contramuffin,

Yes, but your wikipedia link doesn’t prove that animals are only sensitive to blue light, only that they are more sensitive to blue light. That is a very well-documented phenomenon. But there is plenty of evidence that red light can entrain circadian rhythms as well, dating well back to the 80’s. There has even been a study that identified different mechanisms of entrainment to low-wavelength and high-wavelength light in bacteria, which you can find below. My point is that it is very scientifically irresponsible, and in fact, blatantly wrong, to claim that humans are sensitive only to particular wavelengths of light, when in fact humans and other animals are sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light.

Beyond that, I don’t necessarily know why you seem to be claiming that the intensity of the ambient light does not matter for photic entrainment, when this is a highly documented and, in fact, highly studied phenomenon in the circadian field. Yes, the moon reflects light, but this is dim enough that mammalian SCN’s can interpret the difference between that and the full daylight. See below for some papers that look into light intensity and their effects on entrainment.

Here is some reading if you are interested:

Contramuffin,

You’re right, I can’t give medical advice. But having abnormally long or short circadian days is a known thing - called circadian diseases. It’s not really my specialty, so I can’t comment too much on it, but my understanding is that many of them are genetic. These genetic variations can cause the circadian clock to run slower or faster than normal (which happens to be adjacent to what I study, so I can talk about it in excruciating detail if desired)

The Familial Advanced Sleep Phase Syndrome (FASP) is one such genetic circadian disease that gets a lot of attention among the circadian field, but you almost certainly don’t have it, since FASP makes your clock run shorter than 24 hours, whereas you seem to imply that yours runs longer.

The key thing to remember is that the circadian clock is not psychological. There is an actual, physical, molecular clock running in your brain and in nearly all the cells in your body. If this clock has imperfections, then that will directly lead to consequences in your circadian rhythms and your sleep cycle. The circadian clock is a real thing that people with the right equipment can measure and read. It wouldn’t even be particularly hard - just a blood sample or a swab would be sufficient. To be honest, I myself would like to study your cells to see if there really is anything out of place, but that would probably break so many research and ethics rules.

Anyways, to answer your question, I would recommend getting a medical opinion - it might be worth specifically bringing up that you suspect you have a circadian disease. I’m not too sure about treatment options, since my impression has generally been that we kind of don’t have any treatments for circadian diseases. But it’s not really my specialty, so maybe there is. My memory is that melatonin is a masking cue, which basically means that it makes you sleep but it doesn’t actually affect your circadian clock (which probably explains your poor experience with melatonin).

Contramuffin,

Yeah, crepuscular animals are weird. They have circadian rhythms (the circadian clock is incredibly well conserved across vertebrates and to a lesser extent, across invertebrates), but I’m not actually entirely sure how their circadian clock work to get them to wake up at dawn/dusk

Contramuffin,

Physics-based combat? This feels very immersive-sims-y

I’m looking forward to it

Contramuffin,

I’m at a complete loss - even with the labels, I can only see a rock. I can’t figure out what part is supposed to look like what body part

Contramuffin,

Any game that isn’t trying to go for realistic graphics. Some off the top of my head:

  • Braid
  • Okami
  • Outer Wilds
  • Ori and the Blind Forest
fathermcgruder, to asklemmy
@fathermcgruder@jorts.horse avatar

What is it about the text messages and emails sent by older people that make me feel like I'm having a stroke?

Maybe they're used to various shortcuts in their writing that they picked up before autocorrect became common, but these habits are too idiosyncratic for autocorrect to handle properly. However, that doesn't explain the emails I've had to decipher that were typed on desktop keyboards. Has anyone else younger than 45 or so felt similarly frustrated with geriatrics' messages?

@asklemmy

Contramuffin,

Not exclusive to old people, unfortunately. I’ve seen many instances of texts from decidedly young people that make me question if the language being used was some derivative of Old English.

But to answer the question specifically, I generally find that old people have a higher tendency to type or use speech-to-text and then not check for accuracy. It makes it generally pretty common for autocorrect to completely mess up meaning of the message. Also older people seem to either spam or avoid punctuation entirely with no in between.

Contramuffin,

I mainly use mine for emulation. So technically yes, but you’ll need to provide a way to download and install it easily

I need some help choosing a monitor.

Simply put I have built a gaming tower that I have no monitor that will connect with the machine only having a BIOS and no OS. As I understand it, I need something that will connect with an HDMI cable, but that seems to be either a traditional monitor or a tablet. I’m completely unsure which would be more stable, and therefore...

Contramuffin,

I have no idea why tablet was considered an option. I’ve never heard of anyone using a tablet, and you are the first person I’ve heard who is considering a tablet.

Just go with a monitor. Get a high refresh rate 1080p. You might be able to drive a 1440p if that’s what you’d prefer.

Also you won’t be able to use the computer without an OS. I would recommend deciding on what OS to use while waiting for the monitor to arrive

In our post-AI era, is job security strictly mythical? Or How to believe in careers as a concept worth doing?

With the lastest news of AI layoffs, I’m struggling to understand how the idea of a career still holds. If careers themselves effectively become gambles like lottery tickets, how do we maintain drive and hopes in the longterm endgame of our struggles?...

Contramuffin,

There are certain careers that can’t be replaced by AI - anything that requires working with your hands will not be replaced by AI unless robots suddenly get invented. But if robots exist, then there’s likely bigger things to worry about than your job.

I would look for non-routine jobs that require a lot of handiwork. Non-routine because it will be hard to replace with general, non-AI automation, and handiwork because AI is currently digital only.

Carpentry, plumbing, engineering, laboratory research, teaching all likely fall into the safe category

Contramuffin,

The OP consistently shows extreme bitterness toward seemingly everyone in her own family. To the point where she actively talks about disowning her son and suing her mother. I think she probably deleted a lot of those comments, but it definitely recontextualizes a lot of her posts not as jokes, but as earnest, passive aggressive hatred for her family.

Contramuffin,

Hmm, that’s an interesting question. I’m not an evolutionary biologist but I am a biologist (more specifically, a microbiogist).

The crux of the misunderstanding, I think, is that the definition of what counts as advantageous or “good” has changed over time. Very rapidly, in fact. The reason many diseases are still around today is because many genetic diseases offered a very real advantage in the past. The example that is often given is malaria and sickle cell anemia. Sickle cell anemia gives resistance to malaria, which is why it’s so prevalent in populations that historically have high incidence of malaria.

Natural selection doesn’t improve anything, it just makes animals more fit for their exact, immediate situation. That also means that it is very possible (and in fact, very likely) that the traits that we today associate with health will become disadvantageous in the future.

If we remember that natural selection isn’t trying to push humanity towards any goal, enlightenment, or good health, it becomes easier to acknowledge and accept that we can and should interfere with natural selection

Contramuffin,

I’m not sure I understand the analogy. A lot of annoyances that people regularly deal with on computers are either intended mechanisms to stop human bad actors or unintentional bugs passing off as features. You can’t really say the same about demons.

I suppose you might be talking about ritualization, or the idea that the people who build protocols are so removed from the people who follow them, that the people who follow the protocols don’t know why they do the things they do, but only know that bad things happen if they don’t follow the protocols.

But even then, the analogy seems somewhat strenuous, since the point of occultism is exactly to try to study demonology and understand how to work with demons - ie, to try to understand why the protocols are the way they are.

If you wanted to talk about ritualization, there are significantly more apt comparisons. Most examples of culture or religions could be argued to be practical protocols that ended up gaining momentum and becoming more spiritual than they initially were.

Contramuffin,

Nowhere have I said that programs are perfectly fine. In that exact quote that you have quoted me on, I even said that unintuitive features may be bugs passing off as features.

I am making the claim that no matter how much technical debt there is in a code, it is not remotely comparable to occultism and demons. If you read and understand what I have said, I make clear that it is not even that programming and occultism are dissimilar, but more accurately that the two cannot even be categorically compared because there is nothing to compare. You are not comparing apples to oranges, you are comparing apples to chairs.

Contramuffin,

Sure, I get that, which is why I make the point that the OP may be taking about ritualization. But that isn’t made clear in the original post, and especially with how the post is presented, the OP appears to be actively discouraging that notion. The last sentence is particularly confusing because it’s implying that most if not all company protocols are just as arbitrary and supernatural as attempting to summon a demon.

Contramuffin,

I’m personally not a fan of Mint - tried it for a month or so. My impression is that if it works with your muscle memory, it works well. If not… then even Windows ends up more user-friendly.

I’m particularly not a fan of the “start menu” because you don’t really get a lot of space for pinned apps, and there’s no way to really modify that. I ended up liking KDE quite a lot more. It takes a bit longer to set it up to what you like, but its customization means that while there’s a bigger upfront cost to setup, it’s much smoother once it is set up.

I’m using KDE Neon (Ubuntu + KDE), which I’m pretty happy with. But I’m also debating whether to switch to Kubuntu (also Ubuntu + KDE for some reason)

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • JUstTest
  • mdbf
  • ngwrru68w68
  • modclub
  • magazineikmin
  • thenastyranch
  • rosin
  • khanakhh
  • InstantRegret
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • Durango
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • megavids
  • GTA5RPClips
  • tacticalgear
  • normalnudes
  • tester
  • osvaldo12
  • everett
  • cubers
  • ethstaker
  • anitta
  • provamag3
  • Leos
  • cisconetworking
  • lostlight
  • All magazines