cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14841802
It’s absolutely true that a lot of modern-day problems with being tired come from bad sleep habits. What I’m talking about is a real phenomenon that isn’t being in front of a screen too close to bedtime. If anyone wants to know more, here’s a 3-minute video from AsapSCIENCE about what research shows.
I think we, the night folk, are descended from the people who stayed awake, making sure the campfire didn’t go out and/or keeping watch for predators.
I wouldn’t be so upset, if there weren’t still nocturnal jobs to be done. But there ARE. We should have been singled out, early on, and told “okay, here’s the deal: you’re one of the night people. As an adult, please choose from these occupations that are best done at night. You will get a variety of subsidies and tax breaks, to encourage you to continue providing vital services, while the rest of us are sleeping.”
Apart from things like night security, waste collection, maintenance, etc, there should also be “normal” services staffed by night people, in order to serve the other night people. Like, doctor and dental offices that cater to the times when night people are just getting off work, can take off work during the night, or are still up at night on the weekends.
But none of that happens. Instead, the modern world is like “NOPE. WE WILL MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO ABSOLUTELY ENFORCE A DAYLIGHT SCHEDULE, EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE COMPLETELY MASTERED ARTIFICIAL LIGHTING TECHNOLOGY.”
It’s turtles all the way down, still beat left handers at times and places. USA measures shit in the approximation of one egotist tyrants body sizes whomist now long dust.
USA measures shit in the approximation of one egotist tyrants body sizes whomist now long dust
I hate it, whenever this shit comes up. We didn’t use body-based measurements because of the EVIL TYRANNY OF THE HORRIBLE EVIL BAD EVIL KING.
We used them because, while the king might have been a bit taller than the average man, he was still basically the same size as most people. And so the measurements were actually conveniently sized, based on the scale of the human body (ALSO, THE KING’S CUBIT WAS A STANDARD MEASUREMENT, WHICH IS A GOOD THING. SEE MY EDIT, BELOW).
But the supposedly logical metric system calibrated the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance on the Earth’s surface from the north pole to the equator.
That’s arguably mathematically beautiful. Arguably. But it’s not useful to people. It’s not based on the human body. I object to that. I think it was a deeply anti-populist decision, made by haughty nobles, who quite rightly got their heads chopped off, right after they came up with that shit.
Those nobles had no idea how common people used measurements. They didn’t consider the people who actually built houses or tables or ships. They were planning on using the metric system to do pure science. That’s fine. That’s good. We need that. But there’s no reason the scientists can’t use a measurement that is also good for engineers and carpenters.
But no, the aristocrats were going to pick something they thought of as numerically lovely, and never spared any fraction of a thought for the real people, who would have to use the measurements to do real-world shit. Again: it’s good that they had their heads chopped off. They were pieces of shit.
When that revolution was happening, we should have revamped the metric system based on a Universal Standard Cubit. I think we should have gone and measured the cubit lengths of a million real people, from all cultures, all regions, all faiths, all races, and taken the average of them. That would have been useful and appropriate.
EDIT: I’m just saying, if you’re going to hate on the nobility, at least be consistent. A lot of people are like “Cubits? No, because kings bad.”
But then you’re like “Metric system good. Metric system forced on us by SMART aristocracy.”
EDIT 2: PEOPLE ALSO FAIL TO REALIZE THAT THE ANCIENT CUBIT WAS A STANDARD MEASUREMENT, WHICH PROVIDED MOST OF THE BENEFITS OF MODERN STANDARD MEASUREMENTS, LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF YEARS BEFORE THE FUCKING METRIC SYSTEM.
It’s TURBO DISHONEST to extoll the fucking virtues of metric standardization, then go “oh, stupid bad evil stupid evil dumb king was such an egotist that he FORCED his people to measure things using his arm.”
MOTHERFUCKERS, IT WASN’T ABOUT THE KING’S PRIDE. IT WAS THE INVENTION OF A STANDARDIZED UNIT.
You guys think standard units are good! That’s what the cubit was! People had literally been using their own forearms, but some genius was like “nah, we need a standard one…but we should keep it about the size of the arm. Might as well use the ruler’s arm as a ruler, that way he’ll probably pay for a bunch of them to be made, with his massive gold stash.”
Hard disagree. There is far too much variability in the body size of adult humans, especially when taking sex into account. Sure, maybe my foot closely resembles the foot-size of said monarch but my 5 ft tall wife’s doesn’t.
There’s no reason to use body paste measurements for nearly any purpose in the modern day. You can’t build a house based on the rough size of someone’s arm when you have half a dozen people minimum working on a project. You need a standard unit which would need to be measured using a standard unit measuring device. Either way you need to use a measuring tool, so why not use a standard that makes the math easier.
Yeah but metric was built that way so there’s a reference that isn’t “We all agreed an inch = this long”.
If we lost every metric ruler, scale, micrometer, etc, we can backtrack and make a new one from the description. Try using your thumb as an inch reference.
If I let my circadian rhythm take over, I’d sleep until noon and be up until 4am
Blame the society and suffer all your life.
Or find a job with a flexible schedule, or in a timezone behind you. Find hobbies that are late in the evening, or move to a country where people casually have dinners at 10pm (all mideterrian Europe).
Sent at 2am in my timezone
find a job with a flexible schedule, or in a timezone behind you.
This, 100%. I work for a gig remotely that’s an hour behind me and let’s me shift my schedule with a bit of freedom as needed to get my tasks done, and it’s awesome. For example, this morning I didn’t even get up until 8am and was still able to do my morning stuff and get to work at a reasonable time.
Fun facts for night owls:
I’m sorry, there are no fun facts. It was a lie, it’s actually terrible. You just zombie through life unable to function without health destroying levels of caffeination _
