I bet there too was some obscure newspaper column that advised against that.
Yet, lo and behold, we survived!
Wow, I forgot that I used to do this! And I'd puzzle over whether any ozone was left with all the CFCs being emitted.
But yes, the OP is very edgy take that totally ignores the existence of book/magazine baskets next to toilets. It's a huge plot point in Breaking Bad, for example.
https://youtu.be/cXgg607wuis?t=35 (Breaking Bad 'Hank Figures it Out')
Vince Gilligan truly made tv gold.
Many share houses, when I was a student, put the film calendar for the local art house cinema on the back of the toilet door. It was the accepted place for it.
Reading on the pot is a time-honoured tradition.
Edit: those books are basically the print version of reddit's front page of posts from r/interestingasfuck, r/todayilearned, r/MadeMeSmile etc.
Just imagine, there was a person on #debian reading and taking a dump.
Just to reiterate: book good, e-reader bad. Phone good, smartphone bad. Scanning through a physical magazine good, doomscrolling TikTok bad.
Except it is about focused vs. diffuse mode of brain, and usually people underappreciate the latter. E.g. walking during a lunch break, thereby getting inspiration for work, is working. The same can be true for taking a shower, sporting, staring outside at the landscape or stars, or meditating. It will also empower your focused mode later on. And, the author's point seems to be a toilet break is a decent opportunity for this. I agree. On my previous job, I regularly sat for 10-15 min in late morning, and it inspired me. But you cannot force people to not take a device with them to toilet. I mean, unless you're working for NSA or something. Don't judge such, look at total performance / efficiency per hour instead. Or per USD spend on the employee.
As a former smoker, this is also what I appreciated about having a fag (in a time before smartphone and vape were common). Some missed the socializing. I hated that part. It seemed to be more like FOMO on gossip, little substance.
This is called survivorship bias. Sure, we survived—but that’s because you’re not including all of the bored people who died of reading instruction labels.
That's some crazy info on that soap bottle.
I really don't get this protective culture that seems so widespread in current times.
I'll state it plainly, your hands are clean before you start to wipe yourself. As long as you put your phone aside, on the counter for example, it's as clean as if reading in an easy chair.
And I'm doing it right now, reading this blog and this thread! Take that, blog author!
But they all took a back seat from the one thing that followed them around!
That said, I do also have ADHD, so maybe people who are "longer and slower" toiler-sitters like me without ADHD might be fine without a distraction.
Now living permanently with a spouse it has settled on a higher frequency than I remember before moving out on my own. Weird stuff.
> one of the days each week I'd do it would always be Monday, and I never had any explanation for why that was the case.
Social functions, a specific food or beverages (Friday drinking night? Not to the Monday though...) on some days, travel for some.
That shouldn't be the bar for most of what we do daily. We can also "survive" without doing any physical exercise. The question is: yes, we'll survive, but in which condition? i.e. is that healthy or not?
The article isn't claiming it'll kill you...
https://web.archive.org/web/20210612143916/http://backlabel....
Backlabel threw together a fake product name from a list and added in some warning symbols and various ingredient and instructions to give you some fake labels to read while you whizz away.
For many of us Swedes this was the one of the first and few Finnish sentences we ever learnt (it means ”Do not cover” and was printed on electric panel heaters in the bathroom).
Instagram feeds and not toothpaste tubes people.