b_b

I know HN is not one for jokes, but colonizing 'Europa' seems like a hilarious irony in name.

I definitely get where you are coming from, given the unfortunately common practice of misconstruing scientific studies to make exclamatory headlines.

I should add then, that the author definitely backs up the studies (which are multiple and often independently discovered) with reasoning about why certain things are evolutionary advantageous and how they fit in to societal phenomenons. I hope you will give this book a chance :)

I saw someone mention it in a HN comment before, but I'd like to restate it here since it is definitely one of those perspective-altering books: "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker.

The author is a professor and prolific researcher of the effects of sleep on the human body, and goes into nearly every nook and cranny of what sleep does for the human body. He has scared me off of my usual practice of sleeping 6 hours or less to get some work or studying done and to get more hours in the day. Throughout the book, the author cites a scientific study and article on nearly every page, so you know that these are real hard facts.

If you are curious about some common causes of ailments or what the function that consumes pretty much 1/3 of your lifetime does, I'd absolutely whole-heartedly recommend this book.

Unfortunately these solutions might just be what we need given that people don't seem to be sufficiently slowing down any of their heavy CO2 production processes, and globally we are definitely not taking this as seriously as we should be. By the time we do, it will most likely after seeing the horrific effects, in which case solutions like these are needed.

Bit of a meta-comment, I wonder why there are so few comments on a submission with so many points, compared to others in the same point range. (100 pts and 5 comments at the time of me typing this comment.)

This is especially poignant in NYC, given the density and diversity of life here. Sometimes I think the NYC subway only seems fast because life changes so rapidly from city block to block that it seems like you've arrived in an entirely new place.

What does this really contribute to the conversation, besides some holier-than-thou attitude about not participating in sports for whatever pseudo-intellectual reason there may be?

> that something is "neurotoxic" says little about its practical safety.

It may take much less alcohol to be neurotoxic, so that does say something. Near anything can be harmful given too much.

> a widening chasm between the rich and everyone else also presents political problems

This is definitely something we're already seeing, with contempt between people of different educational levels, and the rising distrust between each other.

On a related point however, I'd just like to mention that nowadays, the Internet has made learning and information sooooo much more free and accessible. Although you have to have a computer in the first place, I think simple and cheap computers like chromebooks, or perhaps the smartphone you carry, allow you access to much more information than before.

Being in a family where our earnings are below the US poverty line in a high-cost area of residence, I am deeply appreciative of the wonderful people on the Internet that have opened up their information for free access, and especially to open-source for making programs and computing infinitely more accessible.

The problem with all this of course, is that you have to have a computer and a computing device in the first place. Internet can be very expensive, and can sometimes be easy for a lot of families to cut away because it may be perceived as unnecessary. The only solution I can think to that would be to provide free internet for everyone, and educate them on how to use it effectively beyond just the social media apps. Perhaps there are better ones?

Seems a bit harsh to wish the suffering that this will cause on literally billions of people to prove a point, when we can intervene now instead.

Might just be me, but it feels a little weird that brutalist design needs a framework. But perhaps I'm misconstruing the design/look of it to how it is actually built, in which case I would rather just do a brutalist design but do it with some more fleshed-out alternative like jquery+bulma.

> Does the general public not know this?

The general public, assumes that because launching rockets and space shuttles into outer space, they must be much more computationally intensive than something like say, a farm tractor. It's a bit condescending to question whether they know this or not, as I think it's quite reasonable and expected that most people don't know this.

> These days the smartphone is boring.

I'd like to respectfully disagree, as I think that there are many people out there, a notable example being the XDA forums[1] for many people intensely modifying and changing their android devices. Smartphones and their apps have gotten so much more complex and capable since their inception, someone could pretty much manage all the basics of their online life on one.

> It intentionally falls to the background...It is minimalist and inoffensive and ever-present.

I wish :) There is a real problem of smartphone addiction, where the phone and its apps try its best to entice you into spending as MUCH time as possible, definitely not in the background or minimalist.

> Even apps are supposedly on their way out.

Given the ever-growing user base and size of the Apple and Google app stores, I don't think that's true, people just may just be looking to launch or access their functionality a tad-bit faster (if at all in truth).

Also, the general user adoption sounds a lot like you're describing the general trend mentioned here: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths, although smartphones aren't necessarily a subculture (more specifically, android and iphone rooting/modding communities might qualify however.)

[1] = https://www.xda-developers.com/

That should depend on the open-ness of the work, and whether it is accessible by others. Academic research is published in journals for people to read[1], whereas taking the example of Apple, they have a reputation for barely publishing any of their research (although it is improving).

[1] Although I acknowledge that there are currently significant barriers to access for many journalistic papers. But research locked away by a company is still far more inaccessible than publishing in a journal like Nature.

Edit: formatting

I personally barely ever read the meat of the research papers. Usually I am only interested in the actual results, some of their related data or figures, and the abstract of the paper. I suspect that I am not alone in this, but I wonder if this is partly to blame for so many false research findings based on bad procedures and methodologies still surviving.

I think many people do take modern research papers for granted and assume that if it is published in a scientific journal, it must be true.