Defanging your computer
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I think computers and phones are really bad. They must be what created the disastrous Post-2010 Man. (Did you know USA average testosterone levels were ~540 ng/dl in both 1988-91 and in 2003-04? But ~440 ng/dl in 2011-2012. Sudden drop!)
Why are computers and phones bad and how do we fix it?
Problem 1: The Light
You are literally looking into a flickering, blue-dominant, red-deficient LED light panel for hours at a time.- It's intuitive that this is incredibly bad for your vision and your brain.
- It definitely causes eye strain.
- People with concussions often become unable to use screens without getting terrible headaches, which implies that screens have some really bad effect on our eyes and brains that these people have lost the ability to defend against.
- I believe the blue light and the absence of natural light must really mess up your dopamine, which has huge downstream effects everywhere (including lower testosterone)
- That light also hits your skin, aging it, and hits your neck, attacking your thyroid gland.
- Light and the dopamine it does or doesn't stimulate is also responsible for near-sightedness. Outdoor light stimulates dopamine in the eye, which for some reason is what prevents the elongation of the eyeball which is the reason for near-sightedness. (myopia)
Solution: I got a ~$550 Dasung Paperlike monitor that plugs into my laptop. It's "e-ink" or "e-paper" which is the same technology as Kindle screens. There is no light, no flicker, and the image is physically there - there's literally black pigment specks being moved around in order to form the image (kind of like an etch-a-sketch) I think this is the only way to truly make a screen almost unobjectionable. However it is black and white and has a slow refresh rate. I actually enjoy that, but it makes it unable to do some work I need to do. So I do the following:
I put the e-ink monitor next to my laptop. I put a cover I made of cardboard in front of the laptop screen. When I need to see true colors, I move the window over to my laptop screen, lift the cardboard cover and look at my laptop, maybe just for a few seconds to get oriented. (You can move a window from monitor to monitor by pressing Windows key - Shift - Right/Left Arrow.) Once I've seen what I need, I move the window back to the e-ink monitor and put the cover back over the laptop screen. 98% of the day, the cover is down and I'm only looking at the e-ink monitor.
The Dasung Paperlike version I got is also a touchscreen, so sometimes I like to use it like a tablet plugged into my laptop.
So the e-ink monitor totally fixes the Light Problem. My dopamine and vision isn't being destroyed anymore.
For full light improvement I probably ought to sit in front of a window with sunlight shooting through into my face. And I still need to take frequent breaks to look out over a long distance instead of doing close up visual work all day.
Problem 2: The Brain Scattering
Internet use encourages a shallow, disordered, aimless clicking which fries your brain. It hurts your ability to focus, think deeply, and connect with people irl. It messes up your dopamine, causing biological effects downstream. There's a book called The Shallows which goes into depth about this. The book is an expansion of this article.Social media, with its attention algorithm and endless scroll, ramps up the Shallows Effect 10x.
The solution: Intentional, non-passive computer use. Just don't fall into the ipad kid brain pattern. On the normal internet, you can just keep an eye on yourself and you'll be fine.
However, when it comes to social media, it's pretty hard to not get sucked into the brain scattering pattern. So for twitter and youtube, I installed extensions to remove all the distracting stuff and make these sites intentional, so you have to type in what you want to see, before you see anything. Youtube and twitter both just display basically a blank screen on the homepage now.
The extensions I installed (on firefox) are "Unhook" for youtube and "Control Panel for Twitter." I also have "BlockTube" installed but I forget if it's doing anything right now or not (I tried it before I found Unhook) And of course I have AdBlock Plus running too.
Problem 3: The Body Smushing
Screen use kills posture and I believe your soft tissue will move around in ways you don't want because of this. Sitting at a screen is much worse for posture than sitting while reading a book because you will subconsciously begin craning your neck and body around in order to see the screen properly. (e-ink largely solves this, it looks fine from any angle. I mostly don't find myself to have subconsciously craned forward anymore.)- The tissue under the chin collapses in an anti-mew direction. (I believe that's what neckbeards are. The skin under the beard is supposed to be higher up on the face)
- The stomach gets scrunched. I believe this causes endotoxin release, and a stomach that sticks out, looking bloated, even when you're lean. I think this causes breathing issues and less athletic ability too.
- I also think that the ribcage deformation of age is caused or exacerbated by this squashed computer posture.
- And of course there's the stuff everyone knows about - anterior pelvic tilt, neck craned forward, shoulders poking forward.
The solution: I like to lean back with my lumbar kind of extended over a pillow, stretching my stomach a bit. My neck and head are supported.
As I mentioned above, e-ink seems essential for fixing computer posture. Your body keeps putting you into computer posture against your conscious wishes, because your body's craning to get the right angle to clearly see the screen. But with e-ink, you're more inclined to just naturally sit in good posture because you can see the e-ink screen perfectly fine from any angle, like a book or piece of paper. It also seems like your body wants you to look at things like books, papers, screens out of the lower half of your eye, and when you look at a computer monitor it will crane your neck in order to accomplish this eye angle, if it has to. But with the e-ink monitor held like a tablet on my lap, I can be looking at it from above, the way my eyes seem to want, thereby preventing my neck from subconsciously craning.
You should still get up and walk around frequently too, can't just sit all day. That's huge for endotoxin, insulin resistance, and the mind.
Problem 4: EMF
This is easy, just turn off wifi, bluetooth, whatever else, and plug in an ethernet cable.Summary:
- Get an e-ink monitor,
- use the internet intentionally,
- install extensions to make social media intentional,
- experiment with your posture and chair,
- frequently get up, go outside, walk around, look at distant things in the sunlight outside.
- use an ethernet cable instead of wifi
sent from my dasung
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It's crazy how much more energetic and clear minded I feel after being on my e-ink screen all day instead of a normal screen. I think the light killing your dopamine is a huge deal.
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I'll look into this as I've been studying much more using a computer. Although I might just use a tablet Instead of a laptop.
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@insufferable Thanks. I liked this post
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I insufferable referenced this topic on
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I don't really understand the details but I feel intuitively that Weird Light vs Real Light is one of the most important things.
LED lights, computer screens, and flourescent lights are all shooting into your head, most vulnerably through your eyes, and directly destroying dopamine stuff.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32142863/
Sunlight, incandescent bulbs, firelight all bathe your neurons in a revitalizing glow.
I think looking into a bright screen is the biggest disaster of all, second is having flourescent light in your eyes, third is having LED light in your eyes, and the fourth worst would be having your head, neck, or other sensitive areas exposed to these lights, independent from eye exposure.
I don't want to get pinned down to just "it's the blue light that's bad." There's just something incredibly Wrong with these unnatural lights, beyond the red/blue thing. Very sensitive people on the ledstrain forum talk about how they wear red glasses, deal with the light flicker problem, and still they get terrible migraines and so on from their screens and modern lights. Then they step outside into daylight and look at the sky and it's an immediate calming cure. I don't want to get hung up on what the technical differences are between looking at the sky and looking at a screen or an LED. They're vastly different objects, of course they have very different effects. I believe you could have a blue-blocked, red-dominant, truly flicker-free LED light and you would still be messed up by staring into it or even lighting your house with it. (I'm sure it would be an improvement over flickering blue LED's though, I won't deny that)
I have only incandescent lights over my head and an e-ink screen. I get only a few minutes per day on average of looking into an LCD. I had to put a cardboard shield in front of the stupid LCD screen in my car to accomplish this.
My iphone screen actually feels less harmful to the eye than my laptop screen. Maybe it doesn't flicker so much. But I'm sure it's very bad too. I really only need a small amount of iphone time sprinkled through the day. It takes 5 seconds to text, maybe you send 50 texts, that's like 4 minutes total per day, broken into very brief exposures.
I try to look at the world outside as much as possible (hours). Sit at a window and you have daylight and naturally lit real objects in your peripheral vision all day. By propping my e-ink screen next to the window I can get the outside scene to be 80% of what's in my eyes.
I also think it would be wise to have a candle, fire, sunset, or similar glowing orange "real" object (not glaringly bright or unpleasant in any way though) in your eyes for hours in the evening. I think this revitalizes the brain. It certainly feels good.
Maybe even a natural textured object like wood or wool, lit by incandescent light above it, would have a similar effect. The wool absorbs and glows with the warm real light hitting it and you look at that. I'm thinking intuitively of how I feel looking at different things. Warm textured wood with a halogen light over it is extremely pleasing and calming to look at.
I think that light (even incandescent) bouncing off shiny plastic into your eyes may be slightly harmful. I think that looking into light in any way is probably not good. Lampshades make a glowing object rather than a shining glaring thing. I don't think bare bulbs should be in your field of view too much.
I think you should follow your instinct whether you want to look at incandescent lit scenes or the blue sky. I feel inclined towards one or the other at different times. I'd think we should mostly be looking at the cooler outdoor scenes in the day, with a few hours of the warm scenes at night.
Since implementing these Light Protocols (the e-ink screen was the kingpin) I've felt a huge change across my life. Huge decrease in procrastination, huge increase in energy, mood, mental quickness, and physical resilience. There appears to be a metabolism boost and even gum sensitivity and digestion are improved. My sleep quality is excellent and I seem to need a bit less sleep. I bet I now have 1/10 the risk of getting dementia compared to the norm.
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@insufferable Have you tried using a small grounding mat while you are on the computer?
Theoretically, it would be a great way to get some grounding time in but I am concerned about how it might interact with multiple electronics nearby.
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@insufferable said in Defanging your computer:
My iphone screen actually feels less harmful to the eye than my laptop screen. Maybe it doesn't flicker so much. But I'm sure it's very bad too. I really only need a small amount of iphone time sprinkled through the day. It takes 5 seconds to text, maybe you send 50 texts, that's like 4 minutes total per day, broken into very brief exposures.
You can use programs like scrcpy to control your phone with the computer.
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@insufferable said in Defanging your computer:
Light and the dopamine it does or doesn't stimulate is also responsible for near-sightedness. Outdoor light stimulates dopamine in the eye, which for some reason is what prevents the elongation of the eyeball which is the reason for near-sightedness. (myopia)
Also do you have a source for this, dopamine preventing elongation of the eye? We need to test out dopamanergic eyedrops
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@insufferable said in Defanging your computer:
I don't want to get pinned down to just "it's the blue light that's bad." There's just something incredibly Wrong with these unnatural lights, beyond the red/blue thing. Very sensitive people on the ledstrain forum talk about how they wear red glasses, deal with the light flicker problem, and still they get terrible migraines and so on from their screens and modern lights
On the old forum there is a thread called "nothing in life comes free", it might interest you. From what I remember, it's not just light but EMF that will enter your eyes, and since your eyes are an extension of your brain, the EMF will easily enter your brain. The harmful effects happen all the way to quantum level where the spin of electrons is affected, meaning that you can't really completely mitigate it in any way other than stopping exposure to it.
Anyway, great thread. I'm probably going to buy an e ink screen soon too.
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Reply to this comment with some of your favourite browser extensions to make social media intentional , your favourite ergonomic chairs and just general tools to improve technology use
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Has anyone seen daylight computer co?
They look quite interesting. There is also an interview with the CEO on YT which was great.
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@AstralPMP said in Defanging your computer:
@insufferable Have you tried using a small grounding mat while you are on the computer?
Theoretically, it would be a great way to get some grounding time in but I am concerned about how it might interact with multiple electronics nearby.
I don't know much about that, sorry.
@basebolt said in Defanging your computer:
@insufferable said in Defanging your computer:
My iphone screen actually feels less harmful to the eye than my laptop screen. Maybe it doesn't flicker so much. But I'm sure it's very bad too. I really only need a small amount of iphone time sprinkled through the day. It takes 5 seconds to text, maybe you send 50 texts, that's like 4 minutes total per day, broken into very brief exposures.
You can use programs like scrcpy to control your phone with the computer.
Great tip thank you!
My Dasung e-ink screen actually says I can plug my iphone into it. I just haven't bothered to do it yet.
@basebolt said in Defanging your computer:
@insufferable said in Defanging your computer:
Light and the dopamine it does or doesn't stimulate is also responsible for near-sightedness. Outdoor light stimulates dopamine in the eye, which for some reason is what prevents the elongation of the eyeball which is the reason for near-sightedness. (myopia)
Also do you have a source for this, dopamine preventing elongation of the eye? We need to test out dopamanergic eyedrops
If you google "dopamine eyeball elongation," there's many different studies. Here's a pop sci article about it: https://www.wired.com/story/taiwan-epicenter-of-world-myopia-epidemic/
@TheSir said in Defanging your computer:
@insufferable said in Defanging your computer:
I don't want to get pinned down to just "it's the blue light that's bad." There's just something incredibly Wrong with these unnatural lights, beyond the red/blue thing. Very sensitive people on the ledstrain forum talk about how they wear red glasses, deal with the light flicker problem, and still they get terrible migraines and so on from their screens and modern lights
On the old forum there is a thread called "nothing in life comes free", it might interest you. From what I remember, it's not just light but EMF that will enter your eyes, and since your eyes are an extension of your brain, the EMF will easily enter your brain. The harmful effects happen all the way to quantum level where the spin of electrons is affected, meaning that you can't really completely mitigate it in any way other than stopping exposure to it.
Anyway, great thread. I'm probably going to buy an e ink screen soon too.
Thanks, I'll check that out. That makes a lot of sense.
@metabolicmilk said in Defanging your computer:
Reply to this comment with some of your favourite browser extensions to make social media intentional , your favourite ergonomic chairs and just general tools to improve technology use
Here's what youtube looks like using the extension I mentioned earlier. I really like it.
Homepage - blank screen. I don't use the side buttons, theyre just there.
Then I search for what I want. (I also have the extension set so I never see any youtube shorts cause they're garbage.)And here's a video page - see how it shows no recommendations? Only shows the video I wanted. If I want something else, I have to think of it myself and go get it.
Decapitate the youtube algorithm!
Other stuff:
- https://graphhopper.com/maps
- Brown noise somehow improves ability to focus if you're in a noisy environment.
- A good idea I picked up from jujimufu's website years ago is to power your computer off after you're done using it. Then when you have something to do on the computer, before you power it on, take a moment to prepare and think out what exactly you're going to do on the computer. Make a list on paper. Then power on the computer focused on doing these clear tasks! Then once you've done it, power the computer off.
- Other good advice from juji: https://jujimufu.com/blogs/other/tricks-to-maximize-computer-time
@metabolicmilk said in Defanging your computer:
Has anyone seen daylight computer co?
They look quite interesting. There is also an interview with the CEO on YT which was great.
I did see that. Looks cool. I'd like to know more about how it works.
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@insufferable I ordered one. So I’ll let you know an honest review when I get it around May
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@metabolicmilk said in Defanging your computer:
@insufferable I ordered one. So I’ll let you know an honest review when I get it around May
Nice! I look forward to that!
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That e-ink monitor looks awesome. Now that you've mentioned refresh rate, I wonder if there's any difference between low and high refresh rate monitors in terms of their impact on your eyes. Would a sufficiently high refresh rate be benign or potentially more detrimental to your eyes?
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ublock origin
tapermonkey
imagus
returnyoutubedislike and sponserblock
video speed controller
onetabyou dont need more.
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@Chud Good list! I just installed onetab, I've been looking for this for years! I love it
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I remembered another way to fix youtube.
https://invidious.io/ -
@insufferable what does that do
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For YouTube, I use the "Distraction Free Youtube" plugin on Firefox, it hides all the junk and focuses the UI on what you are viewing or searching. Good to avoid procrastination.
