61–70 of 175 posts
A bit tangential, but an electric under-blanket on as little as a 10W setting makes a huge improvement to sleep quality in an otherwise chilly bed.
Another benefit is my head stays cool which I find more comfortable
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they produce soot As my bathroom walls can attest to. It took a long time to clean that up. I don't use candles for scent any more. Now I just keep them as one of many sources of emergency light and heat.
The chemical alternatives don't exactly give me confidence (though who really knows what's in a modern candle?). At least candles are a known-known even if non-optimal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I may try one of those. My local grocery store has a few of them. Are they hard to clean?
If it's purely ceramic and not painted, plop it in the freezer for a little bit then all the old wax comes out as a puck; no cleaning needed
Text for those who don't do the bird site: A candle produces roughly the same amount of energy as a resting human — 80 to 100 watts, also consuming about the same amount of oxygen and producing the same amount of CO2. In an enclosed area, adding candles is about like adding people from an air quality standpoint.
Almost the exact same thread and thoughts shared on the tweet are here too... Interesting stuff. I wouldn't think Twitter and HN would be so closely aligned.
How bad does our bedroom air quality get? or how much CO2 do two adult humans produce in a 10x10 closed room overnight? Is it enough to push the CO2 high enough to have an effect? I've noticed I sleep better when I sleep separately from my wife. I'm the more violent sleeper, so it's not movement related, so I'm wondering if it's air quality related.
Absolutely it does - lots of studies available to show CO2 in enclosed spaces exceeding 1k or even 2k ppm (beyond the level of impairment). Eg a bedroom with two people in ~7 hours or a conference room with 8 people in 1-2 hours.
How bad does our bedroom air quality get? or how much CO2 do two adult humans produce in a 10x10 closed room overnight? Is it enough to push the CO2 high enough to have an effect? I've noticed I sleep better when I sleep separately from my wife. I'm the more violent sleeper, so it's not movement related, so I'm wondering if it's air quality related.
The average person exhales about 1kg of CO2 per day. That's 542L per day. Let's say you produce 20% of your daily CO2 output during the night, since your metabolism is lower when you're asleep. That would be 108L per person per night, or 216L for two people.
The average American bedroom is around 120-130sqft, or 11-12 square meters. Assuming a height of 8 feet, the total volume of your bedroom is around 25-30KL. Pumping 216L of CO2 into a sealed room of that size will result in a CO2 concentration between 720 and 864ppm. That's not high enough to cause immediate medical problems, but it might have more subtle effects, especially if your bedroom is small or if your metabolism is higher.
People concern for "air quality" lately has me wondering how in the world humanity survived to this point, in utter ignorance of the horrid damage everything they could smell was doing to them. Perhaps we should be encased in sterile bubbles at birth, with all inputs filtered for purity and consistency. Surely that would be the best way to avoid all the dire consequences of the pollutants surrounding us.
People concern for "air quality" lately has me wondering how in the world humanity survived to this point, in utter ignorance of the horrid damage everything they could smell was doing to them. Perhaps we should be encased in sterile bubbles at birth, with all inputs filtered for purity and consistency. Surely that would be the best way to avoid all the dire consequences of the pollutants surrounding us.
> how in the world humanity survived to this point By outbreeding the fact that we also died a bunch for unknown reasons. And I think this tweet is actually a fairly calming view on things. I wouldn't hesitate to share a room with a couple extra people, so I won't worry about a few candles occasionally, because they're a nice benefit to the space. Meanwhile it's an absolute no-brainer (for me and many other people) t…
We shouldn't thoughtlessly make gradual changes which sacrifice quality of life for safety (which is the direction that these changes always seem to go) without actually deciding that the benefits are worth the costs.