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Modern decor may be straining people's brains

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Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#72
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents lived in the same house for 40 years, my entire childhood was there. My grandparents (both sets) lived in their house for 50 years. I can't comprehend how Americans keep moving for jobs or to upgrade or to get to a better school district. Surely you want some permanence? Get to know your neighbors? Edit yes I did move around in my twenties, but that stopped at 30.

Remember people marry later if at all so you break the cohort developments of growing up and adulting. I helped lead my local little league. It’s different than it used to be - it’s pretty typical to have tball parents in their 40s. A group of parents from 20s to 50s aren’t going to hang out, they don’t relate. I’m a late genx, most of my friends parents were in their 30s when I was a little leaguer. The demise of ol…

Church groups, or at least an awful lot of them, were co-opted by groups like the Council For National Policy (parent group of the Heritage Foundation). I think a lot of younger folks see through the BS and don't want to send their time listening to hate speech discussed as gospel.

These churches chose thier path, and so did their parishioners.

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#73

If you've ever been in an home owned for generations, filled with books and knickknacks and heirlooms and family photos, despite the clutter it all feels comforting in a way that modern decor doesn't. The article doesn't touch much on why modern decor emerged as it did. It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice. Companies are either expanding or like t…

The article also doesn't touch on whether visually cluttered "traditional" decor is better for people affected by those conditions.

I found the office in the picture quite pleasant to look at. Not comforting and homey but suitable as a work environment.

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#74

If you've ever been in an home owned for generations, filled with books and knickknacks and heirlooms and family photos, despite the clutter it all feels comforting in a way that modern decor doesn't. The article doesn't touch much on why modern decor emerged as it did. It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice. Companies are either expanding or like t…

> It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice.

You see the same thing with cars. People choose to buy (or more commonly lease!) a car for a few years and before they've even decided to buy it they're planning to sell it. This is why there are so many sad grey cars on the road - pick a colour that's easy to sell! Don't get anything too wild, it might not sell! What if you can't sell it because it's red or blue?!!? Don't go too crazy with that very pale blue tinted grey, they might not be able to sell it for as much and you won't get much from the leasing company!

There's a guy in my town who has a Porsche 992, it's only a few years old. He bought it as his retirement present to himself when he packed in his job at the start of COVID. It has all the options, and it has custom paint.

It is what I can only describe as Budget-Conscious Prosthetic Limb beige.

That kind of pinky-beige colour for NHS hearing aid plastic.

It cost him 1500 quid to even get it mixed, thousands extra to have it sprayed that colour.

"But what if it doesn't sell?" people say to him, "What if people don't like the colour?"

He doesn't care, he's going to drive it for the rest of his life. It'll be someone else's problem to sell once he dies.

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#75
The biggest revelation I've had regarding interior design is to stop using overhead lights. Anyone who has ever worked in the games industry will tell you that lighting is the most important element of what makes a scene look a certain way. The crazy thing about lamps is you can put them anywhere. They only use a constant amount of power regardless of scene complexity. Lighting in my GPU is definitely more expensive.

When everything in your house is illuminated from point lights stuck in holes in the ceiling, you only get a visual hierarchy along an axis you mostly cannot use (Y/up/down). When the lights are positioned at vertical midpoints, you get visual hierarchy on the X-Z (horizontal) plane which is generally how we are viewing our environment. The layering of shadow and highlights across a room are a lot less stressful to interpret. You can use a lot less total light and still convey required detail in the scene.

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#76

I really hate lighting in modern offices. If there was one thing that folks actively worked to improve I would choose lighting. Having lights with a broader spectrum would go a long way in reducing eye strain and general fatigue, while likely allowing the lights to actually be brighter. Unfortunately I don't see this changing anytime soon.

I so agree! As someone into photography, light is everything. It can even turn oversaturated fabrics into more uniform and less screaming colors. The diffusion of the light flattens things, but the interesting angles create interesting shadows and shapes. So much can be done with light, but so many offices have the boring flat ceiling lights. It seems to be hard for the office space designers to invest a bit of time into islands that can have lamps. What's interesting is that many libraries seem to be more accomodating in this regard.

Either way, light is everything, but it is treated like an afterthought.

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember people marry later if at all so you break the cohort developments of growing up and adulting. I helped lead my local little league. It’s different than it used to be - it’s pretty typical to have tball parents in their 40s. A group of parents from 20s to 50s aren’t going to hang out, they don’t relate. I’m a late genx, most of my friends parents were in their 30s when I was a little leaguer. The demise of ol…

Church groups, or at least an awful lot of them, were co-opted by groups like the Council For National Policy (parent group of the Heritage Foundation). I think a lot of younger folks see through the BS and don't want to send their time listening to hate speech discussed as gospel. These churches chose thier path, and so did their parishioners.

What church(es) are you thinking of here exactly? I’ve never heard of any such group in my entire independent Southern Baptist life.

On the contrary, most folks in the 20-40 range are tired of “cafeteria Christian” denominations that pick and chose which parts of scripture to stand by and which go ignore based on ever shifting social trends, whether it be so-called woke churches hosting drag performers or Boomer-tier Endtimes preachers that can’t stop talking about their all expense paid Israeli “pilgrimage.”

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the rich can afford to own nothing/exert effort to have empty space without consequence. Reminds me of the reason that grass yards exist: to show the world that one can afford land for the sake of owning it, rather than for growing crops.

Lawns are for much more than just flexing. It's an outdoor part of your property which is flat and open enough to use for various activities and purposes. I don't know where people get such a cynical idea that this is THE reason anyone has lawns.

Yeah this is all very regional too. Row houses in London and brownstones in New York or whatever won’t have front lawns as a function of density, but may have back yards or gardens, which may or may not be a function of producing your own food, which is all tied up in different experiences of war, while certainly countryside estates are for form more than function, while post war housing in the midwestern US was in part a build-on-your-lot market with houses literally ordered from a Sears catalog…

There’s definitely more to the story and there are myriad factors.

Re: Modern decor may be straining people's brains

#80
post #52

If you've ever been in an home owned for generations, filled with books and knickknacks and heirlooms and family photos, despite the clutter it all feels comforting in a way that modern decor doesn't. The article doesn't touch much on why modern decor emerged as it did. It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice. Companies are either expanding or like t…

My parents lived in the same house for 40 years, my entire childhood was there. My grandparents (both sets) lived in their house for 50 years. I can't comprehend how Americans keep moving for jobs or to upgrade or to get to a better school district. Surely you want some permanence? Get to know your neighbors? Edit yes I did move around in my twenties, but that stopped at 30.

I really don't want permanence, no! I start to feel fidgety and uncomfortable after I've spent too many years in one place. The idea of living in a single house for decades on end sounds like a kind of imprisonment.

I think of Seattle as "home", and once lived there for twenty-three years straight - but I had nine different addresses during that time. I am probably more of a nomad at heart than the average American, but perhaps Americans have more of a nomadic temperament than the average human.

Getting to know your neighbors can be a mixed bag. Sometimes you make a great new friend: sometimes you're stuck with an obstreperous busybody. It can be nice not having to spend your whole life dealing with the same people and the same conflicts.

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