Maybe staring at the blue light keeps you awake when you read online?

FWIW, doing 10 or 15 squats after reading a spell should get your blood flowing/mind working again.

Bless those blue lights.

When I am sitting in a chair and someone is talking without interruption, I nod off. This was frowned upon in college, but really seems to be an issue when the person talking is giving me money.

It never happens to me reading (except in bed), but it happens a lot after lunch at conferences or in court hearings, especially when it's hot.

I think it would still happen for me when reading things, I just stopped reading things.

Anyway, how old is your youngest? Because I thought I'd changed in bunches of ways, but after C got to be five or so, I went back to the way I was before. Babies fuck up your brain, probably more so for women and multiple babies, but healing happens.

Babies are so needy. Just the worst.

I guess they aren't the worst because they never try to put you on a committee.

Well, but, this is a thing that happened to me constantly pre-kids and pre-internet. Are you saying that once Rascal is a little bit older I'll go back to my narcoleptic ways?

(It's possible. I did develop insomnia as a result of the kid-having. Rascal turns four on Sunday.)

Babies are so bad that adults have to form committees if they want to be worse.

9: I'm proposing it as a hypothesis.

Anyway, even when not actually awakened, I did not sleep nearly as well when there was a toddler in the house. The only advantage was that toddlers go to bed early so you could just go to the bar without having to explain how daddy needs to go drinking because you're boring him.

being so goddamned bored that you're falling asleep

I think this happens to me at some point or another just about every day of my life.

13: How did that even happen?

Now the only time I fight sleepiness is either when I'm driving (especially if I'm listening to talk radio)

I deliberately tune in to a talk radio idiot when I'm driving tired. Rage keeps me alert.

I had similar experiences during undergrad but chalked it up (at the time) to permanent sleep deprivation rather than to boredom. I feel like I learned the wrong habit, though, as now I have to fight to stay awake in anything that resembles a classroom-lecture format. (And I am perpetually sleep deprived again and will be for the foreseeable future. Having to get up before 6am to successfully run the school-day schedule is a real pain.)

15: Ha, by "talk radio" I just meant that I listen to pleasant podcasts.

I used to nod off a lot in classes in school or boring meetings, or had to fight against doing so. Other than that it's never been a problem. Never come close to falling asleep while reading. Watching TV, maybe, but I'd have to be really tired and it would have to be really boring. And these days if I'm watching TV my phone is always handy so that's something else to distract me if I actually want it.

As for boring meetings, I've managed to avoid that kind of meeting for a long time. I'd have to have no idea what's going on and no input to add to get drowsy. At my old job I had to go to a lot of meetings like that. In some cases I had to take minutes at team meetings (you'd think this would help stay awake, but when I just have no context for the technical issues, it doesn't help much), in other cases because they were periodic department-wide things. At my current job, there are much fewer meetings, the department-wide meetings are both shorter and not quite as unrelated to what I do, and if I'm asked to be at a team meeting at all, I almost always know what's going on.

These days I'm complaining a fair amount about my job, but when I put it like that, it could be a lot worse.

Watching TV, maybe, but I'd have to be really tired and it would have to be really boring

I used to fall asleep practically every time I watched a TV show at night. Then I stopped watching TV shows, so now I doze off while I'm reading.

As for boring meetings, I've managed to avoid that kind of meeting for a long time

That is also one of the good things about my job -- very few meetings.

Boring reports are absolutely terrible for engagement (assuming that is the goal of the report and the role you play on the board)?

What's the value you get from reading these in detail and is it needed? My partner is a data hog so needs to consume everything before being comfortable, so I get the impulse. Sometimes managing broad things practically demands a broad approach to the topic, as long as you trust the implementors/compilers of the report.

I guess topic and goal dependent, but maybe consider stepping back a little?

Statistic text books are the worst, which is why you need the PDF version so you can find the correct place.

Something for me switched recently, and now reading in bed is a strong trigger for falling asleep. The result is that I've been reading the same book (a biography of General Sherman) for like six months, because I read only three pages a night.

Books about Ohioans do that.

That's how I read! It's extremely slow going. I do miss making progress in books.

I was about to make a joke about how Sherman must have been the least boring person from Ohio ever, but I looked it up. 6 presidents, Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Custer, Edison, Gloria Steinem... boy, would that joke have been badly researched.

It's just a stereotype. The average Ohioan is not very likely to commit historically significant arson or fuck up a massacre.

Dorothy Sloop.

The most famous Ohioan.

27 was me.

As the Prophet sings: We learned more from a 3 minute record than we ever learned in school

Ah, restored!

Reading in foreign languages (while taking SSRIs) was the deadly sleep-inducer for me. I always thought it had something to do with the mechanics of reading being a little like REM, so if the rest of your waking mind wasn't getting engaged quickly enough, the "huh, I must be asleep" reaction would take over. Junk science, I am pretty sure, but it felt right.

The most amazing experience was when my eyes started rolling around during a seminar in that REM-like way, for about five minutes, and then suddenly stopped and I felt wide awake and utterly refreshed. A waking nap! I never figured out how to control and use this power to my advantage.

The sleeper has awakened!

People reading aloud. Just kills me. I fall asleep almost immediately. This used to be a problem when I used to host and introduce academics giving presentations. It has become massively worse as my sleep deprivation, post child, has become permanent.

I give a lot of presentations at professional conferences, and I'm increasingly jaded. Like Noel Coward on TV: 'Television is for appearing on - not for looking at.' Conference presentations are for giving, not for listening to. It's not rudeness, as such. If someone is giving an engaging talk, and they aren't reading aloud, I'm fine. But, as many people do, I have to pay attention to something else, or I will fall asleep.

Except when I accidentally got stuck sitting next to my boss, I spent academic conferences commenting here while listening. It works great and I probably learned more than if I tried to listen exclusively.

And the bare-bones visual scheme of this blog makes it safer in case somebody does see you phone.

Mostly.

At one time I worried about all the tasteless stuff posted here. Then I realized that most of the tasteless stuff was put up in my own comments.

People reading aloud from their own powerpoints. Falling asleep is all that keeps me from homicide.

OMG! We should totally have a thread where we all comment as emojis.

But the emoji has to capture something about your pseud, right? I can't figure out 38.

39 isn't very clear either, unless somebody who hasn't commented in a while is back.

38 is natilo I think.

It's the emoji of someone being scaredy, right?

It looks like that on my phone, but not the computer. It looks like a frowning face there.

I though that was a person being Norwegian.

I think this one works better for me. Still sucks though.

Standpipe?

(adjective noun)

That's clearly broccoli, right?

Broccoli theater.

It was the greenest fuzziest thing I could find.

Broccoli, sadly, is not an adjective. Am I right in assuming that's a midwestern whale?

Cruciferous?

51: Pretend it's white and great.

You have to squint at the first one and think laterally about the other.

Yes, I got it.

I still don't know who the Munch is.

That is supposed to be a scorpion but on this font it looks an awful lot like 💩.

Maybe this works better, if they can be thought of as rhyming.

I got Broccoli Theater but not Scorpion.

Scaredy cat, I understand. I was thinking the scorpion dwells in New England.

Sharp!

I spent way more time looking up an emoji combination for "Wry Cooter" than I care to admit. (No joy.)

Maybe a snarky face clam shell?

Maybe a snarky face clam shell?

I didn't double post, I rhymed.

For a minute, thinking "what's green and fuzzy?" all I came up with was "cronopios," but now I get it. This seems very right for a thread about drifting into REM sleep.

Ogged is going to be so pissed when he sees this thread.

65 took me so goddamn long.

66, he's gonna be all 🛑🚫⛔

🍞🦆儿

That was cheating.

65 was easy, I still haven't figured out 67

"Green and fuzzy" got me 67, but I still haven't figured 65. I shall now drift in and out of consciousness.

67 is "FR", followed by a church, followed by a fountain, followed by a canoe; the emojis are not easy to make out.

73: Canoe might be retranslated to make that one easier to figure out. Well-played, 67!

65 is really clever. I suppose mine, depressingly, might be 🍔🍟. There is a pigtailed female emoji, but no option to make her redheaded. Odd.

65 is very clever. I still haven't figured any of the other ones out except for "Whale Corn"

We call it "Cetacean Maize"

I was wondering re: Wry Cooter whether there was a relevant food emoji, like the highly suggestive peach. The best I can come up with is 💗🌮.

Annoying thing thread? I took part in a conference call this morning with someone who just talked relentlessly through the whole thing and it was just so hard to pay any attention to the ceaseless monotone yakking. I was trying to ask questions to break it up a bit but the bastard just drove his talkdozer over my head every time I opened my mouth.

Thanks to 72 and a third cup of coffee, I finally got 47. I have no idea of the reasoning behind 79, though.

My own is close, but not quite close enough.

These are annoying. But will be even more so to Ogged.

At least that one was easy to figure.

That bird's the wrong color.

Cloudy Bluejay was one of the most prolific commenters here. Just a bit before your time.

AH, THOSE WERE GOOD TIMES.

I also don't know when "emojis" with an s became the accepted plural. My sense is that for the first year or so the s wasn't there, Obama was president and things were better.

I still haven't figured the flower and the medal.

Assuming 80 is a cherry blossom, I was guessing it's a different flower in the same genus. Can't figure the medal.

I have a guess on the flower but not the medal, and I still don't know what the fountain is doing int 65. No idea about the scorpion. There are, like, 7 regular commenters at this point. How can I be so bad at this?

Someday I'm going to find the master spreadsheet with everyone's Unfogged, Facebook, and Twitter pseuds, their preferred Presidents, and their emoji. Then I will find enlightenment.

Could go with Rye Coot 🍞🐧

Oh man, the ones that popped up since last night are hard.

I'm pretty sure 91 is SP though.

But you can call me... Spider Penis.

I LOVE EGGLANT. IYKWIM.

I'm touched. And terrified.

65 is good. Still not sure what 67 is. If it's rendering as an anarchist black flag, my first emoji should be a saltire.

It's convenient for this game that our resident across-the-river-from-Cincinnati'er is also a socialist.

Oh. Of course. Broccoli Drama is FILM CRIT HULK.

I still can't figure out who the fuck is Broccoli Theater. Or Frightened Cat.

ROT13 hints: Oebppbyv qbrfa'g tebj ba n ebyyvat fgbar. Sevtugrarq png vf fpnerq va gjb qvssrerag jnlf.

90 I've had the same thought.

97 is not me. But that flag should also be a saltire.

89: FR is short for France. What's a famous combination of France plus church plus fountain? Or, rather, water source.

I AM FILM CRIT HULK. CRETIN.

I know we have some Scots but hell if I can match any of them to any of the saltires.

Perhaps it would be easier I f I started talking about 🛫🌊🇷🇺?

Emphatically not a Scot.

106: Jointly, as it were?

Not all Scots are contemporary Scots.

I do want to hear 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🧐's thoughts on the Great Wave Off Kanagawa, though.

107: Of royal descent?

97: I do sometimes use this as a self-sigil in texts, though my middle child insists on 😘👧🏾👧🏾👧🏾. Come to think of it, the littlest has described my socialism as "flower and handshaking club" and may not even recognize it as a 🌹.

I can't figure any of this shit out, even with hints. Please, Lord Ogged, nuke this entire thread.

I swear 112 on my screen looks like a face blowing a kiss to three black Hitlers.

113: France plus church plus fountain equals Lourdes. Plus a kayak.
Scottish flag plus crown plus island possibly is dalriata?

The only way to win this game is not to play.

Maybe this makes it a little easier? See also Ume's hint. God, what a stupid name to pick. I think I was briefly using it as a WoW name right before I showed up here. I'm lazy like that--if I need a pseudonym, I usually just grab something satisfying the obscure/historic/foreign trifecta.

"flower and handshaking club"

That's adorable!

That flag doesn't look Scottish to me: more like ISIL.

115: Yup. Broccoli Theater is Mossy Character. Scared-Scared is heebie-geebie. Hammer is Nathan Fillion.

117/115. I had never heard of that place.

Still at a loss for Monocular St Andrew.

Oh, it depends on your browser or hardware. So some of you folks are not seeing a solid black flag for the Scots?

Hammer was right, as usual.

122: Bizarrely, while OSX as a whole renders it pretty well, Chrome doesn't handle it properly--except in the dropdown for autofilling the name. I think it's because the sub-nation-state flags are inconsistently implemented. US state flag emoji exist but hardly anything supports them. (Admittedly, most would just be blue fields with indistinguishable coats of arms.)

Lord Scottish is perhaps a younger brother of Richard Garriott. Otherwise, my guess is chris y. He's Scottish, right?

My pseud would be more like 👳‍♀️

Wait what? Just the Indian guy. No Venus symbol.

What? I don't see a Venus symbol. Also, what?

I was assuming 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🧐 is the posher of our two self-identified Scots. (The other could be described as 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎸🏍️)

Oh. I think I understand the Indian guy. I didn't know he was posh.

You can't judge poshness based on the average of a subcontinent.

This first character is the tricolor flag for me, but I guess shows up as "FR" for some people? Anyway lurid, who is currently driving the car back from our air quality escape weekend in Monterey, just looked over and discovered me on this indefensible thread instead of doing paid work, which was the supposed justification for making her drive.

Good point.

Or possibly 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎸📗📘📙📗📗📗📘📙....

This is hard work. I'm going back to letters.

I've understood almost none of this.

I think I have everyone but the medal.

I could like this one, though.

Late to the party as usual

Because you like to ski on the mountain, where you live?

That's being literal about my pseud otherwise I'd be

I should probably get some work done as well.

The medal's owner can be identified from the link under the pseud, but I have absolutely no idea why it was chosen.

115 That one I got, it's the others I've got a problem with.

142 115.1 to be clear.

This thread may finally convince me to upgrade my OS, which is now at least 2 behind, and so half the above are just blank characters.

My pseud is barely a pseud, so I've just gone with identifying characteristics.

Erector Chef?

nada mas que... BASURA

Cry cry because if you masturbate you're going to see the devil in hell?

What does SP stand for anyway, since I know it not to be your actual initials?

and 94 is not an answer.

It was on this very blog I learned spiders have no penises, as opposed to this guy.

Also, I assume "Erector Chef" is one of the video games that Steve Bannon will be speaking about.

I'm not even going to try to understand this thread.

Colon Dash would be a good pseud.

Ah, that would link my pseud here (and other places I use it) to my actual identity. But I'll send it to you.
I started using it based on what it stood for even though that was a stupid early internet thing, and never bothered to change it- there's no deeper personal significance.

OT: Is there a nice way to ask somebody to take your name off a scientific abstract? Not because I think it's bad, but just because I didn't do anything for the work described.

Is this thing going to turn up in a replication crisis schadenfreude piece?

Probably not.

Take the credit! You sold out already.

That was for money. There's no money here.

I'm just going to go to sleep and see if I don't decide better in the morning.

In that case, do the right thing.

By which I mean write a note on a trashcan and throw it through the author's window.

I've been getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night every night for the past several of months. I don't feel any better, except when I'm asleep.

Medical professionals have told me that's just about right.

You didn't need to be quiet while I slept.

The professionals also say talking to yourself is not so right.

What about shouting into the void?

If it shouts back seek professional assistance immediately.