Death to varying temperature! Death to day and night! Death to
shorter and longer days! Death to all cycles natural! Death to the
demoness Allegra Geller! Death to Pilgrimage! Death to transCendenZ!1
Apologies for the bombastic first few lines, I thought I'd try to capture the essence of what is about to follow, but I got carried away.
Yesterday I was walking back home and noticed how, before reaching the roundabout, the lights are still sodium-vapour (natrium for the sensible world) lamp, whereas after it the lights are white LEDs. For a moment an ISS photo of the East/West Berlin line came to my mind2:
I'm from Hungary, and night always meant the deep yellow of the sodium lamps. As more and more research went into it it turned out sodium lamps are absolutely ideal for nights: our human eyes are quite sensitive it's very narrow light spectrum (it's yellow, and only yellow, if you think you see any other colours with it, look again), they are elegantly energy efficient, and night life is barely disturbed by them.
But lately it's all cheap, badly designed, shitty LEDs everywhere, which aren't even saving considerable money, as those sodium lamps are nearly as efficient. The retail park in Cambridge now has some purple street lamps, because they are so cheap LEDs that their coating disintegrated, allowing the purple/UV spectrum to burst through3.
One of my life hacks was that I kept using a halogen bulb in my desk lamp. It just feels more natural, and the excess heat from it literally warms me up, which is not something to dismiss in the glorious UK winter.
Unfortunately I got curious, and the promise of better angles and less desk space sounded wonderful, so I bought a second hand BenQ ScreenBar. It took me months to realise that it was sucking the life, the creativity, and the will out of me.
I don't have a scientific explanation, but once I put my trusty IKEA desk lamp back with that halogen bulb I finally regained some of my stubbornness to do things. Is it CRI? Is it the colour temperature? Is it the infrared emissions? I don't know, and neither do others, but LED lighting is lifeless4. You can get away with it as some places, and it makes decent Christmas tree lights, for me, it's horrible as desk lighting.
Those LED street lights could also be better. Philips installed red, bat-friendly night-time lighting5 in 2018 in the Netherlands, and there are promising amber LED street light projects67 - but we'll still light the night up. Because safety, convenience, and... because we're afraid of the dark? Even my desk lamp and it's halogen bulb contributes to this sinister light pollution, which disturbs or vaporises natural sleep and relaxation cycles.
Nowadays, thanks to the pandemic, I work from home. There are social implications and I'm extremely unhappy that my employer got rid of the yearly department and company level gatherings, leaving us with sad, online only events. However, the health benefits are incredible: I don't have to use an AC8.
I know people who go mad in the scourging heat of the British summer, which might even reach 30°C, so they set the AC to 18°C. And then in winter, usually the same people set the AC to 24°C.
The human temperature tolerance is meagre compared to a lot of animals. I have to wear thick wool jumpers (thanks to the universe, Aran knits exist9) below 20°C and shorts above ~26-27°C. I do get uncomfortable working when my room temperature is above 29°C - because it's not meant for working, we should be resting, like people in the mediterraneum used to at midday. I also put the heating on to keep my home above 18°C - which makes me question where us, humans, would be truly comfortable in the world, if we didn't have heating.
So you see: with the pandemic and with working from home I re-gained one, albeit small natural cycle: that winter is colder and summer is warmer.
But what about the other cycles?
What about seasonal eating, about what food should and shouldn't we eat at different times of the day? What about the cycles of shorter and longer day? Shouldn't we align our working and sleeping hours instead of going 9-5 like machines? What about night and day cycles, shouldn't we have actual darkness at some point? About body meridian cycles, one's natural sleep patterns, and so on? Why are we trying to eliminate cycles?
Words from the greatest ever film monologue might be apt here:
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men!
Charlie Chaplin - The Final Speech from The Great Dictator10
But what if that's the goal, machine men, with machine hearts?
What if all these small cycles are hidden reminders of the one cycle nobody can bypass: that our life begins and ends. That everything decays. Is that why we're trying to murder the nights, the yearly, the seasonal, the daily cycles, so that our own cycle will also stop?
I wouldn't be surprised if the nation leaders recently caught on tape discussing living up to 15011 would think this way. I'm really hoping that Chaplin wasn't wrong, and
The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…
still stands.
But to return a bit from the disturbed thoughts maybe the secret is to slowly but steadily embrace what we can.
Working from home opens the door not just for the temperature cycles to creep in, but to have a nap when needed. Blackouts are available to make our rooms truly dark throughout the night. We can email our city councillors to embrace wildlife friendly, more natural street lights. And we can put halogen bulbs into our desk lamps - that is as long as we can buy and stockpile halogen and incandescent bulbs.
eXistenZ (1999) is a dividing film, but I believe it's genius and disturbing..
↩︎SPOILER
During the movie, Allegra, at one point, at the trout farm, repeats her sentence exactly the same way, which she previously described to be a tell-tale of NPCs. In the end both Ted and Allegra behave very much like NPC, with their expressions, the way of talking, limited reactions, etc. So the real question is: who is the player? I'm not alone trying to figure it out: https://moviechat.org/tt0120907/eXistenZ/58c764d26b51e905f682e9ad/The-dog-is-the-proof?reply=58c764d26b51e905f682e9dfhttps://www.businessinsider.com/divide-between-west-east-berlin-from-space-today-2019-11↩︎
https://hackaday.com/2025/05/30/white-led-turning-purple-analyzing-a-phosphor-failure/↩︎
https://nymag.com/strategist/article/led-light-bulbs-investigation.html↩︎
https://images.philips.com/is/content/PhilipsConsumer/PDFDownloads/Global/Case-studies/CSLI20180612_001-UPD-en_AA-Nieuwkoop-bat-friendly-lighting-case-study-philips-light-recipe-June-18.pdf↩︎
https://www.optic-gaggione.com/materials/amber-optics-for-street-lighting/↩︎
https://www.mic-led.com/news/why-cities-are-vying-for-amber-led-street-light-the-futures-orange↩︎
https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/synopsis/articles/29-The-Great-Dictator-s-Speech↩︎
(Oh, by the way: this entry was written by Peter Molnar, and originally posted on petermolnar dot net.)
