4 ms·

Christmas LEDs are technological abominations. They literally hurt to look at.

ddingus 6y ago
And they don't really twinkle like the heat driven, blinker style incandescent lights do. I loved to watch the pattern on the ceiling as a kid. It would change in subtle ways. Never the same, but sometimes really close. I got a set and I am scared of them. Fire hazard. But I do run them once in a while for young ones at Xmas time. Just so they can check it out.
- golem14 6y ago
  I have had the same feeling about early cfl lamps. Turning those on seemed to make the rooms darker and more dingy instantly
  - ddingus 6y ago
    Yes! We tried to like those and had the same impression. Amount of light seemed good, but quality was in the dumps.
bserge 6y ago
I don't understand what it is about some LEDs that make your eyes hurt when you look at them. Best way I can describe it is that my eyes can't focus on them and are constantly trying to.
- therealidiot 6y ago
  I can't focus properly on bright blue things. There's a football stadium not far from where I live and its name alternates between red and blue in big text. I know what it says but I cannot read it at night when it is blue.
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    > I can't focus properly on bright blue things. No one can, for a bunch of reasons. The eye is mostly corrected for red-green wavelengths; the eye is a lot less sensitive to blue light; there are far fewer receptors for blue light, which reduces spatial resolution. Monochromatic blue displays are an extreme UI antipattern and should not be used for anything. If combined with high luminosity, they become essentially unreadable unless close up. E.g. ultra-blue seven segment LED displays. VFDs can suffer from this, but this is also the reason why many of them use green-blue phosphors, and not blue phosphor (which would be possible).
- mlyle 6y ago
  The worst LED lights are 60Hz, very short duty cycle, very quick flash, with no diffusion. They're seemingly-infinitely small pinpricks of pure chroma flashing at an unpleasant speed. The worst are the blues.

And they don't really twinkle like the heat driven, blinker style incandescent lights do. I loved to watch the pattern on the ceiling as a kid. It would change in subtle ways. Never the same, but sometimes really close. I got a set and I am scared of them. Fire hazard. But I do run them once in a while for young ones at Xmas time. Just so they can check it out.

golem14 6y ago
I have had the same feeling about early cfl lamps. Turning those on seemed to make the rooms darker and more dingy instantly
- ddingus 6y ago
  Yes! We tried to like those and had the same impression. Amount of light seemed good, but quality was in the dumps.

bserge 6y ago

I don't understand what it is about some LEDs that make your eyes hurt when you look at them. Best way I can describe it is that my eyes can't focus on them and are constantly trying to.

therealidiot 6y ago
I can't focus properly on bright blue things. There's a football stadium not far from where I live and its name alternates between red and blue in big text. I know what it says but I cannot read it at night when it is blue.
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  > I can't focus properly on bright blue things. No one can, for a bunch of reasons. The eye is mostly corrected for red-green wavelengths; the eye is a lot less sensitive to blue light; there are far fewer receptors for blue light, which reduces spatial resolution. Monochromatic blue displays are an extreme UI antipattern and should not be used for anything. If combined with high luminosity, they become essentially unreadable unless close up. E.g. ultra-blue seven segment LED displays. VFDs can suffer from this, but this is also the reason why many of them use green-blue phosphors, and not blue phosphor (which would be possible).
mlyle 6y ago
The worst LED lights are 60Hz, very short duty cycle, very quick flash, with no diffusion. They're seemingly-infinitely small pinpricks of pure chroma flashing at an unpleasant speed. The worst are the blues.