7 ms·
An Essay on Diseases Incidental to Literary and Sedentary Persons (1768)
- JoelMcCracken 4y ago"cormorant of books" what a great metaphor (unless I misunderstand something there); I think I'll use this myself in the future.
- bigmattystyles 4y agoThe typography that makes their lowercase 's' look like 'f' is interesting. Makes you read to yourself but with a lisp.
- retrac 4y agoYes the long S [1]. Not used at the end of a word. It's the origin of the German ẞ, which is visually a long S with a short s after. Increasingly often just written as ss, with some German dialects officially doing away with ß. Words like "possess" in English used to be written pretty much (visually) like poßeß or poſſeſs. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
- morkalork 4y agoAm I crazy in reading that the change was spurred by technological advancement (introduction of the printing press)?
- retrac 4y agoThat shouldn't be too surprising. The technology used deeply influences writing. In the Latin alphabet, the upper case forms developed from the forms of letters used in stone and metal, with monumental carvings. While lowercase evolved from the kind of writing done with pen or brush on parchment or papyrus. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot more straight lines amenable to carving into stone in the upper case letters. As I understand it, printed f and long S looked very much alike, and the usual tweaks in handwriting to make it clear weren't really easy in print. So they just dropped it altogether. One less letter required in the typeface, too.
- codersfocus 4y agoThe origins of the Latin alphabet are interesting too: miners in Egypt who didn't want to learn all the hieroglyphics decided to start using some of them phonetically, creating an alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic_script
- TylerE 4y agoTrue classical latin didn't have lower case. Initial letters were written marginally larger, but what we'd now (mostly) think of as uppercase is what all the letters looked like.
- teddyh 4y agoThat’s called “Small caps”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_caps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_caps
- TylerE 4y agoNo it isn't. From the first sentence of the link, my emphasis: > with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures.[1] T
- OkayPhysicist 4y agoWouldn't be the only one: The English thorn Þ character (making the "th" sound) was replaced by either the "y" character ("ye olde shoppe" was pronounced "the") or the digraph "th" based on a French mispronunciation (A really fast "tuh-huh" is pretty similar to the "th" sound) for use on printing presses made for countries without it.
- SomewhatLikely 4y agoReading your comment the first modern parallel that pops to mind is emojis.
- kmill 4y agoIt's also the origin of the integral sign! (Mentioned on the Wikipedia article.) There's a nice accidental parallel between sigma notation (the discrete, "angular" summation) and integral notation (the continuous, "smooth" summation). Another s fact is that Greek has lower case σ and additionally the variant ς that only appears at the ends of words, which is very Latin-s-like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma
- chaibiker 4y agoThank you so much, working on this issue, but didn't expect a reference this far back! If curious, on the latest in sitting, standing, perching, alternating, a good overview recently from University of Waterloo: https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-of-research-expertise-for-the-prevention-of-musculoskeletal-disorders/events/webinar-space-between-sitting-and-standing-hybrid-seating https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-of-research-expertise-for-the-pr...
- asdfman123 4y agoThe most useful health advice is to get cardio and strength training in and eat real foods. Everything else is a hyperoptimization. Some hyperoptimizations are marginally useful, some aren't actually useful at all. Humans were built to eat real food, and they were built to use their bodies.
- chaibiker 4y agoReducing average sitting bout length has as big an impact as exercise. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-021-00547-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-021-00547-y
- dangwhy 4y ago> In this Review, we make a case for an approach to preventing and managing cardiovascular disease that involves ‘sitting less and moving more’. Its not just 'Reducing average sitting bout length ' though right ? Also this seems like self reported observational studies?
- chaibiker 4y agoRight, both exercise and sitting bout length independently are important. You just can't completely exercise away the impact of sitting alone.
- kiba 4y agoImportant to get your vo2 max up, as highest as possible, because folks with elite vo2max are dramatically more likely to survive longer than baseline averages. Also important to focus on getting strong as possible, in both bone and muscle, with some focus on fast twitch muscles. A lot of elderly death can be attribute to some sort of falls. Even if they survive the fall, it can be a road to a fast death. Another thing not to neglect is to make sure you have movement patterns and that you focus on fortifying the body against injuries. Lifting extreme weight won't do you any good if you can't lift more, ditto for running.
- ghotli 4y agoI'm glad this was posted if only for the quote about how some books are more treacherous than others. That and reading the old typeset version of the letter S that looks like an F. It's is among the better material I've encountered on the internet in awhile, thanks.
- diamondap 4y agoInteresting that no one has commented on the central point of the article, that living entirely in your own head for too long is just plain unhealthy. This problem has been around for a long time. In Gulliver's Travels, the Laputans spend so much time thinking, they have servants called flappers who periodically rattle them into awareness of the actual physical world around them. Our minds can and will go anywhere. Sometimes we need to be reminded of our physical, social, time-bound being, of its limits and where to focus our attention. That's called "being grounded."
- throwawaylinux 4y agoWe always live entirely in our own heads, from beginning to end. The journey is ultimately solitary.