Hmmm, I will take that under advisement in case new pillow number 2 fails. I didn't know about little back-sleeping ones, I assumed normal pillow size. Is your pillow the same size as a regular pillow?
2025-08-07 13:51:46
What sort of pillow?
Michael, your story of the buckwheat hull pillow doesn't surprise me. As far as I can work it out, for back sleeping the desired position is to have one's neck fully supported but not raised, and one's head somewhat lower to the point where that is achieved. Those kinds of pillows can achieve that, if you wiggle your head into it just right, as indeed did very over-stuffed goosedown pillows for me for a long time. But I think (after 30 years or so) I am long past that. Now it has to be pillows filled with different kinds and resistances of foam and memory foam, contoured in various ways that are just right for one's particular needs. And it's often, as it has been for me now, a system of trial and error, where you have to try with a particular new pillow for several days to be sure whether or not it's any good.
Unfortunately, I am now a side sleeper, and I have never worked out exactly what the ideal combination is for that. New pillow number 1 professed to be for both back and side sleepers, and was weirdly and alarmingly contoured, but it only seems to be (reasonably) good for back sleeping. The jury is still out on new pillow number 2, but it means I am currently juggling 4 different pillows!
2025-08-06 17:37:20
My new pillow arrived today. My fingers are majorly crossed. And for russell and Pro Bono too: may all our physical problems get better, since our political ones (Ubu, Gaza and Ukraine etc) show no immediate sign of doing so. Someone needs to find a way to enforce consequences or else we are in a de facto tyranny.
Absolutely right.
2025-08-05 17:19:43
I reflected that Trump is firmly aligned on the side of Envy, Rapine, and Ignorance, and is, for the moment at least, triumphing over Truth and Learning.
Exactly right. But congratulations to your daughter, Pro Bono. It's an extraordinary and underappreciated achievement for them to keep going in those circumstances.
Agreed.
Charles, thanks for Creatine suggestion. Will look into it.
2025-08-05 13:51:04
russell @01.08: definitely not too much info. It's one thing to understand something intellectually, and another to understand it viscerally.
Funnily enough, I have been grappling with a version of this for several weeks, not as a result of covid, but because of something that recurs every several years and is usually solved fast with a new and different orthopaedic pillow. The symptom is a lot of neck and shoulder pain, but the result is that I have been getting only pathetic amounts of sleep, usually only a few (3-4) hours in total a night, in several increments. I am continually exhausted, my brain is increasingly sluggish, and I'm now waiting in desperate hope for new pillow number 2. As I lie in bed, juggling three different orthopaedic pillows and trying a different position every few minutes (but never my preferred, natural sleeping position), I think about how a condition so apparently unserious can cause so much misery, and I think a lot about those people who have to live for years in constant pain from serious, intractable conditions, and how on earth they manage it. In my own judgement, I do not come out well from the comparison.
So I feel for you, russell, even more than I would normally. I didn't know that the new strains of covid could still have such effects. I only hope they end soon, and that afterwards your accustomed good health and fitness reasserts itself, and lasts for many more years.
Hmmm, I will take that under advisement in case new pillow number 2 fails. I didn't know about little back-sleeping ones, I assumed normal pillow size. Is your pillow the same size as a regular pillow?
What sort of pillow?
Michael, your story of the buckwheat hull pillow doesn't surprise me. As far as I can work it out, for back sleeping the desired position is to have one's neck fully supported but not raised, and one's head somewhat lower to the point where that is achieved. Those kinds of pillows can achieve that, if you wiggle your head into it just right, as indeed did very over-stuffed goosedown pillows for me for a long time. But I think (after 30 years or so) I am long past that. Now it has to be pillows filled with different kinds and resistances of foam and memory foam, contoured in various ways that are just right for one's particular needs. And it's often, as it has been for me now, a system of trial and error, where you have to try with a particular new pillow for several days to be sure whether or not it's any good.
Unfortunately, I am now a side sleeper, and I have never worked out exactly what the ideal combination is for that. New pillow number 1 professed to be for both back and side sleepers, and was weirdly and alarmingly contoured, but it only seems to be (reasonably) good for back sleeping. The jury is still out on new pillow number 2, but it means I am currently juggling 4 different pillows!
My new pillow arrived today. My fingers are majorly crossed. And for russell and Pro Bono too: may all our physical problems get better, since our political ones (Ubu, Gaza and Ukraine etc) show no immediate sign of doing so.
Someone needs to find a way to enforce consequences or else we are in a de facto tyranny.
Absolutely right.
I reflected that Trump is firmly aligned on the side of Envy, Rapine, and Ignorance, and is, for the moment at least, triumphing over Truth and Learning.
Exactly right. But congratulations to your daughter, Pro Bono.
It's an extraordinary and underappreciated achievement for them to keep going in those circumstances.
Agreed.
Charles, thanks for Creatine suggestion. Will look into it.
russell @01.08: definitely not too much info. It's one thing to understand something intellectually, and another to understand it viscerally.
Funnily enough, I have been grappling with a version of this for several weeks, not as a result of covid, but because of something that recurs every several years and is usually solved fast with a new and different orthopaedic pillow. The symptom is a lot of neck and shoulder pain, but the result is that I have been getting only pathetic amounts of sleep, usually only a few (3-4) hours in total a night, in several increments. I am continually exhausted, my brain is increasingly sluggish, and I'm now waiting in desperate hope for new pillow number 2. As I lie in bed, juggling three different orthopaedic pillows and trying a different position every few minutes (but never my preferred, natural sleeping position), I think about how a condition so apparently unserious can cause so much misery, and I think a lot about those people who have to live for years in constant pain from serious, intractable conditions, and how on earth they manage it. In my own judgement, I do not come out well from the comparison.
So I feel for you, russell, even more than I would normally. I didn't know that the new strains of covid could still have such effects. I only hope they end soon, and that afterwards your accustomed good health and fitness reasserts itself, and lasts for many more years.
Open thread, so I found this (about and with an extract from Max Bennett's A Brief History of Intelligence) on the origins of human language, its relation to AI and other aspects, interesting. Also, it sent me down a rabbit hole about Kanzi, whom I had completely forgotten:
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-one-weird-trick-that-gave-humans?utm_source=substack&publication_id=54748&post_id=169644176&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=false&r=w2vx&triedRedirect=true
Also, ensures that in the future, reliable statistics and actual facts are harder, or impossible, to come by.