I love the tiny bars. In Tokyo and Osaka, it's really easy to walk past "apartment tower" style buildings where each floor has several different bars, each with different themes and aesthetics. The "bar per person" ratio is very good. Usually not too noisy. Very helpful for Japanese language practice.
Great article. Loved the illustrations and references to specific medieval laws. A good example of how an earlier generation's "common sense" was totally different from ours today.
The "myopia is purely genetic" zeitgeist has been continually shoved down all of our throats in the west. Meanwhile, studies from Taiwan, Japan, and Korea show that myopia truly has an environmental component to it, e.g. childhood eyestrain and video games. It's also undeniable that myopia manifests more in middle class workers than working class, which indicates some sort of systematic environmental component.
Since the article is specifically about Japan and Asian markets, I must add this: One may argue that the discrepancy in mainstream scientific conclusions could simply be due to differences in genetics between East Asians and Europeans. This mainstream "myopia can't be cured/prevented" rhetoric has been extremely harmful for approximately 2 billion people on this planet.
The predisposition to myopia is genetic but one becomes myopic due to an environmental factor: the lack of exposure to sunlight. It is because of the lack to regular exposure to sunlight that people who study and spend a lot of time in homes can develop myopia if they are genetically predisposed.
Focusing on nearby objects does not lead to myopia. Doing gymnastics with the eyes has no effect. Likewise, using under-sized glasses has no effect on myopia.
Here a supporting article about Inuit populations developed myopia just in one generation because of changes in lifestyle reducing outdoor activities:
This reminds me of archetypal idyllic images of ancient Greek education where a philosopher is teaching a group of students in an outdoor amphitheater. Maybe we need to redesign our schools to be outdoor, or at least with indoor structures with generous amounts of natural lighting.
Outdoor schools were a thing in recent history. It gained a lot of traction about 100 years ago until the 1930's. It was called the "open air school" movement. I think it was started mostly to combat a rise tuberculosis.
I don’t trust most people to apply sunscreen effectively. You really need a lot of it for adequate protection, and by the time you apply that much, you become an oily slippery mess leaving sunscreen on every surface you touch. It’s easier to just stay the hell away from the sunlight and any surface that reflect light.
There may be some correlation but there must be other factors. Doesn't fit my history. I'm myopic, -6.0 diopter, needed glasses starting in 2nd grade. Spent a lot of time outdoors as a kid (no computers, 3 channels of TV which was targeted at grownups except for Saturday morning). Being inside was boring.
Nearsightedness also runs in the family on my fathers side, but strangely none of my kids need glasses and they all grew up with much more TV and other screen time than I had.
I accept that this isn't anything more than anecdote, but my mother was very myopic. I grew up in the boonies, spent loads of time outdoors, had no video games until I was in high school, and was allowed very little TV time.
I still needed glasses by 2nd grade and finally leveled out somewhere around the -8.50 range in my mid-late 30s. Hasn't really gotten too much worse as I got older, but as a lovely side note, I'm in my early 40s now and am getting the slightest bit of trouble on the other end of the spectrum where I can't always focus on small, close-up things if I have my glasses on. Guess it'll be time for bifocals soon.
It does seem like a convenient "just-so" anecdote, and I've never experienced or heard of myopia just going away like that, but I also don't think it sounds completely implausible.
I'd imagine it's also less noticeable in scenarios when you don't need to read smaller letters from a distance as much (ie: when you are playing outside rather than sitting in class).
Also in bright light your pupils are constricted so depth of field is greater. In dim light your pupils are dialated and depth of field is shallower. Same principle as a camera lens f-stop.
So the perception that you see more clearly in bright outdoor conditions could be true.
From tons of articles, medical advices, etc. that insist that "you don't develop myopia from reading, monitor work, video games, etc".
They not not say that it's "purely genetic", but that's the impression one gets, that all those lifestyle params don't play any role...
Wikipedia says it's "a mix of genetic and environmnetal factors", and includes all of the above factors I've mentioned. But I've read many times in the past decades articles insisting that those other things don't matter (and presenting it as the medical consensus)...
> From tons of articles, medical advices, etc. that insist that "you don't develop myopia from reading, monitor work, video games, etc".
As an adult, it would certainly be an outstanding discovery if this did matter. Which is why I'm skeptical about these supposed glasses. Sounds like snake oil, quacks like snake oil.
For children, teenagers and young adults: maybe. It's all about the eye shape, and children's bodies are still in development.
>As an adult, it would certainly be an outstanding discovery if this did matter.
Why not? It's not about being "still in development".
All of our organs (heart, liver, knees, joints, ears) can deteriorate in various ways if we don't take care of them or abuse them in certain ways as adults (e.g. ears and loud music, especially on headphones, can lead to reduced hearing). Heart, well, we can have the heart of a 80 year old at 40 if we have the wrong lifestyle.
So why not eyes as well?
(Not to mention myopia usually rises over time in adults that have it - and they change glass perscriptions etc.), so it's clearly something that develops in adulthood too. Not to mention other things related to the eyes and their plasticity etc., like presbyopia, that strike at ~ 40-45 or so.
> myopia truly has an environmental component to it
Very much possible. I only have anecdotal evidence, but if you plotted the amount of time I spent at home starting at a TV versus other kids, you will probably find interesting correlations.
> , e.g. childhood eyestrain and video games.
Why single out video games in particular? If there is a problem, the problem is the screen. Or rather, how close it is. It is unlikely to be related to the content.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn about a feedback loop getting disrupted. For many organs in the body, an approximate shape will work just fine, who cares if an organ is slightly off by a few millimeters. Not so for the eyes.
The factors weren't "childhood eyestrain and video games". The one consistent factor was the amount of bright light exposure in a study[1]; in other words, being indoors, away from bright sunlight, which is correlative to eyestrain and video games, not causative, because people tend to do those things indoors. If you read outdoors in bright light, it's not really worse than just hanging around in bright light.
Couldn't find a non-paywalled PDF, sorry, but here's the original study:
Also, it might have changed since then (2012). If there's since been a study refuting this one, let me know, because it's nigh-impossible to find between the glut of citation-free news sites and blog posts, and paywalled journals.
The currently favored theory is that it's due to a lack of UV light reaching the eye. It's not (just) video games, it's (also) school and generally being indoors instead of out at midday.
There's no such theory, and exposure to light brightness has nothing to do with myopia. Being outdoors causes less close up focus, which slows the progression of myopia.
The way I understand it is that it only matters while the eye is still developing, so if you're over 10 it's too late anyway. The thing with UV more generally is that we've obviously evolved with them, so while they are dangerous in some respect we also depend on them. In this case, protecting your eyes too much early is probably detrimental, but not protecting them later on probably is as well.
I have bad myopia (around -5) both my parents have it too and to me it has always been evident that it isn't purely genetic. I think I could willfuly downgrade my vision if I concentrated.
In my family (n=basically_none), it seems that myopia correlates strongly with habits. The most bookish, indoors-y kids ended up in glasses - and the more so, the thicker the glasses - while folks who spent their childhoods running around outside tend to have 20/20 vision.
Assuming such an effect really exists, I expect it would be very difficult to statistically distinguish from straight heredity. Kids' early childhood habits tend to reflect family culture.
OTOH, perhaps those who are starting to have myopia aren't going to want to do outdoorsy things because they tend to require far-seeing. If I can't see what's going on far away, I'm not going to have a fun time with most sports, and I'd rather read a book.
The other hypothesis I've heard is that it's switching back and forth between focusing on close-up things and distant things. Which you naturally do a lot when engaging in outdoor activities, but basically not at all when staring at books or screens.
I have hypermyopia (-12.5 left, -13 right) and my sister has 20/15 vision. Same childhood environment as her and I needed glasses before I could even read, let alone before I ever played a video game.
It's well beyond a genetic predisposition, it was a genetic guarantee for me.
Not sure if it'll help, there's an older gentleman on Youtube who claims reading with glasses actually makes myopia worse with time, due to the way it affects the shape of the eyeballs. Look up Tod Becker.
> This is something that has been studied pretty extensively. If it was actually a cure, it'd have been well-proven by now, and we'd all be doing it.
Untrue and faulty reasoning. It may have been studied extensively on biased populations, or the research may not have been funded adequately. Anyways, this is part of the "myopia is purely genetic" zeitgeist which is shoved down all of our throats in the west. Meanwhile, studies from Taiwan, Japan, and Korea show that myopia truly has an environmental component to it, e.g. childhood eyestrain and video games.
One may argue that could be because East Asian genetics are different from those of Europeans. I can't say exactly why, but I will say that the mainstream "myopia can't be cured/prevented" rhetoric has been extremely harmful for approximately 2 billion people on this planet.
Urban schools in China and Taiwan used to mandate daily eye exercises in classrooms. There was no effect. It wasn't until Taiwan started requiring more outside time for children that they were able to reverse the myopia trend.
Agreed. I surveyed the existing medical literature on the topic in about 2018 (or was it 2017?) and conclusion was that it is still a very active area of research with a lot of controversy.
Anecdotally, I have a low-grade myopia which gets observably worse after a lot of near work or sitting the whole day in front of a computer. I can pretty consistently reverse through the use of print pushing and use of anti-corrective lenses (basically forcing myself to look at a slightly out-of-focus image each day). It also consistently worsens when I stop doing it, especially when I stop spending time outside.
A good way is to search for articles with "TOPIC" and "review" in the name on e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ or using a tool like https://inciteful.xyz/ (which was featured on HN some days ago). NCBI has an option for filtering by type of article, which includes reviews and systematic reviews.
These kinds of articles will then list relevant results, citing other relevant papers so you can continue going deeper from there.
In addition, wasn't there a study that found Australia children of Asian descent don't follow the same trend of myopia? IIRC, the researchers found that Australian children tend to spend a lot more time outside and get more natural sunlight. I wish I could find the original article.
In all my years of using Google Maps, I have never seen any message like "we cannot recommend a route for the destination you have selected". Considering that human lives are at stake, the product owners should be more generous to acknowledge their lack of knowledge rather than cobbling together a route using outdated information.
It is completely conceivable for an app to say: "we don't know, please use a different app" -- it's just pure greed for user engagement that prevents owners from doing this.
Similar life-and-death situations have happened in the past with Google Maps users in Middle East.
There are lots of obvious and not so obvious places where routes can't be calculated, for example, when asking for driving directions across the Darien Gap: "Sorry, we could not calculate driving directions from "San Francisco, California" to "Bogota, Colombia"" Although in theory you may be able to make it across by motorcycle overland, there aren't any roads and as such google maps doesn't plot a route through there.
It's not insane, it's rather on purpose. In the 1970s there was a huge concern that if proper infrastructure was built, it would cause foot and mouth disease to make its way from South to Central and North America, which stopped the USA's attempt to built a road across it. Within a decade, Panama turned much of the area into the Darien National Park and the UN classified it as a biosphere reserve & world heritage site because of a lot of the other concerns that came up during the attempt.
The epidemiological concerns haven't gone away and there isn't much interest in building across the gap.
> In the 1970s there was a huge concern that if proper infrastructure was built, it would cause foot and mouth disease to make its way from South to Central and North America
That's fascinating!
Wikipedia shows that the disease is nearly eradicated in South America:
I’ve seen various warnings on walking or biking directions, as well as on driving directions using ferries or toll roads, or crossing borders.
So they are neither categorically opposed to warnings for any of the reasons you mention, nor are there technical difficulties. I guess the case of roads that are dangerous just happens to be extremely rare.
Human marketplaces are not perfectly efficient, and my guess is that restaurants, of all places, are very affected by subjective perceptions and trendiness. So I think that the growth-hack concern on early reviews makes a lot of sense.
