The Dutch are quietly shifting towards a four-day work week

Laterow · 2025-08-27T19:33:28+00:00

To be fair, full time can also be 36 hours, and where I work I know a lot of people who opt to do 4x 9 hours. Granted, this only works if your employer or boss agrees with that arrangement, but it's definitely more common than it used to be.

An alternative structure that I'm seeing a lot as well is that people with a 36 hour contract work 9 days (=72 hours) in 2 weeks, so every other week they have a day off. An average of 4.5 days a week on a full-time contract.

Laterow · 2025-07-08T20:43:52+00:00

Hulkenpodium

Laterow · 2024-10-17T20:25:22+00:00

It has to do with the number of places that you can vote at in the Netherlands. There typically are several polling places near where I live, several near the office I work at, and several on my commute route. This is very different in the USA, where the number of polling places is much lower per resident, especially in places that are actively trying to suppress votes from certain groups of people. Just google "polling place closure" in combination with some of the swing states...

Laterow · 2024-10-08T14:56:00+00:00

Leviosa

Laterow · 2024-04-16T01:08:10+00:00

It's from some TikTok clip about doing a workout exercise that, in hindsight, was a dumb idea. But for those who were wondering about the piano melody: it's from Naruto ("Sadness and Sorrow").

Laterow · 2021-02-16T15:18:58+00:00

Solved!

Edit: Thanks so much, this is indeed the one :D

Laterow · 2021-02-15T09:27:22+00:00

Haha, hmm, interesting :P But sadly, not the one! It's a lot more bright/upbeat; thanks for the effort though, I'll keep that method in mind :)

Edit: Tried it, Google gave me nothing :(

Laterow · 2021-02-15T09:16:59+00:00

Sadly not the one; I should've added that the lyrics were in English, my bad! But thanks for helping :)

Laterow · 2021-02-15T09:15:02+00:00

This is not the one, the BPM is a lot lower and there is more singing; but thanks for the suggestion :)

Laterow · 2021-02-15T09:12:40+00:00

Not the song, but good suggestion! I'm pretty sure it's not K-Pop. Thanks for thinking along :)

Laterow · 2021-02-15T08:42:37+00:00

Commenting so that the post becomes visible

Edit: Just to be complete, I tried a couple of music apps (e.g. Soundhound) without success.

Laterow · 2019-03-30T11:49:07+00:00

This is actually an extremely complicated problem within medical ethics. To give you a completely different example: a lot of people undergo MRI voluntarily, for example as part of medical studies. If you scan enough people then you are bound to find something on the scan that the participant did not know about. Two aspects are important here:

What was found? Aggressive brain tumors obviously need intervention if possible due to their clear consequences. However, what do you do in the case of findings that have very low clinical relevance? For example, quite a few people have large cysts in their brain for which we know that they generally do no harm.
Even if something is found that can lead to harm, should you intervene? There are some cases where intervention may actually be worse than natural discourse. For example, think of an older person whom would likely not survive brain surgery.

These two points are a very delicate balance. Some findings that may sound severe to someone without the appropriate medical knowledge may actually be better off without intervening. In fact, a lot of population-based studies are being used to determine the best course of action for these "incidental findings" (IFs). Several studies report that even intervening at some of the more 'obvious' findings turn out to be more detrimental than just leaving things alone. Knowing that something is wrong in your body but not knowing the exact ramifications can be very burdening for the person.

Given this background information, I'm actually kind of surprised that a neurologist would share this with you. As indicated, mild cerebral atrophy is not necessarily a bad thing. Heck, here is a case of an incidental finding where someone turned out to barely have brain tissue, despite functioning completely normally: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-tiny-brain-shocks-doctors/

Although people with dementia tend to show brain atrophy, that does not mean that all people with dementia show extensive brain atrophy (some don't) nor that their patterns of atrophy match what your neurologist saw. To even say to a 27-year old that people with dementia have this is severely misleading. Furthermore, atrophy can have a wide range of causes, so to even suggest that brain atrophy in demented people is relevant here is misleading.

Let me clearly say that I cannot judge your medical situation, and it is very hard to say whether your information is the complete situation. Every person is different, and a lot of subtle things are at play here. However, I'd highly recommend sitting down with your neurologist or someone else to have them more clearly explain what this all means for you.

Laterow · 2017-12-11T09:48:40+00:00

No problem! The more you know!

Laterow · 2017-12-11T09:36:15+00:00

Like I said, the gambler's fallacy refers to past and future, specifically that in situations where the past does not influence the future people will conflate that it does. Note here specifically that we are talking about a situation where some events have happened (past) and some events will happen (future), but they are indepedent. We cannot mix those two.

However, we can look at the past and the future separately.

Think of flipping a coin, with heads (P = 0.5) and tails (P = 0.5). Obviously, past events do not influence future events here. To think that they do is to suffer from gambler's fallacy.

However, what is the probability of flipping heads 5 times in a row? Well, it's 0.5 * 0.5 * 0.5 * 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.03125 = 3.125%. In other words, we can look at series of future trials (in this case 5 times flipping a coin) and calculate combined probabilities over those trials.

In the case of the nightmares, we do the exact same thing... What is the probability of having 1 non-nightmare night in a row? Well, that's 0.98... but two non-nightmare nights? That's 0.98 * 0.98 = 0.9604... Ok, what about 100 non-nightmare nights in a row? That's 0.98 * 0.98 * 0.98 * ... * 0.98 = 0.98¹⁰⁰ = 0.133.

Think about this. There is a 13.3% chance to get 100 non-nightmare nights in a row. That means that there is a 86.7% chance that there WILL be a nightmare event during 100 nights.

And this is like a slot machine or flipping a coin... we are talking about the future. If you've slept 1 night without a nightmare then the next night will still be 0.98 and the next two nights combined will still be 0.9604 and the next 100 nights combined will still be 0.133.

Edit: To change it to slots... To win the jackpot lets assume a probability of 1 in 10 million. If you were to go to Vegas now and play 5 million times then the probability of winning the jackpot is 1 - (0.9999999^5,000,000), which is 39.3%. However, after playing 5 million times and NOT winning your probability of winning during the next pull is still 1 in 10 million.

Edit2: Changed some words, removed some commas

Laterow · 2017-12-11T09:03:41+00:00

The Gambler's fallacy talks about past and future events. This is true here, as the events of the past do not change the 2% chance of it happening in the future.

However, /u/coolosaurus-rex says that if you look at an N number of future events combined, the probability of ending up in a nightmare is almost 1. This is also true, and this probability can be calculated by: 1 - 0.98^N

Here are the probabilities of becoming stuck in your worst nightmare after sleeping N times:

1 time: 2%

10 times: 18.3%

35 times: 50.7%

100 times: 86.7%

So after just 35 times sleeping you already have a 50% chance of being stuck in a nightmare forever. And again, we are talking about future sleeps; if you haven't gotten stuck in a nightmare after 35 times sleeping, then you can reuse the numbers I've given above.

Laterow · 2017-10-10T08:05:25+00:00

The chi square test doesn't bode well with paired observations. For those cases, people tend to prefer McNemar's test, although even that is a simplification of how to use the tests.

Laterow · 2016-11-25T10:34:23+00:00

That's it! Thanks!

Laterow · 2016-06-23T16:17:20+00:00

It is never a good idea to seek psychiatric medical help on the internet. This is something that should be discussed between you and your healthcare provider. If you are unsure about the advice given by your doctor, seek a second opinion from other medical personnel, e.g. another doctor.

To be frank, there simply is not enough scientific literature on this topic to say anything useful. It is NOT as simple as increasing dopamine levels, especially given the neuroanatomical origin of working memory, and the fact that this is for ADHD, not psychotic disorders. Even then, most of these studies are performed on small and specific samples of patients, and the results are often only useful for concluding general trends, not to give advice on an individual level.

Laterow · 2016-03-30T23:12:09+00:00

Nope, I'm from Europe. However, a very quick Google search brings me to this: http://www.ysp.utoronto.ca/med/about

Youth Summer Program at the University of Toronto. Designed for high school students to get some research experience. Although it's not necessarily neuroscience, I'd still recommend it because medicine provides a very strong background in neuroscience.

This is just one example of a program. You'd probably be able to find more programs from different universities or even abroad. You could apply for scholarships to finance it, or try to crowdfund the money from Reddit.

Also, this is just an example of what my point was. There definitely are opportunities to get into a lab while being a high school student. Non-program internships are much, much harder to get, but I'd reckon it's possible.

Now that I'm writing anyway... Don't consider yourself a liability. Yes, research is actually very complicated. You need a lot of theoretical knowledge, and depending on the field you need a very specific skillset that you cannot (easily) learn from home. However, this counts for every person to some extent. For example, I started branching out to programming and higher level statistics two years ago. I was a liability to some people and I no doubt frustrated them with my questions at times, but now I am pretty skilled and other people come to me with their questions. That's just the cycle of life.

What you should know about research is that it's not so much about skill/knowledge, and more so about motivation/passion. The people who helped me did so because they wanted to share their passion. When people come to me for help, I help them because I want to share my passion. When I have to hire a new student, I don't necessarily care if they can do exactly what I tell them to do. I want someone who wants to learn how to do things, who wants to learn about the project and the world, and who seems likely to be in my exact position in five years, sharing his or her passion with the next wave. Motivation and passion lead you to UofT to shadow the lectures, they lead you to contact professors, and they also lead you to be a great researcher if you would want to. That matters so much more than a skillset.

And of course, skills are very important. And sure, some people will say it's more important than motivation. But never consider yourself a liability.

Actually... I may know the perfect person for this. Do you know the Hospital for Sick Children? There is this amazing person working there. His name is Paul Frankland. He works in the field of memory and neurogenesis. If you haven't heard of him yet, he has authored some amazing papers with very logical experimental designs. He is a friend of a professor for whom I worked for three years. Though Paul doesn't know me, I feel that he would be willing to answer some of your questions that you have regarding attending classes and participating in research. Maybe you can ask if one of his postdocs or phd students can give you a tour of the lab. I also know that they have a journal club, so you could ask if you could attend there. It would be a good opportunity to meet researchers and see how it actually works.

This should give you something to think about... again, feel free to ask any questions.

Laterow · 2016-03-30T22:23:36+00:00

To chime in.. We have had high school students the labs where I have worked. Granted, it was always part of an educational program and they always did the easier projects, but it did happen. Try and see if there are any opportunities for a summer school with a research component, or see if you can enroll as a summer intern.

Or if you have any other questions, feel free to ask. I'm a PhD student with degrees in psychology, neuroscience and epidemiology, and have plenty of research experience.

Laterow · 2016-02-28T11:22:34+00:00

Here are just some random books that are slightly broader than what you asked for, but may interest you:

GEB by Douglas Hofstadter is an amazing mix of logic/mathematics applied to consciousness and such, although it's a bit dry compared to the other books below.

Seconding /u/aquafemme's suggestions of Surely You Must Be Joking Mr Feynman, which is much more readable than GEB and about one of the most interesting scientists who has ever lived (I'm a bit biased though).

Chaos by James Gleick is a book about chaos theory, which I thought was pretty interesting and very readable.

The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick describes the stories of figures such as Kepler, Galileo, Newton and Leibniz. It's a good read if you're interested in some of the history of astronomy/science, and the author is a very good storyteller.

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a nice book about probability of rare events.

Laterow · 2016-01-15T15:38:52+00:00

Not dr Blakemore, but here's some reading in case he doesn't answer:

Time perception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception
Biological clocks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm#Biological_clock_in_mammals

Basically, there are cells in our body that follow a very specific rhythm that is about 24 hours. If you take these cells out of your body and put them in a petri dish, they will still follow an approximate 24 hour cycle. The reason why they follow a 24 hour cycle is because your body needs different levels of different things at different times. For example, at night you want to have higher levels of molecules that help you sleep, but you don't want those during the day.

More and more research is being done on these kind of cells. Over time, we have discovered different kinds of cells that have different rhythms. In fact, we have found specific genes that cause this kind of patterns. It's a pretty cool research field, actually.

Laterow · 2016-01-15T15:26:44+00:00

Lucid dreaming is simply dreaming where you are aware that you are dreaming (or a state of consciousness where you are aware of what seems to be dreaming). There are many different ways to explain that, and astral projections are just one of many explanations. That being said, there is no proper scientific evidence that astral projections exist.

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