Night owls and early birds
Night owls and early birds
256 comments
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No one gave them too much power. They just woke up early and took it before anyone else could.
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But they are seen as more productive because they are on farmers' hours
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Yes, but we are on scholars hours. 🧐
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My wife has to be up at 4am for her job, which means I'm up that early most days too. It isn't a choice that we want to. But it is a social life killer. You invite me to arrive at your house on a Tuesday at 7 for an evening of dinner and games or something, the answer is probably going to be no.
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They took the early worms
We need to liberate them
Join the rebellion
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I feel like there is some famous saying about that, something like ... people who wake up early get worms.
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Bum worms.
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A sleep scientist/professor named Matt Walker has a podcast about, you guessed it, sleep. He talks about this and how it's very unfair to people who are biologically programmed to get tired later.
He goes on to describe scientific proof of the effect this has on their sleep and the impact to their health. It's sad really, but his hope is to raise awareness and acceptance of the night owl's schedule.
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This attitude is maddening. I am diagnosed with delayed sleep phase syndrome that will turn into a non 24 hour rhythm if I let it. I've worked with sleep doctors all over the country, most recently Duke.
I'm lucky that my work lets me start at 11am, I don't get enough sleep those days but better than it could be.
Unfortunately I'm on call every other week, so forcing my clock to reset isn't an option. It takes me 6 to 10 weeks to get to societies ideal sleep schedule, and a single night of interrupted sleep to undo all that work
The weeks I'm not on call are my weeks with my daughter, who has to be at school at 730 and there's no bus for her to ride.
Either week, my schedule is fucked and I'm in a haze all the time. Helpfully anyone who finds out about it just tells me to excercise more (makes no difference, ive done a lot of testing and exclusion), stop caffeine (tried it), stop using screens of any kind after work (been there), or any other thing that they think I am doing wrong and causing the problem.
I did not expect to rant that much... I completely agree, science means nothing in the face of feelings and preconceived notions.
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Many of us just don’t move enough.
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It's not only about being tired enough to fall asleep early. If I stick to a 10pm-6am sleep schedule I feel exhausted during the day, and by early afternoon I'll be falling asleep. It's like being jetlagged permanently; my body simply doesn't want to keep to that schedule. It's not just an "oh, you need to stick to the schedule long enough to adapt and get into a proper routine" situation either - it's something I struggled with for years while I was in school and university, despite getting enough sleep.
It's amazing how much better and more energetic I feel - physically and mentally - now I'm able to keep to a sleep schedule that suits me. Obviously exercising is a good thing, but early/delayed sleep phase syndrome are real things.
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and many of us stay up too late for no reason.
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I'm a night owl and a morning person who works on a farm/cattle ranch. I had a 27 hour shift for the first time last month and I was kind of ecstatic about it. I felt proud when I got home and crashed. I also have a lot of willpower though so it's easy for me to push through work stuff with very few freaks.
I guess this is my way of saying that everyone is different.
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That's insane. He's literally saying "early bird gets the worm" is true and we should punish the early bird. When the obvious solution is to set your damn alarm earlier.
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Or figure out something that doesnt require you to be up that early?? There is science out there that there are genuinely "morning people" and "night owls", setting an alarm is a fine thing to do but it literally is in opposition to some people biology. I have been fortunate in my line of work (nursing, where shifts are usually either 7am or 7pm start times) to find a shift that starts and noon and ends at mid night, perfect for me.
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Excellent use of your empathy there.
If I have to do it so should everybody mentality.
If some humans can handle lactose and others can’t. Some suffer from migraines whilst others don’t etc. you don’t think it’s possible that we also have different circadian rhythms.
Perhaps you could exercise some critical thought. Maybe go read any of the various studies on sleep and make an informed decision rather than a knee jerk reaction.
Also, positive intent. Just assume people are being truthful for the most part. Life is easier if you’re not looking to shit on people.
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So if I set my alarm earlier than I will turn it off and wait for my emergency alarm to go off.
I should got into bed earlier: well it might work but I am just not tired then. If I go to bed at 10 or 11 pm I will just stay awake for hours in my bed.
Luckily I have wfh and don't have to attend meetings before 10 am. Sometimes I get out of bed 10 minutes before 10 and I still feel tired.
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you do not exist
you are simply trolling
block and don't reply
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When they all got together to decide what kind of civilization to have, all the slackers slept in. That’s why we have to work before noon.
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Nobody gave them anything. They just took it... while we were sleeping.
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Damn if I actually did anything productive when I was night owling, I would suggest we take it back, but I'm still working my way through Baldur's Gate III
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As an early person I think night owls have it better in some ways, yeah work can start early but if you want to do anything "cool" it's always late at night. Wish they'd do more daytime concerts and stuff
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Sure, but I'm tired from being up too early lol.
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Early bird here, am alwaya tired by 9PM, don't even wanna go out on Saturday nights any more.
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I'm with you on this. Dance socials always starting at like 10PM, like could we not have done this earlier?
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When I get off work, I have a good 7 hours of daylight, all the stores are still open, I can take a nap without ruining my sleep, I have plenty of time to play with my kid. I'm very cool with going to bed at 9-10 if that's the tradeoff.
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If you like loud, raw techno music and darkness, you could go for a morning party at Tresor in Berlin when the tourists are gone (and only the most dedicated heads are still there). I went there recently from ~6AM till 12 noon, and had a really great time. However, I'm no early bird myself; I had been awake in the streets through the night, but didn't go to Tresor until the afterhours. I believe less than 30 people were there along with me, everybody respecting each other doing their thing and enjoying the experience. No idea if that's a good way to start your day though?
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The joke's on them. I am no good before 8.30am or after 8.30pm.
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Hah, I'm no good.
Suck on that.
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Team Permanent Exhaustion. We continue to exist for reasons.
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Ah, a fellow neitheriser! If I didn't have kids I'd be asleep... not like I'm doing anything but sit on my couch and remind them to get to the bus. Sweet bed is calling...
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I'm the guy who handles all of the 4:59 crisis because the morning people all left at 4
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Sure, but night owls have more fun.
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It's why you keep calling the early bird people at 8pm for work stuff and giving them shit for not working late until they get the message that them calling you at 8am is just as annoying.
It's biology. When winter comes and we switch daylight saving times again, I wake up an hour earlier according to the clock while walking up at the same sun time the entire year.
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I'm a morning lark, but this annoys me so much! People should be able to work whenever the F they're at their most productive, not when morning larks decided everyone should be.
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Feel free to continually emphasize this with your fellow morning larks pls
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Luckily I work for a great company where the culture is generally "we don't care when you do your work as long as you do it", so I don't have many larks around me with that flawed mindset anymore. But I do emphasize it when I get the chance!
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This is not a shit post, it’s a real issue for many. In Denmark there is a political movement for the rights of non-early birds, called B-Samfundet (B-Society).
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From the studies I've read, this seems to be the case across the entire school system, not just university. If anything, it might even affect K-12 even more, since, the younger we are, the more sleep we need.
Nevertheless, I had my most challenging class 8am my freshman year of college and yeah, can confirm—it was horrific.
In retrospect, maybe it didn't help that I was out partying til 3am every day too, but that's a different story... (Jp, I was actually very diligent about it, but still couldn't crack the formula. It was simply too early.)
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For all of middle school, I would to wake up at 4:30 to catch the bus that arrived anytime between 5:30 and 6:25 to get to school at 7:15. And i wonder why my sleep is so fucked today, and why I was always too tired to focus on anything back then.
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I wake up without the alarm at 0400 every day now. My alarm doesn't even go off til 0500. I only want to stay up late looking at the stars, but haven't done that in forever.
I've become what I hate.
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The stars are out 4am. And 5am. If you're up anyways, take your coffee out and go have a look.
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I just find a job where they don’t care when I start as long as I get the work done
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That's what I have. Then suddenly with RTO I get dirty looks for finishing my sprint tasks much faster than my coworkers so I have to pretend to be busy for hours. Fuuuuuck that bullshit.
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I used to play this balance, but it's honestly just as much effort to work hard as it is to pretend to work. Instead, I work throughout my work hours, and built the trust to have flexibility when needed.
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The only problem I have with early birds is that they won't let me sleep-in late in the mornings; they make so much noise.
Now, the Sun on the other hand...
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The inverse is also true; I've had a lot of nights trying to go to sleep to wake up early the next day, but someone decides to have a party next door, or some car drives down the street blaring music at levels that dogs can hear three towns over, or someone decides to get into a late night argument that erupts into the street.
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That is absolutely true... However, in my experience it's far less common than the widely accepted loud morning noises.
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Look, I can't help it. The dogs wake me up at 4 every day and I can't train them out of it and once I'm awake, I can't get back to sleep.
I wish I wasn't a morning person. I really wish I could sleep in on the weekends. Alas, fate had naughty dogs in store for me.
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I hear you. I'm an insufferable morning person, but my son goes harder and is almost always up before sunrise.
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100%. I just don't get productive before 13:00 and my best time is 17:00 to 19:30. I come to work at 8:30, sit arround basically not accomplishinga anything before noon and then work productively a couple of hours and when I start to really get stuff done I am forced to stop (working has to stop at 18:00 here).
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Ironically if capitalism was about efficiency we might care less about the aesthetics of working. Particularly in the ending WFH.
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I'm not sure how much is really genetics vs behavior/environment. I'm a night owl too, if I can on weekends I'm up till after midnight or into the early hours. But that's because I'm playing games, sit in front of PC displays, look at my phone and so on (and still feel like shit the next day obviously, no matter how long I sleep).
But if I force myself to go to bed early a few days in a row, which I've only done a few times so far, I suddenly wake up a minute before my alarm goes off, even early in the morning.
So I'm not sure if there's actually so many night owls around, or if this is just an issue of not moving enough and having artificial light sources all around you in the evening (with plenty of screen usage). To get up early in the morning you have to go into bed early, it doesn't work otherwise. And to go to bed early you have to stick to a schedule, otherwise it's like jet lag, if I go to bed every day after midnight then obviously I'll have a difficult time falling asleep at 10 p.m. the one time I actually try to.
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the biology of sleep is more complicated than "just go to bed earlier."
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This idea that you can change anything about yourself with enough diet, exercise, and will power totally ignores all the science saying some of this is just genetics/biology. You don't have to wonder how much of it is genetics, there are studies.
Yes, some people are just lazy, for sure. But there are some people who will work 12 hour days, no problem, they just don't want to get up early, it's hard for them. That's not lazy, that's just being different. It would be like telling someone they need to sleep from 9pm to 11am and if you can't you just need to try harder. There is nuance.
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I also manage to wake up before my alarm clock with 1-30 minutes (achieved via programming), with alarm times varying from 5.30 am to 7 am depending on what needs doing that day, but it's still physically painful and mentally unpleasant. I'm basically running on autopilot until about noon. Oddly enough, if I manage to get a decent amount of sleep and wake up at something like 2 am, it's awesome, but falling asleep at 5-6 in the afternoon is slightly difficult.
I cannot remember a single instance in my whole life when I woke up in the morning and thought 'heh, fully rested and full of energy. what a wonderful morning!'. I cannot understand people able to get up earlier and do stuff like go running, before work. Hell, I shower at night to save time in the morning (and because getting into bed full of day-stuff is just icky). Going on holidays is also mildly unpleasant because hotels usually offer breakfast up to 10 am (11 in the weekend). I wish they'd offer brunch as well.
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Absolutely, but most of the time humans are very very similar. For example take the whole "fast metabolism" crap, the real difference is like 100-150 kcal a day. That's one slice of toast pretty much.
If you look at the past we didn't have (much) artificial light. Humans were up during sunlight and went to bed when it got dark. With an hour or two of fucking in the middle of the night before sleeping again.
Just based on biology it makes zero sense for someone to be a pure night owl (as in being mostly awake at night). A few hours of time shift? Sure, I can see that. But our main problem is modern living, artificial lights, too much stimulation in the evening, not enough movement, ..
If you cut someone off from all artificial light I'd bet you they'd go to bed earlier on their own.
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I was in the Army and getting up early is the thing. Up at 0530 every morning. It was very difficult for me and I had to put a lot of effort into discipline and routine to not die of sleep deprivation. I'm a massive night owl, 0300 every night if I could. It's definitely a component of genetics not just environment. I agree though, most people are strung out on caffeine, staring at their unfiltered computer screens at 0200 after not doing any exercise that week and wondering why they have sleep problems. Diet, light, and exercise have a massive impact on sleep.
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On the bright side, I both prefer and get paid more to take the later shift at work.
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It's because they got all the worms
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But what about them early worms
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Got them too
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This just in: early birds have worms
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TLDR - Permanent Night shift Manufacturing worker, Supervisor or Garbage truck driver would suit you wierdos. Afternoon shift for the less wierdos. 30% loading/15% loading also makes it a good earner.
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It's a good earner but terrible for your career. You want face time with the bosses, you gotta be there at 9am.
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It feels like pacing and switching gears is more important than the actual time of day that I start work. The first four hours after I wake up is reserved for creative work that requires something that I cannot muster in the evening. Once that time has passed, executive function is much more difficult to marshal and I switch to more humdrum tasks. Anything that requires a lot of willpower or cognitive function to achieve has to be done immediately after I wake. Sport or physically demanding tasks are better suited to the afternoon or evening. That way I go to bed tired and sleep well. I'm most productive and happy if I can maintain that cadence.
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Dang, if I had to produce anything creative in the morning it would turn out completely uninspired. 9pm? Creativity out the wazoo. All my best projects happen in the middle of the night. 10am? It's hard to do regular problem solving for work emails. My brain is just not turned on for several hours after I wake up.
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Yes this is me. Morning is just to figure out what the hell is going on, avoid anything that requires brain power until the system spins up around noon.
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I think it changes over time as well. There was a time when I stayed up late and woke later. That felt like the right thing to do at the time but since getting into my 40s I tend to sleep a bit less and wake earlier. Sleep is also much more fragile, I've had bouts of insomnia and I need to be careful with caffeine and alcohol. Sleep deprivation is the worst thing I can do for executive function, I'll just stare into space all day.
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What are they talking about? Is 9-5 not the standard office grind? It's not even polite to phone someone before 9 am.
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Office grind sure. Most people don't work in offices. If you work in logistics, manufacturing, construction, trades of any kind really, basically anything other than an office or retail or food service, you start work at 6 or 7am.
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Office people always forget that people who don't work in offices exist
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I only start getting productive after 13h
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In Asia the standard office hours are 10 to 6
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Honestly, time before work is wasted for me. Yes, sure, I can clean or workout, but I can't do anything leisurely and I'll just be waiting for work to start.
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Some months ago, I found a video about chronotypes. I don't know how much of it can be considered scientific, but the websites have some interesting statistics about the number of people that fit in each of the categories. Apparently, only a minority is an early-bird or lion-type or morning-person. It has some associated traits that may explain why that schedule prevails (extraversion, leadership, good health), but it is unhealthy and unproductive for the rest! It's not okay.
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One could say... The early bird caught the worm.
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The second mouse gets the cheese, though, and they call it the rat race..
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Why is this a shitpost its completely true . People ahould start respecting others opinion
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Hey, I didn't invent sunlight
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I get sleepy when the sun is out
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It’s cause the sun is out at 8:30 am and not 8:30 pm.
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My sleep schedule is not based on the sun, probably on some random celestial body which moves in very chaotic ways
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That's no moon...
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We have lightbulbs at work now
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I get sleepy when the sun comes out
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You're not a night owl. You're just depressed and have no motivation. Humans evolved to wake up with the sun.
What do nite owls do? Drink in bars? Game all night? Cool story bro. Let me know when you earn enough money to support a family and actually do things with your life.
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Why do I need to support a family if I dont want, like or have kids?
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Enjoy!
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I rather enjoy life than support a family.
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Enjoy!
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Do you need a cookie?
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Oatmeal raisin please!
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Ok boomer
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Enjoy never seeing the sun and your cool friends!
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256 comments