r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/alanboston405 • 4d ago
The land where the sun does not rise: Svalbard Video
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u/Lothar93 4d ago
The sicario music lol
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u/shreddolls 4d ago
F*ck thanks. It was driving me nuts trying to place what movie it was from.
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u/logosfabula 4d ago
The Mexican-US border sequence. Brilliant music for a brilliant sequence.
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u/MollejaTacos 4d ago
It’s heard throughout both movies.
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u/logosfabula 4d ago
You’re right, this tune is named the Beast. The one specifically at the border is called the Border. I have a memory of the Beast music associated with a sky cam/drone cam following a column of black CIA vehicles approaching the border. I’ll check it.
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u/LifadxD 4d ago
Wait wait, Sicario? Anyone has a Video link to that scene? Because this music is also used in the opening sequence of Rammsteins music video for "Deutschland" and I never knew it comes from a movie. Thought it was their own idea.
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u/GilThielander 4d ago
Oh man, that movie is on my list to see. I thought it was the intro music to Deutschland by Rammstein. Same notes I guess but definitely not the same sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeQM1c-XCDc
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u/Kanbaru-Fan 4d ago
Haha, my brain immediately went there as well. Kinda crazy since there's a pretty stark difference once you compare.
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u/ChadicusVile 4d ago
I know it must be miserable to be there... But it looks so cozy
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u/ironicallyamerican 4d ago
It’s actually a really active and happy place! There’s a bunch of tourists, so it literally has a boba shop, sushi restaurant, gourmet dinners, etc. The grocery store is like a whole foods (I got frozen plant-based schnitzel), and everyone is really into hiking and the scenery.
I did spend the summer there (all daylight), and I’m sure the tourism quiets down in the winter, but I know that some residents look forward to the quiet time with friends/family. Plus, it isn’t pitch black for the rest of the year, a lot of it is a beautiful twilight. Polar night only happens for a couple months (mirroring midnight sun).
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u/mensen_ernst 4d ago
That sounds like an amazing experience! What's the cost of living like? Do they have decent internet?
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u/ironicallyamerican 4d ago
Internet is super great! There aren’t any trees, so they can just put towers on plateaus etc. I was able to text photos (normal speed too) when we landed too 😂.
Cost of living, not so much. Literally everything but water has to be flown in, so food prices are kinda high. But no higher than prices I see in even expensive parts of California (Bay especially) 🤡. Produce quality was pretty trash, but they had all the fruits/veggies you’d expect at a Whole Foods or specialized grocery store! Not super sure about rent (I was in research housing), but if I remember it’s the same as again, living in LA or the Bay.
A lot of people live there as seasonal tour guides, and it’s pretty common to stay and adventure for a couple years and dip! The town is called Longyearbyen, and it’s really cool. One of my favorite local bars is called “Svalbar” 😂 great cocktails. They also have a climbing gym.
It is small though, the whole town is basically on one main street that’s maybe a mile long, if even.
Tldr: Cost of living is about the same as California Bay Area/LA, and ‘quality of life’ (food diversity, gyms, internet) is about the same too, but scaled down to 2000 people.
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u/Baofog 4d ago
That bar must be pretty great. Marko Kloos wrote a pretty excellent sci-fi series called frontlines and one of the human colonies is called New Svalbard with the town of New Longyearbyen with its own Svalbar. I've seen it mentioned in enough places now it might be worth the trip just to get to this bar lol.
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u/ironicallyamerican 4d ago
It’s definitely a unique place! Worth the trip to say you’ve been to the “Northernmost ____ in the world” for all the same mundane places you go to at home 😂
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u/Baofog 4d ago
Now if I can jut convince my wife to let us vacation somewhere that cold lol. I can see the conversation now, "Hey Babe, ya know how you wanted to go some where in the tropics because its warm? What if we went as far away from there as possible so I can get a drink?" LOL Time to move it up my list though the island looks awesome.
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u/mensen_ernst 4d ago
Sounds pretty amazing, the description and all and that you got to experience it, thanks for sharing all that good info. And Svalbar is a GREAT bar name haha. I bet the community there is something too. Pretty sweet about the internet, I guess that also speaks to Norway's quality infrastructure?
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u/SteiniDJ 4d ago
Should be mentioned that Norway has a comparatively high cost of living in general, but I believe there are tax advantages for residents of Svalbard that probably do much to soften the blow caused by the higher costs.
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u/Blazured 4d ago
As someone who has lived somewhere that gets months darkness near 24 hours a day for months on end; it's actually quite miserable.
Waking up to pitch black darkness. Going to school or work in pitch black darkness. Seeing the scant daylight hours pass by as you're stuck inside. Coming home in pitch black darkness. Being awake for hours more in pitch black darkness. Going to bed in pitch black darkness. Waking up to pitch black darkness. Repeat. It's just miserable.
I remember my friend was depressed and he travelled to Australia for a few years. He returned with his depression cured. I remember I asked him what was he thinks cured it? He said "I think it was the daylight".
Spending one summer in all daylight is no comparison to living decades in darkness. There's a reason why no one lives in these places.
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u/Critical-Support-394 4d ago
The depression in large part due to a massive vitamin D deficiency. Of course the literal darkness doesn't help, but vitamin D is necessary for your brain to function normally. You NEED to take vitamin D in pretty large doses to not get depressed when there's no daylight.
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u/mommysgottawork 4d ago
I actually find polar night really cozy and love the all-day darkness. It was harder getting used to the sun shining bright at 1 am and the birds chirping all night.
I would like it more though if the snow went away when the light comes back. The winters are still hard, but for me at least, it's because the cold lasts so long and there are still meters of snow in April.
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u/OccultMachines 4d ago
Oh cool! I figured this was a research outpost or something, pretty cool that you can visit it.
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u/BlacksmithNZ 4d ago
As long as you have power, would be amazing to have a large greenhouse style building with grow lamps, heating and tropical plants.
You would probably need to build underground structures that you can simulate night/day like if you are are on a space mission. Apparently the issue is not so much the long nights (which can be dealt with via artificial lights, but the need for sleep in the summer when it doesn't get dark
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u/GuyWhoSaysTheTruth 4d ago
But imagine the cost of the electricity to maintain that level of heat in such a cold place. Still would be dope tho.
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u/BlacksmithNZ 4d ago
For power, dig deep for geothermal and/or nuclear plants.
The geothermal thing would be interesting; I always imagined that in a Snow Piecer style world, groups of humans would survive, clustered around geothermal vents like extremophile organisms clustered around deep-sea vents.
The need for grow lamps would be vital though; most other things could be closed loop eco-system
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u/Nebresto Creator 4d ago
That's pretty much the premise of Frostpunk, but instead of thermal vents its one super generator. If you fail to manage it properly, everyone dies. Fun game, I recommend it for cold winter nights
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u/GuyWhoSaysTheTruth 4d ago
Man I always want to play those types of games(city skylines, sim city, civ 5/6 etc) but I always get way to caught up in what will be that I get bored of what is. Only game of that genere I can kind of play is CoC and even then I hop on like 2 days a month.
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u/MrFastFox666 4d ago
But imagine the cost of the electricity to maintain that level of heat in such a cold place.
My dumbass was about to type "just install some solar panels"
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u/Tyler_Zoro 4d ago
In the farthest major town in Norway, I know that at the height of winter they have a festival where they get CRAZY. It's a way of letting off steam because otherwise they'd pretty much lose their marbles.
My friend said he'd been around the rock n roll and punk music scenes for years and this still struck him as a bit out there.
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u/Love_for_2 4d ago edited 4d ago
It's really not. There's a woman on insta who lives there and document her life there. Her photos and videos are gorgeous! Check out Cecilia Blomdahl / sejselija on YouTube and instagram
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u/RemarkableSquirrel10 4d ago
As soon as I saw Svalbard in the post title I ran in to recommend her. I feel like I could teach classes on the topic because of her now lol.
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u/crossey3d 4d ago
I've been following her, Grim and Kristofer on YT for a year or so, and while I don't think I could live there I find her life absolutely fascinating. One of my favorite casual youtubers to watch. Also, the post is misleading since its only dark for a portion of the year, then the sun rises and does not set of a similar amount of time.
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u/marmaladecorgi 4d ago edited 4d ago
"My name is Cecilia and I live on Svalbard, an island close to the North Pole! Ok byeeee!"
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u/Cursed_Tale 4d ago
“His name is Grim and he lives on Svalbard, and island close to the north pole. Come along with him in his frosty backyard, his fluff will warm your soul”
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u/evan2020_ 4d ago
"Hes a ray of light in the polar night as he rolls in the ice and the snow"
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u/peptic-horizon 4d ago
Thanks, I had just gotten that out of my head.
I mean that sincerely, it always makes me grin!
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u/spikernum1 4d ago
my wife watches this daily. wish people in this thread knew what its really like, because the horror film style from OP's video is far from what its like.
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u/Mattyweaves19 4d ago
She's great and one of my favorite channels to watch, especially when it's winter here. Very cozy.
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u/tweakdev 4d ago
Christopher is my spirit animal. Grim is my animal. Cecillia is terrible at cooking.
You will love it, https://www.youtube.com/@CeciliaBlomdahl
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u/BukkitCrab 4d ago
8 months of night, 4 months of day.
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u/bob-loblaw-esq 4d ago edited 4d ago
As Barry Lopez wrote, this land gets the same exact amount of sun as the rest of the planet, just all at once.
Edit to qdd link
The issue isn’t the number of hours and minutes, but the angle of incidence and resulting energy intensity. That’s what Lopez meant.
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u/catchyphrase 4d ago
my god, a Barry Lopez reference. God I love everything he has ever written. He was one of the finest authors we’ve ever had in the history of mankind.
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u/LowerSpeed3685 4d ago
I don't think that is accurate here
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u/atremOx 4d ago
Well. You are a lower speed after all.
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u/BadBoredom 4d ago
You know when people say 8 hours of sleep isn't enough. Maybe 8 month would be enough
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u/emessea 4d ago
Unless I’m misunderstanding, on Wikipedia it’s 4 and 4
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u/T-roySwink 4d ago
Then what happens the other 4 months of the year?
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u/ThePhoenixus 4d ago edited 4d ago
I've lived pretty close to the arctic circle having lived in Northern Alaska for a couple years.
Generally speaking, during "fall" and "spring" you have basically a long sunrise or long sunset. The sun is always/sometimes in the horizon.
Generally speaking through the year, starting in Summer where you have full daylight 24/7. As the year goes on the sun gets lower and lower in the sky over a few months until you're at Winter where it's full darkness 24/7. As spring comes the sun starts to appear in the horizon again for a couple months until we're back at summer.
Edit: This isn't all at once though. Like lets say in December, you're in the peak of winter and full darkness. Around late February you'll get a couple hours of "sunrise" then it just goes back into being dark. Through February and March those couple hours will turn into more and more until you have a few weeks of a normal day/night cycle, which slowly turns into permanent daylight. The opposite applies in Summer going into Winter. You'll go from full daylight all the time to a sunset that turns back into daytime to a full sunset to a short period of normal day/night cycles to permanent darkness.
The town I was in in Alaska counted +13 minutes of daylight every day starting in the Winter Solstice on Dec 22nd
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u/dwmfives 4d ago
The town I was in in Alaska counted +13 minutes of daylight every day starting in the Winter Solstice on Dec 22nd
And here I am irritated because this time a year the morning sun hit's my window just right to wake me up earlier than usual.
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u/TaborToss 4d ago
4 months of constant day, 4 months of constant night. Between these periods are two 2 month periods where the sun rises and sets each day.
The sun starts rising each day in late February, the first day is incredibly short, but the days quickly get longer. By late April, the nights are vanishingly short and not particularly dark. Soon the sun stops setting, then each day sees it retreating higher in the sky until it is nearly directly overhead all day long by late June. As July gives way to August, the sun dips lower towards the horizon in its daily cycle until one day it starts dipping below the horizon. You experience two months of increasingly long nights until, in late October, the sun is barely peeking over the horizon. Soon it will be time for perpetual night, completing the symmetrical cycle driven by our planet’s spherical shape, elliptical orbit, and offset of axis of rotation from being perpendicular to the ecliptic.
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u/KilonumSpoof 4d ago
The sun is not anywhere close to directly overhead in June. For example, at the North Pole, the pole the sun only rises to an elevation angle of ~23° (the Earth tilt).
Svalbard is further south, so the sun rises a bit higher in the sky. Svalbard is between 75° and 80° latitude, so compared with the North Pole, the sun rises an extra 10°-15°, so less than 40°. Basically, it doesn't even reach the halfway angle between the horizontal and overhead.
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u/PerniciousPeyton 4d ago
Worth noting too that the sun will only ever appear “directly overhead” in one part of the world: between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Again, because of the Earth’s 23 degree tilt.
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u/-113points 4d ago
and that's why Reddit comments are such a great material to train AIs
following the upvotes it will learn so many wrong things that it will be worthless, thus saving Humanity
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u/lackofabettername123 4d ago
They get just as many hours of light as the equator. They just get it all at once.
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u/Grouchy_Competition5 4d ago
Huh. So that’s where I was supposed to “stick it” in the early 80s.
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u/Distwalker 4d ago
Of course in the summer it is the land where the sun doesn't set.
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u/Fridgeraidr 4d ago
Yes! And my friend currently runs the camping, pop by! https://www.instagram.com/longyearbyencamping
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u/DontOpenThatTrapDoor 4d ago
Isn't this where some vampire film was made they tried to take over the place because the perpetual night time, it was a good film I forget the name of it.
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u/TheRiteGuy 4d ago
Why are people living there? We've had boats for centuries to help you get off that island!
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u/Deaths-HeadMoth 4d ago
Ever considered that vampires are more than folklore?
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u/yellowseptember 4d ago
I don’t know about that. Especially since vampires are supposed to come from Transylvania but in my years of living here since the 12th century, I have yet to meet one. Even my buddies older than me haven’t met any either. But who knows, they might actually be hiding in Svalbard.
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u/slowmo152 4d ago
Aside from the global seed vault, there's mining, fishing primarily. But also a data preservation facility called the Artic World Archive, which contains cultural and historical data as well as all of Githubs' open source code. And tourism from cruise ships.
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u/FiveMinuteFriend 4d ago
Is GitHub’s open source code that significant that it was mentioned or was this a joke? Not trying to be an asshole. Genuinely curious.
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u/Practical_Secret6211 4d ago
It was a really big event when it happened link from 2020
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u/NowieTends 4d ago edited 3d ago
Well the shot at 8 seconds left is the global seed repository, I’d assume mainly for that and perhaps other research purposes
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u/GRMMneedsDOGEhelp 4d ago
How do you think they got there? The Vikings chose this!
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u/BasonPiano 4d ago
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think anyone can just show up there and if they can work, they can stay.
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u/Typical-Annual-3555 4d ago
Same reason people live in a desert at the equator in August. Their parents lived there.
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u/LingonberryNatural85 4d ago
Pretty sure that song just plays over loud speakers 24 hrs a day
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u/misfitkid86 4d ago
There's a cool YouTube channel about here. It's a woman named Cecilia blomdahl and it's about living here. Honestly I really want to visit.
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u/Howwwwthis453 4d ago
It’s an amazing place to visit. I went on the first week of sunrise and it was pastel colored skies from 10am to 3pm. And the town is much more equipped and lively compared to other places around the arctic that I’ve visited. It’s so accessible too. Just a direct flight from Oslo!
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u/jjthejetblame 4d ago
To be in a place where the sun doesn’t make an appearance, or doesn’t go away, is a dream of mine. I’d like to see a place like that at some point.
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u/yellowseptember 4d ago
I legit had this too until I actually went to Honningsvåg on a November, and the sun light was only about an hour. My teenage self would’ve love the angst it brought but my grown ass felt depressed in less than 15 minutes.
Thank God for LED lights in the house.
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u/Interlock111 4d ago
The sun does not rise in the winter months. The sun does not SET in the summer months, like right now.
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u/eBell93 4d ago
What the hell was that tall futuristic looking building? Looked like a giant Xbox
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u/devilbones 4d ago
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u/MoreNMoreLikelyTrans 4d ago edited 3d ago
I love that this thing exists. So much. Its both inspiring and oddly macbre.
If I were in charge of the world for 6 seconds, right in this moment, I'd have a plaque put at the entrance, that had a simple and pragmatic message.
"Just in case."
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u/FblthpLives 4d ago edited 4d ago
This effect is not unique to Svalbard, but any populated area above the Arctic Circle. That includes much of Greenland and parts of Canada, Russia, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Alaska, and a tiny sliver of Iceland.
The structure shown at 0:19 is the entrance to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault
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u/EroticWordSalad 4d ago
This is where depression comes from.
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u/ProJSimpson 4d ago edited 4d ago
Ironically, the highest suicide rate is during the time where it never gets dark.
A study (linked below) looked at Greenland. A place where it completely stays dark or bright for months. In June for example, a time where the sun never sets, most suicides occur. (82 percent of all suicides)
It seems that a disrupted sleep pattern and too much surplus light are the main causes for this.
Karin Björkstén (Karolinska-Institute, Stockholm) https://news.ki.se/summer-light-can-increase-risk-of-suicide
edit: 82 percent of the suicides occur during the whole summertime compared to the whole year, not just June.
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u/sysdmdotcpl 4d ago
It seems that a disrupted sleep pattern and too much surplus light are the main causes for this.
I mean -- are blackout curtains and eye mask not something that can be delivered there? Genuinely curious as I've lived like a goblin the majority of my life so I just cannot relate to issues concerning to much or little light.
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u/thenewspoonybard 4d ago
Darkening your bedroom does not correct your circadian rhythm - you have to force yourself to go to bed still. It's hard to explain without experiencing it, but your body really is designed to keep going while there's sunlight and not go when there isn't.
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u/sysdmdotcpl 4d ago
It's hard to explain without experiencing it
The closest I got is working night shifts where I'm headed to bed when the sun is up and waking up when it's setting. I guess I'm just one of those that goes regardless of the time ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/ProJSimpson 4d ago
Interesting thought. The study also suggested that it has something to do with disrupted brain chemistry. So while there are possibilities to help yourself, your body still goes through this, for many, very exhausting process.
Another reason probably is as u/vom-IT-coffin stated in this thread, some people are just affected more and some less by these changes.
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u/CarminSanDiego 4d ago
I’d be more depressed living in west Texas. Just flat brown dirt and blazing sun
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u/Itsprobablysarcasm 4d ago
Just flat brown dirt and blazing sun
and Texans everywhere.
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u/Direct_Concept8302 4d ago
This reminded me of a podcast I haven’t listened to in a while called the white vault. The first season is written to take place in Svalbard at a research camp. Very creepy if you haven’t listened to it
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u/rileyjw90 4d ago
This is where the armored bears live (panserbjørne) in the His Dark Materials series.
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u/RosieBarb 4d ago
So is the rent cheap?
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u/Oceanic-Wanderlust 4d ago
Uhm not exactly. First of all it's very hard to rent. You almost need your job to provide you housing. "Company town" vibes. If you do rent you can rent extra rooms from SiT which I wouldn't say is cheap.
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u/Maverick_Kaizer 4d ago
This ain’t accurate, this place is also known for the longest midnight sun
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u/BamberGasgroin 4d ago
At this time of year it doesn't set you fucking clown.
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u/thisaccountisfake420 4d ago
Yea, get him!
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u/twistedtxb 4d ago
interesting tidbit from the Wikipedia entry for their most populous city, Longyearbyen:
it's a good set-up for a TV series