This or something connected to it is literally ruining my last chance at life but I cannot solve it and there is always a catch. I was disabled long ago by bad surgery and left in lots of pain. My physical career was ended. I was denied social assistance and fell in every crack. Life has never been stable enough long enough to reeducate and rebuild. In suicidal desperation I posted in a few places asking for ideas. A few months back a very kind person reached out to me in response to one of my posts on social topics and offered me an opportunity, a once in a lifetime thing that can work around my issues. In the process of updating my equipment (I had been primarily using a 12yo TN/CCFL having laptop) I experienced severe eyestrain. That sent me down a path of "why" and months later I still have no answer.

Eye doctor said I was ok and found nothing to explain this. I have monovision from Lasik done 20 years ago but it's never been an issue. I tested for and ruled out, to the best of my limited ability, the common gremlins like excesive blue light (always used f.lux/redshift before) and even tried the Uvex glasses that block ALL blue light. Tried PWM free displays and no change. Lowered brightness, changed ergonomics, font rendering, drivers, filters, OLED, ambient lighting. Anything common sense or the internet has come up with doesn't work for me. I even considered it was psychosomatic given the importance of me being able to do the one last thing I could do for any conceivable work and entertainment...sit at a computer...but no tactics to deal with that help. I was thinking about making an Ask HN thread recently but my last experience with that was pretty poor and the offer came from outside of that, but I saw this relevant post today and am desperate so here I am again.

Other than some older, specific stuff like a MBP 2011 17" antiglare screen that I had to sell(panelook.com says it had an RGB backlight but some dispute that), an iPad 2 on iOS (for at least 30min anyway), and a Windows Phone Lumia 635 on Windows Phone 8.1, Any LED backlit display I look at, and ALL modern ones I have found, on any brightness, filter or setting, or OS causes tingling in my face, back of head, and neck which turns into strain/pain/headache. I can replicate it. I can soothe it with time away or using the old, half functional CCFL laptop. I have tried 8 different panels in a Thinkpad, everything Best Buy has, borrowed from people, wasted money buying on eBay and testing. No success or answers.

There is a 10yo/168+ Apple support thread with no solution (was posted here not long ago in fact and most people blamed PWM or said it wasn't a big deal). A forum called ledstrain.org where people much smarter than me have tried to drill down through drivers and dithering and other options. Many of them reduce their quality of life further by using one of the 2 expensive and limited E-Ink displays out there, or hoard specific models of old displays and GPUs and outdated OS revisions they found work for them. I just cannot live even more limited like that since everything else about my life is already shrunk and reduced and miserable. Not being able to use or function around modern LED stuff is not tenable and there is no reasonable solution even on the horizon. Everything in my life is unstable and I have to solve this to get some foundation again. I am even entertaining the idea that this is all a big cosmic prank given how perfect the timing and specificity of this issue is. So, Loki, if you are out there I surrender. You win. Please give me a break.